The farmland is zoned agricultural and sits beyond the Village’s urban service boundary — as such, municipal utilities are unable to reach any future residential development on the land. In addition to being the site of soy and corn cultivation, 1,800 feet of the Jacoby Creek run through the Welch land. (Submitted photo)
Village Council likely to issue $113,000 to Tecumseh Land Trust
- Published: October 17, 2024
As they learned at the most recent Village Council meeting, Monday, Oct. 7, Council members can expect a resolution before them at their next meeting on Oct. 21, that, if it passes, would greenlight the issuance of $113,000 to local conservation nonprofit Tecumseh Land Trust.
As the News reported last month, approximately 184 acres of contiguous farmland just beyond the western reaches of Village limits are slated to be sold before the end of the year; Tecumseh Land Trust, or TLT, intends to purchase the available properties or work with potential buyers to place conservation easements on the land, thus precluding any future development there.
Michele Burns, executive director of TLT, told the News after Monday’s Council meeting that the trust’s goal is to raise $1.5 million in the coming months, ahead of an expected public auction. Burns said TLT so far has raised around $763,000, which includes $250,000 from the trust’s land preservation fund, over $400,000 in pledges from individual community members and $113,000 from the Miami Township Board of Trustees’ American Rescue Plan Act funds.
Should Village Council approve the forthcoming resolution, the $113,000 would come from the Village’s Greenspace Fund, which presently contains $210,000, and would match the Township Trustees’ contribution, bringing TLT’s funds to purchase the farmland to $876,000.
No auction date has been set, and the Welch family, who owns the 184-acre agricultural land, has not publicly set an asking price, Burns said. The News was unable to make contact with any member of the Welch family by press time.
Speaking before Council at Monday’s meeting, Burns noted the importance of the Village’s decades-long commitment to supporting TLT’s mission of protecting the rural land surrounding Yellow Springs.
“I appreciate our long-term land use planning and how often we revisit those land use plans to make the best decisions for our village,” she said.
Presently, TLT holds easements on 227 properties totaling over 37,000 acres of land and 62 miles of waterways in Greene and Clark counties — many of which surround Yellow Springs. Efforts to create a “green belt” around Yellow Springs began in the 1960s when the Village partnered with Glen Helen to deepen local commitments to area land preservation, and to prevent suburban encroachment on Yellow Springs. Those efforts culminated in 1967, when the Village formally included what it dubbed the “Jacoby Green Belt” in the Village’s first comprehensive land use plan.
In a memo to Council, Village Manager Johnnie Burns reminded the group that the Village has a “strong track record” of supporting local conservation initiatives through the Greenspace Fund: The Village contributed over $200,000 in 1999 to the preservation of the 1,000-acre Whitehall Farm, $100,000 to purchase a conservation easement protecting Glen Helen in 2012, and $64,960 in 2017 to support conservation efforts in the Jacoby Green Belt.
The 184-acre Welch family farm is squarely within the Jacoby Green Belt, and as Burns noted, has long been identified as a “priority” property for preservation, and that TLT has, for decades, kept tabs on its eventual sale.
The farmland is zoned agricultural and sits beyond the Village’s urban service boundary — as such, municipal utilities are unable to reach any future residential development on the land. In addition to being the site of soy and corn cultivation, 1,800 feet of the Jacoby Creek run through the Welch land.
In the brief time Village Council discussed the impending sale of the farmland and the Village’s expected efforts to preserve it, some local residents weighed in. Villager Matthew Kirk suggested that expanding the green belt comes at the expense of future housing opportunities in the area.
“The last decade I’ve lived here, whoever has been on this board has consistently talked about how the community is going in the wrong direction — less diverse, more affluent and housing becoming more and more unaffordable,” Kirk said. “What I hear is you’re making a lot of the same land use decisions over and over, and wanting different results.”
Marianne MacQueen, a former Council member who has long supported local conservation efforts, rebuked Kirk’s suggestions.
“As housing costs have gone up across the country and in Yellow Springs, there has been this attempt to say that saving farmland is a part of the issue,” MacQueen said. “No. These are two separate issues. Farmland is being eaten up — just drive around Greene County — and it’s important that we save our prime soils.”
Low-income housing project updates
TLT’s request for funds and other considerations of local land use dominated Monday’s Village Council meeting.
Inch by inch, meeting by meeting, the year-long, intergovernmental efforts to one day build a 50-unit, low-income housing development near the Yellow Springs High and McKinney Middle schools appear closer to actualizing.
Near the outset of Monday’s meeting, Council members gave a first reading to an ordinance that would rezone 3.6 acres of the school district-owned land — which, presently, is the home turf to a number of area and YS Schools soccer teams — from R-A, or low-density residential, to R-C, or high-density residential. Council is expected to give the resolution a second reading, and following a public hearing, ultimately vote on the ordinance at the group’s next meeting Oct. 21.
Later in Monday’s meeting, Council members drilled down on the timeline and remaining actions needed between now and Feb. 27, 2025 — the deadline for submitting a low-income housing tax credit application to the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, or OHFA. If the application is successful, then a developer — in partnership with the Village and local affordable housing nonprofit Home, Inc. — would be awarded approximately $15 million to build the family rentals.
As Council members noted, one of the most pressing matters is securing a community housing development organization, or CHDO, that would assume the role of the developer. According to a project timeline detailed in a memo to Council, the goal is to enter into an agreement with a CHDO by Nov. 25 of this year.
To find the right CHDO, however, may be a time-consuming effort in itself. By a vote of 5-0 on Monday, Council members agreed to deputize Village staff to submit a draft of a request for proposals, or RFP, for review by the time of Council’s next meeting. According to the same memo, the intent of an RFP would be to solicit bids from qualified contractors, or CHDOs, that would detail the estimated cost and scope of eventual construction on the 50-unit development.
Several other actionable items need to happen in tandem with the forthcoming issuance of the RFP — namely, appraising the 3.6-acre land on which the development would be built, and securing land that could replace the soccer fields. The latter became a stipulation for the school district when, at a recent school board meeting, board members voted to recommend the sale of the fields only if replacement land is made available.
According to Council member Brian Housh, some efforts have been made to that end.
Housh informed his colleagues that he and several other stakeholders have been in ongoing discussions with local landowners Rick Donahoe and Julie Jones about purchasing some of their land south of the high school campus for replacement soccer fields, but that little traction has been made in striking an agreement with either of them. Housh also indicated that the Village-owned Gaunt Park is on the table as a potential site for relocating the soccer fields.
For Council member Trish Gustafson’s part, she said she is uncomfortable in agreeing to spend the proposed $1,500 needed for Village Manager Johnnie Burns to hire an appraiser for the 3.6-acre soccer fields until the Village and school board successfully identified replacement land.
“There are just too many unknowns still,” Gustafson said. “We can’t move forward with this until we have replacement, equivalent fields.”
After some back-and-forth at the Council dais, the group voted 3–2 on a motion to “authorize [Village Manager Burns] to spend money out of the Affordable Housing Fund up to $1,500, at the time that seems appropriate to cover the appraisal costs,” as Council President Kevin Stokes moved.
Housh, Stokes and Gavin DeVore Leonard voted affirmatively, with Gustafson and Carmen Brown dissenting. Brown echoed Gustafson’s uneasiness about not yet having secured replacement soccer fields — a stumbling block that, if not overcome, would forestall the pursuance of the low-income housing tax credit opportunity in its entirety.
With the authorization of spending $1,500 on a forthcoming appraisal of the soccer fields, the Village has spent $13,508.50 in its efforts to pursue the housing project — $12,008.50 of which has been spent on legal fees directed to attorneys investigating the feasibility of unencumbering the district land from its financial ties and collateral conditions, about which can be read in past News reporting at ysnews.com.
To the few citizens at Monday’s Council meeting who suggested that the Village has “wasted” that money, as villager Dino Pallotta put it in a public comment, Council member Housh had this to say:
“We have spent less than a tenth of a percent of what this project could bring in,” he said. “Whenever we have any kind of new housing, we get money from property taxes, income taxes, lower utilities, lower levy costs. That’s why we’re still pursuing this.”
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