Johnson County has been working on a new Comprehensive Plan for some time. In May 2018, after 18 months, 31 public meetings lasting more than 100 hours and hundreds of public comments, Johnson County passed its 2018 Comprehensive Plan by our usual 4-1 vote.

That still left considerable work. Since that time, Johnson County has been working on our Unified Development Ordinance (UDO). The UDO is basically a collection of county ordinances dealing with planning, zoning and development.

After months of work, we are nearing the end. Most of our ordinances are in good shape and ready to be updated. The biggest challenge we face is coming up with a new and improved approach to the ag exemption.

A bit of history: Long ago – even prior to the 1988 Land Use Plan – Johnson County began feeling the pressure of people wanting to move here. They were gobbling up farmland to put up housing developments. It seemed a shame that some of the world’s best farmland was being sacrificed for these houses.

In addition, land values went through the roof. There was little incentive for some farmers to grow commodities and sell at low prices when they could just sell their land for development. Young farmers were shut out by these high land prices.

So the Board of Supervisors acted.

They began to prioritize the preservation of ag land, especially prime ag land. And as soon as they did, developers started finding ways around it. They knew that Iowa law provided something known as the ag exemption. The ag exemption, written specifically for farmers, allows unfettered building of farmhouses.

Suddenly, every person with an apple tree was a “farmer.” The board was going to need to do more, or all the ag land would be gobbled up.

One of the ways in which they did this was the “40-acre Rule.” This is pretty simple. It says that in order to be considered ag exempt, you must have a minimum lot size of 40 acres. Forty acres is basically the standard Iowa field, known as a quarter of a quarter section.

By limiting the ag exemption to lots of 40 acres or more, the board put a stop to five- and 10-acre residential lots, while still allowing conventional farmers to enjoy the exemption intended for them. This worked fine for many years.

As the local food movement took hold in the 90s and as it has grown since, more and more people want to get involved in growing their own food. There are few prohibitions on this, mind you.

You can start growing food almost anywhere in Johnson County. What you could not have was the ag exemption, which allows you to build a house. That is the key to the rest of our discussion.

There are several things you can do on ag-exempt property. You can have a virtually unlimited number of animals. You can build two houses, and the houses do not need to be inspected. You can build an almost unlimited number of outbuildings, and these buildings do not need to be inspected.

There are people who grow food on several acres but are taxed residentially. There are people taxed as agricultural who don’t grow anything. Tax status has nothing to do with the ag exemption.

Ag-exempt homes are typically not inspected. If you build your dream home on three acres, the county inspects it. If you build your dream home on 40 acres, the county does not.

The ag exemption can be used as a tool to get around county zoning requirements.

Anything the board does to change the 40-acre Rule could have a devastating effect in terms of urban sprawl. We need to make changes, but we need to make them thoughtfully, carefully and with a sharp eye toward unintended consequences.

Thankfully, the county planning staff has come up with what I believe to be a good set of compromises. This UDO is something of which we should be very proud.

Unfortunately, all this good work is overshadowed by a single topic over which we have no real control: confined animal feeding operations or CAFOs.

You are going to hear that the supervisors who supported the new ordinance “voted for CAFOs.” That is simply false.

Here are the facts: the state of Iowa does not allow local governments to regulate CAFOs. We can pretend all we want that we somehow have control here, but we do not. The state law is clear.

The idea that our old “40-acre Rule” kept farmers from putting up CAFOs is ridiculous. If a farmer wants to put one up, he will put one up. They always have. If the rule was stopping CAFOs, how did we get the ones we have?

There are people who think Johnson County should write an ordinance that expressly bans CAFOs. Let the Farm Bureau go ahead and sue us, they say. I say be careful what you wish for.

The state-level Iowa Farm Bureau would love to hurt the residents of Johnson County. Gov. Reynolds would love to hurt the residents of Johnson County. The Republicans in the Iowa Legislature would love to hurt the residents of Johnson County, and already have a bill ready to go that takes away even more local control.

This is not a game. This is not the “friendly rivalry” politics of the 1980s. They hate us, and they want us to suffer. And they have the power to make that happen.

Couple that with the fact that state law is already against us, and I see fighting this as just a waste of staff time.

The UDO always ran the risk of becoming the proxy battle between rural and urban residents of the county. Unfortunately, it got far worse than that. It became a reflection of America under President Donald Trump – falsehoods of every type being repeated constantly. Great public servants under attack. It has been ugly, and the people who led the charge should be ashamed.

In the end, the vote on Dec. 5 was 3-2 in favor. (Passing the ordinance requires three readings; they are scheduled for the 5, 12, and 19 of December.)

Nobody got everything they wanted out of this process. We did the best we could in a situation where there are multiple issues with multiple competing interests. I do not want to see the perfect be the enemy of the good.

So let me be very clear: this UDO does the best possible job of protecting farmland and stopping urban sprawl, while at the same time empowering small local farmers. This UDO deserves your support.