SALISBURY — The Rowan County Board of Commissioners will hold a discussion on a proposed farmland preservation fund during the upcoming meeting on Monday.

Money for the preservation fund would be sourced from the penalties prescribed to properties that are removed from the North Carolina Present-Use Valuation Program, which provides tax breaks to active farmland, horticultural land or forest. Fifty percent of the penalty, with an annual maximum of $100,000, would be put into the fund.

The Rowan County Soil and Water Board and the Rowan County Agriculture Advisory Board would then be able to jointly request funds to “provide financial assistance to owners of qualifying farmland by offsetting the cost of obtaining conservation easements such as reimbursement of legal fees, appraisals, baseline environmental assessments and cost-sharing for easement acquisition costs,” according to the agenda item.

The fund proposal comes after members of the RCAAB appeared before the commissioners at their annual planning retreat in February and asked for the present-use program penalties to be put into a farmland preservation fund.

Currently, the commissioners utilize the funding, which totaled approximately $790,000 for the past five years, at their discretion.

The meeting is scheduled for 3 p.m. on Monday and will be held at the Rowan County Administration Building located at 130 W. Innes St. in Salisbury. The other agenda items that will be discussed include:  

• The commissioners will hold a public hearing on the issuance of $855,000,000 worth of tax-exempt bonds for Novant Health. The bonds do not represent a debt of Rowan County, instead being issued by the National Finance Authority of New Hampshire. Rowan County is required by federal tax law to hold a public hearing because approximately $54 million of the funding would be put towards energy and capital improvement projects at the Rowan Medical Center in Salisbury.