A Sonoma County Civil Grand Jury report released Sunday May 10 says the agency that has spent 35 years buying up farmland and open space across the county is, by and large, doing the job voters paid it to do. The report’s title — “It’s On Their Website!” — is the jury’s broad answer to citizens who asked whether the Sonoma Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District is being straight with them.

But the report also flags a problem the press release announcing it does not: the special quarter-cent sales tax that funds the agency’s “forever” promises sunsets in March 2031, and the reserve fund meant to keep monitoring conservation easements after the money stops is parked in the wrong investment basket.

What Ag+OS is, and what it has done

Sonoma voters created the agency — almost everyone calls it Ag+OS — in November 1990 by passing two companion measures. Measure A set up the Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District as a dependent special district overseen by the Board of Supervisors. Measure C levied a 0.25 percent sales tax for 20 years to pay for it. In November 2006, more than 75 percent of voters passed Measure F, extending the tax with a sunset of March 2031.

Over the life of those two measures, Ag+OS has acquired and stewards more than 126,000 acres — about 12 percent of the county — at a portfolio value north of $600 million. Roughly half of the land Sonoma County Regional Parks now manages came in through Ag+OS first, transferred along with a permanent conservation easement and, where applicable, a recreation covenant requiring public access.

About 95 percent of the land Ag+OS protects is held under conservation easement rather than outright ownership. Easements travel with the land, are enforceable under California Civil Code § 815, and outlast any future board of supervisors. The county’s general plan and zoning rules, by contrast, can be rewritten by the next BOS that wants to.

What the citizens asked, and what the jury found

The grand jury opened the investigation in response to questions from members of the public: Is Ag+OS accomplishing what voters approved? Does it negotiate a fair price and invest the tax money wisely? What does an easement actually add on top of the zoning code?

On the price question, the report walks through two real transactions in detail. The McClelland Dairy easement in Petaluma was appraised at $5.57 million for the property without an easement and $2.96 million with one in place — a $2.61 million ceiling on what Ag+OS could pay. A second appraiser is then engaged to confirm or modify the first appraisal before staff begin negotiating, and the Fiscal Oversight Commission reviews the deal before it goes to the Board of Directors for final approval. The jury reviewed the McClelland file and the file for a fee-title purchase on River Lane in Guerneville, and was satisfied with both.

On the leverage question, the figures the report makes public are striking. For the agency’s Community Spaces matching grants — the city parks, town squares, soccer fields, and creek restorations Ag+OS co-funds with cities and unincorporated communities — Ag+OS has put up $209.2 million and pulled in $396.1 million in partner money, roughly two outside dollars for every one of its own. In 2025, the agency reported running public outings for more than 5,000 people and educational programs for more than 14,000 students. More than 144 miles of Coho and Steelhead salmon habitat have been conserved.

Where the report bites

For all the praise, the jury made four findings and issued three recommendations with August 1, 2026 deadlines. The heaviest concerns the agency’s “forever” promise.

About 300 conservation easements are now under monitoring. That work, by design, never ends. Ag+OS has been banking a portion of the sales-tax money into a Stewardship Reserve Fund meant to pay for monitoring after the tax sunsets. The county’s Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector, who manages the fund, prioritizes short-term liquidity. The grand jury’s Finding F2 says plainly that the current strategy “may be insufficient to meet the long-term goal of providing stewardship in perpetuity,” and recommends the auditor and the county pension fund’s investment managers collaborate on a higher-yield approach, with recommendations to the Board of Directors by December 31, 2026.

The other findings are smaller but on point. The Ag+OS Board of Directors is the Board of Supervisors meeting in another hat; those meetings are noticed on the BOS site but not on the Ag+OS public-meetings page (F1). The county Recorder’s Office does not flag the agency when an easement-burdened parcel changes hands, so monitoring continuity depends on the new owner remembering to call (F3). And many protected properties have no on-site signage telling the public what their tax dollars actually bought (F4).

Required responses from the Board of Supervisors and the Ag+OS Board of Directors are due within 90 days.

The cliff the press release does not mention

The grand jury’s last substantive section is titled “What work remains to be done?” It opens with a single sentence: “The voter-approved Measure F funding will sunset in 2031.” It then lays out, in conditional language, what the agency could keep doing “if voters approve another measure to continue the sales tax.”

That is, in effect, an unbylined pitch for a third extension. The math the report makes elsewhere is the case for it: a $605 million Community Spaces program leveraged from $209 million of local sales tax, 126,000 acres in permanent stewardship, 144 miles of salmon habitat, half the regional-park system. The math against it is the math that built any 35-year program — the people who voted in 1990 are not the people voting now, and 2031 is not far away.

The reserve-fund question is the bridge between those two arguments. If voters extend the tax, the stewardship reserve is a backstop. If they don’t, it is the only thing standing between 300 perpetual easements and the county’s ability to keep its word. The grand jury just said it isn’t invested to do that job.

That is the part of the report that will matter long after the August response deadlines pass.

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The full grand jury report, “A Review of Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District: It’s On Their Website!”, is posted on the Sonoma County Superior Court website. Required responses are due from the Board of Supervisors and the Ag+OS Board of Directors within 90 days of the report’s release.