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ATTACHMENT 3 ORANGE COUNTY- ENVIRONMENT & RESOURCE CONSERVATION DEPARTMENT MEMORANDUM To: Agricultural Preservation Board From: David Stancil, ERC Director Tina Moon, Land Use /Preservation Planner Date: April 10, 2002 Subject: "Straw" Potential Changes to Voluntary Farmland Preservation Program (VFPP) Ordinance Staff has worked to explore potential changes to the Voluntary Farmland Preservation Program, originally enacted in 1992, as per APB discussion in March. In recent years many changes have occurred in VFPP's and the status of farming, warranting revisiting the ordinance. We have used the ordinances from other jurisdictions, the new model ordinance, and comments from the APB meeting to develop a "straw" set of initial suggestions for changes to the program. These are presented below, section by section, as a starting point for further discussion. Once the APB has changes made that it feels are sufficient, it would then refer these recommendations to the Board of Commissioners. In some cases, notably Section IV (districts and APB membership), additional research and information is needed before a recommendation can be generated. As such, we recommend deferring this section until new farmland mapping and discussions of potential Agricultural Priority Areas can occur this spring and fall. Section I — ENACTMENT No proposed changes. Section II — PURPOSE Using the State Model and other county ordinances (such as Iredell) as examples, expand the existing purpose statement to be a statement of the importance of farming and to link it to existing County policy documents. Section III - DEFINITIONS No proposed changes. Section IV — AGRICULTURAL PRESERVATION BOARD It is recommended that this section, which deals with membership (and hence, what constitutes a "district') be deferred for later discussion. The farmland mapping project and