It's about money
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Your editorial in last week's paper ("Public benefit") compares an article by John Griffin, criticizing Fauquier's methods of conserving its farmland, to my letter of rebuttal.
The last paragraph of you editorial states: "The Farm Bill subsidizes farmers so that we all pay less at the grocery. Conservation measures subsidize landowners so that we all pay less in terms of the physical and emotional wear and tear that urbanization entails."
aesthetic values are not the issue. My point is that there is a financial benefit to every county taxpayer when a farm remains a farm instead of being converted into a subdivision. Aesthetic values are a by-product — very important, but not as important as the financial benefit to all county taxpayers of keeping real estate taxes within bounds by keeping the ratio of open land to population in sync. As former Supervisor Sam Butler once famously said, "Cows don't ride school buses."
You suggest that both the Farm Bill and the laws governing the conservation of farmland might both benefit from a little tinkering. The only tinkering that should be done to the conservation laws should be to make the tougher.
If urbanization is not tightly controlled, we will see many of the people who have made Fauquier the wonderful place it is, and has always been, replaced by a dramatic influx of newcomers who cause, and can afford, the rise in local taxes that inevitably follow urbanization. I think this would be a tragedy that we must avoid at all costs.
And by the way, land conservation in this county started 60 years ago, not 40. It was the Land-Use Evaluation Tax and the easement program that began 40 years ago.
Hope Porter
Warrenton
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