ENCORE: COINCIDENCE OR CLAN?

[This article originally appeared on March 24, 2005.]

Denny Heffron is the chairman of Kent County's Agricultural Preservation Board.  The Board's big mandate is to find and administer funds to buy the development rights to farmland and thereby preserves such lands as farms.  Basically, the idea is to give a farmer a wad of cash to keep farming his land in exchange for a promise to not sell his farm to developers.

So far the Kent County Board of Commissioners has refused to throw local tax dollars into this program, which has upset some preservationists.  This has sent Heffron looking to the feds and private sources for funds.  In the works is an application to for over $780,000 in federal grants to match about $870,000 in private commitments to secure the development rights of up to 25,000 acres of Kent County farmlands.  (That's a huge amount of land to tie up; larger than any one of the county's 21 remaining townships.)

Whatever the merits of this preservation program and using federal tax dollars to pay for it (after all, what exactly do taxpayers get out this?), I do note that Heffron is himself a farmer in Grattan Township.  I also note that two of the farms slotted for this program are also located in Grattan Township owned by another fellow with the last name of Heffron.  Does Chairman Heffron have a conflict of interest?  I don't know, but there are enough obvious coincidences here between who has control over the preservation funds and who will receive them to a raise a question that should have been answered already.

Comments

[Ed Hawks]

Denny Heffron stands to profit immensely from this program because as he gets more and more farmers to sign up for the program it makes less and less large acreage parcels available for development. RIGHT you say that is the goal, keep developers out. Certainly this works but guess who has not put his farm in the program and guess who will be the last one to have a large acreage parcel that will be worth Millions of dollars someday to DEVELOPERS! Remember once the farmers sign up their property can't be developed. Simple supply and demand here. Last one with property that can be developed it going to be RICH.

[The Executive Director]

Ed,

Thanks for the insight. I have received public records of the preservation program from Kent County via FOIA. We'll see what underlies the deals being made.

Regards,
Bill