The Oconee County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday night is scheduled to remove key responsibility for the county’s farmland protection program from a citizen committee that initiated the program in 1998 and has controlled the program since.
Instead, the Commissioners are set to shift responsibility for selection of farms for the program to a committee they appoint and control.
Because of their stated unhappiness with the existing selection process, the Commissioners passed up the near certainty of receiving $175,000 in federal funding and the opportunity to protect a farm in the county in the current fiscal cycle.
The next opportunity the county will have for federal funds will come in the next federal fiscal year, which starts on Oct. 1. Those funds will be available only if Congress agrees on a farm bill that includes funding for the federal Farm and Ranchlands Protection Program (FRPP) or a similar federal initiative.
Since 2003, Oconee County has been a leader in the state in farmland protection, placing permanent conservation easements on 485 acres of farmland in the county, preventing it, in perpetuity, from being developed.
Only $507,800 of the $2,929,510 spent on the program has been covered by local tax money, with the federal government contributing the largest share of funding, $1,947,240. The landowners also contributed to the program, and the total value of easements is more than $4 million.
For more on this story, go to Oconee County Observations.