Peter Bodley
Managing Editor
ABC Newspapers

Anoka County is bracing for a possible lawsuit over the Anoka County Board’s denial of a request from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to acquire some 160 acres of privately owned land in the city of Columbus.

The county board voted 5-2 to reject the land sale, backing the Columbus City Council, which had turned down the DNR request on a 3-2 vote.

Christopher Hayhoe, attorney representing one of the two landowner partners, Gerald Dederich, Deer River, said after the county board meeting that no decision had been made on whether to go to court over the board’s action.

“We are still trying to figure out what happened,” Hayhoe said.

But he admitted that a court reporter taking a transcript of the county board proceedings had been retained by Dederich.

Under state law, the county board must act on DNR land acquisition requests to take property off the tax rolls, according to Bob Parta, chief deputy county attorney. And the statute does give the county board power to reject a land sale to the DNR for “valid reasons,” Parta said.

But the state law does not define what would constitute “valid reasons,” he said.

“A lawsuit is entirely possible,” Parta said. “We will have to wait and see what happens.”

The issue came before the county board after first going to the board’s wetland review committee, which made no recommendation.

The DNR wants the 160-acre property, which lies adjacent to the Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area, to add to the management area. It is located on the west end of 167th Avenue.

There are four, 40-acre parcels with taxes totaling some $3300.

The proposal

Under the proposal, the DNR was not directly involved in the land acquisition. The landowners planned to sell the property to Trust Republic Land, which would, in turn, sell the property to the DNR.

The Trust Republic Land’s option on the property expires at the end of March.

While the majority of the property is wetland, there are 14 acres of high ground, according to County Commissioner Dick Lang, chair of the committee.

State law also requires that the property be evaluated by the local soil and water conservation district and a recommendation made to the county board.

Chris Lord, Anoka County Conservation District director, recommended the sale of the property to the DNR.

While there was some upland area which could be developed as housing, there are 93 acres of wetland, high quality for natural resources, Lord said.

“The property lends itself better to conservation than development,” he said.

Among the groups supporting the land being sold to the DNR for conservation were Pheasants Forever and the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.

According to Hayhoe, the landowner partnership has been trying to sell the land for development the past four years without success.

“There have been dozens of showings but no interest,” Hayhoe said.

Local reaction

But when questioned by County Commissioner Rhonda Sivarajah, Stanley Murray, the realtor hired by the landowners, said in those four years, the property had only been listed with the Multiple Listing Service for 90 days. The listing price was $1.6 million.

Larry Dallien, county director of property records and taxation, said the 2007 assessed value on the 160 acres for property taxes was $458,000.

“I’m not surprised it has not sold,” Sivarajah said.

And County Commissioner Scott LeDoux, himself a realtor, said it was neither common sense nor prudent to put the property on the MLS for only 90 days given the fact that residential homes are taking anywhere from 120 to 130 days to sell and land is taking a lot longer.

Mayor Mel Mettler of Columbus said the city had given more than its share of land to the DNR and two other acquisition requests were now in the pipeline.

“More than 10,000 acres of land in Columbus is state owned,” he said.

What in the past has been considered unbuildable land is now being developed and he believed homes could be built on the upland portion of this property, Mettler said.

“We have to draw the line in the public interest,” he said.

What County Commissioner Dan Erhart found “offensive” was the fact that the state is willing to provide subsidies for projects all over the metro area, but Anoka County is expected to take many acres off the tax rolls to sell to the DNR.

If this land is so important to preserve, there should be some state system to mitigate the loss of taxable land, a pooling policy like fiscal disparities, Erhart said.

Sivarajah wanted to know how much the DNR would be paying the Trust for Public Land for the property, but Dan Rhode, DNR wildlife manager, Carlos Avery, said that to divulge the price would be against state law because it would give other possible buyers knowledge of how much the DNR was willing to pay.

Since taxpayers’ money would be used to buy the land, Sivarajah said taxpayers had the right to know the price.

Sivarajah made the motion to deny the land sale. Reasons she gave included the amount of land the DNR already owned in Columbus, that some of the land could be developed into a residential area, that the wildlife management area continued to encroach into residential areas of the city and there would be a loss of tax revenues.

Lang and County Commissioner Jim Kordiak, while sympathetic to the city, did not think the county board had a valid reason to deny the sale since there was a willing seller and willing buyer.

They were in the minority in the 5-2 vote, with Sivarajah, Erhart, LeDoux, Board Chair Dennis Berg and Commissioner Robyn West voting to reject the sale.

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