Owners Get Tax Break If They Destroy Derelict Groves

To the owners of groves that have been purchased for retail and housing developments: your property taxes may be going up.

The Highlands County Property Appraiser's office is mailing notices to grove owners about the Citrus Health Response Program, which allows them to keep their Greenbelt Exemption if they remove all the trees.

"The Highlands County Citrus Growers Association is notifying its members, but there are still a lot of grove owners who still aren't aware of this program," said appraiser Raymond McIntyre.

The problem, says Ray Royce, executive director of the citrus growers association, is that canker and greening diseases live in abandoned groves.

"I may maintain my groves, but if the guy next to me doesn't, then it's a host for all sort of citrus diseases," Royce said.

The Crutchfield family bought one of those groves, to develop Crossroads Mall where U.S. 27 intersects with U.S. 98 and S.R. 66. Terry Crutchfield, a real estate agent, supports the idea.

"It's a great program, a federal program, for people who have said, 'We're not going to develop. We're not in the grove business, and we never intended to be in the grove business,'" Crutchfield said. "We've been taking care of our groves. Ours are being sprayed."

If producing groves are maintained, they are taxed at a lower rate - as agriculture lands, said McIntyre.

If the grove is not maintained and picked, but the landowner destroys the trees, the land will be assessed at $50 per acre. At the current millage rate, they'll pay 75 cents per acre.

If the grove bought for development purposes is not maintained and it's worth, for instance, $50,000 per acre, the owner would pay $750 per acre, McIntyre said.

"All citrus groves which ... have no trees remaining must be kept fallow, and clean from all citrus foliage and sprouts from old stumps that could harbor and contribute to the spread of citrus disease," said McIntyre's March 9 letter to citrus grove owners.

"If that grove has been abandoned," Royce said, "citrus diseases will spread from the next grove to the next grove to the next grove. Push those trees into a pile and burn them."

Greening bacteria is spread by psyllid insects as they feed and move from tree to tree. Canker bacteria is transported by wind, rain, famers and their equipment.

Thousands of grove owners around Florida have signed agreements, and hundreds have pushed down their trees, said Terry McElroy, Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services spokesman.

Some Highlands County grove owners have not complied, and their Greenbelt Exemptions already have been removed, McIntyre said.

"I'd say two or three dozen, in the last two years," McIntyre said.