Board President Tommy McKay at a Rural Legacy announcement -The Bay Net photo by Sean Rice

The St. Mary’s Board of Commissioners took the first official step this week of approving an overhaul of the Transferable Development Rights (TDR) program as suggested by a government committee of the St. Mary’s Chamber of Commerce.

Land Use Director Denis Canavan gave the Board a brief synopsis of the proposed changes, which are expected to double the amount of rural acreage being preserved in the county. The board accepted the “first reader” of the ordinance and forwarded the issue to the St. Mary’s Panning Commission for their nod of approval.

The Chamber’s government affairs committee worked on a TDR overhaul plan for several months, according to John K. Parlett, who presented the proposed changes six months ago to the planning commission.

It is widely agreed that the TDR plan is not working as designed. A majority of new subdivision developments in the last few years have landed in the Rural Preservation District (RPD), an area designed for farmland preservation, because the complicated development laws make it easier and cheaper to develop there.

TDRs are used as a method of preserving farmland and rural areas by allowing land owner to sell their rights to develop, and receive large sums of cash in exchange for having their land protected for perpetuity.

Developers are required to purchase TDRs when building in the RPD, or when they choose to squeeze more houses on a development within one of the county’s development districts or town centers.

Currently land owners can extract TDRs from their land to sell at the rate of one TDR per three acres of developable land, but the rules require a survey or geological review to determine which sections of land are developable, and where the TDRs can come from.

The chamber proposal simplifies the TDR extraction process by removing the process of determining which sections of the sending parcel are developable, and setting a flat rate of one TDR per five acres of land.

The proposal, which includes a list of changes designed to increase the amount of acreage preserved, includes a “fee in lieu of” provision, which calls for the county to maintain a bank of TDRs that developers can purchase, at 125 percent of the current market value, which is currently near $10,000 for each TDR.

If the changes are adopted at proposed, small-time developers would also be required to purchase more TDRs.

For example, the Board earlier on Tuesday approved the transfer of two TDRs for a family to add a lot to the small Queentree Knolls subdivision. Board President Tommy McKay (R-Hollywood) said six TDRs would be required to do the same action using the proposed changes.

Commissioner Dan Raley (D-Great Mills) said that is an aspect “the public needs to know.”

“We’re going to require the purchase of TDRs,” for smaller developers and family transfers for additional homes, he said.

“For every action there unintended consequences,” McKay said of the proposal before the issue was sent to the planning commission.

“Mark my words, you're going to run the farmer out of St. Mary’s County, because there’s going to be such a demand for land he won’t be able to turn the offers down.”