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Ecology Center Director Elected Greenbelt Commission Chair

February/March Issue, 2005

Ecology Center Director Mike Garfield was elected to chair the City of Ann Arbor Greenbelt Advisory Commission through its first year of overseeing the city’s landmark land preservation program. Garfield and eight other persons were appointed to the board by the Ann Arbor City Council last June.

Garfield has played a leadership role in southeast Michigan land preservation efforts since 1994 when he helped form a coalition of environmentalists and farmers to lobby for farmland preservation in Washtenaw County. In 1999 and 2000, he co-directed triumphant ballot campaigns to save natural areas in the City of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County, respectively. In 2003, he co-led the campaign to enact the Ann Arbor Parks and Greenbelt Program, and played an advisory role in the creation of the Ann Arbor Township PDR (Purchase of Development Rights) program. He played a similar advisory role in the successful 2004 Scio Township land preservation campaign. These programs are expected to cumulatively provide approximately $125 million for land preservation and save as much as 15,000 acres of land.

The Ann Arbor Greenbelt Program is the best funded and most ambitious of these efforts, targeting farmland and high-quality natural areas in eight townships surrounding the city. In fact, it stands as the first regional farmland preservation program in Michigan.

To date, the Greenbelt Commission has created a ranking system to evaluate properties that are nominated for preservation; initiated the process of issuing bonds to make multiple purchases in the early years of the program; and overseen the hiring of Gerry Clark, Ann Arbor’s former Acting Parks Superintendent, and the Conservation Fund, one of the country’s most highly regarded land preservation organizations, tomanage the day-to-day operationsof the program.

The Greenbelt Commission is accepting applications from property owners to have their land enrolled in the program and permanently protected from development.

S I D E B A R:

Michigan Communities Look to Wastenaw Programs for Leadership

EC Director Garfield recounted the history of land preservation programs in Washtenaw County before the Michigan Land Use Funders at their December conference in Lansing. Over a dozen communities are trying to create similar programs, each adjusted for their particular local situation. In January, Garfield presented the Wash-tenaw experience before activists and community leaders in Rochester Hills, where an open space preservation millage was narrowly defeated last November.

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