I write this morning about matters concerning the Lake Herman Sanitary District, of which I am one of three elected trustees. (Actually, "elected" is a slight exaggeration: in the three decades of the district's existence, there has never been a contested seat.) Let's see how well this open government thing really works:
For at least a decade and maybe longer, the Lake Herman Sanitary District has been taxing land that doesn't belong to it.
When I joined the LHSD board in 2006, I inherited the district files, two plastic tubs of relatively organized minutes (mostly handwritten in spiral notebooks), tax rolls and receipts, correspondence, plans, and maps. County Zoning Officer Deb Reinecke asked me to go through those files and see if I could resolve a discrepancy in her records. Evidently, the original official map, filed with the Zoning Office in 1978, includes the area marked in light blue in the map you see here. The tax roll prepared by the County Auditor, however, includes the additional area marked in red. Deb asked me to find the official map so we could verify that the District has the authority to tax all of the areas on the tax roll.
I spent the past year rummaging through the files, reviewing the maps, sorting through the minutes, and checking with lawyers. In all of the district files, I found no official map. There are plenty of district directories with maps that include the blue and red areas, but none that bear an official surveyor's stamp saying legally, formally, "This is the sanitary district." The district minutes and ordinances make no mention I can find of the district's ever officially annexing any land beyond its original borders.
My conclusion: for at least a decade, perhaps as far back as the late 1980s, the Lake Herman Sanitary District has been taxing land outside its official borders.
So how do we solve this problem? To legally tax the territory in red, the district needs to legally annex it. After being taxed for years without being part of the district, it may not make much difference to the affected landowners. However, I can imagine some folks might ask a very simple question: when do we get our money back?
So what do you think, readers? What's the best route? Just add the disputed territory to the map and call it good? Issue refund checks? Your comments are welcome.
We haven't set our next meeting yet. I'll be contacting my fellow board members Lawrence Dirks and Charlie Stoneback, and we'll try to get together at the Madison Public Library meeting room the week after Thanksgiving. The board has been pretty loose in its meeting schedule: I'm trying to get us on a quarterly schedule. We'll put official notice of our next meeting in the Madison Daily Leader, and we'll post our agenda online. Stay tuned....
In general if land is being taxed by a district that has no authority to do so, the landowners affected have a right to the money they have been paying.
ReplyDeletebut they will first want to know, how much tax they've paid for the past 20 years (or what the tax is annually.
I say write every affected landowner a letter. Explain what has happened and offer them a refund or the opportunity to donate the "taxes" they've been paying to the district.
Then, you probably need to take into account how long the current property owners have had the property because if they've only owned it for five years, they should only be allowed the last five years of taxes paid to the district.
I guess the more you think about it the more complicated the answer gets.
This is an extremely complicated issue. The questions I have are: how much revenue would the LHSD lose if the land is not incoporated; and where the money would come from if a refund were to be given?
ReplyDeleteComplicated is right!
ReplyDeleteLHSD doesn't assess much tax: assessments the last couple years have run about $20 per $100,000 in property value (I'm pulling that from memory; we'll definitely sift through the exact numbers on the tax rolls from each year when we have our meeting). Over ten years, a typical landholder might paid a couple hundred bucks. The disputed areas include maybe ten property owners. If we're lucky, we're talking about net refunds of $2000-$4000 (there's a really ballpark figure).
Of course, if we're really lucky, everyone affected will say, "Don't sweat it. Keep the money, spend on keeping the lake clean." But that's if folks feel generous and willing to let pass some really bad bookkeeping on the part of the sanitary district over the past several years.