Town to seek high court review of tree tax break
Appeals court opinion says statute still applies
The Town of Delafield Board voted Tuesday night to ask the state Supreme Court to review whether a wealthy resident deserves a huge tax break for planting apple and Christmas trees in his yard.
Last week, the Court of Appeals reversed a circuit judge’s ruling in favor of the town, which had decided Peter Ogden was no longer entitled to agricultural classification for about 12 acres of land adjacent to his home near Pewaukee Lake.
“This ruling defies common sense,” said Town Chairman Larry Krause, who said the board voted 5-0 to seek Supreme Court review.
The property had all been classified residential until Ogden was granted the agricultural classification in 2012, based on his plan for a tree farm there. But in 2016, the assessor concluded Ogden wasn’t really running a commercial operation and changed it back to residential.
That changed the assessed value for tax purposes back to $886,000, from the just over $17,000 value it had when classified as agricultural.
Ogden appealed, and the Board of Review upheld the residential classifi-
cation 2-2. Then, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Kathryn Foster upheld the Board of Review.
But the Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Mark Gundrum, a resident of the town, said the statutes that created the agricultural tax break don’t require even the intent that farming operations be profitable, much less proof that they are.
“Of great import to this case,” Gundrum wrote, “the plain language of the statute and rule refers to ‘growing’ the relevant crops — here apples, hay, and Christmas trees — not marketing, selling or profiting from them.”
Ogden is president of Milwaukeebased Ogden & Co., which manages apartments, condos and commercial buildings in southeastern Wisconsin and Arizona.
What’s called “use value assessment” was intended to protect farmers from having their croplands taxed at the value it might have as a residential subdivision or business site. The question to the Supreme Court may be whether, in Ogden’s case, the land in question is “devoted primarily to agricultural use” or to buffering his home or reducing his tax burden.
After the Appeals Court ruling, Ogden’s attorney, Paul Zimmer, called it “a great decision for taxpayers all around the state.”