Pittsylvania County land-use code change hits dead end

Pittsylvania County had plans last summer to change its land-use code to make sure that participants in the program met its criteria.

But, the proposed changes that would have taken effect in January will not happen.

“It’s not going anywhere,” County Administrator Dan Sleeper said Tuesday.

Farmers under the county’s 28-year-old land-use program pay reduced taxes on property used for agricultural purposes, such as for cropland, timber, pasture or horticulture. The land is assessed by the Commissioner of Revenue at a lower rate per acre than similar agricultural property not covered under land use.

However, the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors tabled the matter this past summer.

“We were making much ado about nothing,” said Chatham-Blairs Supervisor Hank Davis of the proposed changes, which would’ve included revalidation fees and required that everyone under land use to re-register every six years. Every lot would have been examined to find out if it were eligible to be in land use.

The changes would have yielded little in return for increased burden for the Commissioner of Revenue, Treasurer, the Board of Supervisors and county citizens, Davis said.

  There are properties in the county classified under land use but no longer meeting requirements. Out of 4,354 parcels under land use, Sleeper estimated in July that there were about 100 that no longer belong because they had changed, stopped use or been subdivided. No one has re-registered under the program since the early 1990s.

Tunstall Supervisor Tim Barber said he also agreed with the decision to table the issue because the changes would have been rough on farmers during a bad economy. Barber said he talked with farmers in his district about the proposed changes. 

“It was getting a lot of negative feedback from farmers,” Barber said Tuesday.

There are already safeguards in place to find out whether a landowner has re-zoned from agriculture to residential, Staunton River Supervisor Marshall Ecker, who also was in favor of tabling the proposed changes.

The Pittsylvania County Agricultural Development Board had proposed revalidation fees under the land-use program at $6 per parcel and 72 cents per acre, while the Legislative Committee had proposed fees of $30 per parcel and 90 cents per acre.

The average market share in Pittsylvania County for an acre of property not in land use is about $2,000. But under land use, property used as cropland, for example, is assessed at $435 an acre, resulting in lower property taxes. There are about 335,000 acres in the county under land use.

The Commissioner of Revenue coordinates the implementation of the land-use program according to guidelines from the State Land Evaluation and Advisory Council.

Pittsylvania County’s land-use program resulted in about $438.6 million in deferred land value and about $2.2 million in deferred taxes in 2008.