Refresh my memory, please. Has a president’s visit always mandated the closing down of a large resort?
The Tamarack webpage reads: Tamarack Resort will be open with limited access August 22-24 due to other scheduled events. Access to the resort will be limited to Tamarack Resort homeowners, Club members, lodging guests and season pass holders.
The Idaho Statesman reports that most of the Tamarack rentals had been “snapped up” by the Department of Homeland Security.
KTVB’s website reported, just prior the president’s visit, Tamarack is now closed at the entrance. Only season pass holders and homeowners can get through. Still, locals are hoping they’ll be able to catch at least a glimpse of the commander-in-chief.
Tamarack is a big, brand spanking new resort. First a little information on the posh new vacation spot with alpine pretentions.
Tamarack, Idaho
by Ken Castle
Until last season, Tamarack resort was just another name in a long string of development proposals for a site 97 miles north of Boise, Idaho. But now, where once there was nothing, there’s an on-hill layout that offers long, looping cruisers and more than 2,800 feet of vertical. Tamarack will open for lift-served skiing this year and plans to add a village, a golf course and a large residential community over the next 10 years. Moreover, nearby Brundage Mountain Resort is on an expansion kick of its own, making a two-mountain ski fling a viable proposition. In recent months, $80 million in real estate has changed hands at Tamarack. Around Valley County, which has slumbered since the decline of the timber industry, the mantra these days among real estate agents is: “Let the bidding begin.” Prices are escalating, but you can still snag a piece of land for less than $100,000 or a new cabin for less than $300,000. Here’s the rundown.
Tamarack Resort – The first two phases of development consisted of 171 properties, including .5- to 1.5-acre lots on the golf course and 62 twin-level cottages and chalets, ranging from 1,200 square feet with two bedrooms and two baths to 2,400 square feet with three bedrooms and three-and-a-half baths. New designs with slopeside locations will be sold in a third release in early 2005. Prices so far: $300,000 to $850,000. A refundable deposit is required for a reservation, and when your turn comes you can accept or reject the available choices.
McCall – With new restaurants and shops, the area’s largest town has $120,000 fixer-uppers and 20- to 30-year-old homes for $120,000 to $200,000. Payette Lake offers homes from $1 million to $11 million. Hot projects include Jug Mountain Ranch, with a golf course and .3- to .5-acre homesites seven miles south of McCall ($125,000 to $450,000), and Aspen Ridge, near downtown with .3- to 1-acre-plus lots, some overlooking the lake, selling for $60,000 to $300,000.
Cascade – In this former mill town, 23 miles from Tamarack and about five minutes from Lake Cascade, a four-bedroom, two-bath house starts at $164,000, but most deals close in the $250,000 to $350,000 range. New subdivisions have been proposed, but for now check out Eagle Nest, three miles east, where 2- to 27-acre lots run $78,000 to $150,000.
Donnelly – With a few hundred residents, this tiny town-the closest to Tamarack-has plenty of vacant land, as well as new subdivisions in the wings. One, called Boulder Creek Meadows, is nine miles from the resort and offers lots from $70,000 to $110,000.
Population (Valley County) 7,651
Median home price (2004) $146,250 in the county, $165,000 in McCall. At Tamarack, which is not on the MLS, average 2004 sale price was around $624,000.
Annual taxes on median-priced home In the county, about $940 per $100,000 of assessed value, and in McCall, about $1,100 per $100,000
Number of properties sold in 2003 758
Number sold in 2004 (through Sept. 15) 864, two-thirds of them lots
Current Listings 595
Source: Skimag.com
Looking at the population of the county and the number of residents had me wondering about taxes associated with the building of the new resort.
Because Bush’s visit wasn’t only recreational. It was a big endorsement.
What is he endorsing?
Property taxes squeezing middle class in Valley County
Dan Popkey
The Idaho Statesman | Edition Date: 07-31-2005
Email This ArticlePrinter Friendly PageEscalating real estate prices threaten to squeeze out the middle class and even old-money families, as the super-rich transform Valley County into another Sun Valley.
Fed by a wrong-headed tax break for developers, the frenzy is pricing Idahoans out of homes where they’ve built sweet memories of sun and snow. Out-of-state speculators are buying at Tamarack and other subdivisions, pushing property taxes and lease rates out-of-reach.
“The billionaires are crowding out the millionaires,” said Tony Park, who has a second home on Payette Lake and is suing to overturn the tax break.
The assessed value for Park’s home jumped 49 percent last year, to $895,000, and that didn’t include the land. He pays the Idaho Department of Lands almost $2,000 a month to lease a state-owned lakefront lot, a rate pegged to his rising assessments.
“We relate to the Sun Valley experience and all the cultural change that brings,” said Park, a Boise lawyer and former Idaho attorney general. “People are saying, ‘How about my kids? Are they going to be able to keep the lake house?’ ”
Change also means long commutes for working people who build the houses, cook the meals and change the sheets. Horseshoe Bend and Riggins may become to McCall what Shoshone and Gooding are to Sun Valley — bedroom communities with 100-mile commutes.
Park and his wife are suing to overturn the tax break on constitutional grounds. They are joined by two other Idaho blue-bloods with places on the lake: Peter Johnson, former chief of the Bonneville Power Administration, and Gary Mahn, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s first commerce director and a successful entrepreneur.
“It’s people with lots around the lake in McCall — who are not on food stamps — who are complaining about a $100 million shift in tax valuation,” said Senate Republican Caucus Chairman Brad Little of Emmett, the Legislature’s most vocal foe of the tax break. “I call it the millionaires against the billionaires.”
Motions for summary judgment will be heard Sept. 12 by 4th District Judge Michael McLaughlin. If neither side wins there — Park and the others are suing the county — trial is set for Nov. 8-11 in Cascade.
Little was one of a handful of lawmakers who saw the harm in extending the agricultural exemption to rural subdivisions in 2002, and has tried to repeal it every year since. He’s a rancher with land in Valley, Gem, Canyon, Ada and Boise counties. He’s on a summer-long Legislative committee studying property taxes.
Lawmakers in 1980 said scarce farmland needed saving. That goal met the Idaho Constitution’s requirement that exemptions be “necessary and just.” But the ag exemption’s illegitimate offspring is neither necessary or just. Rural lot owners pay little or no tax until construction starts, shifting taxes to other property owners.
Instead of preserving farmland, the new break stokes development and speculation. This tax year, 47 percent of the 289 exempted rural lots in Valley County are in out-of-state hands, according to a study by Ronn Julian, retired Cascade District Ranger for the Forest Service.
“Man, is this what the Legislature intended?” he asked.
The exemption harms more than millionaires. It costs anyone without an undeveloped vacation lot. From Driggs to Dover to Donnelly, treasurers don’t bother sending bills to property owners because a stamp costs more than the tax bill. Those taxpayers who are not benefiting from the exemption will pay $3.3 million more this year because they are carrying the shifted tax burden, says the Tax Commission.
Julian raises serious doubts about the constitutional standard of “just.” For example, Cascade High Boys Basketball Coach Jim Simpson pays taxes on $94,570 for his one-third acre lot in Cascade, while Gov. Dirk Kempthorne pays taxes on $1,000 for 14 acres at Eagle Nest Subdivision, east of town. Tamarack CEO Jean-Pierre Boespflug has a half-acre at the resort valued at $40, while Jane Cropp lives at Lake Fork, where her four acres of land are assessed at $74,550. Tamarack has sold $260 million in lots, most bringing $500,000 or more. That value was set in the marketplace, but the exemption prices lots as if they were still rangeland…
Source: The Idaho Statesman
What kind of commutes are the janitors, housekeepers, waitrons, low-level management and other employees of Tamarack having to make, and I wonder what their wages are? How far will be the commute and what are likely to be the wages of the employees of “Discovery Square”, the prospective Tamarack village offering shops and dining.
The website posts a few job openings but no mention of wages. The application states of course that Tamarack has a zero tolerance policy for both drugs and alcohol and that there will be random drug testing. As an employer, Tamrack has no responsibility to you regarding assurity of your employment, I understand that employment is at-will and that I am free to resign at any time, and that the Company reserves the right to terminate my employment at any time, with or without cause and without prior notice. I also understand that no representative of the Company has the authority to make any assurances to the contrary.
Oh well, it’s just annoying to me, city/town planning not assuring individuals the option of living within a reasonable distance of where they work. There’s also the price of gas to consider and that cities and towns need to start plotting to be friendlier in the energy department. But there’s no reason to trouble the billionaire heads at Tamarack with such petty concerns. Bush has given his stamp of approval to the Tamarack billionaires and they’re happy. Permit them this luxury. They’ve worked hard.
Bush has too, feeding fears–he needs some space and time for himself, lots of space, lots of time–and it must be misery when you can’t take several weeks to go bike riding without the peasants trying to follow you everywhere, badgering you with their problems.
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