Yellow Pages
From now on, newcomers who want to build a home on their very own slice of Skagit County farmland must be willing to farm it.
In a decision published today, the county’s planning department has put some teeth into an old section of code that only allows farmers to apply for building permits for new homes on 40-acre-minimum lots.
The code isn’t being changed. The new administrative interpretation issued by Planning Director Gary Christensen spells out how his department will enforce a regulation that has been on the books for a decade or more, he said.
The code has been too vague to be effectively enforced, Christensen said.
“These ag parcels can in the end turn out to be large-lot residential parcels on which maybe McMansions are built,” Christensen said. “We are concerned about an increasing number of non-ag property owners living on farmland.”
Under the new interpretation, applicants wishing to qualify for a building permit must sign a sworn affidavit confirming three years of farm income from the lot where the home would be built. It does not allow non farmers to build homes on agricultural land then lease the tillable part to a farmer.
The new interpretation does not affect those who want to remodel or rebuild on an agricultural lot that already has a house on it.
Allen Rozema of Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland said his group recently became aware of the new interpretation and supports it.
“What we’ve seen is people who can afford to buy 40 acres and sprawl out ... so they can have some elbow room,” Rozema said. “It starts to fragment the agricultural fabric out here, checkerboard it, and makes it harder and harder for farmers to have contiguous fields to farm.”
Christensen and Rozema both said they didn’t have data on how many acres zoned for long-term agriculture have been lost to people who treat the properties as large residential lots. Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland would like to do a study to come up with that figure, Rozema said.
Appeals of the interpretation will be accepted at the offices of county Planning and Development Services until Sept. 11.
n Ralph Schwartz can be reached at 360-416-2138 or .
