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^Scenic Easements
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* r * ''; Th6 people of Rappahannock County benefit from the tvilling;ss ofsome landowners to donate scenic easements on their prop*ty tojthe Virginia Outdoors Foundation. Thfs is land that is permanently protected from development. In imedases more houses can be built, but generally less densely lan would have been possible without the easement. Th$ landowner also benefits from a tax write off of the value of ie ea$ement when it is donated and lower taxes when the property passed on to his heirs. However, with the hue and cry from some umers when the fire tax was applied to the fair market of real state, scenic easements offer another tax advantage. The ommissioner of the Revenue uses land use value as fair market alue for the fire tax for land under scenic easement. Perhaps that can become the incentive to increase the percentage f the bounty’s land that is covered by scenic easements. Nothing so clearly signals, to potential developers the county’s etermination to remain rural and beautiful as the willingness of its isidents to forego for themselves and their heirs the potential profs from developing the land. | Over and over county planners and members of the Board of supervisors listen to proposals for more intensive use of land escribed as the “highest and best use.” More and more citizens are Italizing that keeping land in agriculture or forests is its “highest kid best use.”
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