Sharon Cairns Mann:  award-winning author
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Blog Post #26:  Yes, it can get worse!

11/30/2016

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I can assure you that tangling with the two biggest law firms in Denver was not on our bucket list of bright and happy things to do.  It wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t fun, and it was definitely the last thing in the world we wanted to do.  But there we were, dealing with our new reality. 
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By now we were drifting into 2010. Be forewarned that the year yielded an incredible jumble of issues with the State, the IRS, and the malpractice case.  It has been a challenge to try to sort out these matters and present them in a way that is comprehensible, so, for the time being I am going to stick with chronology. If you feel like the paragraphs in this post jump around like a pinball, you are right!  But remember, chronology is the glue.
 
STATE:  We were greeted by the news on January 24, 2010, that Colorado Governor Bill Ritter would “oppose any legislation to grant amnesty to hundreds of Coloradans whose tax credits for conservation easements are being challenged by federal and state authorities.”  (The Denver Post, “Ritter rejects tax amnesty for conservation easement credits.” And http://statebillnews.com/2010/01/ritter-ill-oppose-conservation-easement-tax-amnesty/) 
 
Land Owner’s United
 
We discovered that there was a group of landowners who had banded together to fight back against the state on this whole subject.  They were mostly situated in southern Colorado, and they faced the same issues we did.  They had formed a group called Land Owners United (LOU), and, while it was sad to discover that other people were suffering from the same thing we were, it was also thrilling to discover that we weren’t alone, we weren’t crazy, and we all had the same problems and experiences.
 
Here’s a more official description of the group, taken from a letter from their attorney to the Colorado Department of Revenue.  “Land Owners United (LOU) is a nonprofit organization formed to assist landowners, many of them in Southern Colorado, with the calamitous impacts caused by gross mismanagement of the conservation easement program and tax credits by the Colorado Division of Real Estate and the Colorado Department of Revenue.”
 
LOU strongly supported the abovementioned HB 10-1169 introduced by State Representative Wes McKinley and co-sponsored by Speaker of the House, Terrance Carroll.  Essentially the bill proposed “grandfathering” all 2003-2007 conservation easements, and putting an “end” to the debacle.  Now the bill was in jeopardy of dying before getting to the finance committee, and LOU was working to mobilize people to write letters.  While we have never officially joined LOU, we developed a very close working relationship with them, so they become an important part of this story. LOU is also the same group behind the current lawsuit against the State of Colorado that I mentioned in Blog Post #1 (LOU created a new group for this lawsuit called Landowner’s United Advocacy Foundation, Inc. [LUAF]  with more than 300 members. See their website at http://www.landownersadvocacy.org/home.html).  And, as a reminder, here is a link to the article first mention in Blog Post #1.  (http://www.denverpost.com/2016/03/28/colorado-landowners-sue-state-over-conservation-easement-program/)
  
IRS:  As you may recall, the IRS had begun requesting time to extend their investigation, and on the advice of both JW and then A&J, we told the partners to refuse. 
 
On Feb. 20, 2010, our partner who had received the first notices from both the IRS and State received a Notice of Tax Deficiencies from the IRS for 2005, 2006, 2007 totaling $137,211.80 (including the 40% penalty they were tacking on).  Quick question, Dear Reader:  would you be upset – maybe even faint -- if you received that notice?
 
STATE:  The excesses of Erin Toll finally began to be recognized and make headlines.  (Click here for a Denver Post article dated 3/20/2010:  “Real Estate Division dispute highlights differences in governance.”)  This kind of information reinforced our conviction that we didn’t need to sue Todd – that it was a witch hunt originated by Erin Toll, and that it would die down.  Our biggest failing?  We were optimists…
 
A series of negative articles about Erin Toll ensued, with startling quotes such as this:  "She was an unguided missile that always sought the headline." Former Gov. Bill Owens describing Erin Toll, (The Denver Post – see attached .pdf below for the whole series of articles.)
 
IRS:  At the end of March and beginning of April, our partners started to notify us that they, too, had received “Notices of Tax Deficiency” from the IRS -- notices saying they owed a ton in back taxes, due to their deduction for the conservation easement being disallowed, plus penalties (a whopping 40% and interest).  All of our donating partners.
 
STATE:  On April 9, 2010, we read that Land Owners United (LOU) had won their Open Records Request in Denver District Court Division 9.  “The Colorado Division of Real Estate and the Colorado Board of Real Estate Appraisers unlawfully withheld records and failed to respond to repeated, written requests for public records made by a group of Southeast Colorado property owners in August and September of 2009, a Denver District Court judge recently decided.”   http://www.denverrealestatewatch.com/2010/04/09/land-group-wins-court-decision/
 
I have verified with LOU that this decision was appealed by The Division of Real Estate (Erin Toll), but Land Owners United won again on appeal in August of 2011. Unfortunately, links to that decision have disappeared.  If you have a link, please send it to me so I can add it!  Thanks. 
 
IRS:  On April 12, 2010 A&J wrote a lengthy letter to all our partners detailing the long process of dealing with the IRS in Tax Court, and then added, “This, however is not the end of the controversy. This is actually the beginning.”  How’s that for cheerful news from your attorney? 
 
MALPRACTICE:  As we were grinding our way through these IRS cases that spring, we began to catch a new scent – that maybe Todd’s work had not been as thorough as it should have been.  We began to contemplate the ugly fact that we might have to actually sue Todd and the Major Law Firm. 
 
In May, Stan told A&J to go ahead and file a malpractice suit against Todd and Wishful Thinking, and A&J began corresponding with MLF (remember them?) who represented Todd and Wishful Thinking.  Dear Readers, Wishful Thinking and Major Law Firm are two of the biggest law firms in Denver.  I can assure you that tangling with them was not on our bucket list of bright and happy things to do.  It wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t fun, and it was definitely the last thing in the world we wanted to do.  But there we were, dealing with our new reality. 
 
STATE:  And, at the same time, another article came out supporting what we had always known – Erin Toll was a problem. See “The Rise and Fall of Erin Toll:  Colorado Regulator with a Tough Reputation” May 7, 2010.    “http://www.denverpost.com/2010/05/07/the-rise-and-fall-of-erin-toll-colorado-regulator-with-a-tough-reputation/
 
In June of 2010, I move from one unsuitable job In Denver to another – a full time position with benefits.  We desperately needed the money and with Stan tied up with construction on our house and spending money like crazy, I needed to plug the financial holes.  Little did I know I was just throwing myself under the bus as far as more abuse and craziness! The new job was so busy I couldn’t even take potty breaks.  More stress – just what I needed. 
 
The day before I was supposed to start the new job, I got stung by a bee at our construction home in Walsenburg just as I was leaving for my drive back to Denver.  When I started the new job the next day, I was really sick, and covered with red splotches everywhere. I hauled my brand new coworker (a nurse) into the bathroom with me and pulled down my pants to show her my pink waffled butt.  “Honey,” she said, “those are hives – you’re just covered in hives. You better get yourself to the ER right now.”  Even my throat and lungs felt furry.  I was having an extreme allergic reaction and I probably should have been in the ER, but desperate to keep this new job, I foolishly soldiered through the day.  Desperation will cause one to do crazy things.
 
The new job required me to stay five days a week in Denver, then make a mad three-hour-plus dash on weekends down to the work site where we were building our home south of Walsenburg.  The job was extremely stressful, the commute was taxing, and I felt as if everything would fall apart if I blinked.
 
In addition to all the matters related to the conservation easements, we had a lot of demanding personal stuff going on.  We were building our own home, and it was a major project in and of itself.  It’s not the subject of this blog, but I hope it helps the reader appreciate that in addition to all this C.E. stuff, we had personal lives that frequently felt like they were falling apart due to the impact on our time.  Not to mention that this onslaught had already been a long, tough slog.  My nerves were getting frazzled, I was beginning to have chest pains, panic attacks, physical issues -- I was just plain miserable. ©Sharon Cairns Mann 

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Blog Post #25:  Can it Get Any Worse?

11/23/2016

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​By the fall of 2009, we realized our troubles with the IRS were not going to go away and we were likely going to have to fight them. And, by then, we had the state breathing down our necks as well – can it get any worse? 
 
In early September, we advised Boetz that we were represented by JW at MLF, and introduced them to each other online.  We corresponded with both of them, supplying more information about Tracts #4 and #10.  Boetz sent forms to me to sign that we are the “Tax Matters Partner,” for all of the Conservation Easements, and JW told me to proceed with that.
 
Meanwhile, our donating partners had started receiving what is called a “30-day letter.”  JW had told us that we should not respond to the 30-day letter, which would then force the IRS down a different path than if the taxpayer responds[1].
 
A flurry of emails between me, the partners, and JW ensued, and by this time we were demanding that JW send us an engagement letter for him and his firm.  My records show that I consistently requested the engagement letter from September 9, 2009 to October 23, 2009. Meanwhile, JW continued to represent us without the engagement letter.
 
The IRS had sent a request for extensions to all the donating partners (ostensibly so they could dig up more dirt on us).  On October 23, JW advised me to advise our partners not to sign those requests, and that by the end of the day he would send our engagement letter to us.  So upon his advice, I sent a letter to the partners telling them not to grant the extensions to the IRS and to watch for anything they might have to sign from JW. 
 
I asked at the outset of this post, “Can it Get any Worse?”  Yes, it can!  Abruptly, on October 26, 2009, JW at the Major Law Firm (MLF), declined to take our case.  We were stunned.  We had hunted high and low to find him, we needed to take action, we had worked with him for at least 14 months, he told us October 23 to expect a fee agreement by the end of the day, and now he refused to proceed. 
 
Do you want to know why?  Because JW’s Major Law Firm also represented Todd, our original C.E. attorney (along with Wishful Thinking, Todd’s very big law firm), and people were beginning to sue Todd and Wishful Thinking because many of them were also having problems with the IRS and the State.  And, even though we had hired JW to represent us against the IRS, JW and MLF were afraid we were going to sue Todd, too, which would clearly be a conflict of interest for them.  Except, JW at MLF knew this all along, and strung us along for 14 months, then threw us under the bus. (To JW’s credit, he never billed us for his time, so at least this wasn’t a serious “money-down-the-drain” episode, but it was a “time wasted” episode.)
 
While the thought of suing Todd had certainly crossed our minds, we still did not consider it an option.  First of all, we still saw this as a witch-hunt by Erin Toll and a lot of misguided folks in the State, but we were getting nervous about all the people who were suing him. And, second, we still did not see that he had done anything wrong, so if there was no negligence on his part, there were no grounds for suing him.
 
So, on October 26, 2009, we were abandoned by JW and Major Law Firm and again frantically searched for new representation, finally coming up with a team at A&J.  In mid-November of 2009, we signed a fee agreement with A&J, and asked them to proceed in filing our cases against the IRS.  (Dear Reader, please note that we brought the cases against the IRS for disallowing our charitable contributions based on the conservation easements when there was no basis for them to disallow them. I say this because some folks have been critical of us, believing that we were the ones who got sued.  We did not.)  By the time we signed found A&J, we had also become convinced that we needed to ​preserve our right to sue Todd​, (although, as mentioned above, we were still unclear exactly what negligence or malpractice had occurred), so we asked A&J to take on the “potential” malpractice case as well.
 
So, guess what Stan and Sharon were doing again?  Remember all those documents we had provided to the IRS, and then to the state, and then to JW at MLF?  We had to start all over again and provide them to A&J.  So, for the remainder of 2009, Stan and I worked our butts off again to provide the data necessary for A&J to proceed.  Dear Reader, please remember that we had 23 partners (I was partner #24) and there were 15 separate Conservation Easements…that’s a lot of paperwork! 
 
Late in 2009, Joan Dittmer wrote a vague Op-Ed in The Denver Post (see attachment   below) that supported the Conservation Easement program in Colorado, but without apparently understanding that hundreds of landowners were being egregiously hurt by the very process she was lauding.  But, ​at least she came out in favor of the conservation easements and explained their inherent value to the citizens of the state!
 
We closed out 2009 gearing up to fight the IRS and wondering what was next from the State of Colorado. ©Sharon Cairns Mann

[1] To explain this, I use a later memo from another law firm, “A taxpayer can challenge a 30-day letter by filing a Protest, which will cause their dispute to be sent to the IRS Appeals Office to discuss settlement.  In our experience, however, Protests often turn out to be a ‘less preferred procedural path.’  This is particularly true in conservation easement cases because the IRS has designated conservation easement cases as “coordinated cases.” When considering coordinated cases, the IRS Appeals Office does not have the same settlement discretion that it would otherwise have in a case that is not a coordinated case. There is often no meaningful settlement potential at the Protest stage in a coordinated case.”

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Blog Post #24:  Double Whammy

11/16/2016

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When we got the IRS appraisals back from IRS they were filled with mistakes, misstatements of fact, and a complete non-recognition of the notion of “highest and best use.”
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In late July of 2009, the same two partners who were being “audited” by the IRS received notices from the State of Colorado Department of Revenue that “additional documentation is needed to support your gross conservation easement credit.”  The State specifically asked for two things:  1) a copy of the appraisal and 2) a copy of the deed transferring the easement to a qualifying organization.  Easy peasy!  We could do that.  But, naturally, we weren’t feeling too great about our first official notification from the state, which created a double whammy of both the State and IRS going after our two partners.

At about the same time, we finally received news about the IRS appraisals.  I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised: when we got them back from Walters they were filled with mistakes, misstatements of fact, and a complete non-recognition of the notion of “highest and best use.”  In addition, Walters, like the previous State investigators in Julie’s case, had not bothered to call the County planning officer to verify the facts.  (I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself in the timeline here, but the following year, on October 27, 2010, Stan wrote to one of our attorney partners and said, “Found out this morning that the IRS appraisers in our cases were part of the good-old-boy clique that did conservation easement appraisals early and resented the late comers in their respective territories of the state.” I can’t remember how Stan found that out, but as I continue to write and research this blog, I may be able to fill you in.  I can tell you this:  Stan doesn’t make up that kind of stuff, and in fact this good-old-boy theory was later expanded on by landowners and illuminated by journalists – see Blog #35 for more details.)

Back to the receipt of the appraisals in 2009.  I can’t find the exact date when we received the Walters’ IRS appraisal, or even a copy of it, but on August 14, 2009 I wrote to the partners telling them that the “re-appraisal” by the IRS was not good news and that they were going to begin getting some kind of notification from the IRS.
 
On August 17, 2009, Stan wrote a long critique of the appraisal to JW at MLF, disputing Walters’ claims and pointing out all the factual errors.  I was tempted to print it here, but it is very lengthy and technical.  I doubt you’ll actually want to read it, but just to be transparent and supply you with all the facts, I’ve included it below as a .pdf.  (Note that I highlighted some [not all] of the factual errors that he made, but you can read it for yourself and see what a disaster it was.)
 
On August 20, 2009, Stan and I went to visit JW at MLF in Denver with the two partners who were being pursued by both the state and IRS. 
 
As a follow-up to that meeting, Stan, wrote a letter to the partners on August 23 saying, “So far, two of our partners (owner/contributors of three of the conservation easements) have received notices from the IRS disallowing the claimed contribution.  So far, the State of Colorado has made no claims, but has requested hundreds of pages of documents which we have supplied. The information upon which the IRS is relying is almost entirely false.”
 
Here are some other excerpts from our letter to our partners describing what we learned from JW, which was remarkably similar to the letter we had sent to them the previous August.
 
  1. Literally hundreds of such notices have been sent to Colorado donors already, so we are way down the line in order, which is to our benefit.
  2. JW is already handling 100 of these cases, so he is very familiar with what is happening.
  3. Among the choices we have when receiving notice from the IRS, this lawyer believes the best is to do nothing and wait for a 90-day statutory notice that will follow the original notice.
  4. At that time we will have the choice of either (a) filing a protest (individually or consolidated), or (b) filing a case with the United States Tax Court.
  5. One very favorable case (Hughes v. Director of Internal Revenue decided by Judge Wherry) has already been completed in the Tax Court, and others may follow by the time we have to make the decision between (a) and (b) above. (This case is described in more detail in Blog Post #23: “There May Be Some Cussin” along with a link to a Denver Post article.)
  6. JW will make that final decision at that time.
  7. In the meantime, Colorado has not sent many deficiency notices.  So, partner donors may or may not get deficiency notices from Colorado.  If we do, our lawyer will follow Colorado Tax Procedure Conservation Easement Credit Disallowance Hearings procedure, and act in behalf of each said partner.
  8. Our lawyer advised us that there are so many cases that the Colorado legislature may very likely consider some sort of global settlement approach that will avoid undoing the tax-credit sales.  Literally hundreds of well-to-do citizens are already protesting to the legislature and the Revenue Department to preserve what they (and we) have already done.
  9. Because we are so far down the line in order, and because we may want to consolidate all our cases, it will likely be a very long time before we are actually scheduled for hearings or trials. Because we are so far down the line, some pattern of settlement or outcome is likely to develop before we have to do anything other than file our protest or our suit.
  10. Our lawyer does not want to be locked to a particular position until he can see how the earlier matters are being resolved.
  11. This thing will end, but not soon.
 
I think it is interesting, as I read back over these documents, to see how this disaster went from the early days of a “probe” in 2007 to hundreds of landowners being affected by 2009.  The storm seemed be growing, and riding it out was beginning to feel impossible. But, we had great representation from JW at Major Law Firm in Denver.  What else could we do? ©Sharon Cairns Mann 

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Blog Post #23: There May be Some Cussin'

11/10/2016

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Judge Wherry slapped down the IRS for using an “engineer” instead of a qualified appraiser, and Wherry also valued the land at $2.0 million instead of $238,135 – almost 10 times when the IRS appraiser claimed!! 
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The Hughes/Wherry decision that JW had told us to watch for finally came out in May 2009.  Here's a link to  the May 12, 2009, article in the Denver Post, “Ruling puts value on land contribution.” 
 
The article describes one of the first cases in the avalanche that was to follow.  “In a case that has been closely monitored by the conservation-easement community nationwide, U.S. Tax Court Judge Robert Wherry, Jr., determined that the original appraisal overvalued the 2413 acres Hughes donated to the land trust.”  This was actually a bad news/good news ruling.  While it appeared that Hughes “lost” (he was ordered to pay taxes to the IRS), at least Wherry appreciated the fact that the land had value.  Here’s a summary:
 
The judge ruled that Hughes owed the IRS $437,154 in taxes.  Dear Reader, on the surface, without knowing hardly anything about conservation easements, you can see why this is unfair.  The man did exactly what the law said he could do.  He donated his land to the Black Canyon Regional Land Trust, Inc.  He presumably received a tax credit for it from the State of Colorado, although that part is not addressed in the article.  And, he claimed the donation as a charitable contribution on his tax return (totally legitimate) valued at $3.1 million.  Dear Reader, that is only $1284 per acre.  How much is YOUR land worth!?  Way more than that, I suspect!
 
And yet, the case hinged on the fact that the government “engineer” (not a qualified appraiser, mind you), valued the total conservation easement between zero and $238,135.  Excuse my bad language, but &$*#&*!!  How would you feel if you gave your valuable land away, and then, AFTER THE FACT – WHEN YOU CANNOT UNDO THE EASMENT – you are told that your land is worth ZERO!!???  More expletives. 
 
How is it possible that any piece of land is worth “ZERO”?  And even at the high end of the engineer’s valuation ($238,135 for 2413 acres), do you know any land in Colorado that is truly worth only $98 per acre?  There may be pockets and places where that is currently true, but it does not take into consideration the “highest and best use” rule (see Blog Post #23 for a fuller description of “highest and best use”) and the fact that the current owner is giving up his or her rights for future development (profits) forever – meaning the current owner, and his or her children and grandchildren.  Forever is a long time, folks!  The application of “highest and best use” valuation method is intended to take that “future vision” into account. 
 
I’m sorry if it seems like I’m screaming – I guess I’m still screaming on the inside over the moron who valued the land (2413 acres) at “somewhere between $0.00 and $238,135.”
 
But, it is important to note, the conservation easement community considered it a victory in that Judge Wherry slapped down the IRS for using an “engineer” instead of a qualified appraiser, and Wherry also valued the land at $2.0 million instead of $238,135 – almost 10 times when the IRS appraiser claimed!!  In other words, Wherry rejected the IRS’s strategy of having a “Zero” valuation tier.  Still, the $2.0 million was a reduction from the $3.1 million that Hughes had claimed, and thus the need to pay back taxes.
 
The article says, “’This decision is very helpful for landowners with legitimate conservation easements that are being challenged by the IRS,’ said Bill Silberstein, an attorney with Isaacson Rosebaum PC who has several similar cases.”  (And, just to be a little gossipy, was one of the guys who turned me down when I asked him to represent us.  Maybe he had a conflict of interest.)
 
Meanwhile, we were still waiting for news on the IRS appraisals of our land.  But, hopefully they now realized that it couldn’t be the ridiculous sum of “zero.”   ©Sharon Cairns Mann

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Blog Post #22:  Highest and Best Use

11/2/2016

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Conservation Easement appraisals were supposed to consider the “highest and best use” of the land.  The highest and best use of our land was clearly a development.

We apparently were on the “wrong side” by the sheer bad luck of having had our first appraisals done by Julie O’Gorman, who had simply had the bad luck of being targeted by Kevin Shea, Mark Weston, and Erin Toll for no reason we have ever been able to discern. 

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So, we ended 2008 just like we had ended 2007: “waiting.” 
 
Between seeing JW in August 2008 and the end of 2008, not much happened.  I hauled stacks of boxes of paperwork and CDs with more documents to the IRS center at Inverness in the Denver area to deliver into Boetz’s hands. In order to stay sane and keep track of all the documents, I had to make inventories of the contents and then make lists of the inventories!  You simply cannot believe how much data there was.  It was a distressing time.
 
We contacted JW a couple of times with questions, but it was a quiet time of waiting.  Desperate for money, I started a new job in Denver that was completely unsuitable for my experience, personality, and skill set.  But, with Stan building our house full time, money was flowing out way too fast.  It was extremely stressful to be working in Denver and making a mad dash home to Walsenburg every weekend (a three hour drive), but I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders, and extremely anxious about our finances.
 
The “So-Called” IRS Appraiser
 
In early 2009, Boetz finally made an appointment with Stan to show Boetz and the IRS appraiser the land.  Remember, up until now, no one from the state or the IRS except for Boetz had ever talked to us.  So, we were quite happy that Stan actually had a chance to meet with the appraiser (Tim Walters) and walk the land with him before Walters did the appraisal.
 
Stan spent almost 30 hours researching and preparing for the meeting with Boetz and Walters, and he provided Walters with detailed historical notes on the development, projections of future profits, etc.  And, of course, Stan and I were corresponding with JW at MLF about all of this.
 
We were enormously frustrated that we had spent all this time waiting for the IRS, and our land was tied up in limbo because of the IRS’s slowness:  we could neither sell it, nor develop it, nor do more conservation easements.  It seemed terribly unfair, but all we could do was wait.
 
Highest and Best Use
 
At this point, I realize that I may not have made some things clear about the appraisals for conservation easements, so let me pause and do so.  When the statutes were written about donating land into a conservation easement, the IRS and State recognized that an individual was giving up the land forever.  This means that the valuation should take into account not just the current value and the current owner or the current use, but also the fact that if you put your land into a conservation easement, your heirs have also lost the ability to sell it at its full price or develop it.  It means that even if it doesn’t have a lot of value now, things could change in the future.  For more information about the real estate principle of highest and best use, click here.
 
For example, say you have a dinky home on a corner lot in Denver that may not be very valuable right now, but could conceivably be a desirable lot for a high-rise building.  This notion of peering into the future for “the highest and best use” was therefore included in the instructions for how conservation easement appraisals were to be done, which means they were to consider the “highest and best use” of the land. Just because you don’t have a high-rise on your piece of property right now, if your property is strategically located, and other criteria are met (see graphic), it is conceivable that there could be, should be, or might be one there in the future because that  is the highest and best use of that piece of land.  Therefore, if you donated your land to a conservation easement, you wouldn’t just be giving up the value of the land right now, but you’re also giving up what you might sell it to a developer for in the future.
 
This idea of “highest and best use” of the land is extremely important in our case, because we were clearly heading down the path of development, with approval and blessing from the County, with subdivision plans, approved filings, and residential zoning.  We were not in the grasslands of eastern Colorado that may not ever be developed.  We were right on I-25 with an extremely desirable residential subdivision (please refer back to Blog #7, in which I describe why it was such a fantastic piece of property and the specifics of our development plan).  So, the highest and best use was clearly a subdivision.
 
We finally got our day with the “so-called” IRS appraiser.  I say “so-called” because these IRS appraisals were actually being done by local appraisers (not IRS appraisers) and by this time appraisesrs in Colorado were living in abject terror under Erin Toll’s reign and were eager to show themselves aligned with the “right side.” We apparently were on the “wrong side” by the sheer bad luck of having had our first appraisals done by Julie O’Gorman, who had simply had the bad luck of being targeted by Kevin Shea, Mark Weston, and Erin Toll. 
 
Stan spent hours with Walters, pointed out the fact that the utilities were present, handed him detailed notes, and off Walters went.  And then we had to wait, and wait, and wait.
© Sharon Cairns Mann

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    Author

    Hi! Welcome to this blog!   I'm a professional writer and award-winning author. I didn't really want to write this blog, but I also believe that the story of the huge conservation easement fiasco in Colorado has not yet been adequately told. So here it is!

    It's so long, I've had to serialize it, so please note that you have to START with Blog Post #1 (June 28, 2016) for the story to make sense!  So, if you're new to the blog, please go back to the beginning and start there.   

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