In 1993, I was approached by the Friends of the National Parks at Gettysburg to write a series of articles for their newsletter. I was approached because much of my writing as a newspaper reporter had been on the effects of growth on the county.

The articles appeared under my byline and, incidentally, with the approval of my editor. An abbreviated form of the series appeared in he Evening Sun some time later.

With the permission of the Lawrences and the FNPG, here is the second of the five newsletter articles. Naturally, over the passage of time, some of this information has become outdated.

Yours,
Terry W. Burger
Gettysburg: 11/27/97

Efforts to protect land from excessive development, in the battlefield area particularly and in Adams County generally, continue on multiple fronts. Defensive strategies, most of which will specifically benefit the battlefield environs only by accident, have been or are being formulated by federal, state, county and local governments as well as private preservation organizations.

Mentioned earlier in this series is the Adams County Agricultural Land Preservation Program, launched in 1990. At the time of this writing, the county program has purchased development rights on more than 20 farms, protecting between 4,000 and 5,000 acres of prime farmland, keeping it

in production and on the tax rolls. Total cost has been $6.8 million of state and county money, about 90 percent of the cost being borne by the state.

A quick word of explanation is needed to clear up a common misconception that development is necessarily a financial boon to the community in which it occurs. As the old song says, it ain't necessarily so.

Tax-wise, undeveloped land is not such a bad thing. According to a 1992 study commissioned by the American Farmland Trust in Northampton, Massachusetts, for every dollar raised from taxes on residential properties in three towns in that state, $1.12 was spent in public services, including education, fire and police protection, roads and other services.

Farmland and other open lands, however, cost the towns an average of 33 cents for every dollar of tax revenues. Several professional planners have said those figures are in the ball park for the Gettysburg region.

That fact in mind, it would seem prudent for municipalities in developing areas to seek a balance of industrial/commercial development, residential development, and the preservation of open areas that remain in production and on tax lists. Efforts toward those ends are likely to produce some interesting partnerships between the private and the public realms.

One such alliance came together in 1993, when the Adams County Agricultural Land Preservation Program acted in consort with the American Farmland Trust, with the FRIENDS OF THE NATIONAL PARKS AT GETTYSBURG acting as a broker.

The AFT is a non-profit organization created in 1981 to protect and monitor the nation's disappearing farmland. The AFT and its attorneys helped the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania write its own Agricultural Land Preservation Program legislation enacted in 1988.

In July of 1993, the Adams County farmland preservation program entered into an agreement with the American Farmland Trust.

The AFT agreed to purchase a conservation easement on the 99.24-acre farm belonging to the Hoffman family. According to the agreement, AFT will hold the development rights for two years, at which time they will be sold to the county.

The $188,000 "hand off" is part of an effort on the part of the county to keep the momentum up on its Agricultural Preservation program without having to rely on the fickle enthusiasm of the state legislature to fund such programs.

"We worked out an arrangement based on a model purchase arrangement they made in Lancaster County," said Harry C. Stokes, one of the county's three commissioners. "We will be buying (the easement) back and owning the rights, with the state, using solicited funds and, if there is a shortfall, county and state funds."

Stokes said the county has approached, through the FNPG, a number of private philanthropic organizations - including the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, AFT and others - to help them purchase easements on prime farmland threatened by development pressures.

The original $200 million state-wide bond issue from 1988 is essentially spent. County officials have said in the past they fear the portion of the state's cigarette tax earmarked for the preservation program will not cover the programs needs.

Foundations may not be anxious to get involved in easement purchases,however, According to Andrew McElwaine, an FNPG volunteer and a staff member of a Heinz foundation, who said foundations, which often are quite willing to purchase lands outright and donate them to entities such as national parks, have been generally skittish about getting involved in the purchase of easements because the title to the land is then more convoluted than such organizations are comfortable with.

As this series of articles was being prepared, Adams County was taking another look at the 'fine print' of its Agricultural Preservation program as it relates to properties lying within the GNMP's new boundary or within the Historic District immediately surrounding the park.

Ellen T. Dayhoff, coordinator of the county's preservation program, said how well the two programs might 'interface' depends on who you talk to.

"We had discussion a couple months ago on the farms we'd be interested in within the park boundaries," Dayhoff said. "It's still under discussion. We've agreed to stay in touch. The problem is the NPS easements would be much more restrictive than ours are.

The biggest issue is whether or not the county agricultural board should be interested in farms inside the boundary at all," Dayhoff said. "Perhaps we should say it's in the park, and let the NPS deal with it."

"Civil War-related organizations, The American Farmland Trust and others are very interested in Adams County, as a whole, not just the battlefield, and the AFT is a potentially significant player," said McElwaine. "They were the ones who provided the funding for the purchase of the Hoffman Farm. That's important. The state just changed a lot of the limitations on the county farmland preservation boards; the program in Adams County may be re-capitalized; that's a viable way of keeping farmland in farmers' hands."

FNPG Executive Director Victoria Greenlee said the arrangement between the county and AFT was unusual.

"The county wanted to buy the development rights, but they had already allocated their money," she said. "It was a relatively pristine area, near the East Cavalry Field. The county came to us and asked what we could do. What we did was put together a coalition."

That coalition was stitched together by McElwaine, she said.

"Our part in it, in addition to bringing the coalition together, is that we are committed to assisting the county in approaching some foundations and some money sources to pay back AFT."

Greenlee said the FNPG has not committed any of its own money to purchasing easements, but has so far acted chiefly as a broker. The involvement of private citizens and groups in preservation issues is a phenomenon Greenlee sees becoming more common as government dollars remain hard to get.

The FNPG intends to devote its own efforts largely to helping purchase property within the new boundaries of the park, and stay away from direct involvement with the Historic District encircling the parks, the FNPG official said.

"What needs to happen is somehow we have to make a vehicle where people can donate their easements and take advantage of all the tax breaks," she said. "There are people whose income is such that if they could amortize a five-year tax break, they'd love it. That's an area where we haven't even scratched the surface."

Greenlee said the county government is looking into beginning a land trust or conservancy, which would be an independent 501-3c non-profit organization with its own board of directors.

Commissioner Stokes said the county would also look into the possibility of tapping into the state's new Key 93 funds.

The bulk of the $50 million bond issue, passed overwhelmingly in the November elections, would go to state and local parks, trails, natural areas and game lands, about $14 million will be earmarked for the state's historic sites, museums, public libraries and zoos. Stokes said some of the enabling legislation language may make funds available to a conservancy such as the county hopes to create.

In April of 1993, the Adams County government sent representatives of their farmland protection program to Washington, D.C. seeking information on creating a private conservancy to help preserve farmland.

Dayhoff said the county is exploring the formation of a private, non-profit county land bank or conservancy, able to accept donations of land or easements for conservation , recreational and other associated purposes. Such an organization could also take under its wing historical and recreational properties, she said.

A private conservancy would provide an alternative to the county providing further funding, which would probably require a further tax burden, something the commissioners wish to avoid.

Adams County Commissioners Tom Weaver and Harry Stokes said the hope is that the conservancy, which would be private, non-profit and not run by the county, would complement the agricultural preservation program. They said one idea is to have the conservancy qualified to accept donations of properties. The program could be bankrolled in part by the resale of those parcels, with development easements already in place.

The commissioners said whether the conservancy would be set up to accept land for recreation, watershed preservation and other uses is under study.

"We would rather have people donated into our conservancy, rather than into the park," Stokes said. "Regulation wouldn't be as strict as it would be under a NPS easement, but it would work very well in tandem."

Other private efforts to protect the heritage embodied in the battlefield include that of the small-but-potent Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association.

The GBPA, founded in 1959, is perhaps best known for sparking the controversy that eventually resulted in the creation of the boundary legislation signed into law in August of 1990.

The GBPA, founded with the express purpose of purchasing properties important to the battle and turning them over to the NPS, set off the fracas in 1986, when the private, non-profit organization obtained the 30-acre Taney farm and tried to donate it to the Gettysburg National Military Park.

The farm lay outside an "administrative boundary" agreement set between the service and Congress in 1974. While some in Congress wanted to enlarge the boundaries right away so that the farm could be included. Congressman William F. Goodling (R-19) pressed for - and got - a law that required the Park Service to conduct a study of its boundaries needs. That study, completed in 1988, led to the addition to the park of nearly 2,000 acres, and provided a set boundary for the first time since the park was created.

The GBPA's property-buying abilities have been diminished in recent years because of the association's entanglement in another controversy; the controversial land-swap that led to the railroad cut matter discussed earlier.

GBPA President Walter Powell said the organization used to keep collection jars at various points frequented by tourists at the national park. Those collection jars, which provided much of the GBPA's wherewithal, were removed after the GBPA filed a lawsuit against the NPS, Gettysburg College and The Gettysburg Railroad in the wake of the destruction of Oak Ridge.

"Despite how uncomfortable a thing that was to do, I think that the original board (of the GBPA) would have done the same thing," Powell said, adding that the organization's primary efforts will continue to be directed toward the acquisition and preservation of areas important to the battle.

Time will be the worst enemy toward whatever preservation efforts are pursued by any group because of development pressures on areas around Gettysburg, pressures arising especially from the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area.

Andrew McElwaine, who worked as an assistant to Pa. Senator John Heinz until the lawmaker's death in April of 1991, is very familiar with the region surrounding the nation's capitol.

"In the Montgomery County, Maryland real-estate book, the big book the Realtors use, you'll find ads for homes in the Hanover, Adams area. When you drive up Route 15 from D.C. there are all these large, four- and five-bedroom homes right on the Maryland-Pennsylvania line at Emmitsburg. I have a hunch those people don't work in downtown Emmitsburg."

McElwaine said that intense development is moving inexorably toward the Gettysburg area.

"But that begs the question: What do you do about it?" McElwaine said. "When the 1989 boundary study was done and the legislation was sent before Congress to implement it, Congressman Peter Kostmayer of Bucks County shut down the hearing on approving the boundary study by saying he wasn't sure the Congress should go through with the proposals, because he was concerned that the government was pulling 2,000 acres into the park boundary that is in private hands and had no money to buy it; it was just going to sit there. Kostmayer suggested the Congress should go back to square one and come up with money to buy the land."

The entire proceedings was delayed for about five months, McElwaine said, until Kostmayer finally relented.

"His concern has haunted me ever since, because he may have been right," McElwaine said. "We added 2,000 acres to the park that five years later is still entirely in private hands."

In a 1993 public meeting on the update of the GNMP's Land Management Plan, Superintendent Jose Cisneros had said that 20 years ago the properties would have been identified, and Congress would simply have funded a massive buy-out.

"Today, we have to look for willing sellers," Cisneros said. "If there are no willing sellers, we have no authority to purchase."

At the time the boundary study was authorized, Goodling made it clear that he was not going to allow any more land to be added to the park unless it was done in such a way to protect the local tax rolls and the local property owners. The boundary act signed into law by President Bush in 1990 was Goodling's creation and so reflects his concern; the law clearly gives preference to the acquisition of easements, keeping as much property as possible on local tax rolls.

A Gettysburg attorney, who spoke in the fall of 1993 only on condition his name not be used said, however, that the easement program, which grew out of the concern for local tax rolls, was having a negative impact on property owners within the new boundary.

"What they end up doing in essence is to deprive people of the opportunity to maximize the value of their property through the threat of condemnation," he said.

The attorney said the threat that an attempt by a property owner to develop his or her property could possibly result in an NPS-initiated condemnation proceeding "freezes" the value of that piece of land.

"...It's almost like inverse condemnation, where you so restrict a piece of ground that it is tantamount to a taking. There have been some U.S. Supreme Court cases on that subject in the past four or five years," he said. "I think it stinks."

The thought occurs that an option would have been for the federal government to exercise a variety of eminent domain, except instead of forcing purchases of properties outright, purchasing instead only the development rights of those properties. McElwaine said that, too would present numerous problems.

"What does an easement mean?" McElwaine said. "Do they mean that Joe Tourist from Pittsburgh can go on that farm and look for the spot where great-great-grandaddy fired his musket, without the farmer firing his musket at him? What if that farmer wants to put up a non-historical satellite dish?"

At this point, it is not known how many of the 116 tracts within the park's boundaries will come on the market in the near future. At the same time, development of every description is pressing in from every side along the periphery of the park.

"It comes down to a day-to-day fire fight," McElwaine said. "The Hoffman farm was an effort was an effort to get a handle on that."

Not far from the Hoffman farm, along a commercial strip cluttered with motels, restaurants, car dealerships, and shopping centers, stands a scrubby lot in a forest of billboards. Just after the battle, Hospital Woods and surrounding fields stood thick with tents, full of wounded soldiers.

The southern end of the battlefield has already seen once condemnation at the site of an auction gallery. Nearby, a large commercial camping ground, part of which is within the new boundary, plans expansion.

"What is probably not going to happen at the Gettysburg battlefield is a Manassas-type situation, where there was one massive development that's all-or-nothing: It's going to be piecemeal, death by a thousand blows," McElwaine added. "What could happen is what happened along Pickett's Charge, the tourist strip on Steinwehr Ave.; you could end up with things like that all around the battlefield."

On the western side of the park area, negotiations have taken place over the past two decades with the Gettysburg Country Club for an easement on ground, now a golf course, that was the scene of some of the most important fighting on the first day of the battle.

Gettysburg Realtor David Sites, who chairs the long-range planning committee for the country club, said in early March of 1994 that movement began again several years ago toward selling a development easement on country club ground to the NPS. "We're getting closer," said Sites. "We've gotten to the point where we've had an appraisal, and we're now in the process of negotiation."

Originally, the NPS was negotiating a land swap with the country club, to have been similar to the land swap finalized with Gettysburg College in 1990. Sites said the railroad cut controversy essentially squelched that idea. All that will be involved now is a sale of easements, he said.

The controversy over the trade with the college (see sidebar story) has left the NPS gun-shy over land swaps, McElwaine said.

"Any idea of swapping land is absolutely out of the question," McElwaine said. "What the park service should do is give them something like 80 percent of the value of the property, in cash, in return for an easement. If they can't protect that parcel, which is so essential to the first day, then they can't protect anything."

In an earlier installment of this series, commuter transportation access from the Gettysburg area to the Baltimore-Washington Corridor was discussed, including light rail and commuter lines either now in use or planned in the near future. Those lines are aiming toward the Gettysburg region like missile tracks.

The point of concern I have is that with those commuter rails open, real estate values in the Gettysburg area will skyrocket. That will put the current $12.4 million estimated in 1990, that will be obsolete very quickly and we'll be looking at massive appropriations to acquire these sites."

Since the boundary was expanded in 1990, Congress has appropriated $2.8 for land acquisition for the Gettysburg National Military Park. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated about $12 million will be needed to acquire all the easements and acquisition authorized by the Boundary Act. McElwaine said that figure is now perhaps 15 or 20 percent off, and the gap will grow with each passing year as land values escalate.

McElwaine said the Department of The Interior, under whose wing the NPS operates, is under constraints to submit conservative budgets, and so does not ask for money for land acquisitions.

"Congress has to pad that back in," McElwaine said. "You've got a fight on your hand every year to get that million dollars. The good news is that every year Senators Harris Wofford (D-PA) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Congressman Goodling have been good about going out and getting it. Wofford has personally asked Sen. Byrd for the money. We've had that kind of support.

McElwaine said getting the appropriations is one thing; what the money is spent on is another.

"I think the issue we're going to run up against pretty soon is what are those funds to be used for and what is to be acquired? How many willing sellers are there? There are willing sellers and then there are willing sellers. There are those who are willing to take what the NPS offers them, and there are those who are not."

Those more entrepreneurial land owners may be frustrated by the monolithic nature of the National Park Service.

"The NPS generally does not vary from its appraisal," McElwaine said. "If you don't take it, the only recourse left, really, is the condemnation proceedings. That is only used if there is some sort of threat to the resource on the property."