On 5 Feb 2004 10:53:30 -0800, (Curtis CCR)
wrote:

Short Wave Sportfishing wrote in message . ..
On Wed, 04 Feb 2004 21:00:28 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:

"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 04 Feb 2004 19:50:31 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:

"Glenn Ashmore" wrote in message
news:FQ8Ub.19239$u_6.9131@lakeread04...

Here is an alternative, though risky alternative. The covenants of the
will/bequest are very powerful. (See my reply to Larry.) Form a
non-profit community organization. Find some heirs to the estate and
feel them out about contesting the city's right of posession and
donating the land to the organization. I believe that when they donate
the land they get a tax deduction equal to the current value of the
land
less the value of the original bequest.

He may also want to contact the Nature Conservancy, which acquires land
that's about to be made ugly in various ways. They often find ways to
lock
it up legally so it REALLY can't be used for disgusting purposes, like
tree-less housing developments.

www.nature.org

They may already have their eye on the specific land anyway - it's worth
making inquiries.

Good advice, but be very carefull with these folks - they can be a
real handfull to deal with.

You mean the Nature Conservancy?

Yep - it's a long story - basically, I wanted to put my forest and
meadow property in a long term trust agreement, but the language in
the agreement was such that I would have lost access to my own land
while I was still alive and kicking.

I'm not saying they don't do good work and maybe it was just the folks
I was dealing with, but I never went back to them after that.

I worked an open land deal with the state instead.

I worked with an organization that was a lot like the nature
conservancy (only smaller) on a project to remediate a telecom site we
had in a state park. During the project, they were talking about
trying to work a deal with a local archery club that owned some
adjacent property. The club wouldn't sell the land, but the
conservation group talked about getting a "conservation easement" ( I
think that was the term ).

The organization would not buy the land, but pay the archery club to
agree not to do anything else to the land for the term of easement.
They could still use the land, but the easement meant the club
couldn't do ANYTHING to it - it even put limits on the future
maintenance of some improvements the club had already made. This was
several years ago and it didn't look like such a deal was even close -
I don't know what has happened since.

That's pretty much what happened to me with the caveat that the land
was to have "restricted access" - I asked what "restricted" meant and
it was pretty drastic even to the point of I couldn't hunt on my own
land or fish in my own pond.

Sorry - that dog won't howl.

Later,

Tom
S. Woodstock, CT
----------

"To the fisherman born there is nothing
so provoking of curiosity as a fishing rod
in a case."

Roland Pertwee, "The River God" (1928)