Craig Wants Review Of Lease Rate Increases Cabin Sites In Sun Valley Area Would Increase 40 Times In Cost
U.S. Sen. Larry Craig wants congressional hearings on a controversial plan to dramatically increase cabin site lease rates in the Sawtooth National Forest on Jan. 1.
Craig, who last spring succeeded in thwarting a proposal to impose tougher penalties on grazing violations in the Sawtooth, also would like to delay implementation of the rate increase for one year, said Michael Frandsen, a spokesman for the Idaho Republican.
Going a step further, U.S. Rep. Michael Crapo called on Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman to cancel the fee hike. He said the agency should find a way to honor the commitment made between cabin owners and the Forest Service while providing taxpayers with a fair return on use of public lands.
“I want to make it clear that I expect the 182 special use permit holders in the Sawtooth National Forest to pay a fair and reasonable annual fee for the use of Forest Service land,” the Idaho Republican wrote to Glickman on Tuesday. “However, increases of this magnitude are not fair and reasonable.”
More than 15,000 tracts of national forest land leased for recreational homes around the country will be reappraised within five years under regulations negotiated with leaseholders and others during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The sites were last appraised in 1978.
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, reported late last year that undervaluation of the lots was costing the government and counties tens of millions of dollars a year. The Forest Service says the reappraisal should move rents to market value, ending taxpayer subsidies.
In the Sawtooth, the first national forest to complete the reappraisals, annual revenue from the 182 tracts will soar from less than $100,000 to $800,000 if the government appraisals hold. Some leases will increase 40 times from just over $200 to nearly $9,000 a year.
The Forest Service said that if leaseholders refuse to pay the higher charges, they can either sell their cabins to someone who will or remove the improvements from the land.
They have 45 days to appeal by obtaining independent appraisals of their tracts and then reconciling any differences between them and the government’s or splitting the cost of a third appraisal with the Forest Service. The yearly rental is 5 percent of the appraised value, adjusted annually to reflect inflation.
“It’s a legitimate pursuit on the part of the Forest Service to try and get fair market values for cabin leases. Senator Craig doesn’t argue with that,” Frandsen said. “But when it goes up so high, it places a big burden on leaseholders.”
Randy Karstaedt, a member of the Forest Service’s lands staff in Washington, D.C., said it would be ironic if hearings were conducted since it was a congressional agency that prepared the report urging the Forest Service to adopt a more market-based fee structure.
It was unfortunate that cabin sites in the Sawtooth National Forest were among the first to be reappraised, Karstaedt said, because property values there are “not typical of what will happen at most places across the country.”
Because of high real estate prices in the Ketchum-Sun Valley area, Sawtooth cabin sites will be among the costliest in the nation. Other hot spots will be in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Lake Tahoe and Southern California, as well as cabin sites with lake or stream frontage.
“These are very extraordinary circumstances,” Karstaedt said. “Everything is tied to the non-federal, private real estate market.”
xxxx HOT PROPERTY Because of high real estate prices in the Ketchum-Sun Valley area, Sawtooth cabin sites will be among the costliest in the nation. Some leases will increase 40 times from just over $200 to nearly $9,000 a year.