FINLEY POINT - Donald Forney doesn't invest in property so much as he lives it, loves it and works it.

It's more than a piece of saleable ground to him.

It is what he will leave his heirs when he leaves this life.

The farm northeast of Great Falls the 81-year-old Forney got from his father and worked most of his life will go to his children.

So, too, will the Flathead Lake summer home with the beautifully manicured lawn here on Finley Point that Forney and his wife Georgia have enjoyed since 1979.

But Forney wonders now: Will his heirs be able to keep the 120 feet of lakeshore on Skidoo Bay that's been in Georgia's family since 1949?

When the state of Montana mailed out property re-appraisals earlier this year, the Forneys were stunned to see the Montana Department of Revenue had determined that the market value of their lakeshore home had increased by more than 300 percent since 2002.

The assessment went from $333,600, to more than $1 million.

Even with the six-year phase-in plan the state announced to help offset the increases many property owners across Montana are seeing - which includes a decreasing tax rate - the Forneys' property taxes will more than double from the $4,064 they paid in 2008.

By 2014, according to the tax calculator at the Revenue Department Web site, the Forneys - or their heirs - will have to shell out $9,472 a year - that's almost $800 a month - in property taxes alone.

And that's if mill levies don't go up.

"There have been no improvements made to the property (since the last appraisal in 2002), but the taxes go up by more than $5,000?" Forney says. "That doesn't seem right."

The Forneys aren't alone. All around lakes like Flathead and Whitefish, jaws dropped when the new assessments were mailed out about a month ago.

Down North Finley Point Road from the Forneys, Rosie Strope saw the assessed value on her 212 feet of Flathead lakeshore more than quadruple, from $439,000 to almost $1.9 million. While she replaced the cabin on the property with a new home she moved into this summer, Strope says she doesn't think there's any way she could get that price in today's market.

"It might reflect asking prices, but it doesn't reflect sales, which I understand are zilch right now," Strope says.

Across Skidoo Bay, the state's assessment of the value of Denis and Sue Hart's lakeshore home went from $550,000 to $2.1 million.

As Denis understands it, the $5,000 they paid in property taxes last year will reach more than $16,000 by 2014.

"We're getting taxed out of our own home," says Hart, 65, who retired from the U.S. Forest Service after being transferred eight times in his career, making what he thought was one last move into the Flathead Lake place that's been in his family for 70 years.

"I worked for 40 years and finally thought I had a place I could retire to and die at, but it looks like I'll have to transfer one more time," he says. "There's no way I can pay that much in property taxes on a fixed income. Sixteen thousand is over a third of what I make a year."

Montana Department of Revenue director Dan Bucks says the steep climb in lakeshore values reflects reality.

"The rest of the world has discovered how wonderful Montana is," Bucks says. "Our land is increasingly valued by the rest of the world, and that's simply the reality of what has happened. There's more competition for our land, and there isn't any more being created."

The reappraisal process is required by the Montana Constitution, Bucks says, and is designed to make sure taxes paid by property owners are equitable and based on the market when the reappraisals are done every six years.

Knowing that values were going to rise in many parts of the state, Bucks says, the Legislature and his department went to great lengths to soften the blow. The "snapshot" of the market upon which assessments are based, always done a year in advance in the past, was pushed back six months to get a closer reading.

"We did it as late as we could and still get the reappraisals done as required by law," he says.

Also in the past, values were determined in part by looking at sales prices of neighboring properties during the six-year period, Bucks says, and assuming prices would continue to increase - or, in rare cases, decrease - at the exact same rate.

"But that's not what we did," Bucks says. "For the first time, we bent the curves down to fit the market. We added some new statistical methods that allow us to track declines in value."

Four programs were established to help qualifying property owners deal with tax hikes. One, Bucks says, the Extended Property Tax Assistance Program, could help people like the Harts. It "better balances the property tax in relation to income, in cases where the property tax has gone up rapidly," Bucks says.

And the taxes are being phased in over this six-year cycle, while the tax rate also gradually declines from 3.01 percent to 2.47 percent by 2014.

Before the Forneys have to pay the estimated $9,472 in 2014 (a figure that is based on 2008 mill levies and will likely be different by then), the calculator at the Revenue Department's Web site tells them to expect to pay $5,374 in 2009, $6,373 in 2010, $7,263 in 2011, $8,066 in 2012 and $8,777 in 2013.

It all sometimes has the desired effect on other types of properties. The Forneys' daughter and son-in-law, Linda and Will Thrasher, live on the "non-lake" side of North Finley Point Road. While Linda thinks the 42 percent increase in the assessed value of their home is out of line, their property taxes are actually expected to decline slightly, from the $2,307 they paid last year to $2,169 in 2014.

For some folks on the other side of the road, though - the ones with the waterside views - the 300 to 400 percent increases in property assessments are devastating.

The increases are a good thing if you want to sell, Bucks says, or use your property as collateral for a loan.

But these are people trying to hold onto lakeshore that's been theirs, or in their families, for 20, 60, 70 years.

Rosie Strope rented on Flathead Lake for 25 years before buying her piece of paradise 20 years ago.

"The question I'd like addressed is what are the county and state going to do with all this new revenue, where there's been extensive high-dollar building around the lake and in the valley the last seven years," she says. "Where's all that money going to go?"

Maybe they'll use some of it to fill the potholes on the Finley Point Road that the county circled with orange paint but never came back to fill, Don Forney says with a laugh.

His wife's father, Marion Hansen, bought more than 1,000 feet of Flathead lakeshore and 80 acres on Finley Point back in 1949. About 560 feet remain in the family, on lots Hansen gave his four daughters and one son.

"It's been a great place for the family," Forney says. "Everybody's scattered to the winds, which happens," but summers have always brought everyone together on Skidoo Bay.

"Everything we've done has been with the intent of leaving it to our heirs, in the hope that they can use it and take care of it like we have," he says. "But they'll have to be able to afford the taxes on it."

People like the Forneys and Harts are scrambling now.

Don Forney filed for an informal review with the Department of Revenue, writing, "I believe a 300 percent increase in valuation in six years is unreasonable."

That won't be enough, he was told when he took the form in to the Polson Revenue Department office. He has to offer evidence that it's unreasonable.

Like the Harts, the Forneys - with the help of their daughter - found a Web site that could help them do so. Bigfork Realtor Scott Hollinger provided a list of 26 Flathead properties that sold in 2007 and 2008, before the July 1, 2008 "snapshot" was taken by the state, to help property owners compare their assessments to actual selling prices.

Linda Thrasher found four properties at www.lastbestplace.com similar to her parents' that all sold for less than $1 million, including one that went for $670,000.

"I've got 10 comparables I took in," Denis Hart says. "One has 68 feet more frontage than we do, and sold for $1.2 million in 2007. Another one with comparable acreage to ours sold for $895,000."

Just as maddening to the homeowners is that the new valuations are, as Hart says, "based on a market that hasn't existed for over a year."

When the national economy tanked, so did sales of lakeshore homes.

But, Bucks says, "just because sales are down doesn't mean land values are down." The Legislature told his department to keep tracking market values up to the 2011 session, when adjustments may be made if property prices are falling.

"It's the most frustrating thing I've ever dealt with," says Hart, who notes that shortly after the state told him to expect his property taxes to more than triple in the next six years, it also announced it had a $392 million surplus.

"I understand part of the problem is that affluent out-of-state people have been buying lakeshore and driving the market," Hart says. "But it's killing native Montanans like us."

Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at (406) 319-2117 or vdevlin@missoulian.com.