{"id":45,"date":"2011-06-20T08:15:52","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T14:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/interculturalurbanism.wordpress.com\/?p=45"},"modified":"2011-06-20T08:15:52","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T14:15:52","slug":"land-tax-reform-and-urban-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=45","title":{"rendered":"Land Tax Reform and Urban Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"

(A version of the following appeared in the Pueblo Chieftain<\/a><\/em>, co-authored with Kyle Cascioli, June 19, 2011).<\/p>\n

Colorado Governor Hickenlooper recently signed into law House Bill 1146 rolling back the state\u2019s favorable agricultural property tax rates for landowners who do not maintain farming or ranching operations on the property. \u00a0This became an issue when it was discovered that the state had a policy dilemma regarding the equitable application of Colorado zoning laws that determine whether a given parcel qualifies for the lower agricultural zoning property tax rate as opposed to the higher vacant land or residential zoning tax rate.<\/p>\n

The critical point concerns developers who acquire large blocks of agricultural land for speculative future development as part of land banking strategies.\u00a0 In some cases developers either discontinue agricultural operations, scale operations back to insignificant production levels, or fail to maintain the land so that it remains agriculturally viable until such time that it is developed.\u00a0 Taking agricultural land out of production prematurely can have disastrous consequences.\u00a0 Last year in Florida, for example, tens of thousands of citrus groves \u201cland banked\u201d by homebuilders for future development were unmaintained, and became a breeding ground for a type of lice that eventually destroyed millions of acres of crops across the South.<\/p>\n

The new law does nothing to address the premature removal of land from agricultural production.\u00a0 The law will zone and tax these properties at rates that are higher than the agricultural property tax rates, but only for properties under 2 acres.\u00a0 During the run up to bill passage JoAnn Groff, the state\u2019s property tax administrator, was quoted as saying that, \u201cA \u00a0large number of Colorado agricultural properties include residences, and it will take effort to determine whether they are integral to agriculture.\u201d\u00a0 She went on to state that \u201cPerhaps not from a revenue standpoint, but from a fairness and equitable standpoint, I think you [we] are taking a very large step.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Groff, and our state legislators, have failed to address the real issue.\u00a0 While the new law will require Tom Cruise to pay his correctly zoned share of property taxes for the Telluride parcels where he grazes a few sheep it will not discourage some production home builders from potentially gaming the system in land banking strategies.\u00a0 Speculation and the accelerated disappearance of Colorado\u2019s agricultural lands will be especially consequential for Colorado\u2019s metropolitan suburban and exurban communities that benefit from nearby farming and ranching.<\/p>\n

The critical issue here is not the equitable application of Colorado property tax law but the need to maintain productive agricultural lands until such time as they are developed in response to market demand.\u00a0 \u00a0Our legislators should amend this law in keeping with an ethos of agricultural and urban sustainability. They should work to create policy that will keep producing farms near urban communities on both slopes, mitigate exurban sprawl along the Front Range, and maintain the quality of life for all Coloradoans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(A version of the following appeared in the Pueblo Chieftain, co-authored with Kyle Cascioli, June 19, 2011). Colorado Governor Hickenlooper recently signed into law House Bill 1146 rolling back the state\u2019s favorable agricultural property tax rates for landowners who do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-op-eds"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}