Town of Suffolk
Supervisor Scott Russell has proposed setting up a fund that will allow the town to purchase farmland and resell it, but only to farmers."Now, farmland enters the market and we hope for the best," he said at Tuesday's work session, where he introduced the idea to the Town Board.
Current preservation funds, like the income from the 2% tax, do not permit the town to resell any of the land it preserves. Most 2% money is used to buy the development rights to existing farms. If, however, a farmer or the owner of farmland wishes to sell everything, the town must go through an intermediary like the Peconic Land Trust, which will purchase land provided it has lined up the next willing buyer.
The proposed system would allow the town to buy the land at market rate, subdivide and sell off any parcel containing a home at market rate, strip the land of its development rights — in effect selling it to themselves — and then offer the land, with the stipulation that it be farmed, at rates below what is currently being charged for farmland on which the development rights have been sold. Mr. Russell hopes that figure can be less than $10,000 per acre.
Farmland now on the market, without development rights, is going for around $20,000 per acre and that's too much to make a farm profitable, said Martin Sidor, owner of a potato farm in Mattituck, who was on hand to explain the proposal to the board.
As an example, Mr. Russell used a 23.8-acre farm with a house and barn that's currently on the market for $2 million. The town could buy the property at that price and sell the house for $400,000. After that, with an estimate of $60,000 per acre in development rights, the town could take $1,380,000 from the land preservation fund. This would leave $220,000 for the town to recoup and allow it to sell — to a farmer — for $9,565 per acre.