|
CHURCH: I don’t have issue with a well-crafted ordinance and so forth, but I go back to
<br />enforcement again. I saw this when I was the chairman of the Tax Board of Appeals for years
<br />where there were so many violations of people who were in ag zoning getting ag assessment
<br />benefits and clearly weren’t conforming to the requirements. And so the issue here is, how do you
<br />go about enforcement? And then the question is, somebody has to do it and how do you pay for
<br />it? And to me, it seems pretty simple; people driving around, stopping these operations, checking
<br />them out, how do you pay for it? And I think that the mechanism, which I don’t see here at all, is
<br />penalties which are severe enough to fund these types of things where they self-fund themselves
<br />and, you know, for people get slapped on the wrist, they get some notice, they ignore it
<br />completely. You are not going to get enforcement here. You know, I don’t care how well it’s
<br />crafted or not, you are not. The provisions here don’t provide for that. I don’t think you have an
<br />answer to it, but unless we start thinking in those directions, we will have limitless ordinances,
<br />which are well-intended and well-crafted, which people ignore.
<br />
<br />SHIMAOKA: A question I’ve got is, is there any I guess mechanism that allows for site visits to
<br />define, or determine, that these guys are agricultural, as far as our definition of that?
<br />
<br />DARROW: What I’ll do is, I’ll answer the questions. Maybe it’s better if I answer them now
<br />versus wait until, so let me answer Chairman Unger’s question first regarding the minimum
<br />10,000 gross. So let’s do that, and then I’ll touch upon it when we go through it.
<br />
<br />Both in Bill 227, if I can refer you to that item, I believe it’s in Exhibit 2 — I’m going to be
<br />jumping around here, so please, I apologize for taking a little time, okay, so, yes — Exhibit 2,
<br />okay, this would be Section, this is on Page 6 of the bill, or it actually goes to 7 — wait, wait, am I
<br />even in the right —
<br />
<br />UNGER: Yeah, Page 7 —
<br />
<br />DARROW: — yeah, so, it looks like, for some reason I thought she took it out, but it appears to
<br />still be in there, I want to make sure this is the right bill, but it looks different from, okay, that’s
<br />why, all right, I believe it’s Exhibit 1, okay — so Exhibit 1, Page 3, (d)(1), that’s where it
<br />references the minimum verifiable gross sales of 10,000 dollars; that’s been crossed out. And so
<br />at that point there was no minimum requirement. Basically, what the, if you look at No., the new
<br />No. 4, which is on Page 4 down at the bottom, it’s basically making a statement that the gross
<br />revenues from agricultural tourism shall not exceed the gross revenues of the associated
<br />agricultural activity and/or agricultural processing facility. So the reason why, I think, she took it
<br />out is because, and this is in discussions with Councilman Wille, we have several meetings talking
<br />about the bill and the changes that the Planning Director was looking at making to make sure that
<br />she was not really against it but understood where we were going, so we just didn’t do this without
<br />counseling with Councilman Margaret Wille. But what happened was is that apparently the
<br />people that had come and talked to her said this process is not working, it’s too restrictive, we
<br />can’t, we don’t have the means of being able to come in and do all this stuff, we are just farmers;
<br />that’s kind of the reasoning behind some of these changes to make it less restrictive and less
<br />burdensome. One of the big burdens they said was having to provide financial records, being able
<br />to show this relationship between the agriculture versus other agricultural tourism activities. I’m
<br />not sure how true that is or, you know, anything about that; one thing I do know is that in our other
<br />12
<br />EXHIBIT A
<br />
<br />
|