House approves optional county conservation fund but limits deposits to 30% of rollback taxes

The Utah House on Monday approved House Bill 115, a permissive measure that allows county legislative bodies to deposit up to 30% of five-year Greenbelt ‘‘rollback’’ taxes into an optional County Conservation and Preservation Fund for uses such as parks, trails, watershed protection, agricultural land preservation and critical wildlife habitat.

Sponsor Representative Jack Drexler said the bill ‘‘enables but does not require’’ counties to establish a fund tying Greenbelt rollback revenues to land-conservation purposes and that the measure was suggested by a county extension agent. ‘‘This idea was brought to me by our county extension agent who is very, very involved every day…The beauty of the bill is that it allows a direct connection between greenbelt land that goes out of agricultural production and the acquisition of other land to compensate for that land going out of production,’’ Drexler…