Under the tin roof of a long stable, barn and aviary at the Good Earth Farm off B Road in Loxahatchee Groves, about a dozen residents of the western communities gathered Tuesday, Dec. 17 to air their frustrations and fears related to the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s Office.
Several local residents have reported that they are suddenly and unfairly being denied agricultural classifications for their land, which in some cases is tripling property tax bills and crippling small farmers, equine and livestock operations that get by on slim margins.
When the agricultural designation is lost, the property is assessed at the residential rate in a region where home prices have skyrocketed since 2019.
Dr. Deborah Marshall, an equine veterinarian with 5.5 acres on 161st Terrace North, said she purchased her property in 2002 for $199,000. She has held an ag classification because of the horses she kept on the property until recently. Today, the residential value is almost $1 million and would generate a property tax bill she could not possibly pay, she said.
“This is a crisis,” said Nancy Fried, owner and operator of the Good Earth Farm and Foundation Inc., home of the Chocolate Chip Animal Rescue/Sanctuary and Children’s Zoo.
Fried, a Loxahatchee Groves resident since 1999, said the taxes on her 14 acres went from $11,000 in 2022 to $36,000 in 2024.
After Fried hired an attorney and appealed her case to two magistrates and the county’s Value Adjustment Board (VAB), her tax bill was reduced to $15,000. In the interim, however, she had to pay the $36,000, plus legal fees.
“Keeping our agriculture is so critical,” said Elizabeth Accomando, who serves on the VAB and is also the president of the Indian Trail Improvement District. “We have to hold onto what we have.”
The VAB is an independent entity and is not affiliated with the property appraiser’s office or the tax collector’s office. It consists of two county commissioners, one school board member and two citizen members who approve and hire special magistrates to settle disputes during scheduled quasi-judicial hearings.
District 6 Commissioner Sara Baxter, a resident of The Acreage, currently serves on the board, along with newly elected Commissioner Joel Flores, a Greenacres resident.
Accomando said VAB members heard more than 100 appeals during their March session — many of them related to ag classifications.
Marshall believes this is not coincidental.
“Denials have been happening all over [the area] based on bizarre new rules that have nothing to do with agriculture, and decisions made by personnel with no training in agriculture,” said Marshall in a letter to the Town-Crier. “For me… the new taxes would mean a forced sale of my home and the dissolution of my 25-year practice.”
“I’m terrified I’m going to lose my property,” she said later. “It’s a huge threat.”
Representatives of the property appraiser’s office have a different point of view.
“We’re not trying to terrorize people,” Keith Alexander, the manager of the office’s Agricultural Appraisal Department, told those gathered on picnic benches at the Good Earth Farm. “But the primary use of the land must be agricultural.”
However, defining “agricultural” can be murky.
“The agricultural classification is for good-faith commercial operations,” Alexander said. “[The operation] does not have to be profitable, but there has to be an attempt to make a profit.”
According to Florida Statute 193.461, as posted on the property appraiser’s web site, “bona fide agricultural purposes” include but are not limited to horticulture (generally fruits, vegetables and ornamental plants), floriculture (flowers and ornament plants), viticulture (grapes), pisciculture (tropical fish), aquaculture (aquatic plants, animals and other organisms), forestry, dairy, livestock, poultry, bees and “all forms of farm products and farm production.”
Marshall’s ag status has not been denied, but she worries it could happen soon while she tries to figure out how to restock her property and comply with county regulations that she believes are too fluid and too open to bureaucratic interpretation.
She also said the regulations often do not agree with best practices, as determined by the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
“Do I have to have eight horses, or two cows, or some pigs, or 20 goats? None of which the property can sustain. I don’t know,” Marshall said this week. “I’m confused, and I don’t think any of it is clear.”
Marshall, who is in her 70s and semi-retired, said she already has spent more than $1,400 in legal fees trying to determine her rights. Her attorney told her the best course would be for impacted residents to file a class action lawsuit, she said.
Alexander said there are some 5,000 properties in the county with agricultural classifications, with approximately 500 new applications each year.
Properties are typically inspected every three to five years for ag compliance.
While aerial drone photography is sometimes used for assessments, Alexander said, the photos are typically not used for denials. If the photographs raise questions, then an inspector is sent out, he explained.
Marshall said the inspectors often are part of the problem. Many are quite young and “lack a real understanding of what ag is,” she said.
Alexander said new staff members undergo training and usually spend a year going out with a more senior staffer before making inspections on their own. He said the biggest issue is that his inspectors must be knowledgeable in all agricultural areas — not just one, such as cattle, horses or row crops — and understand the 34 regulations covering various branches of agriculture.
“Staffing does appear to be an issue,” Accomando agreed this week. “The leadership is knowledgeable, but maybe the boots on the ground are not.”
But the “big, big picture” is bigger than that, she said.
“There’s been an attack on agriculture going on for years,” Accomando said. “Look at what’s happening with the farms and groves getting sold off to developers. The bullet of fast growth is coming.”
Back at the Good Earth Farm, Fried climbs into her Kubota RTV and takes off, proud and happy to show off the acreage she clearly cherishes — the jumping and dressage arenas, the 17 pastures, her hemp garden, a pen for pigs and another for goats, even her compost and manure piles, and the lake at the center of the property. Then it’s back to the barn, where exotic birds are squawking and 18 horses are stabled, many of them minis.
Though Fried has successfully pushed back on a major tax increase for now, she worries about her future, and the future of the creatures she feeds, houses and grazes — many of which are rescues.
“If I don’t have my animals to take care for,” she said, “I don’t have a reason to live.”
