TABER, Alta. – A 70-year-old problem is haunting southern Alberta ranchers who depend on grazing leases.
Dwight Tolton farms between Vauxhall and Taber and has held a 2,000 acre grazing lease since 1975 in the Municipal District of Taber.
His lease was with the provincial government because it was designated, along with many other rental pastures in the province, as tax recovery land. This was land held by the Alberta government since the Depression era when a number of farms were abandoned or lost after owners could no longer pay property taxes.
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Since 1985, the province has been turning this land back to municipalities, which have either taken over as landlords or sold the land.
The MD of Taber has 569 quarters of tax recovery land, mostly in the northeastern corner of the municipality.
Tolton and his committee of leaseholders, which represents 200 families, do not believe the municipality should be a large landholder and they are worried about their tenure on land that they have held for generations.
His committee wants the province to work with them as leases are turned over so that people are fairly treated.
The municipality released a 15 page lease policy on March 13, but Tolton said leaseholders have not been contacted about the new arrangement.
The history of this land can be fuzzy.
Between 1932-35, the province forgave tax bills, but in some cases no one knows if exact information was passed on or if all parcels of abandoned land had unpaid taxes, said Joan McCracken of the provincial sustainable resource development department. Public land has been the responsibility of numerous departments and some records have probably been lost.
In some cases municipalities sold the land to residents for $1.
Under its newly published tax recovery land policy, the MD of Taber will offer the land at an assessed real estate price, said deputy reeve Greg Sekura.
“We are bound by the Municipal Government Act to only sell land at fair market value,” he said.
If people choose to continue as leaseholders, they can rent from the municipality.
“We have no plans to put anything up for tender unless they decide they no longer want it. They have first option to lease or buy it,” Sekura said.
Tolton’s problem is the land could be valued at $400 to $600 per acre, which he feels is too high based on its productive value. As well, most farmers do not have the money to buy the land after years of drought and closed markets caused by BSE.
“We have had three years of hell in the agriculture industry. Where is this cash to come from?” he said.
Farmland values in the municipality are variable. In the south where irrigation feeds specialty crops such as potatoes and sugar beets, land is worth $3,000 to $5,000 per acre, while rangeland is $300 to $500 per acre. Dryland is around $1,200 per acre.
The province told the MD of Taber in 1997 that the land would be turned over in 10 years and reeve Hank Van Beers admits the council of the day chose not to deal with the issue. Eighteen months ago a committee of leaseholders was set up and the municipality began writing appropriate policy.
Sekura said the number of leaseholder concerns surprised him and emphasized that the local government wants the area preserved as agriculture land.
“We will be ensuring that even if they do exercise the right to buy it, that it will be maintained in the environmental state it is in.”
Van Beers said some environmentally sensitive areas and riparian land will never be for sale.
The last of the provincial lease agreements on tax recovery land expires in 2016, but leaseholders can make changes beforehand. They must give notice to the province that the lease agreement is ending and then they can lease from the MD or buy it at fair market value.
“Even though we will be taking title to these over time, we have extended the current policy that the province has to all leaseholders until 2016,” Sekura said.
There is oil and gas activity in the region, and the municipality plans to share revenues with the leaseholders.
Larry Sears, chair of the Alberta Grazing Leaseholders Association, said this situation has come up in other municipalities and many were solved with little fanfare. In the Taber case there is confusion as to whether some of the land had taxes owing. In some cases taxes were paid when people abandoned land, but proper records were not maintained.
“It is a pretty difficult situation when you have three different types of title to your ranch or farm: deeded; a grazing lease from sustainable resource development and this really iffy thing from the MD that is called tax recovery,” he said.
“The landholders or leaseholders certainly never thought the situation would come up, so they basically ignored it.”
Similar situations have been resolved in the counties of Paint Earth, Forty Mile, Warner and Cypress.
