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The Farmland Protection Program purchases the development rights of working farmers who wish to keep farming.
The Program is currently funded by roll-back taxes — five years of the difference between land use and market value taxation when a landowner decides to move out of land use taxation (more about land use later) — and by private donations. Rollback taxes generate around $20,000 per year.
Private donations, principally from the Rappahannock County Conservation Alliance, have totaled $20,000 over the last two years. A 2-cent tax would generate about $300,000 per year.
The remainder of this article summarizes arguments for the two-cent tax.
Avoids larger tax
increases later
The cost to educate a child in Rappahannock public schools, in local tax dollars, is a little more than $8,000 per child per year. Thus, every 25-acre farmland parcel not converted to a house with a school-age child saves the county $8,000 per year.
For example, if a 205-acre farm is converted to five acres for the farmer and eight 25-acre parcels, and a house with one school-age child appears on each parcel, the cost to educate those eight children for five years is $320,000, probably more because public education costs escalate faster than inflation. Those costs can be avoided in
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