Brief by Central Staff
Local Politics – March 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
In our experience, the usual ranch gate consists of wooden fence posts and barbed wire to keep the cattle where they belong. In more prosperous operations, the gate might be metal, and a cattle-guard could be part of the installation.
But if the “ranch” is actually a high-end real-estate development that contains cattle as a tax hustle (if you work it right, you can run cows on the property and call it “agricultural land,” which is taxed at a much lower rate), then an $80,000 automatic gate is just a cattle gate.
That’s the argument that Weldon Creek developers Tom and Margie Smith made to the Chaffee County Commissioners on Jan. 31. Their agent, Karin Adams, asked the county for a tax abatement. “The issue is these gates on the property. I don’t know of another ranch where the property is assessed for gates.”
Kevin Andreas of the county assessor’s office observed that “In our opinion, this is a structure … that far exceeds the requirement to hold cattle.”
