25 Apr
Forest Service leased lots article
Two articles appeared in the April 25th Wenatchee World concerning lease rates for the USFS summer homes lots on Lake Wenatchee and at Conconully. I will post them both as separate comments to this. Click on “comments” below to read them…….
I erred in posting the original entry so here is the Wenatchee World article on the Lake Wenatchee USFS lots. I’ll post the Conconully article as the next comment.
George
Owners of cabins on Forest Service land may see increases in cost next year
By K.C. Mehaffey
World staff writer
Posted April 25, 2008
OKANOGAN — With 682 private cabins located on the Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests, some permit holders of those recreation sites have been asking federal officials if they should be worried about the future of their summer places, too.
“Our mission is not to phase them out at all,” said Keith Rowland, special uses coordinator for the Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests. “We feel recreation residences are a very legitimate use of the National Forest. And that comes from our Washington (D.C.) office all the way down to the district rangers,” he added.
Rowland said about 5 percent of the nation’s 14,500 recreation cabins are on the combined forest, the large majority — 532 — are located in the Naches Ranger District. There are also many on Lake Wenatchee outside of Leavenworth, on the Entiat River, on the Chewuch River north of Winthrop, on Salmon Creek near Conconully and on Lake Bonaparte outside of Tonasket, he said.
Rowland said the Forest Service offers a 20-year lease to those who comply with terms, and permits will expire at the end of this year, so some cabin owners are eyeing the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s offer to Conconully cabin owners with interest.
He said some cabin owners — particularly those on Lake Wenatchee — will see large increases in their annual fees beginning next January.
The agency charges 5 percent of the appraised lot — without the value of any structures — and reappraisals will cause some of those annual permit fees to jump tenfold, to $15,000 a year in some cases, after they’re phased in over three years, Rowland said.
Looking at the appraisals in Conconully, he added, “To me, that seemed in the ballpark.”
K.C. Mehaffey: 997-2512
mehaffey@wenworld.com
April 25th, 2008 at 5:20 pmConconully cabin owners balk at new lease offer from feds
Most cabins’ annual fees would be raised from $700 to $3,375 Conconully cabin owners balk at new lease offer from feds
By K.C. Mehaffey
World staff writer
CONCONULLY — The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will reconsider appraisals and terms of permits that would charge nearly five times what the agency currently gets for lakefront property in Conconully, where several dozen private cabin owners lease the federal land.
Neighbor Richard Dahlquist helps Nancy Price move her canoe on the upper Conconully Lake last week. Both own cabins on leased federal property on the lake, and Price is hoping to sell hers, but fears a new lease agreement from the Bureau of Reclamation will scare off interested buyers. Cabin owners are now waiting to learn if the federal agency will reconsider their appraisal and terms of the permits. (World photo/K.C. Mehaffey)
The Bureau offered the new permits last week, but agreed to take another look after about 200 people showed up at the April 17 meeting to complain.
Owners say some people who have been coming to their cabins for decades will be priced out of their recreation lots, especially with only a five-year term, and the clear message that their recreation homes are not here to stay.
New leases for most of the 81 cabin owners would raise annual fees from $700 a year to $3,375, cabin owners said. Cabins not overlooking one of the two manmade lakes would see smaller increases.
“I’ve had several people tell me, ‘That’s it. I’m out of here,’ ” said Guy Thornburgh, an Anacordes resident who has been coming to this small town to hunt and fish since he was a boy.
Some cabins are small, uninsulated structures that haven’t changed much since they were built in the 1950s, while others could serve as homes. But none can be used as a permanent residence, under terms of the leases.
Jerry Kelso, Upper Columbia River area manager for the Bureau of Reclamation, said his agency will reevaluate how it appraised the lakefront property, and may also reconsider the length of their permit agreements. But even with a longer term lease, the Bureau would still reevaluate every five years whether the cabins prevent the rest of the public from accessing the two reservoirs, he said.
“We have to go out and make sure, essentially, that there’s not now a public need for the land that’s occupied by the cabin sites,” he said.
A survey last year predicted there will not be a need for public use of the cabin sites for the next 10 to 15 years, he said.
In the long term, Kelso said, his agency “has a general policy to eliminate what’s called exclusive use on Rec’s public land, when appropriate.”
That notion doesn’t sit well with some of the cabin owners.
“We raised our kids here. I buried my husband at the Conconully Cemetery. Our ties are long and strong to this area,” said Shirley Ballard from Seattle. She and her husband first came in 1962, and brought their children every summer until they were grown.
Ballard said she is particularly irritated by language in the new contracts that tells permit holders they will “quietly and peaceably” remove their cabins and return the land to a natural state if the Bureau terminates their permit.
Her neighbor, Nancy Price, from Eatonville, said she figures policies can change. But with her cabin up for sale, Price is worried that buyers won’t even consider the investment with only a five-year lease. “I think what bothers me is that people are scared. I don’t have anyone knocking on my door to come see my cabin,” she said.
Bob McIntosh, an Okanogan native who now lives in Renton, formed the Conconully Lakes Cabin Owners Association last year so cabin owners could work together. “The cabin owners are not reluctant to pay an increase. It’s just the approach, and the fact that we had no notice there was going to be such an increase,” McIntosh said.
He said they do dispute the appraisal — which compared non-leased land on popular Lake Osoyoos, and was done by a Tacoma appraiser, and without regard to the fact that Conconully lakes rise and recede during irrigation season. “We would feel so much better psychologically if we had a 15- or 20-year permit,” he added.
A letter from directors of the Conconully Lakes Cabin Owners Association urged the Bureau to go further: “We believe your ‘obligations’ under law do in fact allow you to take a 180 degree stance and acknowledge that the cabins are a good thing for Conconully, that you don’t have to protect us from our investment decisions, that there is no Federal obligation to phase us out, and that we should not be intimidated into agreeing to unnecessary terms in a document.”
Mike Poulson, agriculture and natural resource policy director for Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, said he is working closely with aids from Sen. Maria Cantwell’s office to try to resolve the issues.
“I’m not only concerned for the cabin owners, but also for the town of Conconully. If they lose those cabins, that’s a large part of their economy,” he said.
The Bureau of Reclamation expects to respond to the cabin owners in the next two months, Kelso said.
K.C. Mehaffey: 997-2512
mehaffey@wenworld.com
April 25th, 2008 at 5:26 pmA lengthy article on the leased USFS lots on Lake Wenatchee appeared in the Wenatchee World on 5-7-08. It can be read at
http://wenatcheeworld.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080507/NEWS04/184507720
May 8th, 2008 at 7:54 am