Last week’s poll asked what firmness of mattress you prefer. While I personally prefer a soft mattress, and the wife is ok with it, I know that there are plenty of people out there who really prefer to sleep in utter discomfort on hard mattresses. While it was nice to see that there were so many people who chose soft or in-between, those of you who prefer firm mattresses are insane. Ugh. :-)
This week’s poll comes after reading this StarTribune article which bring to light a $20 million program which has bought up ~8,000 acres of land to keep it out of reach of developers–and in many cases, the people who funded the program.
From the article:
Dakota’s effort is widely considered a model program: The county leveraged the initial $20 million to bring in $58 million in grants and donations. Aiming to protect open land and make water cleaner, the county targeted properties that join lakes, rivers and streams. The county has 78 conservation easements so far.
The county pays the landowners for the easements, which restrict future use of the property to open space or farming and set requirements for how the owners must manage and maintain the land.
[...]
Al Singer, land conservation manager for Dakota County, said the easements cost less than buying the land while keeping it on the tax rolls and in the hands of owners who will farm it or maintain it.
“The County Board has not taken the position that public access was required because of all of the other public benefits gained by protecting selected properties,” Singer said.
While not all public groups using public monies to protect lands require access to these sites, there are some that do. But the real problem here is the county should spend more time informing the public as to their intent, per parcel, and ask for input on how those monies are used; perhaps even changing their requirements to match other public groups who demand the public have access to purchased lands if that is what the people desire.
Of the 10 comments on the StarTribune site as of publishing, many are against the actions of Dakota County. One commenter notes that one purchase was definitely a problem:
How stupid is this – pay $21,000 per acre for an easement that doesn’t provide any public access? Buying the property outright shouldn’t cost much more than that. Dakota county messed up.
boylan Sep. 6, 12 12:09 AM
However, one commenter supports the actions of the county claiming the public ruins public lands and thus their money should be used to purchase the lands while forbidding access to it:
The land is not just for the people. I love that they selflessly put it aside. That will keep people from ruining it. This privet land will still benefit everyone, by providing fresh air, healthy wild life, and much more.
neeners Sep. 6, 12 7:35 AM
So which do you think should be the case? Is taking land out of the hands of developers, possibly at high public cost, worth it when it cannot be used by the people who paid for it in the first place? Should the County be forced to make a change to the way it handles these sorts of transactions to ensure public access? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and vote on the sidebar and then comment on below. After you do both of those things feel free to check out our expired polls in the archive or read through the previous posts about polls here.
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September 9th, 2012 at 4:14 pm
My biggest issue with this program is on the farmland side. Does anyone honestly think that paying farmers to keep on farming their land is a good use of taxpayer money? On top of that, in Dakota County, the land in the townships is not zoned to allow development (generally 1 unit per 40 acre zoning), and no large amount of development is imminent in any land use plan. If the money is spent on farmland in areas where development is imminent, isn’t it a poor idea to spend money on land use planning that designates and assumes the development of an area when it will now not be?
I honestly do not understand how the farmland side presents any benefit to dakota county residents.
September 10th, 2012 at 1:17 pm
The idiots in Dakota County voted for this crap. Remember 2002, back when it was all rainbows and unicorns, we had survived Y2K and nothing was gonna get us down. Sure let’s throw 20million at a county land set aside program. They couldn’t possibly screw that up could they?
My guess is that most of the lemmings that voted for that program assumed that we would have some new nature preserves and/or some new county parks with no expectation that we’d instead just hand the cash over to good old boys and say just keep doing what you’re doing. Though I can’t say for sure because I wasn’t stupid enough to vote for increasing my taxes to pay for open space when I was also being asked to help make sure Johnny can read.
Should we have access to that land? They way they structured it the answer is no. Best we can do is when the current owners die, the heirs decide to just give it to the county so they don’t have to deal with maintaining it the way the county wants.
All that said, I can see what the County was doing. The took the plan and applied it. Protecting green space and water ways. They weren’t trying to optimize public space potential, but instead worked to optimize the value they could get to provide protection of areas of specific interest to those in Dakota County. According to the original program, there were to be annual audits of the money spent. I assume that was done and the amounts paid for these easements are appropriate. The bonds were only supposed to be for 10 years, so I assume this is why the news is coming out now, the program is wrapping up or looking for more funds. you can see all about the original plan here: http://www.co.dakota.mn.us/CountyGovernment/Projects/FarmlandNaturalArea/Program+History.htm