Town Options for Peaceful Meadows

The talk of Whitman has been on the pending sale of Peaceful Meadows, and I’ve been hearing from a lot of residents asking what is going to happen to that land? I thought this would be a good opportunity to explain the process of selling agricultural land in Massachusetts. The Selectmen have not discussed this yet, so this is just a thought experiment of my own. I’m also not an attorney so please accept my understanding of this process as that of a two term selectman with an interest in land use.

According to the auction site, the property at Peaceful Meadows is going up for auction as four parcels (with an option to bid on the properties in their entirety). Two are residential, one commercial, and one 55 acre farm. The farmland has been taking advantage of a portion of the state tax code called Chapter 61A. When a 61A property sells, if the buyer intends to maintain it as agricultural land that property is transferred. If the buyer intends to change the use, to something like residential or commercial property, then the Town gets the right of first refusal. Basically we get the opportunity to match the sale price. The Town can also assign that right of first refusal to a nonprofit conservation agency, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, or a political subdivision of the Commonwealth (such as Plymouth County or the City of Brockton). We’ll will have 120 days from the sale to exercise this right; in Whitman that looks like the Board of Selectmen deciding to exercise the right and Town Meeting funding the purchase. Right now Whitman has a planned Special Town Meeting to consider building a new Middle School about 60 days after the auction.

The farm itself has a brook running around it, and GIS records suggest a substantial portion is wet. However, let’s entertain a hypothetical scenario that the farm is sold and the Selectmen want to exercise the right of first refusal; how do they propose Town Meeting pays for it? Lucky for us Whitman passed the Community Preservation Act in 2020 and have been collecting funds for about two years. After funding a few projects this year we have a little more than $200K in available CPA funds that can be used to purchase open space. We could also bond the money for the purchase and commit future CPA funds to the debt. There is a state program (Agricultural Preservation Restriction, or APR) that would pay the Town to deed the land with a permanent agricultural restriction, if we wanted to guarantee that the land only ever be used for agriculture. I’m not sure that the Town wants to own and operate a farm, but if we had a partner interested in leasing farm land from us it would be a possibility. Middleboro did this with Picone Farm in 2022. In purchasing the McCarthy Farm, the Town of Rockland secured a Local Acquisitions for Natural Diversity (LAND) grant from the state. Some towns seek to use Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) action grants to preserve land that may protect environments threatened by climate change. Lucky for us the Town of Whitman also entered the MVP program in 2021. We could also seek to use some free cash, ask for a capital debt exclusion (one time), or maybe use the remaining ARPA funds if we wanted to purchase the land without conservation restrictions, as Abington did with the Griffin Dairy Farm before eventually using CPA funds to fund open space projects in there. Hatfield structured their right of first refusal to sell 30% of the Sliwoski Farm for residential development and conserve the remaining 70% with CPA funds. That’s a possibility if we want to use CPA funds without borrowing money.

Realistically this all depends on the sale price. If the auction shows little interest and the sale price of just the farm parcel comes up under a million dollars, but the buyer intends to develop it as residential, I could see the Town exercising the right of first refusal and bonding the money to buy it. It would be committing up to 5 years of CPA funds while seeking the maximum allowable $500K LAND grant from the state. However, if the property sells for $10 Million, I don’t think it would be responsible for the Town to spend that kind of money. In actuality I think it will fall somewhere in between. All we can really do is wait to find out.