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Paying to Preserve

Check out that map.

That’s Door County and, as of July, all its preserved property. A number of public and private organizations, such as the Nature Conservancy, Crossroads at Big Creek and the State of Wisconsin, have preserved land from development, shown by the splashes of color on the map.

“There’s so many benefits to having public open space, and that’s actually proved economically as well,” said Dan Burke, executive director of the Door County Land Trust (DCLT). “There’s obviously a lot of scenic benefits and a lot of recreational benefits, and I know we’ve worked on projects in neighborhoods where it could have gone the other way in terms of [an area] being heavily developed.”

But as communities struggle to keep up with costs while keeping taxes in line with state mandates, some question the wisdom in having preserved property in a municipality when it often isn’t on the tax roll.

The Department of Natural Resources, which owns almost 12,000 acres of land in Door County, has a program called Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILT) to reimburse municipalities that are home to DNR property.

“Mainly the argument for [PILTs] is, the state’s buying land and the DNR owns so much we need to compensate the communities,” said Kurt Byfield, administrative policy coordinator for the DNR. “I’m guessing somebody said ‘hey, you guys own a lot of land and you may be owing a significant amount.’”

PILTs work like this: the DNR sends municipalities money based on how much land they own, when that land was purchased and how much it’s worth. For land purchased after Jan. 1, 1992, the municipalities have to distribute that money to other tax jurisdictions such as school districts, vocational schools and counties.

PILTS for land purchased between 1969 and 1992 are 50 cents per acre. For land purchased after 1992, PILTs are calculated based on recent land values.

“That keeps it in line of the property values of that community without requiring us to do annual assessments,” Byfield said. “[Municipalities] get a payment that’s fairly close, sometimes higher and sometimes lower than what the tax payment may be.”

The Town of Baileys Harbor, home to 2,385.85 acres of DNR property, got $17,100.93 in PILTs this year, plus more they sent to Gibraltar Area Schools, Door County and Northeast Wisconsin Technical College.

The Town of Forestville, with a little more than 100 acres of DNR property, got $52.18 in PILTs this year.

A more complete list of PILTs made to Door County municipalities is located here.

Private organizations such as The Nature Conservancy don’t have similar PILT programs, although some of their preserved properties are taxed and enrolled in the Managed Forest Law. Burke said about half the land the DCLT protects is still privately owned and on local tax rolls.

Exempting private conservation groups from property taxes was the legislature’s way of bringing the private sector into the conservation effort, Burke said, which amounts to the DCLT spending $175,000 annually on stewardship.

“The spirit, I think, of the legislation was the realization that… all the important recreational, scenic and natural lands aren’t going to be protected through government needs and government sources, that they need this partnership through nonprofit conservation groups,” he said. “The spirit of the law is to get the private sector involved.”