Yolo County is recognized for its fields of green farmland thanks, in part, to the California Land Conservation Act of 1965, or the Williamson Act. However, California’s budget crisis cut $28 million from the Williamson Act, leaving the undeveloped countryside in jeopardy.

The Williamson Act allows property owners to form a contract with the county that gives them a special property tax rate for keeping their land as farmland or open space. The landowners’ property tax is derived from the land’s income producing capability, instead of its Proposition 13 or current market value.

If property taxes on agricultural land were increased to their current market value, many small farms would be driven out of business. For this reason, many landowners value the Williamson Act as essential for their farm’s survival.

“It is a crucial element in maintaining the economic viability [of agricultural land] due to the property tax relief that it provides participating landowners,” said John Gamper, director of taxation and land use for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Since the Williamson Act’s conception in 1965, counties have been reimbursed by the state for the loss in property tax dollars. With the act’s recent financial cut, the state will no longer provide counties with the difference.

John Young, Yolo County’s chief deputy agricultural commissioner and sealer of weights and measures, said 400,000 of the 600,000 acres of agricultural land in Yolo County are currently enrolled in the Williamson Act. Many landowners will feel the effects if Yolo County decides not to renew the contracts with landowners.

Robert Ramming, owner of the organic Pacific Star Gardens fruits and vegetables farm in Woodland said if the Williamson Act was not in place, he and his family would never have been able to maintain their 40-acre farm by just the sales of their produce.

In response to the possibility of Yolo County not renewing contracts with farmers, Ramming proposed that landowners join forces and form a voluntary commission. Donations from these landowners and those in favor of the Williamson Act would be given to the county in return for their agreement not to cancel the contracts.

Some landowners worry that without the Williamson Act, or measures such as Ramming’s, they may be forced to start taxing themselves to ensure the county will renew contracts.

Fellow landowner, Casey Stone, vice president of Yolo Land & Cattle Co. and director of the Yolo County Farm Bureau, said if the county was to cancel contracts it would be detrimental blow.

“[The Williamson Act] is not a fad program,” Stone said. “It’s been a long, time-proven program. It’s certainly the most cost effective way to keep productive agricultural land.”

Apart from allowing land to be kept in agricultural hands as opposed to developmental ones, the Williamson Act plays a significant role in the California environment.

Gamper said the act prevents low-density residential development, which alters plant species and wildlife habitats.

“This program is clearly California’s most important and most successful farm and ranch conservation program,” Gamper said.

KELLEY REES can be reached at city@theaggie.org.

The Yolo County Board of Supervisors met last Thursday and Friday to discuss worst-case scenarios that departments will face as a result of the county’s $21 million budget deficit.

In the worst situation, more than 200 workers will lose their jobs, including social workers, sheriff’s deputies, building inspectors, lawyers and nurses.

The meeting was a strategic planning workshop, which addressed the departments that were given a prospective 16 to 35 percent budget reduction.

“The worst-case scenario was created for discussion purposes only,” said Yolo County public information officer Beth Gabor. “County-wide solutions were mostly absent from discussion, like furloughs. This was really the worst of the worst.”

In the worst-case scenario, Yolo County will lose 14 percent of its workforce. Resources needed to fight communicable diseases, repair roads, respond to emergencies, prosecute misdemeanors and protect the public from pesticide poisoning will decrease significantly.

“Yolo County is so dependent on state money, which is decreasing, and on the largess of city partners,” said Supervisor Helen Thomson.

Figures suggest certain departments can afford cuts. The growth in revenues increased 44 percent in the past decade, but expenditures increased 77 percent. Health expenditures increased 80 percent, public protection increased 118 percent and public assistance increased 47 percent, according to Thomson.

Yolo County sheriff Ed Prieto believes cutting public safety should be a last resort, however.

“This is really a horrible chain of events,” Prieto said. “I’d rather get rid of administrators pushing paper who make $90,000 a year. Our deputies start at $50,000 a year.”

Prieto created five increasingly drastic options to deal with the prospective budget cuts, the harshest of which would close the deficit but eliminate 18.6 percent of the sheriff’s workforce through 47 layoffs.

Prieto estimated that in the worst-case scenario, he would have to cut his patrol force in half and stop patrolling 24/7.

“Our worst fear is if something happens in Clarksburg or something, it will take us 20 or 25 minutes to get there,” he said.

The worst-case scenario would also cause the closure of the Walter Leinberger Minimum Security Prison, which would release 145-150 felons into the community.

“These inmates would be released and granted irrevocable patrol, which means they’d have to commit another robbery or rape or something for them to be detained again,” Prieto said. “We’re hoping for the best, but we believe that public safety is going to be seriously jeopardized.”

Public safety wouldn’t be the only department hit hard by cuts; the health department and agriculture department, among others, would also have to drastically reduce their resources.

“We have a difficult job balancing community needs and public safety,” Thomson said. “But I don’t see any other solutions.”

Eight more meetings are scheduled in the upcoming months to continue discussing the issue on a department-by-department basis. According to Gabor, the Board of Supervisors will have a better idea of necessary cuts by May or June.

“We are going to spend a lot of time on these issues this spring,” Thomson said.

SARAH HANSEL can be reached at city@theaggie.org.

Many California workers will have a new resource when it comes to affordable housing. The California Legislature unanimously voted in favor of AB 1246, which Gov. Schwarzenegger later signed.

Rep. Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) authored the new bill that authorizes the establishment of “workforce housing cooperative trusts.”

“Californians of all income levels need access to housing, and I am proud that this bill creates a new form of affordable housing,” Jones said in a written statement on his website. “AB 1246 will allow employer and labor organizations to develop and fund workforce housing cooperatives, which will provide new lower cost home-ownership opportunities.”

Cooperative housing is designed to allow a sponsor such as an employer, labor union or other social institution to buy a plot of land and then parcel it to individual members of a cooperative. The sponsoring organization holds a common mortgage over all of the properties, and individuals buy a share in the cooperative along with the right to occupy a housing unit.

Ordinarily, a property’s equity increases as the debtor makes payments against the mortgage balance or as the property value appreciates.

AB 1246 defines housing cooperatives as limited equity housing, meaning equity increases are enjoyed by the entire cooperative and not just by individual members. The bill aims for individual payments within the cooperative to become more affordable over time even in a fluctuating real estate market.

Collective ownership through sponsor organizations is further facilitated by the sponsor organization’s membership in the San Francisco-based Federal Home Loan Bank, which will provide subsidized loans to the sponsor to help affordably finance the property.

AB 1246 has a direct effect on Davis, said David J. Thompson, who sponsored the bill and is president of Twin Pines Cooperative Foundation. For example, the Davis Joint Unified School District already owns two large sites zoned for housing. DJUSD could lease the land to a sponsor organization allowing district employees to form a cooperative on the already-owned land.

“I think there is always a moment when there is a downturn in the economy when people have to come to terms with the idea that things they could have done themselves are not possible or at least as easy anymore,” Thompson said. “You can either drop out of the [housing] market completely, or you can look at other people in your position and form a co-op.”

Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis) voted for the bill.

“This was a good bill sponsored by our very own David Thompson” Wolk said. “In this time of economic and housing depression this is one more option for Californians.”

Dos Pinos is a cooperative located in Davis. Between 1986 and 2004, Dos Pinos had the lowest monthly housing cost to owners anywhere in Davis, according to Thompson in a 2004 article in the Cooperative Housing Journal. Dos Pinos also had the only units which have been consistently accessible to the same or lower income groups, according to Thompson’s article.

One key difference is that cooperatives formed under the new bill would have less leeway to dissolve through member votes and transfer equity to individual owners.

“One of the dilemmas is that limited equity cooperative housing creates a fairly sizable asset,” Thompson said.

He said it is important to keep the cooperatives as a public good rather than a way to make unjust private profits.

SAMUEL A. COHEN can be reached at city@theaggie.org.

Differing views on spirituality have taken on unusual territory with billboards spreading a message of godlessness.

The advertisement displays an image of a light blue sky and puffy white clouds and reads “Are you good without God? Millions are.”

Ten of these billboards are now up between Davis and Sacramento alongside Interstate-80.

Part of the national United Coalition of Reason (CoR) campaign, which is also working in cities such as Boston, Seattle and Baltimore, these advertisements aim to increase awareness of nontheistic viewpoints.

The Sacramento CoR, made up of nine nontheistic groups from the area, is sponsoring and coordinating the local campaign, costing $6,450. The billboards will be on display only during February.

Tom Ikelman, a media representative for the Sacramento CoR, said the campaign’s primary goals are to relate to others who share this attitude, attract people to the idea and refer them to the variety of groups who are skeptical or do not believe god exists.

“The variety of viewpoints, like humanists, agnostics, freethinkers and atheists, are represented with our coalition,” Ikelman said. “The billboards express the truth that there are millions of good people without God in their life, regardless of the constant claims of you needing God to be good.”

Ikelman said he is not surprised some people have taken offense to their effort and believes they might misunderstand their purpose.

Anonymous vandals recently defaced one of the billboards by using spray paint to add the words “also lost?” after “Millions are.”

“The vandalism is unfortunate but shows the lack of respect given towards this small community,” Ikelman said.

Father Bong Rojas, the pastor at St. James Catholic Church in Davis, believes the issue has many facets, and the billboards show the absence of spirituality in society.

“I truly believe that it is not an issue of godlessness, rather an issue of forgetfulness.”

Director of religious studies at UC Davis, Naomi Janowitz, believes these groups are banding together to point out a strain of American thought based on atheism exists, and it is appropriate to talk about.

“Their belief system is not mainstream, and they are expressing they have morals,” Janowitz said. “It is an unrecognized fact that atheism has been part of American tradition.”

President of the UC Davis Agnostics and Atheist Student Association (AgASA) Shiva Kasravi, and social chair Elyse Green, endorse Sacramento’s CoR message. They believe “atheism” and “agnostic” are philosophical terms many consider to have negative implications, and these advertisements can lead people to further resources.

“The statement made on the billboards cannot be seen as denouncing theism or religion while advocating atheism because they say nothing about the validity of any of these ideas,” Kasravi and Green said in an e-mail interview.

Although their statement does not represent all the members of AgASA, Kasravi and Green said CoR’s campaign voices an underrepresented attitude. They believe the billboards can help dispel some of the myths and rumors associated with agnostics and atheists.

“All [the billboards] say is that moral standards extend beyond a belief in God,” Kasravi and Green said. “They are simply saying that atheists can also have moral standards and that, if you consider yourself a ‘good’ atheist, you are not alone.”

According to the Pew Research Center’s 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Study, 78.4 percent of adults reported to be Christian. Of the adults surveyed, 16.1 percent reported they were unaffiliated with a religion, 1.6 percent of which said they are atheist and 2.4 percent agnostic.

The Pew Research Study also shows a dynamic and diverse American religious makeup. The category of those unaffiliated with a religion, such as atheists and agnostics, has seen the greatest growth, whereas the Catholic Church, now at 23.9 percent, has lost the most members due to changes in religious affiliation.

The organization Freedom From Religion Inc. has a similar campaign throughout the country. Its billboards say “Imagine No Religion,” referring to the John Lennon song “Imagine.”

MICHAEL STEPANOV can be reached at city@theaggie.org.