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the upper altamaha initiative:
spring 2008 Katie Bates and Morgan Bedell Tax Assessment of Conservation Easements in Athens-Clarke County Katie Bates & Morgan Bedell In 1992, the State of Georgia passed the Georgia Uniform Conservation Easement Act. The Act allows land owners to sell or donate development and certain use rights to a government or land trust through a conservation easement. The State's goal in passing the Act, was to: retain or protect natural, scenic, or open-space values of real property; assure the availability of this property for agricultural, forest, recreational, or open-space use; protect natural resources; maintain or enhance air or water quality; and preserve historical, architectural, archeological, or cultural aspects of real property. (O.C.G.A. 44-10-2(1).) According the Act, land owners who enter into conservation easements are entitled to a reevaluation of the property's value upon recordation of the easement for property tax assessment. (O.C.G.A. 44-10-8.) This project addresses a concern raised by the Oconee River Land Trust that Athens-Clarke County tax assessors are not following through with this statutorily-mandated reevaluation. Our project seeks to assess the reasons for noncompliance with the statute's directive and develop an educational tool that can assist tax assessors in completing these reevaluations. The project will assess the variety of conservation easements that exist in the state, such as those that prohibit all development and those that allow limited development, and research tools developed by other government and nongovernmental entities to assess the value of properties encumbered by such easements. The project will engage five primary parties: the Oconee River Land Trust, the Athens Land Trust, a sampling of local tax assessors, the Georgia Conservation Lands Program, the Georgia Land Trust Service Center, and the Georgia Department of Revenue. In particular, the project will interface with local Georgia tax assessors known to have successfully reevaluated properties encumbered by conservation easements and tax assessors known to have faced difficulty in revaluing such properties. Through meetings and interviews with these partners, the project members hope to identify the barriers to compliance with the statutorily-mandated property reevaluation, as well as possible solutions to overcome these barriers already developed by compliant tax assessors. One goal of the project is to bring together individuals across the state both who are in touch with conservation easement valuation problems faced by local tax assessors and who are in positions to facilitate state-wide education and enforcement of the statutory requirements. The final product for the project will be an educational report directed for the use of local tax assessors. The tool will provide tax assessors with basic information on conservation easements, background information on the statutorily-mandated requirement that they reassess land values considering the conservation easement, and guidance on how to revalue property considering the encumbrance of a conservation easement. The tool should provide land trusts and government entities within the state with a basis from which to discuss conservation easements with local tax assessors and may be used in conjunction with live presentations in the future. Primarily, however, the tool should provide local tax assessors with the knowledge they need to effectively conduct property revaluations in light of conservation easements. |
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