(University of Oregon School of Law, 2008) Murphy, Laura Bucher
This Article presents a potential tool for those homeowners negatively
impacted by industrial animal farms to use. It is a general roadmap for
property tax assessment protests for residences near factory
farms. It draws largely from a publicly available guide, also by
this author, that was created as part of the Vermont Law School
Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic's (ENRLC)
project to facilitate these types of protests. The project
recognizes that when localities fail to account for the devaluing
impacts that factory farms have on neighboring properties in
making property tax assessments, they mistakenly overestimate
the fair market values of those properties, which results in unfair
and falsely high property taxes. If, in contrast, factory farms are
properly taken into account, neighboring residences will receive
fair assessments and fair tax bills, and localities will be more
likely to consider the true costs of factory farms when making
relevant policy decisions.
