Selected Articles from the LAND Newsletter
President's Report
By Richard Volk, LAND President
In my opinion there is more than enough public land now. USFWS and ND Game and Fish make payments in lieu of taxes (PILT). However the amount paid falls far short of the amount paid by private landowners.
I checked with the Cavalier County Auditor for these facts. USFWS owns 10078 acres in Cavalier County. They paid in lieu of taxes the total sum of $15,395.00 for the year of 2001. Those dollars were split with 75% going to the schools and the remaining 25% to local governments. That amounts to $1.53 per acre of which local government gets 39 cents.
ND Game and Fish own 6899.4 acres in Cavalier County. Their payment in lieu of taxes was $17,035.00 for the year of 2001. The schools received 75% with the remaining 25% to local governments. That amounts to $2.47 per acre of which local governments get 62 cents.
I own 1569.69 acres of land in Cavalier County. About 1500 acres has cropland base from which I receive income. I paid $7,295.96 in real estate taxes to the Cavalier County Treasurer for the year of 2001. That averages out at $4.65 per acre owned in Cavalier County. That amount is split between the State of North Dakota, the county, townships, fire departments and drainage assessments.
At a panel discussion on sportsman’s issues held in Devils Lake in March, Dean Hildebrand, the director of North Dakota Game and Fish, made a statement that the PILT paid by his department is equal to what private landowners are paying. The figures in Cavalier County tell a different story. If the taxes that I paid were representative of the taxes paid by private owners of farmland the revenue loss for Cavalier County would be a total of $46,485.36 because of public ownership.
Cavalier County provides some of the best hunting and bird watching in the state with our current mix of public land, CRP, easement land and cropland which furnishes much of the food for wildlife. To improve access, what are needed are more funds to maintain and improve local roads. The hunters need to show more consideration and build some relationships with the farmer and landowner. I can view more wildlife driving around Cavalier County than I observed on a recent trip to the West Coast driving across ten states. I traveled 4500 miles, over half of which was on federal and state highways across many miles of public land.
Is more publicly owned land good for the State of North Dakota and the people that live and work in the state?
