Supervisors approve Rainbow agricultural easement acquisition

San Diego County will obtain two new agricultural easements soon, including one on a 143.41-acre property in Rainbow.

A 5-0 San Diego County board of supervisors vote Sept. 11, approved the acquisition of the Rainbow easement for $305,000 and an easement on a 154.84-acre property in Dehesa.

The approved motion also found that the transfer of land ownership to allow continued agricultural use and preserve existing natural conditions was categorically exempt from California Environmental Quality Act review.

“This is the next step to acquiring another two properties,” supervisor Dianne Jacob said.

In August 2011, the board of supervisors approved an update to the county’s general plan. The update directed county staff to develop a pilot Purchase of Agricultural Conservation Easement program to compensate willing property owners for placing an agricultural easement on their property which would limit future uses and eliminate future development.

The resulting PACE program includes three eligibility requirements: the property must have been actively farmed or ranched for at least two years before the application, the general plan update must have reduced the property’s density and the property must have had the ability to be subdivided before the general plan update.

Between 500 and 600 property owners expressed interest in taking part in the program, and 60 property owners submitted applications for the pilot program. The applications were ranked on criteria established by the PACE advisory group. The primary ranking factor was the density reduction due to the general plan update, and other ranking criteria included agricultural viability and the ability to contribute to the assemblage of the Multiple Species Conservation Program.

The pilot program included a $2 million allocation covering $212,000 for independent third-party appraisals and $15,000 for title and escrow expenses as well as the funding to purchase the easements.

The appraisal which determined the value of the agricultural easements used the California Farmland Conservancy Program traditional approach which estimates the market value of the land if unencumbered and the market value of the land with the conservation easement and then determines the easement value by subtracting the encumbered appraisal value from the value of the unencumbered property.

The 10 properties with the highest ranking were appraised during the pilot program. The property owners ranked second and fifth declined the easement offers while the owners of five properties totaling 10 legal parcels provided “willing seller letters” including two Fallbrook ownerships with a combined 138.17 acres.

The acceptance of those five property owners exhausted the available funding, so offers were not made for the remaining ranked properties and appraisals were not made for the properties not ranked in the top 10. In July 2013, the board of supervisors approved the purchase of the five properties totaling 738 acres for a cumulative price of $1,694,000.

The 2013-2014 budget process allocated $620,000 to complete the purchase of the 10 ranked properties. Two of those owners declined the easement offers, while the owner of a 44-acre parcel in Lakeside accepted the easement purchase agreement. The remaining $560,000 was added to the unused $94,000 from the original $2 million to cover future purchases.

In December 2013, the county supervisors directed staff to work on acquiring easements from the 16 properties not funded during the pilot program while referring the acquisition costs of those properties to the 2014-2015 budget process.

In September 2014, the supervisors approved the acquisition of easements on eight properties for $1,319,850 including a 19.14-acre Bonsall parcel whose easement was valued at $190,000, and that action also directed staff to include up to $1.5 million for PACE acquisitions in the 2015-2016 budget.

The intent of that budget direction was to have an ongoing program, and the PACE program now has an annual $1.5 million funding allocation. In November 2016, the board of supervisors approved the purchase of an agricultural easement on a 211.54-acre property in Pauma Valley for $608,470.

“This program has been very successful since its inception,” Jacob said.

The Rainbow land consists of five legal parcels owned by the Ralph and Samee Foster 2001 Revocable Trust. The land is northeast of Rainbow Road and Mount Olympus Valley Road.

The Rainbow and Dehesa acquisitions are the 29th and 30th acquired under the PACE program and increase the total acreage conserved under that program to 2,333.21 acres. The easement acquisitions bring the county’s total purchase payments to $5,990,470.