Clallam GOP to oppose real estate excise tax

PORT ANGELES -- Clallam County Republicans will oppose the real estate buyer's excise tax in the Nov. 8 general election.

Members of the county GOP voted Monday to protest the measure as ``a wasteful tax,'' said county GOP Chairwoman Donna Buck.

Voters will decide if they will authorize Clallam County commissioners to collect a half of 1 percent toll on the sales of real property, paid by buyers.

The money would fund conservation of agricultural land by buying development rights on farms.

``We're not totally against taxes,'' Buck said Thursday, ``but we see it as a wasteful tax.

``People stood up at the meeting and talked about the fact that money has been poured into this sort of thing, for so little land.''

In 2002, the county set aside $250,000 of timber revenue in a Conservation Futures Fund.

Last March, they spent it all, the interest it had earned, and another $60,000 to buy an agricultural easement on 44 acres in the Dungeness Valley.

Federal funds of $221,650 matched the county's money. The purchase also included about $10,000 that some 600 private citizens had donated to the futures fund.

Total price of the easement paid to farmers Jerry and Mary Schmidt of Agnew was $567,899.

Hoh River valley concerns

Buck, wife of state 24th District Rep. Jim Buck, R-Joyce, said party members also fear the buyer's excise tax would be used to tie up land in the Hoh River valley.

The area already is the target of a separate, private conservation effort opposed by property-rights activists.

Republican Women of Clallam County will meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Secret Garden Cafe.

They will hear Sequim Realtor and property-rights advocate Steve Marble speak on the buyer's excise tax. The meeting will be open to the public, she said.

Clallam County commissioners placed the excise tax on the Nov. 8 ballot after receiving more than 4,000 signatures on petitions circulated by Clallam Citizens for Food Security.

The group, headed by Friends of the Fields President Bob Caldwell, also includes well-known Dungeness Valley organic farmer Nash Huber.

Clallam Citizens for Food security had sought a full 1 percent excise tax, but commissioners halved it, saying it still would raise more than $1 million a year.

The money would buy development rights - the difference between a farm's appraised value in agriculture and its worth if developed.

Advisory Board

County commissioners would choose the properties with the help of a citizens advisory board.

They would transfer the easements to the North Olympic Land Trust, which would hold them in perpetuity. The properties never could be developed, although they conceivably could lie fallow.

If voters approve the tax, commissioners will hae 60 days to appoint members to a citizens advisory committee and pass an ordinance establishing details of the fund.

One likely provision is that the fund could buy only land zoned for farming, not for commecial timber, commissioners have said.

They also must decide whether to include other lands eligible for conservation under state law - shores and stream banks, for instance - in the program.

Sequim and Port Angeles area Realtors also are campaigning against the tax, supported by their state and national associations.

Realtors say that the tax would make it more difficult to own a home, reduce affordable housing and fall unfairly on only a relatively few people to benefit many.

Clallam Citizens for Food security counter the excist tax will preserve vanishing vistas and a disappearing resource, that the real estate boom has already eliminated most affordable housing, and that farms produce more tax revenue than they use in public services.

Furthermore, tax supporters say they will establish a fund to pay the excise tax for first-time home buyers.