By Andrew McLaughlin

We are approaching the twentieth anniversary of a very fateful meeting in Warwick. In March of 1994, over 600 Warwickians convened to create a “vision” of how the town should be at the dawn of the twenty-first century. What happened at that meeting was the culmination of a community visioning process sponsored by a group called Community 2000.

At the meeting, each participant was given a few red dots that they could paste next to a wide spectrum of twenty or so goals posted around the hall. The amazing thing was that the vast majority of the dots were placed around the three goals of saving farms, preserving the rural character of Warwick, and preserving open space. What emerged was the collective realization that we all gave a very high priority to these goals.

As a result of this meeting, a smaller group was formed to examine the Warwick master plan and the town’s zoning laws. It should be remembered that in the mid-nineties, development pressures were strong all around Orange County, and Warwick was no exception. The group discovered that although the Master Plan had a number of suggestions for preserving farms and open space, these were not implemented in the zoning code.

So began a long process of working with the town government to review the Master Plan (now called the Comprehensive Plan) and to rewrite the zoning to facilitate farming and the preservation of open space. Among many innovations were making farm stands easy to open to help farmers sell their produce locally and giving incentives to cluster developments to save open space.

It was soon apparent that this would not be enough. Serious preservation of farms and open space required a source of funding. So a few of us began to explore funding options dedicated to preserving farms.

With leadership by the late Seymour Gordon, we decided that the best path was having the town issue bonds to fund a purchase of development rights (PDR) program. What then followed was a campaign to persuade the town’s voters that they should tax themselves by agreeing to issue $9.5 million in bonds through a special referendum. The vote narrowly passed, but pass it did. A result of the PDR program was the preservation of over 2,500 acres of farmland through the purchase of development rights from participating farmers. This helped preserve farms and open space by providing an infusion of cash to help farmers modernize their operations and by saving the land in perpetuity for generations yet unborn.

After a few years, the PDR program had become so successful that the funds would soon run out. Thus, in 2005 another campaign was started to fund the ongoing PDR program through a real estate transfer tax. This led to a town-wide vote, in which the tax was approved. This program now generates about $50,000 a month and is the foundation for the ongoing preservation of farms and farmland.

Warwick now has about 4,000 acres of preserved farmland. These lands ensure that the production of food and open space will remain an integral part of Warwick’s future.

Andrew McLaughlin has lived in Warwick since 1982. He was involved in saving Sterling Forest, is the current President of Warwick Conservancy and is a member of the board of the Orange County Land Trust.