Seeking information on transferable development rights

[planman]

I am searching for information on how to establish the buying and selling of development rights as a way to handle sprawl on prime farmland. How many development rights per parcel of land, limiting the total development rights per township, any examples will be helpful.

We are a rural county in Kansas adjacent to, and in the path of growth (sprawl) of Wichita. This idea may be a hard sell because there is "so much open land just waiting to be developed"!

One thing in our favor is that the governing body of the county is progressive in their thinking and they are accepting of ideas that promote good planning. Thank you in advance!

[kms]

Try this link -http://sites.state.pa.us/PA_Exec/Agriculture/bureaus/farmland_protection/

It's Pennsylvania Farmland Preservation.

[Jerry Weitz]

There are lots of sources on TDRs. The most complete account of all programs in the U.S. is in a book by Rick Pruetz, AICP, called "Saved by Development." That should be available in the planners bookstore. There was a supplement issued to that book also, which updated the material with new communities that have adopted TDRs. Montgomery County, MD has effectively used TDRs to save thousands of acres of farmland.

[Budgie]

Currently there are no TDR or PDR programs in Kansas and to my knowledge there are no counties using Conservation easements, although state law specifically allows TDR's and allows local governments to act as land trusts. There are two active land trusts in Kansas. The Sunflower Land Trust based in Wichita/Augusta and the Kansas Land Trust in Lawrence.

In Saline County, we have used a process similar to a TDR without creating a market for development rights. Saline County has a 1% per year population growth rate, which conventional wisdom indicates that we don't have growth pressures to support TDR banking. What we do allow is a landowner to cluster development rights in the Agriculture area. For instance, if 320 acres has 4 homes (1 per 80 is our standard), then we allow 4 homes on 20 acres with the remaining 300 acres being reserved to AG only. Currently, we use deed restrictions and prior goverment actions to enforce the AG only restriction, but we're proposing to shift to an agriculture easement. We call them AG Easements rather than Conservation easements because of the liberal conotation of the term "conservation".

We'll be proposing modifications to our code to simplify and clarify clustering standards and processes.