greybeard
Well-known member
I've been involved the last 2 months with some public meetings with the Appraisal District's BoD and Chief Appraiser and a petition I started back in late May/early June. We have a little newspaper here and I bought one a few days ago just to see what they had to say about the meetings (we were able to get about 60 people at each meeting, and they've never had more than 4-5 people show up at any of them before) but I found nothing about the meetings in the paper, but the nearly 1/2 front page was taken up with a big drawing and a lengthy article about...............................................................................................
Bigfoot sightings. :lol2:
wtf??
And on the front page?
All the news that's fit to print indeed...
(I did see where the county has thus far in 2020 collected significant increases in sales taxes compared to the same period last year.)
According to a report issued by Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar, the county’s July payment of $53,490.47 was up by $14,168 or just over 36 percent from the $39,322.47 received in July 2019. It is also the largest July sales tax collection recorded by the county.
The latest increase followed gains of 15.4 percent in June, 15.1 in May, 14.7 percent in April, 72.6 percent in March, 3.7 percent in February and 29.4 percent in January.
So far this year, the county treasury has received $353,402.08, which is up by $64,924.66 or 22.5 percent from the same seven-month period of 2019.
I will again be at the Aug 11 BoD meeting to make another presentation in a further attempt to encourage more ag in the county and goad the Board and Chief appraiser and her ag advisory panel to make changes that would encourage young people to get into ag (specifically cattle) and make it less costly to do so. Our county requires 20 acres to get an ag exemption for grazing, no exceptions AND requires 15 of those acres be cleared of trees, which does not fall in line with most of the counties in East Texas. Used to be 10 acres and nothing about 75% of the land having to be cleared open pasture, but somewhere around 1999-2000 that changed. Evidently the 3 person ag advisory panel at that time all raised cattle on open land and decided "that's the way it must be done cuz that's how we do it". It's only this year, that the county has been actively enforcing that 75% open/25% wooded part, and have kicked some people off ag whose land has been under ag exemption in cattle production for 25 years or more. The BoD got an earful in June and one of the members told me they were in shock when they left that 1st meeting & that that many people would "attack them" over it. Told her"Get used to it. I got one fight left in me and this is it..I'm not stopping. Lose ag in this county, you'll never get it back."
Having woods during drought and in the winter is like having an extra 3 tons of hay.
I got started late on the petition, just a couple weeks before the June meeting but ended up with almost 400 names on our petition (28,500 residents in the county)
San Jac County 1d1 ag exemption minimum requirements::
Petition:
San Jacinto County has a very long and successful tradition of livestock being raised on forested lands, both in the US National Forest when the county was 'Open Range' and on private lands before and after the implementation of the stock law. During 'open range' hundreds if not thousands of head of cattle and hogs ran in and grazed the woodlands of the US National Forest of San Jacinto County, grew, bred, birthed and were gathered and hauled to market each year. There were cattle raised "in the woods" of this area before the county was created and even before Texas became a State.
Wooded land and the forage it provides is a vital element to the farmer and rancher, as well as any good steward of the land and nowhere is that more true than in the flood plain of the East Fork San Jacinto River. In the heat of July and August, when the native Bahia and common bermuda are dry and crunchy under foot, with very little nutritional value, the woods grasses, forbs and other plants are still green and growing, providing the livestock producer with an important supplement and often carries his livestock thru even the worst of droughts, as we all saw in 2011. The same is true in winter. Once the first frost comes, the Bahia is little more than poor hay, but those same protected grasses under the trees, withstand all but the first hard freeze, allowing the producer to minimize the tonnage of hay he has to feed.
Clearing land is an expensive and labor intensive endeavor with questionable prospects of ever recouping those costs via livestock production on the floodplain of the East Fork. The longer rivers in Texas such as the Brazos, the Red, the Colorado and the Sabine rise and fall slowly, often staying up for several days and in the case of the Trinity River, sometimes for weeks. Their watershed is of such size and great length, that their flood waters carry vital nutrients and trace elements. Those rivers' rise and fall is gradual, and just prior to, at and immediately after crest, the sediment falls out of the water leaving the land the floodwater is on enriched and more productive than before.
Those rivers, are a normally positive force in building topsoil and keeping existing soil viable and productive, and have been for thousands of years.
The East Fork San Jacinto River however is a short river, rising near Dodge in Walker County, flowing thru the counties of San Jacinto, SE Montgomery, NW Liberty county, and culminates in Lake Houston in Harris County. TSHA states that from it's beginning source to Lake Houston the East Fork is only 69 miles long. This river historically comes up fast at a high rate of flow, is usually out of it's banks for less than 36 hours, and goes back down into it's channel equally fast. During this river's annual floods, the water does not stay up long & there is not enough time on open ground for the river to drop much if any sediment, but the flow on open ground does present a serious and real erosion risk as well as leaching out vital nutrients and trace elements such as nitrogen, selenium, phosphorous, and potassium. The exception to that adverse action is in the wooded areas. The trees, vines, forbs and other plant life inhibit water flow, aid in the deposit of nutrients and the forest floor retains the moisture much longer than open pastures. Requiring a producer to remove 75% of this valuable asset is counter-productive to what this area has done for decades, going back to the late 1800s. Removing that high % of good deeply rooted ground cover is simply counter intuitive to good stewardship of the land and in this age of low livestock prices, the producer needs every bit of help from nature he can get. In addition, disturbing that amount of soil by clearing will result in every E. Texas invasive to spring to life as soon as sunlight hits the soil. All soils in Texas carry a vast seedbank of seeds, good and bad, Including but not limited to Chinese Tallow, Sweet Gum, and Honey Locusts, meaning the landowner has to embark on a life long battle to keep these hardy but useless invasives in check, either thru constant mowing or bi-annual herbicide applications, both of which are labor intensive and costly. This detracts from the from the landowner and cattleman's profit, which is already meager enough to begin with.
Yes, we can take the land from the forest, but the forest always wants the land back and it never ever stops trying.
It was and is the intent of the Texas Legislature to encourage 1d1 (Ag Exemption) participation in order to forever retain and encourage the rich and historical importance of livestock production thru out the State especially for the small livestock producer as well as other forms of agriculture. This important program helps the younger generation get a start in what appears to be a dying ag lifestyle and a loss of ag production acreage going forward. Rising land prices make it very difficult for young Texans to get started and succeed in agriculture, and one relief to that problem is to make it easier to access and qualify for 1d1. Our neighboring Walker County requires only 10 acres, Liberty County requires only 15 acres, Trinity County decides on a case-by-case basis, with only Montgomery and San Jacinto Counties in this immediate area requiring a minimum of 20 acres.
To that end, we the undersigned do petition the San Jacinto County Appraisal Board and the Chief Appraiser to reverse the requirement of 75% open pasture and only 25% wooded, and we petition the same to drop the 1d1 minimum acreage requirement to 10 acres.
I think I did a pretty good job on it.
Bigfoot is more important for a newspaper to cover than the future of ag here?
This old man don't think so.
(I am not directly affected by either the 20acre thing or the woods having to be cleared thing, but others are)
Bigfoot sightings. :lol2:
wtf??
And on the front page?
All the news that's fit to print indeed...
(I did see where the county has thus far in 2020 collected significant increases in sales taxes compared to the same period last year.)
According to a report issued by Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar, the county’s July payment of $53,490.47 was up by $14,168 or just over 36 percent from the $39,322.47 received in July 2019. It is also the largest July sales tax collection recorded by the county.
The latest increase followed gains of 15.4 percent in June, 15.1 in May, 14.7 percent in April, 72.6 percent in March, 3.7 percent in February and 29.4 percent in January.
So far this year, the county treasury has received $353,402.08, which is up by $64,924.66 or 22.5 percent from the same seven-month period of 2019.
I will again be at the Aug 11 BoD meeting to make another presentation in a further attempt to encourage more ag in the county and goad the Board and Chief appraiser and her ag advisory panel to make changes that would encourage young people to get into ag (specifically cattle) and make it less costly to do so. Our county requires 20 acres to get an ag exemption for grazing, no exceptions AND requires 15 of those acres be cleared of trees, which does not fall in line with most of the counties in East Texas. Used to be 10 acres and nothing about 75% of the land having to be cleared open pasture, but somewhere around 1999-2000 that changed. Evidently the 3 person ag advisory panel at that time all raised cattle on open land and decided "that's the way it must be done cuz that's how we do it". It's only this year, that the county has been actively enforcing that 75% open/25% wooded part, and have kicked some people off ag whose land has been under ag exemption in cattle production for 25 years or more. The BoD got an earful in June and one of the members told me they were in shock when they left that 1st meeting & that that many people would "attack them" over it. Told her"Get used to it. I got one fight left in me and this is it..I'm not stopping. Lose ag in this county, you'll never get it back."
Having woods during drought and in the winter is like having an extra 3 tons of hay.
I got started late on the petition, just a couple weeks before the June meeting but ended up with almost 400 names on our petition (28,500 residents in the county)
San Jac County 1d1 ag exemption minimum requirements::
Petition:
San Jacinto County has a very long and successful tradition of livestock being raised on forested lands, both in the US National Forest when the county was 'Open Range' and on private lands before and after the implementation of the stock law. During 'open range' hundreds if not thousands of head of cattle and hogs ran in and grazed the woodlands of the US National Forest of San Jacinto County, grew, bred, birthed and were gathered and hauled to market each year. There were cattle raised "in the woods" of this area before the county was created and even before Texas became a State.
Wooded land and the forage it provides is a vital element to the farmer and rancher, as well as any good steward of the land and nowhere is that more true than in the flood plain of the East Fork San Jacinto River. In the heat of July and August, when the native Bahia and common bermuda are dry and crunchy under foot, with very little nutritional value, the woods grasses, forbs and other plants are still green and growing, providing the livestock producer with an important supplement and often carries his livestock thru even the worst of droughts, as we all saw in 2011. The same is true in winter. Once the first frost comes, the Bahia is little more than poor hay, but those same protected grasses under the trees, withstand all but the first hard freeze, allowing the producer to minimize the tonnage of hay he has to feed.
Clearing land is an expensive and labor intensive endeavor with questionable prospects of ever recouping those costs via livestock production on the floodplain of the East Fork. The longer rivers in Texas such as the Brazos, the Red, the Colorado and the Sabine rise and fall slowly, often staying up for several days and in the case of the Trinity River, sometimes for weeks. Their watershed is of such size and great length, that their flood waters carry vital nutrients and trace elements. Those rivers' rise and fall is gradual, and just prior to, at and immediately after crest, the sediment falls out of the water leaving the land the floodwater is on enriched and more productive than before.
Those rivers, are a normally positive force in building topsoil and keeping existing soil viable and productive, and have been for thousands of years.
The East Fork San Jacinto River however is a short river, rising near Dodge in Walker County, flowing thru the counties of San Jacinto, SE Montgomery, NW Liberty county, and culminates in Lake Houston in Harris County. TSHA states that from it's beginning source to Lake Houston the East Fork is only 69 miles long. This river historically comes up fast at a high rate of flow, is usually out of it's banks for less than 36 hours, and goes back down into it's channel equally fast. During this river's annual floods, the water does not stay up long & there is not enough time on open ground for the river to drop much if any sediment, but the flow on open ground does present a serious and real erosion risk as well as leaching out vital nutrients and trace elements such as nitrogen, selenium, phosphorous, and potassium. The exception to that adverse action is in the wooded areas. The trees, vines, forbs and other plant life inhibit water flow, aid in the deposit of nutrients and the forest floor retains the moisture much longer than open pastures. Requiring a producer to remove 75% of this valuable asset is counter-productive to what this area has done for decades, going back to the late 1800s. Removing that high % of good deeply rooted ground cover is simply counter intuitive to good stewardship of the land and in this age of low livestock prices, the producer needs every bit of help from nature he can get. In addition, disturbing that amount of soil by clearing will result in every E. Texas invasive to spring to life as soon as sunlight hits the soil. All soils in Texas carry a vast seedbank of seeds, good and bad, Including but not limited to Chinese Tallow, Sweet Gum, and Honey Locusts, meaning the landowner has to embark on a life long battle to keep these hardy but useless invasives in check, either thru constant mowing or bi-annual herbicide applications, both of which are labor intensive and costly. This detracts from the from the landowner and cattleman's profit, which is already meager enough to begin with.
Yes, we can take the land from the forest, but the forest always wants the land back and it never ever stops trying.
It was and is the intent of the Texas Legislature to encourage 1d1 (Ag Exemption) participation in order to forever retain and encourage the rich and historical importance of livestock production thru out the State especially for the small livestock producer as well as other forms of agriculture. This important program helps the younger generation get a start in what appears to be a dying ag lifestyle and a loss of ag production acreage going forward. Rising land prices make it very difficult for young Texans to get started and succeed in agriculture, and one relief to that problem is to make it easier to access and qualify for 1d1. Our neighboring Walker County requires only 10 acres, Liberty County requires only 15 acres, Trinity County decides on a case-by-case basis, with only Montgomery and San Jacinto Counties in this immediate area requiring a minimum of 20 acres.
To that end, we the undersigned do petition the San Jacinto County Appraisal Board and the Chief Appraiser to reverse the requirement of 75% open pasture and only 25% wooded, and we petition the same to drop the 1d1 minimum acreage requirement to 10 acres.
I think I did a pretty good job on it.
Bigfoot is more important for a newspaper to cover than the future of ag here?
This old man don't think so.
(I am not directly affected by either the 20acre thing or the woods having to be cleared thing, but others are)
