County commits money for ag preservation

By FRITZ MAYER

MONTICELLO, NY — County legislators have taken the first concrete steps to help preserve farmland in Sullivan County. On August 16, legislators voted to commit $93,000 to help purchase the property development rights (PDR) to the Meyers family farm on Earl Meyers Road in Callicoon. The Meyers Farm was the first property in Sullivan County to be included in the statewide PDR program.

A PDR program is a land protection tool through which willing landowners sell development rights in exchange for a perpetual conservation easement, or deed restriction, on the property. The purpose of the easement is to assist maintenance of an agricultural operation or preservation of natural areas, or possibly both, by permanently protecting the land from development. The land may be sold or transferred, but the deed restriction remains in place. In the case of the Meyers Farm, New York State has agreed to pay 75 percent of the development value, with the remaining funds coming from other sources. Sullivan County is picking up 12.5 percent of the tab-$93,000?and The Open Space Institute (OSI) is picking up the other 12.5 percent.

This is the first action taken under the county’s Endangered Property Protection Program.

Legislator Frank Armstrong said, “We need to offer our farmers and agribusinesses as much support as possible, including support that allows them to reject economic and development pressures to sell their farms for non-agricultural uses, and continue to operate their family farms as farms and agribusinesses.”

Jennifer Grossman, the vice president of land acquisition for OSI, said the family can do whatever they need to do to the 136-acre farm to keep it viable as a working farm, but under the terms of the PDR program, they can’t subdivide it or build houses on it.

The process began in October 2006, when the state entered the property into the PDR program. Earl Meyer said the deal is not yet complete because lawyers and accountants are still examining all the particulars.

“There are a lot of rules and regulations with this,” he said. “You’ve got to examine it from every angle because this will affect the farm possibly for hundreds of years.” He said, however, the process may be complete within the year.

Meyers said for the past year or so his daughter and son-in-law have been mostly operating the farm, which was started by his great-great-grandfather in 1842.