LOGAN - Cache Valley voters will decide this fall whether to tax their homes to keep some of their farming neighbors from selling out to build more.
    The Cache County Council voted 5-2 Tuesday to put a $10 million land-preservation bond on the November ballot. The amount was halved after the county executive and the local Republican Party took stands against the original proposal for $20 million.
    If voters consent, as a winter poll suggested 71 percent would, the county will appoint a citizens board to prioritize properties for protection from development. The money could be spent either to buy lands for public access or to pay farmers and ranchers to forgo their development rights forever. It's a widely used model in parts of the United States where farmland is under pressure from urbanization, and some officials say it's overdue here in Utah's rapidly disappearing agricultural core.
    When one councilman at Tuesday's meeting asked how many in the crowd supported the measure, dozens raised their hands and none objected.
    "If it's what the people want and they're willing to pay for it, why should we deny them the right to vote for it?" asked Councilwoman Kathy Robison to loud applause.
    The measure would cost Cache County homeowners with a typical $180,000 home $18.12 per year, and a business owner with the same property value $32.94.
   
Advertisement

Holly Strand, of Providence, said she'll gladly pay that to save open spaces that she has watched shrink as traffic has grown in her three years in the valley. She brought her toddler daughter to the meeting to support the ballot measure, and said she hopes voters will take the same course those in her previous homes of Santa Barbara, Calif., and Boulder, Colo., did.
    "It creates a sense of place that you lose if you build on every square inch," she said while strapping her girl into a car seat in her Subaru wagon after the meeting.
    Shauna Kerr, of The Trust for Public Land, which backed the ballot measure, said $10 million is less than what the county needs, but still an excellent start. She noted that Park City voters started with $10 million when they approved their first preservation bond in the mid-1990s. Park City since has approved $10 million and $20 million follow-up bonds.
    Cache County's attempt faces opposition from those who believe taxes are high enough already. County Councilman Darrel Gibbons said he represents the largest farming district in the county and has heard only opposition from farmers who don't want to pay for the program. Current taxes plus ballooning fuel and food prices add up, and the council should have used its position of knowledge about the tax burden to keep the issue off of the ballot, he said.
    "We have a moral obligation to say enough is enough," Gibbons said.