2012-04-19 Leeward Exh B - Zoning Code Ag Tourism

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BOWMAN: But then you have a minor that might not because -. LEITHEAD TODD: Well, if you are not doing $10,000 in gross sales, then are you really doing -. That’s gross; that’s not net. BOWMAN: Okay, that’s gross. LEITHEAD TODD: So are you really a real farmer or is this a backyard -? GIFFIN: Hobby. LEITHEAD TODD: Cause the intent is to try and make, supplement the income, if I was -. And part of it is if you are doing any crop that is seasonal, what you have is you have monthly expenditures for fertilizer, water and labor but you are waiting for your harvest, and so you -. This is an attempt by the Legislature to try and allow farmers to have income that comes in on a monthly basis that helps supplement them waiting for the actual sale of their crop. You know, if you have some crops that are two years before you harvest, then this would allow you to have some income from a tour of your farm. It would allow you to have, if you have a really cool name for your coffee, you know, you could sell the coffee mugs and stuff like that; so you could have some income that comes in. Because they wanted to help them balance it out. Because for some guys, you know, you are waiting a long time and you are borrowing the money, and in the meantime you don’t have income coming in. So the farmers were asking for something that would help them. That’s why we sometimes have B&B operations on actual farms, because they are trying to supplement that, because that gives them regular -. But we don’t put a requirement on a B&B operation that there be a nexus to agriculture; we haven’t put any requirements that it can’t exceed their agricultural sales. This is the only place where I’ve seen this language is in agricultural tourism. And I think it came out of the prior Director’s concern that he didn’t want just tourism but no actual agriculture going on a property, and yet you’ve got tourism that is non-agricultural. It’s probably open-area recreational things like Ziplines, and those are permitted; open-area recreation is a permitted use on Ag land, and yet you’ve got no what we think of as typically agricultural activity necessarily going on. So anyway, I was trying to kind of tweak the existing language, make it a little bit easier without totally gutting everything that was in it, and making it just, you know, whatever the farmers want to do. I think some farmers would like me to just really loosen it up even more, but this was an attempt to go within what we already have to make it a little bit easier but not completely throw out the ordinance. GIFFIN: Commissioners, any other questions of the Director? BOWMAN: So just to clarify, it’s still going to be major agricultural tourism operations then, right? LEITHEAD TODD: The language that I have here is “major.” But if the Commission wishes to recommend that the word “major” be taken out and just say “agricultural tourism operations must have a minimum of $10,000 in verifiable gross sales …,” I don’t have an objection to that, because the original bill required, whether you are having one visitor or 30,000 visitors, to have $10,000 in sales. 4 EXHIBIT B