‘65 Legislation Aims at Saving Farming Areas

The 17,000-acre Chino dairylands are part of about 15 million acres statewide being preserved under terms of the 1965 Williamson Act, which seeks to save farmland and control suburban sprawl. The law allows local political jurisdictions to establish agricultural preserves within their spheres of influence.

Under the act, landowners can enter into contracts with local governments restricting their land to agricultural use for 10 years. In return, the landowners are taxed on agricultural-use value, rather than the value of the land for potential real estate development, which generally is much higher.

The property owner can withdraw from the contract over a nine-year period, during which the tax rate rises gradually to market value. The owner also can buy his way out of the contract in one year but must pay such a substantial penalty that this is seldom done.

In 1983 a law authored by Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) provided a one-time, six-month “window” permitting a landowner within an agricultural preserve to sell the land if he could prove that development was going on all around the property in question and if the proposed use was in accordance with the local general plan.

Robinson’s bill was intended to help would-be developers of property in eastern San Diego County, but Chino landowner Neil Kasbergen took advantage of the legislation to escape from the agricultural preserve.

Kasbergen and his partners have proposed a high-density residential development for the property, a project that many dairy farmers see as the beginning of the end for the Chino dairylands.