Utah residents who own cabins on U.S. Forest Service land are watching a reappraisal of similar property in Idaho and worrying that land lease rates may soon soar.
Federal land lessees in Idaho's Sawtooth National Forest were notified in September that their rent will rise substantially in January.The owners of one lakeside summer home in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area had been paying about $4,000 a year in rent to the federal government.
Then, under new rules to ensure the government receives fair-market value for its property, the owners received notice that their rent will soar to $67,000 a year.
Such a dramatic rise unsettles Utah cabin owners, whose property will be reappraised soon using the same technique as in Idaho.
"If it goes up that much, it will create problems for a lot of people," said David Summers, president of the Soapstone Cabin Association of 41 cabin owners on Forest Service land along the Mirror Lake Highway in the Uinta Mountains.
"The bulk of the people up here are just average people," he said. "When fees go up a lot, some will say it's not worth it."
The Sawtooth National Forest was the first to complete the reappraisals called for under regulations negotiated with leaseholders and others during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Reappraisal of the other 15,000 national forest leased tracts for recreational homes around the country will be completed within five years.
The Wasatch-Cache National Forest this winter will reappraise 199 cabin properties, said spokesman Dick Kline.
Bob Swinford, spokesman for the Forest Service's Intermountain Region, said it has been two decades since cabin property was reappraised, so it is almost certain fees will rise significantly.
But the Sawtooth example is a worst-case scenario, he said. Millionaires have been vying for the few parcels of private land in that scenic region, driving up the value of adjacent Forest Service cabin sites.
In most other Idaho forests, a tripling or quadrupling of rental fees was more typical. Fees of several hundred dollars a year climbed to about $1,000, and fees of $800 to $900 went to about $3,000.
Most of the 15,600 private cabins on Forest Service land are relics of the first three decades of this century when the agency was trying to encourage recreation in remote areas, said Swinford. A few cabin sites continued to be offered until the 1960s when the program was abandoned.
Since then, the Forest Service has been criticized repeatedly for charging less than fair-market value for cabin sites, so Congress passed a law requiring the use of standard business practices to set rental rates.
On the Wasatch-Cache Forest, there are 28 such leases on Bountiful Peak; seven at Brighton; 15 at the Evergreen area in Big Cottonwood Canyon; 23 in Mill D Fork of Big Cottonwood Canyon; 45 in Porter Fork of Mill Creek Canyon; 41 in the Soapstone area; and 40 in the Christmas Meadow area on the north slope of the Uinta Moun-tains.
Dixie National Forest in southwestern Utah is beginning the reappraisal of 41 properties, and the Uinta National Forest next year will launch its review of 102 cabins.