Editor’s note: Eben Fodor, nationally recognized community planning consultant and author, recently spoke about Polk County’s plan to increase minimum acreages in an interview with Bulletin editorial writer Steve Gordin and publisher Jeff Byrd. Fodor was in his office at Fodor & Associates in Eugene, Oregon. The firm does land use and growth management consulting, development impact analysis and sustainable community planning.
Fodor represents businesses, individuals and community groups in land use appeals and helps resolve land use and development conflicts. He has been one of the leading researchers on the impacts of urban growth. He writes on growth and sustainabil-ity issues and speaks on these topics across the U.S.
His popular book on managing growth, “Better, Not Bigger – How To Take Control of Urban Growth and Improve Your Community,” was published in 1999.
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TDB: We understand that you cannot comment specifically about Polk County, not having studied our situation. But as a general rule, what do you think of a seven-acre minimum lot size as a method for controlling growth?
Fodor: A good growth management program involves a framework of policies. Seven-acre zoning by itself is a bit narrow for a growth management program.
TDB. Many here are concerned about the economic impact this could have. Some estimates place jobs related to construction at 20% of all jobs here.
Fodor: Clearly you currently have a high reliance on construction. A construction-based economy tends to be volatile and short-lived. It brings temporary jobs. It requires dramatic growth on a continual basis. It’s risky to try to sustain or prop up a construction-based economy. The construction industry can crash like the closing of a textile mill.
It sounds like your primary asset (in Polk County) is natural beauty. Perhaps also wonderful people, but I suspect mostly natural beauty. It takes a lot of money to have a second home, a vacation home, and the driving force – the economic engine – may be primarily the natural beauty of the area. The problem is that the (construction based economy) continues on and on until the natural beauty is compromised – that is, there is too much traffic congestion, overdevelopment, development without character and personality, strip mall type of stuff.
On the other hand, if all you get is the high-end development, you have economic disparities between local incomes and land and housing prices.
The solution to that cycle is to address local growth in some responsible and fairly comprehensive way.
TDB. Just to clarify as we discuss this, is your expertise related mostly to urban areas? This is largely still a rural county.
Fodor: I work with both urban and rural land use. But it will require more than some urban growth expert to determine what Polk County should do. Polk County may be rural, and it may be too early for a seven-acre minimum there. The problem is that by the time you get there, it can be too late.
The question is: What is it you want to protect about the county? What is there that you want to save? What are people passionate about, and what actions would they support to preserve those things?
TDB: Wouldn’t a seven-acre minimum hurt some property owners, stripping value from their properties?
Fodor: You are talking about property rights and the expectations for their investments. There is no inherent right to have guaranteed expectations of property values for any real estate investment. But people do have these expectations.
Local government, on the other hand, has a clear duty to look after the health, safety, and welfare of the community. Overall, land use regulations by local governments tend to enhance values. Regulation is essentially a system of optimizing land values. It is a way of assuring folks who buy land for a residence that no hog farm will be located next door. It increases land values when you have security and knowledge of how neighbors will impact you.
When you take land use regulations away, property values drop. Typically, the more regulation, the more value. But this assumes that they are good regulations that produce benefits.
TDB: But there are always winners and losers.
Fodor: If someone faces a significant loss, there are compensation mechanisms that should be considered. Overall though, any good land use plan is going to enhance land use values.
TDB: What other options are communities trying?
Fodor: Communities are using Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) policies, but with mixed success. Typically, it is difficult to find places where people want more density. But you can acquire development rights or conservation easements in a number of ways to protect important community amenities, such as viewsheds, watersheds and open space corridors. You can acquire development rights for critical amenities, like parks and trail systems. It’s best to put in place a funding mechanism to acquire and protect important land, such as a very small sales tax or a real estate transfer tax. In this way you can protect these over the long term and maintain a community anchored in a permanent natural setting.
Again, what do people want? To protect these mountains? That forested ridge line? To maintain open space for horseback riding? You need to shape a community vision, and then act to carry it out.
TDB: The prices of land here have risen, and are now fairly steep. With a two-acre minimum, a man with 40-some acres can sell for over $1 million. With a seven-acre minimum, the land is worthless. He can never sell.
Fodor: In this example, there may be some loss in value, but he can sell six lots, and they may be larger, more valuable homesteads.
TDB: There are not that many rich people.
Fodor: At seven acres you allow quite a bit of development still. A policy of seven acres over the entire county is even-handed in that it applies to everyone. It meets the fairness doctrine. The question is, would it produce the results people want to see? Is it the direction people would support?
TDB: Many people here do not support any sort of land use regulations. Newcomers tend to favor land use regulations.
Fodor: Newcomers bring a valuable perspective. They have seen what can happen. Some people don’t have any idea what they are in for. The story is repeated thousands of times across the country. There is no guessing here. We know the scenario pretty darn well. You have an attractive quality to an area. You get growth pressure. Facing growth pressure, you ask, ‘What ways can we step up and address the pressure to protect the community?’ Failing that, you get sustained growth until it becomes intolerable. It becomes too ugly. You don’t have enough water. It is too congested. It is too expensive. Then the growth stops.
The question is: Do you do something before it is too late? Seven acres is a small step, but it is a step.
TDB: The county commissioners are pointing to the current drought to justify the action.
Fodor: With septic tank and well systems, five acres is the standard. A two-acre minimum is not sustainable. Two acres has about a 20-year maximum life for a well and septic system before cross-contamination becomes a problem. I am not sure where the seven acres came from in your proposal. In Maryland, there are counties with 25-acre minimums. It is simplistic, but it is presented in Maryland as farmland preservation. Twenty five acres is what they consider the minimum to have a farm. There are minimum lots sizes of up to 160 acres in the forest land sections of Oregon. You need that size to do forest management, stage big equipment and not be impacted by neighbors.
TDB: We’re talking about increasing from two to seven, and citing the need as the drought.
Fodor: Sometimes you need something like that (the drought) to say, ‘We will absolutely not grow beyond this!’ But such reasons are not really what will sustain the decision. You can always engineer around technical problems. They will get water out of the air if they need to. The real questions are: What quality of life do current residents want? What do they want the character of the community to be in the future?
The economy and jobs will be driven by the quality of life. If it is a good quality of life, it will attract business, and create a stable economic base. If you have a single, overarching goal, maintaining quality of life is not a bad one.
TDB: Isn’t this a simplistic way to attack the problem. Wouldn’t it be better to have a master growth plan?
Fodor: Public support is necessary for any good, workable land use plan. Without public support, it is not going to last. Comprehensive planning, even uncomprehensive planning, is essentially a process of achieving your goals. The best goals come from the community, when it has been probed in depth about what people want. Planning is future-oriented, as opposed to the present. It’s about families and children and future generations. You have to think in a longer time frame. The economy is always thinking about now, tomorrow. Think ahead 20 years, or longer, if you have an ambitious program. The planning process is the most concrete basis to build upon.
And don’t depend entirely on elected officials for solutions. They often don’t deliver what people really want. Surveys show people across the nation are disenchanted with the performance of elected officials on land use and development matters.
Good planning needs to come from a broad group of local residents.
Editor’s note: Look for an interview soon in the Bulletin with officials of the N.C. Home Builder’s Association, which is opposed to mandatory low density regulations.