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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Conservation Land Trusts & Permaculture

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  • From: Sean Maley <semaley@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>, coldestsnow@aol.com
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Conservation Land Trusts & Permaculture
  • Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2007 12:24:21 -0800 (PST)

Green Phoenix Permaculture has been exploring this, too. Conceptually this
seems like a great fit, as a land trust helps factor out speculation. Our
weakness has been finding adequate legal guidance to help put all the details
together in a PC compatible way. First, there are different kinds of land
trusts other than for conservation (we have mostly targeted Community Land
Trust
options). Some wealthy land owners have used the Conservation concept to
lock
up land, so they keep their scenic views and higher land values. Others use
it
to reduce the value of their land and hence tax burden (both capital losses
and
assessment value). The IRS now looks very closely at these things, so legal
assistance is highly recommended. Unfortunately, Lawyers seem to specialize
in
very specific legal areas, so mixing and matching legal fields seams to cause
trouble when your design encompasses too many fields (which it probably
should).

With that said, I'm sure there is a lawyer somewhere who is
willing to do the research. So far, I have been quoted $5000 (research
retainer, not final price) to do the research just mixing PC education, a
regional CLT, and cottage industry/farmer market style fund raising to keep
it
going. We have a pro-bono lawyer still on the case (first one stone walled
us
for a year, current lawyer waiting for us to provide revised by-laws
simplifying
us into one category: Education), but he isn't familiar with Permaculture
concepts (as far as I can tell). It isn't like we want to evade taxes or get
rich, we just want to save the world by promoting a culture based upon deep
ecology concepts ("we are a part of Earth", not it's "Steward" holding
dominion
over all life and death).

I can provide the model details, if anyone is
interested in exploring this. My personal thought being that permanent
culture
starts with caring for land (represented as a Trust), which allows the land
and
people to care for one another, then sharing resources to help secure more
land
for a robust network of permanent culture. My opinion on Kevin's situation
is
that there was no established financial model ready to address a priori
expenses.

To the uninitiated, we sound like crackpots playing lawyer (hard to argue
the truth). We are essentially an inverted business model. Where businesses
usually try to invest outwardly plotting market share (spoil profits of
competitors and increase your own; exclusionary by being destructive), we
focus
on investing inwardly including others, then shoot off pioneers to repair
more
land to include more people (inclusive by being constructive). The existing
Corporate and Land Trust structures don't address this conundrum
well.


-Sean.


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