BIG CANOE LAND DEAL SERIES (Pt3): Pickens County Appraiser Roy Dobbs :: A History of Negligence & an Open Records Request

An excerpt from the October 2007 edition of the Big Canoe Smoke Signals stated,

“The inaccuracy of some county records raised the question of POA ownership
of some of our common property.”

This statement sums up a long history of dubious land transactions, and unfathomable property tax accounting, between the Big Canoe Property Owners Association (“POA”) and the Big Canoe Developer.  The most recent insult suffered by the Big Canoe Property Owners stems from the 2016 “Developer Bailout” Land Deal.  In the 2016 Land Deal, the community voted to pay $9,400,000.00 for 51 tracts of “developer owned” land that supposedly totalled 730 acres.

Before the closing, a Records Review by Rochester and Associates was done, as they were hired to provide due diligence work.  Their Executive Summary report found that according to County Tax Records, 21 of the 51 parcels already showed as owned by the POA, yet they were counted as land we were supposed to buy as part of the deal.  They did NOT review any actual deeds to investigate the accuracy of this discovery – but relied on a simple email from the Developer’s attorney, Jim Crew, that the parcels were “actually owned by the Big Canoe Company.”

Recently I began looking into the issue, and upon review of nine (9) of those parcels, discovered that not only had the POA been listed as the owner of record for 20+ years, but that the POA had been paying the property taxes for those 20+ years also.

SO WHAT IS CAUSING THIS CONFUSION?

The easiest way to understand a complex land transaction that involves a multitude of parcels….. is to look at the visual plat maps.  The problem is that the Big Canoe Developer has rarely in history ever filed any recorded plats as part of their land transactions.  But they have internally platted, replatted, subdivided and combined parcels many times over the years, and often referenced those “Unrecorded Plats” in Recorded Deeds.  But nobody is allowed to see the referenced “Unrecorded Plats” which are being relied upon as part of the legal description.  I’ve found evidence of changing acreage in different plat versions in some of the rare plats that were recorded.

I can’t find any master plat (set of comprehensive parcel maps or composite maps).  It seemed inconceivable to me that nobody had a master plat of the entire community, so I did a Records Request of the POA.  They refused to comply.  The plats, which are normally a standardly filed part of recorded property transactions…. are apparently top secret.  The POA Attorney, George Nowack, says we will need a court order to see them.

So I turned to a place that by law is required to have maps ad plats kept in “Current Condition”…. the County Tax Assessors Offices.  I have been reaching out for many weeks to Pickens County Chief Appraiser Roy Dobbs.  One of my first findings when I started searching Tax Map Parcels was that almost all of the land the POA purchased in 2016, was, 897 days later, still shown visually as being owned by the Developer subsidiary, Potts Mountain Investors.  When I asked Mr Dobbs about it, he seemed to feel it was no big deal.  At one point he simply explained it away as “being over my head” and not to worry about it.

Here is a visual of the property listed as being owned by “Potts Mountain Investors” as of September 7, 2018.  All that highlighted in Blue to the west of Steve Tate highway is the land we bought from the developer over 2 and 1/2 years ago on April 14 2016.  STILL shows as owned by the developer.  And you wonder why there is confusion….

UPDATE: A week after I released this article, and sent copies to the Pickens County Commissioners, Roy Dobbs finally corrected the above map (almost 900 days after the sale) to finally show the POA as the legal owner.  Unfortunately, even more serious issues have been discovered since then, and they will be shared in a followup story due out in early October 2018.

I have written Mr. Dobbs a very clear and not subtle email, which anyone interested can read online here….
http://bigcanoe.themountainsvoice.com/docs/Pickens-RoyDobbsEmail(2018-09-08)redact.pdf

Then I subsequently filed an Open Records request to get the copies of Maps and Plats Mr. Dobbs is withholding.  A copy of that Open Records Request can be found here…  http://bigcanoe.themountainsvoice.com/docs/ORR-0022_ToPickensCoAppraiserSeekingBigCanoeMaps-2018-09-07.pdf

This entire problem has been caused by seemingly intentional confusion.  When visual mapping is hidden and obscured, it becomes very difficult to tell what you are buy and selling, especially in a community the size of Big Canoe, and even more so when you have these spiderweb conglomerations of disconnected land parcels all rolled into big umbrella tracts.  I believe there is massive fraud going on in regards to the 2016 Land Deal, and getting the visual maps is the starting point for unraveling this mess.

Big Canoe Property Owners need to be paying attention to this, and they need to be asking questions of their Developer, their elected Board representatives (especially Phil Anderson, Steve Wilson and Jim Farinholt who were instrumental in overseeing the deal, and who are now actively blocking the release of any records associated with the deal), and also perhaps the Smoke Signals News staff.  I can’t think of any bigger news affecting this community than what could possibly turn into a multi-million dollar lawsuit, and I am dumbfounded why they aren’t actively covering this and trying to get answers for the property owners.

We’ll have a story coming soon that lays out for the property owners many of the potential points of damage and financial retribution that could be sought (“clawed back” for the property owners) in such a lawsuit. Some potential areas of issue I have found so far include:

• Buying Land we already owned, and adding new rights for the developer to said land?
• The Developer selling POA land into Conservation Easements and taking our rightful profit?
• Inflated prices due to possibly illegal or improper appraisal methods; for example, the $2.5 Million dollar appraisal value for the Eight (8!!!) acres of Sconti Point was based on insane density assumptions, including the incorrect assumption that it had sewer.
• Voter misrepresentation fraud
  • We didn’t get all the land in Mother Canoe as promised in voter presentations.  FOr example, the entire southern side of the Main Gate, 23 total acres is still held by the developer.
    
  • After the Vote they reduced total presented acreage from 730 to 708+/- acres. The Sales Price remained same, but certain tracts were removed from the sale AFTER the vote.
    
  • And again… we were “buying” our own land.  Even if some of it was “$0” cost as part of the sale, that just means they  were over inflating other tracts to cover for that.  More importantly, they were inflating the total acreage in a manipulative attempt to “get the vote”…. aka Voter Misrepresentation Fraud.
• Potential property tax fraud if we were paying the developers tax bill for 20+ years.
• If illegal or improper appraisals were filed with Wells Fargo as part of a loan requirement, does that get into Federal bank law issues?  Could our loan be in jeopardy of being called?  If that were to materialize, then that could potentially result in substantial fraud damages that could take this to a whole new level.

This issue is not going to go away.  Rumors supporting the POA & Developer are being spread that this is just all fixable minor clerical errors… “No big deal, it’s all being overblown”.  But the fact remains that they are trying awfully hard to hide ALL records related to the deal.  Others before me have tried for years to get this data.  They hit brick walls also.   Another thing people need to be thinking about is this…. with all the negative publicity surrounding this, and it growing exponentially…. if it was that simple to fix, and to prove my allegations false…. why hasn’t either been done yet?  Use your brains people!  Start demanding answers!  Go into the next Board Meeting and ask the tough questions!  Ask for the records!  Stop buying these non-answers they are giving!

Disclaimer: david h.h. the publisher and author of this story is not a licensed attorney, and any statements made herein do not represent legal advice in regards to potential legal actions.