December 6, 1999

Saline County

Persons present: Bob Stewart, Gerry Snapp, Ron Powers, Becky Plattner, Wayne McReynolds, Roy Hunter, Mubarak Hamed, LeAnn Haling, Mike Dillon, Anna Cox,  Richard Clemens, Kathy Borgman, Mark Belwood

12/6/99
RCP

• Undeveloped agricultural potential
• Individual property taxes
• Land being used for short term economic gain
• "Supply chain" economics in agriculture (vertical integration)
• CAFOs (Deleted CAFOs as separate item; concept is covered in the above item)
• Changes in property values
• Changes in tax base
• Impact of government owned land in county
• Employment opportunities
• Effect on incomes
• Effect on costs of providing local government services

• Soil degradation
• Misuse of land
• Pollution of water sources
• Loss of natural resources (e.g., forests, wetlands, wildlife habitat, native flora and fauna)
• Land being developed without concern for unique flora, fauna and native life forms (delete this item, combine last part with item above)
• CAFOs
• Odor (added this item back, somehow it got dropped from original list)
• Potential health concerns
• Potential impact of changed land use on cultural/historic sites
• Too many "dusk to dawn" lights (moved from Planned/Guided Land Uses group)

• Lack of direction (planning) for land use
• County has no authority to regulate agriculture
• Too much outside (non-local) control/ownership of land use
• Loss of control over their livelihood
• Local control will lead to patchwork of regulations
• Government buying too much ground
• There is a need for more public lands
• Impacts of low density development
• Agricultural sprawl
• Clash of rights – whose rights prevail?
• Impact on personal rights
• Loss of farmland
• Not enough local expertise to guide/regulate land use
• Impact on property rights
• Needless government intervention

Following the discussion and revision of "concerns", the group took a few minutes to begin identifying the basic values represented by the list of concerns. This task will be revisited in future meetings, but the first tentative list included the following:

• Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness
• Quality of life
• Economic well-being
• How any change will affect my future
• Respect for the land
• Respect for one another
• Inalienable rights

The next task was to begin identifying potential "actions" that would address the list of concerns. The following is a "first cut" list of possible actions. This list will be revisited and revised at our next meeting.

• Initiative Petition to change the Missouri Constitution to permit regulation of agricultural lands by counties
• Push the legislature to improve county and township planning and zoning statutes
• Land use covenants
• Health ordinances
• Land Trusts
• Conservation Easements
• County Planning
• County Zoning
• Do Nothing
• Let the Market work
• Tax credits, subsidies for various land uses
• Environmental credits
• Environmental regulations
• Incentive zoning
• Performance zoning
• Education of the citizens
• Transferable Development Rights
• Purchase of Development Rights
• Cooperatives
• Voluntary Actions/Alliances
• Agricultural Districts
• Conservation/Cluster Development