03/05/2008: "Land Bank To Purchase 186 Acs at $1,175,000"

Land Bank Director Lincoln Bormann received approval from the County Council on Tuesday to proceed with the outright purchase of 186 acres of land on Orcas.

The land is located between the Judd Cove Preserve and Turtleback Mountain Preserve on Orcas Island, and has the potential to become an important link between the two properties.

The property is now owned by family farmers Vern and Sidney Coffelt, who are nearing retirement. Bormann told the Council that the Land Bank purchased conservation easements on the farm in 1995 and 1996, but the Coffelts are now in the position of needing to sell the land or find another way to enable them to back off from their day-to-day activities.

He told the Council that if the property were sold at full price on the open market the cost would make it highly unlikely that any investor would maintain it as a farm. By purchasing the land, the Land Bank could then lease potions of the land to farmers -or would be farmers- as a means to insure that the land stays in agriculture and to protect scenic vistas.

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(continued from front page) Bormann told the Council the Coffelt property illustrates the “short comings of easements on Land Bank property” if the easements do not require that the land be farmed.

The County will make payments, and pay interest, on the property over a period of four years, and the Coffelts will be given a life estate on the property of one acre, so that they may remain in residence on the property for the rest of their lives.

The Council unanimously supported the purchase, with Council Member Gene Knapp saying, “There is no way to describe this as anything other than terrific.” Council Member Bob Myhr added, “This can serve as another model for preserving property and land in agriculture.”

(The San Juan County Land Bank was created in 1990 and mandated to “preserve in perpetuity areas in the county that have environmental, agricultural, aesthetic, cultural, scientific, historic, scenic or low-intensity recreational value and to protect existing and future sources of potable water.” It is funded with a one percent real estate excise tax paid by purchasers of property in the county.)