York County commissioners adopted the consent agenda on Dec. 3, approving an easement donation that staff described as the first time landowners have preserved previously reserved building lots to maintain an entire farm.

Eric Naylor, director of the county's Ag Land Preserve program, told commissioners the donation covers a farm that Stuart and Anne McGowan largely preserved in 2008 and that Cooper and Wendy Morris later purchased. Naylor said the property totals about 132 acres and that the landowners chose to preserve a couple of building lots they had previously withheld, "which effectively preserves the entire farm." He said the county amended its preservation program this year and received approval from the state review board to allow this type of project.

Naylor connected the Morris family to a longer history of farmland preservation, noting Cooper Morris’s father, Samuel Morse, helped sponsor three key laws in the 1970s and 1980s that "protected farms and created farmland preservation as we know it today." He named the measures in the meeting record as "Act 319 and 1974, Act 43 of 1981 (the agricultural area security law), and Act 133 of 1982 (the right-to-farm law)."

A commissioner asked whether a prior 10-acre threshold remained in place. Naylor replied that county funding eligibility generally still requires parcels of 10 acres for the county to pay preservation costs, but that smaller projects can qualify under other criteria. He added that for this donation, "the landowner has paid for the appraisal for all the legal work, title commitment, title fees," and therefore there are "no dollars in it for us." Dahl, the county official who introduced the item, praised Naylor and his team for streamlining the program to make such donations feasible.

Because the donation was part of the consent agenda, the board approved it along with items 1–28 by a voice vote; the record shows the motion to adopt the consent agenda was made, seconded and carried. The consent approval means the easement donation will be processed under the amended Ag Land Preserve program and adds to the county’s preservation totals — commissioners noted the county celebrated preserving 50,000 acres earlier in the year.

The board’s action was procedural approval of the consent agenda; the meeting record does not include an itemized public hearing, separate roll-call vote specifically for the easement, nor additional conditions attached in open session.