Tax Valuation Protest by SCPLOA (Sand Creek Park Land Owners Association) members.

[Regina Hasperhoven]

Dear Mr. Kefalas and Mrs. Shadduck-McNally:

Based on public feedback from our fellow SCPLOA members, including the duly recorded protest by Mrs. Kathy Mahaffey at the 5/16/2023 Larimer County Commissioner's meeting, we, the undersigned (married) joint tenants of SCPLOA parcel 52240-00-008 (Account: R1078313), G. Todd Greenhalgh and Regien E. Hasperhoven (Riverton, WY), must emphatically concur that the proposed increases are obscenely inflated. Actual market values in this area are static even stagnant entirely due to Larimer County's own derelict failure to provide the tax-funded public improvements necessary to justify ANY increases -- much less those indefensibly proposed.

We have owned 35 acres of ("vacant" but PROHIBITED commercial by contractual SCPLOA covenant) land on Camel Rock Road in Larimer County for over 30 years. Being dutiful citizens of the USA and land owners in Larimer County, we have paid our taxes (in two states) without complaint for three+ decades having never observed any public expenditure benefitting ourselves or our SCPLOA neighbors. True, road access conditions have changed -- unfortunately and entirely for the worse. In terms of other public amenities -- it might as well be 1823 on Sand Creek.

Yet recently, being senior citizen retirees, we were shocked, appalled and revolted to receive a 2023 Real Property Notice of Valuation in our mail box from the Larimer County Assessor that arbitrarily and absent the most basic due diligence, raised our property value from $85,000 to $190,000 -- with a corresponding 2.5X (150%) proposed annual increase in our taxes from a little over $2,000 to $4,430 -- within the span of one year! Erroneously comparing SCPLOA (NW Boulder Ridge) property values to the far more developed and easily accessible Red Feather Lakes exurban area (SE Boulder Ridge just beyond FT. Collins) is equivalent to comparing the remotest "no services" reaches of western Appalachia to the posh suburbs of northern Virginia. The latter (Red Feather Lakes) has shops, gas stations, restaurants, a golf course, the  Shambala Mountain Center, and more, all made possible by adequate access from Fort Collins and a surrounding area rich in natural assets and visitor attractions -- and the max-taxed Colorado commercial properties that subsidize the entire developmental enterprise.

The effect of this fatally flawed county assessment was akin to receipt of a letter bomb -- and it has devastated our trust in the office of Larimer County Assessor. This alienation of trust is a natural reaction to a perceived sense that this public office is proposing to rob us and our neighboring property owners on Sand Creek. And we refuse to be passive witnesses to this flagrant public injustice. The fundamental and solely legitimate function and purpose of government is to secure our inalienable rights as will best "effect [the people's] safety and happiness." Proposing to rob them achieves just the opposite effect. It should go without saying that people will not tolerate other people stealing from them -- and the apparent legal legitimacy of the nefarious mechanisms employed makes it an actionable cause for formal public protest and petition for legal redress of grievances. 

A bedrock principle of our United States Constitution is that no private property shall "be taken for public use without just compensation (USC Article Amendment V)." In 30-years of paying property taxes to Larimer County we -- and presumably not alone among our fee-paying SCPLOA members -- have received NOTHING (i.e., no thing, no anything as in zero, nada [0]) from Larimer County, Colorado government. Restrictive covenant-bound landowners on the northwest side of "Boulder Ridge" west of Highway 287 North might as well be a lost colony on Mars. Thirty years ago future public road improvement access seemed a reasonable and plausible compensatory outcome of those exponentially increasing tax assessments -- which began at less than $200 annually (on a property purchased at at 9.5% interest in 1992).

But the last time we survived those organ-grinding washboards and improvised two-tracks, we would have preferred to be traveling the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon.

Another thing that hasn't changed since 1992 is the relief we feel when we finally reach the private SCPLOA roads our covenant fees maintain (for a tiny fraction of what Larimer County extorts annually). Speaking specifically for myself (G. Todd Greenhalgh), the brutal journey of those few final Colorado miles on body and motor vehicle alike was not worth the wear and tear -- and the mere memory of which has proven sufficient to deter me from visiting the property since 2020. This despite the unique and priceless natural beauty we have paid for several times over into a useless black hole county tax collection void. After 31-years I personally (G. Todd Greenhalgh) feel like the defrauded fool victim of a malfeasant racketeering extortion enterprise threatening to steal my property if I don't pay up -- and up and UP.  I feel that way because that is exactly the situation my wife and I and fellow SCPLOA landowners are in. If the goal of Larimer County is the mass forcible dispossession of our property -- this is how corrupt governments the world over, past-to-present, achieve it.

On a more positive note, this entirely dismal experience has granted me profound insight into the minds and motivations of our principled patriot founders when they declared independence from their tax-tyrant colonial overlords. Were we prepared to endure decades of litigation and money-sucking procedural maneuvers and delays, I have every confidence that SCPLOA members as a class could recover the full extent of past tax payments (remitted without reciprocal "just compensation") in addition to reasonable interest and attorney's fees.

In conclusion: In 31-years we have NEVER received an ACTUAL reputable offer on our property equal to or exceeding the "official" Larimer County assessment -- despite receiving many. The offers average around half (50%) of current assessed valuation. If Larimer County would like to purchase our property for $190,000 -- my spouse and I would be more than happy to seriously entertain such an offer. But caveat emptor: You'll want a helicopter to maintain comfortable and convenient access. If you prefer to drive, however, consider the Red Feather Lakes area southeast of Boulder Ridge as a far more amenable alternative. And as a bonus you'll enjoy a litany of line-item public services, utilities and other compensation in exchange and in return for those tax dollars your private vendor collects for you, while you are otherwise extorting and defrauding honest citizens and the public in general.

  

Sincerely,

G. Todd Greenhalgh, MPA

R. Hasperhoven