Agenda 09-17-19 Item 6-a - Refund Request from John C. and Judith K. Guibert, Lake Orange Property

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18 REQUEST FOR PROPERTY TAX REFUND John C. Guibert and Judith K. Guibert 4316 Arrowhead Trail; Hillsborough,NC 27278 (PIN#9857757373) March 13,2019 This Plat showed: • Elevation contours for both the 615' and 620' elevations • That,the land existing within those contours was 0.30 acres in size • That the land existing above elevation contour 620' was 1.60 acres in size • That the total land shown for Lot 10 was 1.90 acres in size. This appears to have been a good faith attempt to resolve any current or future questions regarding the ownership and taxation of the land within the 615' and 620' elevation levels on Arrowhead Lot 10. This Plat was apparently"rejected"by County staff—apparently due to insufficient level of detail or other errors made (clerical or otherwise)by the surveyor and/or the recorder of the Plat. As a result,the Plat of record remained the erroneous Plat Book 26, Page 73 mentioned above. It appears that similar "rejections"were made for the similarly conducted and recorded Plats for all of the Arrowhead Subdivision Lots. It is not known what efforts, if any,the County made to ensure that such rejections and the reasons for the rejections were communicated to the buyers of Arrowhead Lot 10 or to the buyers of any of the other Arrowhead Lots, along with information on what was needed to correct the situation. As buyers of Lot 10 in October, 2002, we can attest that we were not aware of the fact that we were inheriting a situation where we were knowingly being taxed for land we did not own. Quite frankly, we were naive enough to believe that such a thing could not happen in the United States of America. It is difficult to understand why the County decided to continue to place more weight on the use of the already known to be erroneous Plat recorded in Plat Book 26, Page 73 rather than on the subsequent Plats recorded in the mid-1980s, all of which—though described by County staff as being somewhat imperfect—were nonetheless more complete and accurate with respect to delineation of ownership than the older Plat. Those subsequently recorded Plats appear to have been a significant improvement in that they provided a reasonable basis for quantifying the amount of land on the Arrowhead Lots that was owned by Lake Orange Inc. In addition, continuation of the use of the original Arrowhead subdivision Plat appears to be in conflict with one of the general axioms of property law: "One cannot convey that which one does not own." Having become clearly aware of these ownership &"double taxation"issues in July/August,2018, John and Judith Guibert acted as quickly as possible to resolve this matter once and for all by conducting and recording a new survey/survey plat for Arrowhead Lot 10. (As an aside, availability of surveyors is low and resulted in our inability to take this action as promptly as we desired.) The new survey was conducted on January 23, 2019 and was recorded on February 19, 2019 (Plat Book 119, Page 191). The new Plat shows: • Elevation contours for both the 615' and 620' elevations • That,the land within those contours is 16,084 SF (0.37 acres) in size • That the land existing above elevation contour 620' is 66,780 SF(1.53 acres) in size • That the total land shown for Lot 10 is 1.90 acres in size. This survey and recorded Plat have been accepted by the County as acceptable for both land ownership and taxation purposes. 4