How much is a piece of land worth? Compensation is the ultimate question when the government uses its power of eminent domain to seize private property for public use.
Such a question was recently considered at California’s 2nd Appellate Court in the matter of a 15.69 acre piece of land near Lompoc that the county wants to set aside as habitat for the federally endangered California tiger salamander.
On March 15, the court affirmed a Santa Barbara County Superior Court ruling and excluded evidence of an opinion from an opposing appraiser who valued the piece of land at much more than what the county paid for it.
First, a little history. Previous landowner Sonia Wisniewska (now Anderson) tried to do a good thing by placing a piece of her property into an easement to help the county avoid stiff federal penalties after it accepted responsibility for killing two tiger salamanders during a county construction project several years back.
But when Wisniewska lost the property through foreclosure, the county lost its easement rights, according to court documents. That’s when county officials began the process of eminent domain to acquire the property.
The county retained Santa Barbara appraiser James Hammock, who placed a value of $41,600 on the 15.69 acres, which is now owned by Orange County attorney Robert Haugan—who’s listed in court documents as the owner of Double H Properties LLC.
However, Haugan’s attorneys hired Ventura appraiser Kioren Moss (who happens to be the brother of Steve Moss, the late founder of the Sun and New Times) to appraise the property on their behalf. Moss valued the property at $43,000, plus an additional $133,000 for “severance damages,” or loss of value on a property, which was accounted for because of the easement.
Hammock disagreed that there was any severance.
Double H only received what a Santa Barbara County jury determined to be a “fair market value” of $87,562 from the county following a trial in January 2015, according to court documents, although Haugan told the Sun that the amount has jumped to around $95,000. The amount was more than the county’s appraisal but less than what Haugan wanted for the property. Originally he told the county that he wanted $170,000 for the land, but the county refused to negotiate with him, which is why Haugan’s attorneys hired Moss to provide appraisals.
“As a landowner, you would think when they’re taking something away from you that they’d at least engage in some sort of discussion,” Haugen told the Sun, adding that between the land payout and attorneys’ fees, the county ended up spending around $160,000. “It just upsets me that they didn’t make any effort at all.”
Duff Murphy, one of the attorneys representing the county, told the Sun that it wasn’t in the county’s policy to comment on the matter, but stated that the county already took possession of the property.
When contacted, Moss said he didn’t want to go on record for this story.
The severance damages were applied because the easement effectively gives government agents access to private property. According to court documents, the contention was whether the easement was interfering with ranch operations.
“It was a very low-intensive-use easement,” Hammock told the Sun, adding that the tiger salamander monitoring program operated once a year.
But Moss later applied a second appraisal method, this time accounting for the land’s hypothetical value in mitigation credits, which are essentially offsets from which developers are required to purchase if a construction project encroaches on endangered species habitat (similar to carbon offsets). The second appraisal valued the land at $217,000, according to court documents. That second appraisal Moss provided was the evidence that the appellate court excluded when the March 15 ruling was made.
Mitigation credits are purchased from conservation banks, which manage specific tracts of land set aside to conserve habitat for endangered species. Locally, La Purisima Conservation Bank is an example of this. It’s the only conservation bank in the county. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (if the bank is in California) are the only entities that can approve such banks.
The money paid into the bank doesn’t actually buy land, according to USFWS Spokeswoman Ashley Spratt. It pays for credits, for money that goes into the bank where it’s used to maintain the habitat.
There’s no set exchange rate between land and mitigation credits, said Jeff Phillips, a USFWS conservation banking coordinator in Ventura.
“There’s no one-size-fits-all formula,” Phillips said, adding that there are at least four types of tiger salamanders and other species that are considered for mitigation. “It’s different for each species.”
In comparison, Santa Maria paid a “discount” price of about $1.4 million to La Purisima Conservation Bank to offset the disturbance of 19.65 acres of tiger salamander habitat during a construction project for Union Valley Parkway, according to city documents from 2013.
Aside from the county citing a state law that said the property had to be valued without reference to the easement, Hammock told the Sun that he based the value on agricultural use.
“It had value probably only for cattle grazing,” Hammock said.
Other than comparing it to the marketable value of conservation banks, the previous easement—which sits enclosed on a piece of land located at 3200 Gypsy Canyon Road east of Lompoc—sits less than 10 miles from the La Purisima Conservation Bank.
It’s hard to compare a small 15-acre conservation easement to hundreds of acres of property in a land bank used for the same purpose, according to Kevin Knowles with La Purisima, which holds 850 acres of land in Santa Barbara County. With a piece of land that small, he said, it wouldn’t be economically feasible to turn it into a bank.
“You wouldn’t do a conservation bank for only 15 acres,” Knowles told the Sun. “Too much cost and expense. It’s different when you have 850 acres of restorable wetlands that are worth a lot more money.”
USFWS’s Phillips agreed, adding that although there is no minimum requirement to start such a bank, there may be economic limits. However, he doesn’t think 15 acres is too small, he said, citing the Zayante Sandhills Conservation Bank in Santa Cruz, which is only 23 acres.
Staff Writer David Minsky can be reached at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 24-31, 2016.