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NEWS RELEASE

December 9, 2009

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County Moves to Add 1,000 Acres to Agricultural Land Preservation Program

ELLICOTT CITY, MD – Howard County Executive Ken Ulman today announced that easement acquisition offers have been made to 7 of the 13 applicants in the Agricultural Land Preservation Program’s (ALPP) “Batch 14” application cycle. These offers have the potential to add over 1,000 acres to the 20,500 acres already preserved by the Program. The Howard County Agricultural Land Preservation Board (ALPB) completed its review of the 13 applicant properties in November, after several months of public hearings. The ALPB was charged with completing the scoring of each property, a process which determines the final price per acre that the County will offer the property owner for their development rights.

“I am incredibly pleased that our program has drawn such great properties,” said County Executive Ulman. “All seven properties are relatively large, are being actively farmed and have a high percentage of land already under easement nearby.”

The scoring system is based on characteristics that rate a property based on its agricultural viability – factors such as size, soil capability and adjacency to other protected land. The maximum score is $40,000 per acre; however, the average of the seven properties being made offers is $32,200 per acre. The score is also used in a competitive batch such as the current one to rank the properties in the order in which offers will be made, from highest to lowest. At this time, seven property owners have been made an offer: Camilla and Philip Carroll (500 acres), Genevieve Carroll (61 acres), Teige Carroll (61 acres), Ian Carroll (56 acres), Leona Stedding (90 acres), Marshall Rea (160 acres) and Mario and Serafina Mannarelli (107 acres).

The present economic situation’s effect on the real estate market has provided an excellent opportunity for the County to acquire agricultural easements since development pressure has eased significantly, making the ALPP a very attractive option.

The funding for the acquisition of ALPP easements comes from a dedicated portion of the local real estate transfer tax. The ALPP receives ¼ of the 1% tax collected whenever property is transferred within the County. In addition to the 20,500 acres of land currently in the ALPP, there are also 7,708 acres in environmental easements and almost 11,000 acres in state and county parkland (and land owned by the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission). This totals almost 39,000 acres in the Rural West that are protected in some way, which is 41% of the overall land area.

For questions regarding the ALPP, please contact Joy Levy, Administrator at 410-313-5407 or jlevy@howardcountymd.gov.