THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 12, 1995 TAG: 9502100225
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Long : 156 lines
On these two pages, there's a lot of print to plow through - pun intended. Maybe the Agricultural Reserve Program interests you, maybe not. But if the future of Virginia Beach interests you, read on. The ARP debate touches some major issues: Suburban vs. rural. Private property rights vs. community rights. Environment vs. development. Wards vs. at-large elections. Citizen vs. government.
The hope of the program, and the reason for debate, are to suspend the ``vs.'' in those equations and probe for compatibility among farmers and environmentalists and farmers and suburbanites and politicians about where to go and how to get there. The Ad Hoc Committee for the Southern Watershed started the process, and take justifable pride in their initiative and authorship of the ARP.
But this is a process; and however grumbling the demand for specifics, reassurances and a hand in any finished product by others directly affected as ARP payors or payees, it is essential to the proc-ess. Some of the reaction to that demand has had a ``how dare you'' timbre to it. But where the city's future, taxpayers' funds and citizens' trust are involved, pinning down rules and projecting realistic results aren't a dare. They're a duty.
Following are excerpts from the discussion of the Agricultural Reserve Program during City Council's Feb. 7 session.
Councilwoman Barbara Henley
I will answer . . . why we did not recommend the cost-benefit analysis. . coming up with an analysis of that sort which would cast a lot of doubt, primarily because the answer . . . would depend on the assumptions that were made.
Do we assume . . . the buildout of our master street and highway plan, which would four-lane highways all the way down to North Carolina, and through Blackwater? Would we assume . . . the long-range plan for HRSD, which would run sewer line all the way through Pungo to North Caroolina?
. . . Based on where you landed with those assumptions would be what you would avoid in infrastructure. . . . There would be such a wide range of findings, based on the variables that you chose to measure, that there would probably be some disagreement about what that analysis showed.
. . . And then in a program such as this there's the issue of dealing with externalities. Negative externalities . . . would be opportunity costs. Positive externalities - all these would be very difficult to quantify. What would be the benefit air-qualitywise if we do not place all these residences down in the southern part of the city and they didn't have long commutes that would have some impact on air quality? . . . What about storm-water control? If we avoid having to engineer stormwater drainage problems and instead opt for . . . leaving the area in farmland to take advantage of the present situation, then we have avoided those costs. . . . Trying to put that price tag on issues such as this would be very difficult in an analysis of that sort.
. . . So we opted not to try to do it because we thought that there would just be a lot of disagreement about whatever we had come up with. . . . It would be pretty costly in money as well as time. . . . We felt that there was a lot of present information . . . that's still valid that . . . that would be able to give an idea of what that avoided infrastructure might be. . . . Just looking at our own CIP figures . . . we can probably get some idea of what the infrastructure costs might be.
. . . I would feel that the inexact science of cost-benefit analysis is such that it may or may not be worth the time. I think we may be able to come up with a good enough idea from the information that we have otherwise.
. . . There is a wealth of data out there that's available, and we certainly haven't meant to suppress the information. We could give you as much as you want. We'll be more than happy to make every attempt we can to answer questions.
. . . We just didn't feel it was necessary to develop data that perhaps may be suspect if we could look within the literature and find comparable situations that would give us a close idea, plus using data that had already been developed for the city in the past.
. . . So it's not our intent to avoid answering any questions or to suppress any information. . . . If the Council wishes to do further studies and hire consultants . . . have at it.
Councilman John Moss
Assumptions are assumptions, and every study I know of has them. And what better group, if we're making the decision, to make the assumptions we're going to make the decision by? . . . If we're going to make the policy choice, we ought to be able to know how to evaluate if it was successful or not.
. . . Somewhere along the line the city man-ager should set the criteria to evaluate this expenditure of public funds.
. . . If we're going to say, ``I don't care about saving money . . . Preserving farmland is inherently a wonderful thing that we want to do independent of cost,'' then we ought to pursue that and just say it's a policy objective . . . and then not say it was because we're avoiding all those infrastructure costs. Because basically we're saying we can't come up with a methodology we would all agree with that would prove the point or not prove the point.
. . . So then let's not evaluate it on the basis of saving money; let's evaluate it on the basis of preserving agriculture itself. Then we have to come back and say, ``Where is the long-range market analysis . . . that says what's it going to take to keep business profitable the next 25 years?'' . . . Can we preserve agriculture just by buying development rights? I don't think you can say that . . .
Councilman John Baum
We're going to have to do a whole lot of analysis of how to get revenues and try to project how much we're gonna have to spend each year, and it'll have to be revised after we get started on experience. . . . But I don't think you're going to get any numbers that mean anything. There's nobody around that smart. Grain farming is what this area is really suited for, but because of the building in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake that's going to gradually change.
What I've been fighting for for a long time . . . is private property rights being protected. And I'm a strong believer in that part of the Fifth Amendment that you don't take people's property rights from them without paying for them, and that's what we've been do-ing.
. . . (On the ad hoc Southern Watersheds Committee) one very positive thing was happening - and I hope continues. Most rural people have no use for . . . environmentalists. . . . And we started a dialogue where it got more positive. I think you're going to have to have moderate environmentalists and moderate landowners working together to protect property instead of somebody imposing mandates through the federal government or the state government or the local government. We've got to do something better than that.
. . . I'm not comfortable with 2,500 houses. . . . I was afraid (of what) the civic leagues and others would do; just like, ``Why do they need to do anything? We'll fix it so they can't make much money off their land and they can't do anything else with it. They can farm it but we won't allow them to do anything else.'' And I think that's completely unfair and is approaching takings.
. . . But the kind of things that come up to rural legislators are the kind of things that are never in the paper. . . The reason I know how the people (in Blackwater Borough) feel is because I know instantly how I feel. . . . And the time's going to come when you're not going to have a Barbara Henley or a me or anybody else. Because the last two times I ran, these people knew nothing about agriculture. One of them didn't even live there. To try to get the press to print any of that was a waste of time. . . . All these awards I happen to have won - tree farmer, ag man of the year and all that stuff - never a word in The Beacon.
. . . What I've been waiting for is some way of preserving property rights, or buy it.
. . . How in the heck is it I'm going to profit from this deal? . . . The truth is, anything I've heard seriously discussed is you start up north; you're not going down to the Carolina line. Be six, eight or 10 years. I'm going to be 68 Saturday. What am I going to do - go to the Bahamas and look at bikinis on all this great profit? I mean, it must be nuts!
And of course, I resent that. And I will say that nobody ever tells me this kind of stuff to my face. But you can print it in the paper and you can write letters and you can get away with it. But I wouldn't suggest anybody try that with me face to face. MEMO: Related letters on page 7. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Barbara Henley
John Baum
by CNB