By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                The Levy County Property Appraiser’s office has been cautious about granting new agriculture classifications or renewing existing ones in the past two years, having denied or non-renewed 239 requests for Greenbelt agricultural tax breaks on land that doesn’t qualify.

            Property Appraiser Jason Whistler said Monday 129 requests for agriculture classifications were denied last year and 110 this year including the 60 acres owned by Morriston resident Allen Fant that is being used for a composting operation, which isn’t bona fide agriculture under Florida law.

            Property owners who claim they are operating a good faith commercial agricultural operation can get the Greenbelt tax break if they are using their property for pasture, feedlots, horse breeding, and training, row crops like peanuts, and watermelons, hay, or other recognized bona fide agricultural production practices. Greenbelt is the common name for property that is taxed at a much lower rate because it’s classified for use as bona fide agriculture.

            Whistler said the 239 that were denied an agricultural classification on their property can reapply for the Greenbelt exemption, but they must show a management plan indicating what they are planning to do and the agricultural production must be in place by Jan. 1 or the agricultural classification will be denied.

            He said the property owners who lost their agriculture classification over the past two years fell into several different categories including those who purchased property that carried that agricultural classification but couldn’t show proof of their own bona fide agriculture operation when they applied.

            “If there was nothing going on out there and they didn’t reapply or if they reapplied and we denied – the classification was denied,” he said.

            He said his office sometimes finds instances where property is sold that was being used for bona fide agriculture for a number of years and the new owners asked to keep the big property tax break. They are denied if there is no bona fide agriculture going on. Sometimes the new owners don’t reapply for the agriculture classification and it goes away for that reason.

            “It does happen sometimes that they come in and tell us this has always had an ag classification. We ask what are you doing now. They say nothing. We tell them it doesn’t work that way. Once it changes hands you have to prove something’s going on,” Whistler said.

            He said his office is being cautious about granting new ag classifications.

            “If the property changed hands, we make sure the owner comes in and gives us a management plan and goes through the process before we put it back on a piece of property,” Whistler said. “Before we put it back on, they have to go through all the steps of qualifying by dotting all the “i’s” and crossing all the “t’s. before we grant ag. Brian Jones (Whistler’s agriculture classification appraiser) will follow up on each application that’s turned in.”

            Whistler said if the property owner turns in an application and doesn’t have the full agricultural operation in place by Jan. 1, the application will be denied. He said his small staff is stretched too thin to go back to a single piece of property repeatedly to see if the owner is making progress.

            “To me, it’s cut and dried, either they have it or they don’t, and I really don’t want to get into the habit of saying, ok, we’ll grant it this year, even if you’re not finished. We used to work with people like that. They would say, well, I’ve got a fence put up but I haven’t done all of the work (by Jan. 1). We don’t have the staff to keep going back to check on their progress,” Whistler said. “This kind of simplifies things for Brian.”

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Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt June 5, 2023; Posted June 5, 2023