The holder of the land trust becomes the management agency with monitoring and supervisory authority enforced by law, while the property owner, holder of the title, assumes forever all costs of liability, taxes and maintenance related to the property. Prospective buyers of easement encumbered property must consider these financial obligations, as well as specified restricted uses such as development rights.
Heirs to the property, generally the offspring of parents who signed the contract in perpetuity, must forever continue paying taxes, insurance and all expenses related to the land. They generally now live elsewhere with livelihoods other than farming or ranching. If they become financially unable to meet monetary obligations of inherited property, they will likely seek disposal. The larger the acreage, the fewer will be the potential buyers of land which cannot be subdivided and is limited in number and style of personal residences. Until this last legislative session it was reassuring that land trusts were willing to take encumbered land off the hands of financially strapped owners eager, if not desperate, to dispose of it.
Alarming amounts of federal money are funneling into private land acquisition through conservation easements, as well as programs to convert federal multiple use lands into wilderness, representing an federal “land grab” epidemic nationwide. Appealing federal tax write-offs as well as monetary funding are offered land owners. These one-time-only perks are not available to future owners, whether by inheritance or purchase. Highly heralded almost to the point of patriotism are the virtues of open space, wildlife protection and preserving rural lifestyle. The fact that property taxes at the local level remain the same, allows ever increasing amounts of acreage to go unnoticed under conservation easement, very likely to eventually erode into fallow, weed-prone, empty space. Unsaleable property falling to the county through tax default, in essence represents a liability, basically becoming parkland maintained by local taxpayers similar to our national parks and increasingly nonproductive Forest Service lands financed by federal taxes.
Please mark your calendar for an upcoming Montanans for Multiple Use conservation easement information forum April 19, 1 n 3:30 p.m. at Crossroads Christian Church, north of Bigfork.
Clarice Ryan has followed land-use policy for 15 years and is a board member of Montanans for Multiple Use. She lives in Bigfork.
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)