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By Root 2057 0

acquired and that I’m now trying to subdivide for the first time. I submitted to the county a detailed development plan requiring three sets of approvals, of which I succeeded in getting the first two. But the third and last step was a public hearing, at which 80 people living nearby appeared and protested on the grounds that subdivision would mean a loss of agricultural land. Yes, the lot has good soil and used to be good agricultural land, but it was no longer in agricultural production when I bought it. I paid $225,000 for those 40 acres; it would be impossible to support that high cost by agriculture. But public opinion doesn’t look at the economics. Instead, neighbors say, ‘We like to see open space of farmland or forest around us.’ But how is one to maintain that open space if the lot’s seller is someone in their sixties who needs the money to retire? If the neighbors had wanted to preserve that lot as open land, they should have bought it themselves. They could have bought it, but they didn’t. They want still to control it, even though they don’t own it.

“I was turned down at that public hearing because the county planners didn’t want to oppose 80 voters shortly before an election. I hadn’t negotiated with the neighbors before submitting my plan, because I am bull-headed, I want to do what I think I have the right to do, and I don’t like being told what to do. Also, people don’t realize that, on a small project like this one, negotiations are very expensive of my time and money. On a similar project next time, I would talk first with the neighbors, but I would also bring 50 of my own workers to the hearing, so that the county commissioners would see that there’s also public demand in favor of the project. I’ve been stuck with the carrying cost of the land during this fight. The neighbors would like the land to sit with nothing done to it!

“People talk about there being too much development here and the valley eventually becoming overpopulated, and they try to blame me. My answer is: there’s demand for my product, the demand isn’t something that I’m creating. Every year there are more buildings and traffic in the valley. But I like to hike, and when you hike or fly over the valley, you see lots of open space here. The media say that there was 44% growth in the valley in the last 10 years, but that just meant a population increase from 25,000 to still only 35,000 people. Young people are leaving the valley. I have 30 employees, to whom my company gives employment and provides a pension plan, health insurance, paid vacation, and a profit-sharing plan. No competitor offers that package, so I have only low turnover of my workforce. I’m frequently seen by environmentalists as a cause of the problems in the valley, but I can’t create demand; someone else will put up the buildings if I don’t.

“I intend to stay here in the valley for the rest of my life. I belong to this community, and I support many community projects: for example, I support the local baseball, swim, and football teams. Because I’m from here and I want to stay here, I don’t have a get-rich-and-get-out mentality. I expect still to be here in 20 years, driving by my old projects. I don’t want to look out then and have to admit to myself, ‘That was a bad project that I did!’ ”

Tim Huls is a dairy farmer from an old-timer family: “My great-grandparents were the first ones in our family to come here in 1912. They bought forty acres when land was still very cheap, and they kept a dozen dairy cows which they milked by hand for two hours every morning and then again for two hours every evening. My grandparents bought 110 more acres for just pennies per acre, sold cream from their cows’ milk to make cheese, and raised apples and hay. However, it was a struggle. There were difficult times, and they hung on by their fingernails, while some other farmers weren’t able to. My father considered going to college but decided instead to stay on the farm. He was the innovative visionary who made the crucial business decision to commit himself to specialized dairy farming