So, this Newspaper has been reporting on the “2016 Land Deal” for over a year now. The Property owners still don’t have any answers, and the POA Board Of Directors still refuses to release, or even Look At (that’s right – Board members tell me they haven’t even personally and individually verified existence of…) the most critical document in the allegation, which is the Sconti Point Plat that property owners paid $2,300,000 for and they refuse to even look at this single document which might indicate the POA already owned it. This article is sort of related to that level of insanity going on in the community.
I’m going to talk about two (2) things in this article:
- The outrageous amount paid for the “Common Area Greenspace” in The Bluffs neighborhood of Big Canoe.
- The unjustifiably high valuation and property tax burden being placed on Property Owners for said Common Area.
In our 1st article in this Series on “The Bluffs” we talked about how this entire property was pulled into Big Canoe, and discussed questions about how the land was valued. In the 2nd article in this Series we discussed potential Tax Fraud by the Developer, POA, and Pickens County Tax Assessor involving the Property Taxation of the “Common Area Greenspace” in The Bluffs. In THIS article we tell you what we PAID the Developer for that land – and what we ARE PAYING in Property Taxes on that land.
PART 1:
The “Common Area Greenspace Property” in The Bluffs, which is identified on the Tax Parcel Records as Parcel 045-103, contains 49.98 Acres of unusable land, dedicated as common area, on the side of a mountain so steep, that it isn’t even any good for hiking trails. It was already under the Covenants, and there was no requirement that the POA purchase it, and indeed, there was no reason to purchase it as the only consequence would be that the POA would be relieving the Developer of his Tax Burden – which actually we had already done, since we started illegally paying the Developer’s Tax Obligation on this property Six (6) years prior to purchasing it (again, see 2nd article in series).
But the POA did buy it, and to recap our last article, Parcel o45-103 was sold to the Big Canoe Property Owners Association on April 14, 2016, as part of the $9,400,000.00 2016 Land Deal. This Parcel was identified as Tract “BB” in Deed #6 (Page 17). The Price Tag for the total land in this specific Deed was $2,884,500.
Tract BB (Parcel 045A-103, which is the 49.98 Acres of Common Area in “The Bluffs”) made up approximately 1/3 of the land in that Deed. You can see the details of the Worksheet Calculations (PDF) used to come up with the Price Tag Property Owners paid for that Common Area, which comes to….
$896,005.00 ($17,927 per acre)
That is a hefty price tag for land we didn’t have to buy, didn’t need, and constituted only a financial tax burden to the Property Owners. One wonders at the wisdom and mindset that was going on in previous POA President Dick Scharf’s mind as he secretly orchestrated this financial 2016 Land Deal nightmare for the Property Owners.
Believe it or not…. it gets worse.
PART 2:
In our 2nd article in this Series we talked about the Property Taxes. We are going to dive in a bit deeper now.
Parcel 045A-103 (49.98 acres of unusable Common Area) is currently valued by the Pickens County Tax Assessor at $374,850.00 (exactly $7,500 / acre). That seemed incredibly high for a bit of unusable Common Area land.
So I looked at similar large tracts that border “The Bluffs” for Tax Valuation Comparisons. Here is what I found…..
Parcel 045-104 is a 49.23 Acre tract directly to the South. This is actually part of the original parcel that “The Bluffs came out of. It is currently owned by Troy Ledbetter, who sold “The Bluffs” land to the Developer for over $1,000,000 – shortly after he was terminated as General Manager during the 2001/2 Big Canoe Financial Scandal. This Parcel 045-104 is the 49.23 Acre residual tract that Ledbetter retained after the sale. So what is Ledbetter paying in Taxes for this almost identical land? Tract 045-104 (49.23 acres) is valued in the Tax Records at $218,504.00 ($4,438 / acre) which is 41% less than what Big Canoe Property Owners are taxed at.
Parcel 045-102-001 is a 90.93 Acre tract directly to the West. This tract is valued in the Tax Records at $175,986.00 ($2,500 / acre) which is 74.2% less than what Big Canoe Property Owners are taxed at.
Parcel 045-001 is a 162.79 Acre tract directly to the North. This tract is valued in the Tax Records at $406,975.00 ($1,935 / acre) which is 66.66% less than what Big Canoe Property Owners are taxed at.
HOW DO THESE ORDINARY CITIZENS MANAGE TO GET THEIR TAXES SO LOW!?!?!?!
They don’t even have the management team that the B.C. Property Owners have assembled, which is employed to take care of these issues, and to look out for the Community Finances….
- General Manager (Jill Philmon) that has a Salary & Benefits Package approaching $300,000 / yr.
- Finance Director (Jayne Hagan) that in 2017 had a Salary and Benefits Package of $122,426 / yr. We don’t know how much she is paid now.
- Plus a Board of Directors, Finance & Audit Committees made up of retired “previously important people” tasked with overseeing important financial aspects of the community.
It would seem that some of these “business experts”, and high paid professionals could have figured out how to file property appeals, and challenge property tax valuations based on a multitude of comp data, thereby efficiently managing the Holding Costs of our Common Lands – one of our largest fixed expenses.
Perhaps it is time for Big Canoe Property owners to rethink it’s “Expert” and Costly Team – and hire some common person from the greater regional community. After all, sometimes it takes a common person…. to exhibit Common Sense (something quite lacking in Big Canoe it seems).
One last data point for comparison…. Bent Tree Parcel 026C-539 has 1,139 Common Property Acres, valued at $1,263 / acre. Big Canoe has two other large Common Property Tracts in Pickens County. Big Canoe Parcel 046D-001-004 contains 859 acres, valued at $1,993 each. Big Canoe Parcel 046D-001-087 contains 235 acres, valued at $5,201 each.
Numbers don’t lie. B.C. Property Owners overpaid for the Common Property. B.C. Property Owners are paying more taxes per acre, by a large margin, when compared to neighboring comps – and B.C. Property Owners are paying top dollar for a management team to get us these “less-than-stellar” results.
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The final installment of “The Bluffs” will be released Thursday Night, Midnight of August 22, after the upcoming Board Meeting. If it doesn’t make Property Owners realize the depth of the scam they are involved in…. I don’t know what will. And I assure you …. it is on NOBODIES radar. I have never breathed a word of it to anyone…. until now.
Peace,
– david / publisher
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