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Judge declines to block Priest Lake appraisals

by KEITH KINNAIRD/Hagadone News Network
| July 1, 2014 9:00 PM

SANDPOINT - A 1st District judge declined Friday to grant a preliminary injunction to stop the state from using the latest round of appraisals to set cottage site lease payments at Priest Lake.

A group of more than 70 cottage site lessees sued to state in April to bar it from using appraisals developed by Hall-Widdoss & Co. The Idaho Department of Lands board sought to use the appraisals to set lease payments, minimum bids and establish the value of lessees' improvements to the cottage sites.

The Idaho Department of Lands moved in 2011 to extricate itself from the cottage site leasing business at Priest and Payette lakes. The land board set up a process to sell the sites through voluntary auctions and land exchanges.

The Idaho Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that public auctions are constitutionally required in the leasing of endowment lands. An initial round of appraisals ensued and values for Priest Lake lots increased, on average, more than 80 percent.

After the appraisal process was adopted, the land board hired Hall-Widdoss to reappraise the Priest Lake sites earlier this year. The H-W appraisals, much like the previous appraisals, resulted in much higher values than the 2010 appraisals.

The lessees filed suit in April to block the H-W appraisals. They argued that the state, under code of law, was depriving them on their constitutionally guaranteed right to due process.

"The plaintiffs assert that they have a constitutionally protected property right to renew their cottage site leases - in essence a property right in the next lease," Judge Barbara Buchanan said in her decision.

Buchanan noted that the plaintiffs were seeking "extraordinary relief" by asking the court to enjoin the land board from carrying out its constitutional and statutory due involving leased lands. Moreover, a preliminary injunction can only be granted in extreme cases where the right is very clear and it appears irreparable injury will flow from its refusal.

"On the record before it, this court does not find that the plaintiffs have established that they hold any state law property right to renew their leases," Buchanan wrote in her 15-page decision.

Under Idaho law, leases of endowment land are for a fixed term of years. Buchanan said the supreme court made it very clear that the Idaho Constitution prohibits recognition of any property right in a lease of state endowment land, which happened to be the very relief the plaintiffs sought.