For a recent school assignment, 9-year-old Kayla Zumbrunnen wrote a paper called, “Why should they build more homes?”

        Kayla had cried when the trees near her Boone County subdivision were cut down for development. But in her paper, she judiciously examined all sides.

        Her conclusion: Build more homes, but please try to do it between the trees.

        That's the sort of Solomon-like approach that has eluded some of the adults in Boone County.

Bruce Ferguson (center) works with his grandson, Josh Blair (right), and farmhand Denny Davis to move machinery on his farm in Union. (Patrick Reddy photo) | ZOOM |

        Unbeknownst to many residents, a handful of citizens are engaged in a fierce battle of ideas — ideas about the county's future landscape and the government's proper role in shaping it.

        Some want to preserve Boone's dwindling farmland with a voluntary program known as “purchase of development rights,” or PDR.

        It would allow farmers to keep their land but sell the development rights to local government, which then would restrict what can be built there. In this way, farmers are at least partially compensated for the profits they lose by not selling to builders.

        Fast-growing rural states like Pennsylvania, where former Gov. Tom Ridge launched a “Growing Greener” initiative, already have used such programs to purchase rights covering hundreds of thousands of acres.

        “Without this option, farming in Boone County will be gone by the next generation,” says Linda Arlinghaus, a retired teacher who lives on a farm in largely rural Petersburg.

        But opponents argue that taxpayers “will be plundered to pay for these schemes,” because the preserved land will not generate substantial revenue, putting the burden on everyone else.

        “Do we really have the wisdom to make decisions for all future generations?” property-rights activist Bernie Kunkel asked in a letter to county officials.

Board member quit

        Boone County does not have a PDR program, but some would like to see one started.

        Disagreement over this notion prompted Ms. Arlinghaus to resign in September from the county's Soil and Water Conservation District Board. It technically has no role in the PDR decision, but Ms. Arlinghaus wanted the board to express its support.

BOONE COUNTY

• Population has increased by 260 percent in 30 years, from 32,814 in 1970 to 85,991 in 2000.    • Total number of farm acres in 1969: 126,706; in 1997: 79,855.    • Number of farms in 1969: 1,245; in 1997: 691.    • Number of people living on farms in 1970: 3,916, or 11.9 percent of the population; in 2000: estimated 1,100, or 1.3 percent of the total.    • Distribution of population in living environments defined by U.S. Census: 1960: 26.2 percent rural, 47.4 percent suburban, 26.4 percent urban; 1990: 2.3 percent rural, 36.4 percent suburban, 61.3 percent.    Source: Boone County 2000 Comprehensive Plan

        “My health does not permit me to stay on board and continue to disagree and argue with you at each meeting,” Ms. Arlinghaus wrote in her resignation letter.

        She was referring to the board's change of attitude since the arrival of three new members, Bernie Kunkel, David Kuchle and Rick Brueggemann. Elected last year in a race virtually ignored by voters, the three are members of the League of Kentucky Property Owners, a group of developers and citizens opposed to government restrictions on property.

        Every Kentucky county has a conservation district, and most experience no controversy, with tiny staffs working quietly to promote natural resources and help farmers protect their streams and soil.

        In Boone County, the election of three activists has turned this obscure agency into a platform for competing philosophies about the purpose of government.

        Mr. Brueggemann and Mr. Kunkel, for instance, are so opposed to what they see as frivolous public spending that they voted against a $50 grant to Goodridge Elementary School for the purchase of 500 tree seedlings to celebrate Earth Day.

        And last month, conservation board members voted to stop discussing PDR programs altogether, hoping their silence would send a message of disapproval to the fiscal court, Mr. Kuchle says.

        “I do not like to see our government have more property under its control than need be,” says Mr. Kuchle, who owns a 300-acre farm in southern Boone. “Buying and selling and owning property is the basis of our whole capitalist system.”

        But these impassioned voices aside, county officials aren't certain the majority of Boone Countians care about land planning issues.

        So far, Fayette County has Kentucky's first and only local program for purchase of development rights. Led by citizens who saw rapid residential and commercial development press against the famed horse and tobacco farms of the Bluegrass, Fayette assembled its PDR plan quickly enough to secure $15 million from the national tobacco settlement to pay for land purchases.

        Pennsylvania has one of the nation's most successful programs, launched with a $100 million bond issue in 1987. With broad political support and an additional $40 million a year in cigarette taxes and other funding, the state has purchased rights on 186,000 acres, according to a study by the Boone County Planning and Zoning Commission.

        “I'm not sure there's the same community support behind it in Northern Kentucky,” says county administrator Jim Parsons.

        He may present the planning commission's report to the fiscal court this month. If the court wants to move ahead, the report recommends at least a year of public education and discussion before any action is taken.

An alternative

        To some of its champions, PDR is a solution to the pressure placed on farmers.

        They can't make any money growing produce. In fast-growing counties such as Boone, their land is their fortune, but at the same time, they don't necessarily want to see it divided into housing tracts, says Butch Arlinghaus, Linda's husband.

        “The only problem we have with preserving open space is doing it at our cost alone,” says Mr. Arlinghaus of farm owners like himself.

        Beginning five years ago, some Boone County residents organized a movement to keep western Boone rural through mandatory zoning restrictions. That upset the Arlinghauses and others, whose properly values would have been forced down without compensation. The proposed restrictions never became law.

        PDR programs are an alternative that blunts the financial sting to farmers.

        The Arlinghauses reject the argument that they shouldn't make decisions for future generations. When farmers sell their land to developers, they are just as certainly affecting those generations, Mr. Arlinghaus says.

        There are many ways to set up and pay for PDR programs, and it's unclear what route, if any, Boone County would take.

        Some PDR programs restrict development only for a set period of time, such as 15 years. After that point, landowners can buy back their development rights if they can show that continued farming isn't feasible.

        One potential obstacle is the rising cost of land. Kentucky's statewide program, called PACE, has paid an average of $667 an acre, and the most valued property in Boone County fetches as much as $25,000, says Bruce Ferguson, a Boone farmer who serves on the PACE board.

        PACE has since received tobacco-settlement money that may push up the price it can pay, but not close to market levels in some areas.

        “Pennsylvania has done a great job (with PDR), but they spend hundreds of thousands buying land,” says Mr. Ferguson, a supporter of such programs. “It's a hot item up east, where people are more environmentally conscious.”

        Much as he would like the PDR option here, he isn't sure taxpayers care enough about open space to make the commitment.

"Throwing money away'

        Indeed, here's the view of Adele Nichols, a Boone County parent who coordinates several soccer leagues involving some 2,900 children:

        “If it's going to be open space, what good is it, if it's not going to be used for something?

        “In my opinion, that's like throwing money away,” Ms. Nichols said. “Every piece of land we should be able to use for soccer, or another sport, even.”

        Also unimpressed with the PDR concept was Mike Zumbrunnen, the father of Kayla, who moved to Kentucky seven years ago from North Carolina.

        “I'm conscious of the fact that farmland is being chewed up quickly in the United States, but at the same time, I don't think it's realistic to be able to stop the growth,” Mr. Zumbrunnen says.

        He's more irked by lack of government planning than lack of open space.

        His subdivision, Bluegrass Ridge, is located off Pleasant Valley Road with many other new housing developments. But Pleasant Valley still has only two lanes and no sidewalks. On an attempted walk to U.S. 42, Mr. Zumbrunnen kept having to jump the guardrail to avoid traffic.

        “That's not an issue of growth, that's an issue of not managing and planning our growth,” he says.

        Boone County resident Amie Ellis thinks growth is happening too fast. She supports “buying time” with a PDR program.

        A parent volunteer at Stephens Elementary, Ms. Ellis is concerned about the state's distribution of tax revenue to districts. Boone County lacks money for new schools even though “it's almost positive that a thousand families will be moving into these subdivisions,” she said of growth along Pleasant Valley Road.

        “I think (development) needs to slow down,” Ms. Ellis says. “If the county wants to buy up (farms), that's fine with me.”

        Mr. Arlinghaus says he only wants the opinions of all citizens to be heard.

        Opponents of PDR do not want county officials to have public forums on the subject. But the Arlinghauses are hoping for the year of public discussion, followed by a ballot issue that would let voters decide.
       

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