Miami Herald - July 4, 2006 - Tere Figueras Negrete Farmers in South Miami-Dade are opening their mailboxes this week with a certain measure of fear -- and, for some, a dose of anger.
More than 1,500 property owners who sought an annual agricultural tax exemption are receiving rejection letters instead from County Hall -- including growers whose families have farmed the area for generations.
The letters have sent South Miami-Dade's tightknit agricultural community into a tizzy, and county property appraisers into damage-control mode.
Under Florida's ''greenbelt'' laws, property owners whose land is used for commercial agricultural use -- anything from beekeeping to dairy farming -- are allowed significant tax breaks. For an acre of avocados, a grower with the exemption paid less than $100 in taxes last year. Without the break, the tax bill for that plot of land would be at least $2,300.
A Miami Herald investigation last year showed that prominent developers were getting the same breaks for land slated for major residential and commercial projects because they made token nods to the agricultural industry, such as grazing a few well-placed cows on otherwise vacant suburban lots.
Miami-Dade promised a crackdown on abuses. Farmers were required, for the first time in decades, to produce extensive documentation such as land deeds, tax forms and paperwork documenting business expenses to prove they are working growers.
Many said they feared losing their exemptions because of bureaucratic slip-ups.
"It seems our earliest fears have been confirmed," said Katie Edwards, executive director of the Dade County Farm Bureau. ``These people are true farmers, and we can't understand why they are being denied."
The list of growers who had parcels rejected reads like a who's who of South Miami-Dade farming: Brooks Tropical, the largest producer of tropical fruit in the country, and well-known nursery growers such as Costa farms had several parcels rejected.
John Alger, whose grandfather first plowed fields in Homestead during the Great Depression, couldn't convince Miami-Dade government that he is entitled to exemptions on all of his land -- as well as 1,400 or so acres of sweet corn and landscaping trees that he tends. His land is divided into roughly 60 parcels. One-third of them were rejected by the county.
Kern Carpenter, another third-generation grower, tends to about 175 acres in Homestead. Almost all were rejected by the county.
"I was born and raised a farmer. My family has been here 60 years,'' he said. ``If I can't get an exemption, I don't see how there's one acre in this county that can get one.''
The unprecedented number of applications -- more than 7,000 -- this year may have added to the confusion, said Marcus Saiz, an assistant property appraiser. Previously, a typical year brought in about 500 applications from property owners seeking agricultural exemptions for the first time.
Officials at the property appraiser's office concede many land parcels may have been ruled ineligible either because of clerical errors on their end or improper documentation by farmers. The office has assigned more staff to reevaluate applications by rejected farmers and is working with the Dade County Farm Bureau to help growers untangle the mess before tax bills are due in the fall.
County officials denied agricultural exemptions for 2,616 parcels of land this year. About 1,000 of those rejections went to farmers who never responded to the appraiser's request for documents. ''Either they didn't want to, or they failed to on time," Saiz said.
Another 1,000 rejected letters went to farmers who were flagged for improper paperwork. Farmers may have been unfamiliar with the process -- but the appraiser's office may have bungled the handling, Saiz said: ``We may have made some mistakes. There's no question, and I'm saying that up front."
One likely source of glitches is that many farms are a patchwork of individual plots pieced together over the years, and each plot requires a different file in the county's system. Some farmers bundled all their properties in a single package, submitting one copy of needed documents, Saiz said.
Farmers who feel they were wrongly denied will have their forms reevaluated. If that fails, a grower can appeal to the county's Value Adjustment Board.
Edwards, the head of the farm bureau -- as well as farmers Alger and Carpenter -- pleaded their cases at the property appraiser's office on Friday. The meetings cooled tempers considerably, said Alger: "They were really bending over backwards.''
The group also met with Charles LaPradd, the county's liaison to the agricultural industry. LaPradd's forebears first farmed what would later become Miami-Dade in 1864, and he grew up alongside many farmers whose names appear on the reject roster.
"I'm going through the list personally, highlighting the ones I know are legitimate,'' he said. ``There's a lot of frustration out there, but we're trying to work through this."
Miami Herald writer Breanne Gilpatrick contributed to this report.
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