A view looking out towards the Sapphire mountains is an example of open space that could be protected by the open space bond. REBECCA STUMPF-Ravalli Republic

It's a beautiful time of year in the Bitterroot Valley. The season of heat and smoke has finally turned the corner toward autumn. Trees are starting to change color, farmers are harvesting their corn and the final cutting of alfalfa, and ranchers are weaning calves and moving cattle onto fall and winter pastures.

This is always a season of change for Ravalli County and this year and new kind of change is in the works - one that could protect the open lands in the valley that many people find so valuable and still provide a way for local farmers and ranchers to keep working their ground.

This November, voters in Ravalli County will vote on a $10 million Open Lands Bond, which if passed will protect the open land in the valley the county's agricultural heritage, said Dan Huls.

Huls is the chairman of the county's Right to Farm and Ranch Board, the county Planning Board and owns a dairy farm north of Corvallis.

Because of the various hats he wears in the community, Huls knows the struggles local farmers and ranchers face in keeping their operations viable. He also understands the pressure the valley is facing due to growth and development.

The open lands bond could be a step in the right direction in protecting the agricultural land, which in turn preserves many aspects of the valley people finding attractive, Huls said.

“This is a great opportunity for the community to give landowners an alternative to developing their land,” he said.

The agriculture study

Earlier this year, Larry Swanson, an economist with the O'Conner Center for the Rocky Mountain West, completed a study of the impacts of growth on agriculture in the Bitterroot Valley. The study was commissioned by the Right to Farm and Ranch Board and the Bitter Root Land Trust and funded by a Forest Service grant.

Swanson's study outlined the rapid growth of Ravalli County and the subsequent loss of agricultural land. It also contained suggestions for tools the county could use to better deal with the loss and protect agriculture. And Open Lands Bond was one of the tools suggested.

Ravalli County has lost about 41,000 acres of agricultural land since the 1980s, according to Swanson's study. Currently the valley has about 210,000 acres of agricultural land. If the current trend continues, Swanson predicts that another 40,000 will be lost by 2020. The vast majority of this land is lost to development.

Ravalli County's population is nearly 40,000 people. Currently the county is experiencing a flattening in the growth rate, down to about 1.5 percent a year. That's a significant decrease from the growth rate in the mid-1990s, which was 5 to 6 percent, according to Swanson's study.

But still, he predicts that Ravalli County will have a population between 57,000 and 72,000 people by the year 2025.

Agriculture operations in Ravalli County contribute significantly to the economy. Valley farmers spend about $30 million a year in production expenses and bring in about that amount in cash receipts from stock and crop production.

But Swanson also pointed to the importance of agricultural land that isn't reflected directly in the market.

“In many ways the Bitterroot Valley, as with many other areas of the Interior West, are becoming ‘amenity-based economies.' Amenities such as nearby mountains, plentiful forests, high-quality streams and lakes, abundant fish and wildlife, and other features are becoming the foundations up on which area economic life is being built,” wrote Swanson.

“Attractive, well-managed farms and ranches and the relatively open landscapes they contain add appreciably to these quality landscapes and are attractiveness. As these lands are lost through development, many times unnecessarily, many of these values are degraded.”

The benefit to the community is mostly through indirect benefits, Swanson said Wednesday during and phone interview. One indirect benefit of open land is that people's property values are increased because of the beauty of the valley. But the tension lies within how growth occurs, he said.

If growth in the valley isn't managed, then bad developments will push out good developments and the amenities, like beautiful open lands, will be diminished and property values will eventually fall, he said.

The Open Lands Bond is a tool Ravalli County can use to manage growth, Swanson said.

Huls and Bitter Root Land Trust director, Grant Kier, took Swanson's study to heart and even before it was completed began discussing with people in the community options the could use to help protect agricultural land.

Without some incentive for landowners to conserve their land, there's no way to get monetary value out of their ground other than selling to developers, Kier said. And the pressures on agriculture producers to sell land are increasing each year.

Pressures on agriculture

The Bitterroot Valley's heritage is rooted deeply in the ground. Homesteaders begin tilling the rich soil along the Bitterroot River in the 1860s. And that heritage is still evident throughout the valley, said Swanson.

“It's sort of a deep seated notion that these agricultural lands have value to the community,” he said.

There are still farms and ranches around the county that have been operated by the same families for generations, Swanson said. The community knows this and still sees the importance of keeping those operations and their land in production.

“It's that feeling that this really is great farmland, this is great land for producing food and it shouldn't be used for something other than that,” he said.

But the running a farm isn't easy. In a more competitive economic environment, farmers have to grow or diversify with value-added products to stay viable, Huls said.

And for many farmers, the greatest asset they have is their land, he said.

“Everything that they have is in that land,” Huls said.

It's like their retirement plan. And currently there are no cash incentives for farmers and ranchers to conserve their land as open space when times get tough. So it's much more economically attractive to sell land.

“Their only choice now, if they want to extract value out of their land, is to sell it to a developer,” Kier said.

With an Open Lands Bond, landowners would have another option to utilize the value of their land.

The nuts and bolts of the Open Lands Bond

The Open Lands Bond money would go primarily to conservation easements on agricultural and other private undeveloped land in the valley, Kier said. Participation in the Open Lands program would be entirely voluntary, which would make it an attractive resource for many people in the valley.

A conservation easement is a covenant placed on the land that keeps it from being subdivided and developed. It lasts forever, no matter who owns the land.

One of the more positive aspects of a conservation easement is it can be tailored for each piece of property, allowing for continued farming and ranching and protecting the historical values of the land, Kier said.

On the surface, a conservation easement is a simple concept. A landowner approaches a land trust agency expressing interest in putting a conservation easement on his or her land. The agency who would services the easement has two appraisals done on the land to determine the value of the land without development restrictions and the value of the land with an easement.

The property's appraisal without restrictions is obviously much higher than the appraisal with restrictions. The difference in the two amounts is where the bond money would come into play.

Currently the landowner has to donate that difference to the agency servicing the conservation easement. If the landowner has a large income, this donation could serve as a nice tax shelter, Kier said.

But most of the working farms and ranches in the valley don't have the large incomes. Much of their profit is put directly back into the operation of the ranch, Huls said. Therefore nullifying most of the tax breaks available to them.

With an Open Lands Bond, the money collected would cover part of the difference in appraised values. The landowner would still have to donate a portion of the property's value to the agency handling the easement, but that donated money and the bond money would be matched by money from federal programs, Kier said. The money would go directly to the landowner, compensating them for their loss in property value.

This concept isn't a new one. Gallatin County passed a $10 million Open Lands Bond in 2000. It was so successful, the passed another in 2004. In all, Gallatin County has protected about 40 square miles of open land.

In Gallatin County, for every dollar of bond money spent, the county was able to match it with $4 from outside sources.

These federal grant programs meant for protecting open land are vital to the success of the Open Lands Bond, but they can't be leveraged without the bond.

“The kicker is if you don't have the local match, none of that is available,” Kier said.

If the ratio of federal assistance in Gallatin County holds true with Ravalli County, then the $10 million bond could produce $50 million to protect open lands, he said.

In fact, in Gallatin County, because of the ability to leverage federal grants, has been able to conserve open land at the rate of $273.44 an acre, Huls said.

“I think we can conserve a lot of land for $50 million,” he said.

If the Open Lands Bond were passed, the county commissioners would appoint citizens to an open lands board who would receive proposals for the use of bond money. They would review the proposals and then make recommendations to the county commissioners who would make the final decision on what bond money was spent. Only after the commissioners made a decision, would bonds be sold, Kier said.

Fully funded, the Open Lands Bond would cost the average Ravalli County Taxpayer about $30 a year, Huls said.

“That's less than 9 cents a day,” he said.

More to do

“A $10 million Open Space Bond is really a strong step for Ravalli County,” Swanson said.

This would be another statement from the citizens of the county that they want a hand in determining how they grow, he said.

Some of the other tools needed to compliment an Open Lands Bond are in place, like the county growth policy. But others are still in the works.

“Planning is as much sort of laying out what it is you what to occur as it is what it is you don't want to occur,” Swanson said.

The Open Lands Bond can be used most effectively as part of a bigger planning framework that already establishes such things, he said.

Karen Hughes, the director of Ravalli County's Planning Department agrees.

“Right now we have the growth policy which talks about the importance of open lands and helping Ag folks meet their needs,” she said.

An Open Space Bond would be a good tool in the planning department's arsenal when looking at managing growth.

“I think there's a lot of potential for it to provide yet one more tool we could use and actually have some money associated to make it work,” Hughes said.

But besides an Open Space Bond, the planning department is busy working with the planning board on countywide zoning, she said. Plus planning is going forward in the Old Corvallis Road area and Corvallis area.

These local plans will likely include zoning and could dovetail nicely into an Open Lands program, Hughes said.

Other tools that can assist in managing growth and protecting values are capital improvement plans, which define how the county is going to address building and road needs; streamside set backs and zoning.

And as people in the county become more comfortable with land-use planning, there will be more opportunities to look toward the future.

“I think there are a lot of opportunity for proactive planning in this valley,” she said.

Swanson agrees, even though he hears people say it's too late for planning in the Bitterroot Valley.

Ravalli County needs some smart and progressive land-use planning to protect property values and maintain the quality of life people and enjoy here.

“By conditioning growth you're really going to protect property values in that valley,” he said.

For more information at the Open Lands Bond, contact the Bitter Root Land Trust at 375-0956.