Survey: Support slips for farm conservation outlays
County detects headwinds on Measure A tax renewal issue
Public support appears to be waning for the use of Measure A tax revenue to protect West Marin agricultural land from development.
Measure A, which passed with the support of more than 74% of county voters in 2012, enacted a quarter-cent sales tax to preserve and maintain open space, parks and farmland. It raises about $10 million per year.
The measure sunsets on March 31, and preparations are underway to place an initiative on the June 7 ballot to renew it.
At the Board of Supervisors meeting last week, Marin County Parks Director Max Korten presented the results of an online community survey assessing support for Measure A and the public’s top priorities for funds raised by the tax. More than 2,700 respondents participated over nearly two months.
Twenty percent of Measure A funds are earmarked for a farmland preservation program, with the bulk used to help the Marin Agricultural Land Trust purchase agricultural conservation easements in West Marin. Since 2014, MALT has received more than $14.8 million in Measure A funds to help purchase easements. MALT contributed more than $69,000 to help pass Measure A in 2012.
Judging from the survey results, however, enthusiasm for continuing that level of funding is minimal. Farmland preservation ranked last among 10 funding categories evaluated in the survey, and with 12% of participants saying it is “not at all important.”
Supervisor Judy Arnold said the survey results were the subject of discussion at a Marin County Farm Bureau luncheon that she attended.
“There was a shock when we saw how it has plum
meted,” Arnold said, referring to support for the farmland preservation program.
Wildfire prevention was the funding category that respondents placed as the top priority. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said it is “very important,” compared with 21% who said farmland preservation funding is very important.
Speaking for the Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers, Kingston Cole told supervisors, “COST believes that any renewal of Measure A must reallocate priorities to substantially increase funding for wildfire fuel reduction in parks and open space.”
In 2021, Marin County will spend $3.3 million of its Measure A funds on vegetation management, Korten said. In March 2020, Marin voters approved Measure C, a 10year tax that is expected to raise about $19.3 million annually to fund fire safety projects.
Cole said, “COST strongly urges eliminating Measure A spending on MALT, reducing agricultural farmland grants, and reducing or eliminating the funding to acquire additional open space land.”
Susan Ives of Mill Valley, co-founder of Restore Point Reyes Seashore, a project organized by the Fairfax based Resource Renewal Institute, said, “For the last decade, Measure A dollars have gone to benefit some of our county’s wealthiest and most privileged. The county’s largest landowners have received more than $14 million in public money.”
Ives said the mission of protecting West Marin farmland from development has already been accomplished by changes in county zoning.
“Emissions from cattle are driving climate change and contributing to species extinctions,” Ives added.
Speaking for the Sierra Club Marin Group, Barbara Bogard said, “We urge you to reduce the farmland preservation funding from 20% to 10%. We propose a new category of ecological restoration as well as a new funding category that recognizes the impacts of Western colonialism on native cultures, places and practices.
“We’re concerned that racial and social justice for Native American tribes has not been included in this funding as partial reparations for both the Coast Miwok Tribal Council of Marin and the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria,” Bogard said.
In addition to the online survey, Korten and his staff met with more than 40 people and community groups to get their thoughts about Measure A. Korten said the general management plan update for Point Reyes National Seashore, approved by the Biden administration in September, came up repeatedly as he “spoke to groups about their discomfort with the farmland program.”
The plan allows the park to kill some of its tule elk and to extend how long commercial cattle ranchers can rent parkland.
“It’s more important now than ever to conserve agricultural land,” said Thane Kreiner, MALT’s executive director. “Protecting Marin’s agricultural land has numerous ecosystem benefits including carbon sequestration, riparian zone conservation, and preservation of wildlife corridors. From a biological perspective, grazing animals are part of this region’s ecosystem; without them, many native species would go extinct.”
Kreiner added that MALT is working “to foster and promote regenerative agricultural practices such as carbon farming, rotational grazing and waste-to-feed conversion that hold the potential for minimizing the methane emissions that cattle generate.”
David Lewis, director of the University of California Cooperative Extension, said there is no guarantee that developers won’t try to challenge Marin’s zoning laws that restrict residential construction to just one home per 60 acres on agricultural land.
“We’re not done protecting the land,” Lewis said.
Korten said he will draft an updated expenditure plan for a Measure A renewal and submit it to the Parks and Open Space Commission for its review on Nov. 18. The Board of Supervisors will discuss the plan again on Dec. 14. A final expenditure plan must be approved by March 11 to place the measure on the June ballot.