Montezuma Land Conservancy

“It is the policy of the organization to provide perpetual stewardship of conservation easements through a monitoring program that involves regular personal contact with the landowner and field examination of property. It is also the policy of the organization to ensure the reasonable quiet enjoyment of the property by the property owners. The organization typically will not perform annual monitoring without arranging the visit for a mutually beneficial date and time. Only when the owner blatantly ignores or avoids requests for an annual monitoring visit will the organization resort to monitoring without an appointment for approval of thelandowner. Only trained personnel will perform monitoring, ideally in pairs with astaff member and a volunteer. Highly trained and experienced volunteers may monitorwithout a staff member only after they have been reviewed and approved by theexcecutive director.the organization's violation procedures are:1. Any suspected violation is reported to the executive director.2. The executive director considers the report of suspected violation and documentation gathered by the monitors and carefully rereads the entire conservation easement. If the executive director concurs that there is a possible violation, the executive director consults with the organization's legal counsel about the easement provisions that may have been violated to assure that the provisions are clear on the issue.3. If the documentation from the monitoring visit is not totally clear on the issue,the executive director will attempt to schedule a site visit to inspect the situation, explaning to the landowner that the executive director needs to personally see and understand conditions on the land mentioned in the monitoring report. At this visit the executive director will further document the possible violation with camera,video, amps, measurements field notes, and comparison to baseline documentation and monitoring reports.4. If the executive director and legal counsel believe that there is a possibleviolation, the issue is referred to the organization's board of directors at the next regularly scheduled meeting. If the violation entails the potential for continuing or increased damage to the conservation values, it may be submitted to the board for a telehone vote.5. If the board concludes that there is no violation, the procees ends.6. If the board concludes that there is a violation, the executive director willclassify the apparent violation as one of three types: a minor violation; a majorviolation; an immediate threat.7. In all cases the executive director shall contact the violator by telephone toexplain the situation and request immediate cessation of the violation activity and/or correction of the problem. If the landowner disagrees that there is a violationthen the executive director should request a personal meeting.8. Following the phone call a letter is sent via certified mail to the landownerdetailing the violation including a description of the violation including itsmaterial impact, location and extent, the applicable easement citation and theproposed landowner actions to correct the violation.9. If the landowner promptly complies with the requested solution, verify thecorrective action and send a thank you letter.10. No one person should make a decisions on violation response - get counsel first.11. The organization will always conduct meetings with the property owner as a team of two.”

“The organization does not capitalize conservation easements and therefore they arenot reflected in the statement of financial position. Donated easements are notrecorded as revenue in the statement os activities, however grants to purchaseeasements are recorded. Purchases of easements and transactional costs for alleasements are recorded as expenses in the statement of activities. The footnotedescribing the accounting policy for conservation easements is as follows: "theorganization is considered a qualified organization under internal revenue codesection 170(h)(3) and may therefore accept donated conservation easements. Conservation easements, which represents a perpetual restriction on the use of landwithout transfer of ownership of the underlying property, are not reflected in the assets of the organization. There is no market for the easements and therefore they have not been valued by the organization in accordance with fair value rules.donated easements are not recorded as support. Transactional costs to obtain aneasement as well as purchase costs for an easement are recorded as expenses in thestatement of activities in the year the transaction is completed".”