San Benito County supervisors last week made a logical decision when they decided to forgo an amended Williamson Act program because it would have been a waste of time to move forward when the vast majority of involved property owners have no interest.
Supervisors voted 4-1 in denying establishment of a public hearing on the topic. The state legislation, Assembly Bill 1265, would decrease Williamson Act contracts from 10 years to nine years while generating about $230,000 in local revenue. It also would have curtailed the savings by 10 percent for the rural property owners in the program.
Calling attention to the lack of interest in the program from the agriculture community, there was nobody in attendance from the San Benito County Farm Bureau – normally an outspoken organization on all things rural – at last week’s meeting.
As a whole, the debate reflects the declining state of the Williamson Act program, set up to encourage property owners to preserve agricultural lands by offering annual tax breaks. For several years now, state cuts have led to continual diminishment of funding support for counties such as San Benito, of which about 65 percent of the land is contracted under the Williamson Act.
The reality is that such subsidies to the agriculture industry are destined to gradually disappear in this new budgetary and economic landscape throughout California and the nation. In the meantime, though, county supervisors made the right call in moving to support the local agriculture industry in the short term, during these immensely difficult economic times, by nixing any possibility of county involvement.
From a prophetic perspective of sorts, the lone dissenting supervisor, Margie Barrios, was on the right track. Barrios wanted to at least bring the topic to a public hearing and get residents’ feedback before making a decision. In particular, she pointed to a possible $4 million budget deficit next fiscal year and mentioned the potential for layoffs among government employees.
Her stance merely highlights the breadth of damage caused by the poor economy and resulting budget cuts for government agencies – which incidentally is at the root of the Williamson Act program’s demise. In other words, everyone is hurting these days.
But establishing a public hearing just for the sake of holding a meeting makes little sense. After all, the staff time would amount to an added, unnecessary expense at a time when every penny clearly matters.
