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I Saw The Statue of Liberty Weep (While Smoking a Marlboro)

My Brilliant Career as a Liberty Tax Preparer, And What It Means to America

By Robin Ford Wallace

I write this account of my experience as a prospective Liberty Tax tax preparer not because Liberty Tax is a sleazy operation that preys unconscionably on the poor and ignorant (though it is); or because I feel wounded personally by its evil ways (though I do).   No, Gentle Reader, I write this in an attempt to point out a profundity about the larger economy.  Patience!  

Liberty Tax first entered my consciousness in late September.  I’d been looking for a job since Labor Day without a single nibble and was getting that sick Future-Bag-Lady-of-America feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Meanwhile, minimalist signs with a phone number and the words HIRING NOW had cropped up all over town.  I thought it was a scam but I was desperate and I called.

Turned out the signs were from Liberty Tax, recruiting tax preparers for the 2015 season.  I’d been a tax preparer earlier in life, during another hungry period.  So I felt a ray of hope and agreed to come to an open house the next day at the local office, which was in a storefront next to my regular grocery store.

The open house cheered me further:  The upside of becoming a middle-aged white lady, with chin hairs and back fat, was that I was the only one there who could be imagined preparing income tax returns.  The others were young men in shorts, including one covered almost completely in tattoos.  A girl began to feel positively employable! 

The manager – cute, young, female, with sparkly brown eyes, so let’s call her Twinkle – asked us all what was the craziest thing we’d ever done.  Tats said, “That would be the time I stole the school bus.” 

Twinkle told us all about Liberty Tax:  The founder, John Hewitt, had made the connection between computers, the Internet and income tax preparation, and had earned himself megabucks.  Now he sold franchises and all over the USA people who owned Liberty Tax offices were also making megabucks.  Twinkle told us the guy who owned this office and several in the surrounding area had made megabucks, too, becoming a millionaire before he was 30.  Twinkle was just the manager this season but she hoped to buy the office and make megabucks herself. 

We tax preparers would make $8 an hour, she told us. 

Plus commission!  Twinkle explained:  Attending Liberty’s “Free Tax School” and passing a certification test would make us eligible for hiring as preparers in January.  We would be paid our $8 a hour and then at the end of the tax season we would get our big commission check.  Plus, she said, we would be invited to a beach party in Virginia Beach, where Liberty had its corporate headquarters.   

Twinkle said Liberty was also recruiting, and also paid $8 an hour to, “wavers.”  These were people who dressed up like the Statue of Liberty and paraded in front of the shopping center to attract customers.  Wavers didn’t have to learn taxes but it was an outside job and Twinkle said that last year the office had had to let one go because she wouldn’t stay outside waving when it was snowing.  “It sounds mean but that’s where we get the majority of our clients,” she said. 

Brr.  But what can I say?  I was unemployed.  I hoped I would get rescued before January, whether by a job offer, fairy godmother, or death, but I started attending the Free Tax School.

The Free Tax School 

I never saw Tats again, and other people came and went in the classes, so that I didn’t learn many names and anyway I don’t want to write here the ones I do know.  But among the regulars were a middle-aged LPN I mentally dubbed Nursie; an adorable long-haired young woman who wore such cute and trendy outfits, with little hats and things, that I would squeal every time she walked in, so let’s call her Boots here, after her favorite footwear; and a very young, very pregnant girl who always wore sweatpants with her hair pulled back, so that it was difficult to imagine what she looked like cleaned up and I’m afraid my internal nickname for her was the Blob.

Twinkle would stand in front of the class talking about 1040s.  Everybody else would talk about something else, babies or men or sex, the way women will in a group.  The Blob would say, “This will be my last Christmas as a teenager and it looks like I’m going to spend it in the delivery room – just like last year!”

“Are you still on target with your due date?” Nursie would say, kindly.

“My two came close together, too,” another mother would say.  “In fact, I can’t remember conceiving the second one.  I think I was asleep.”

“Taxes!” Twinkle would remind them.

The Blob kept a pack of Marlboros on the empty chair between her and Nursie so that at first I hoped it wasn’t hers but Nursie’s.  When they went outside at break, though, it turned out Nursie only smoked e-cigarettes.  Twinkle smoked Marlboros, too, but she had her own pack.  

Nobody focused too hard on learning taxes but it didn’t turn out to matter all that much:  The second part of the course was learning the “LibTax” computer software, and it was LibTax that did the actual work. 

If you have ever used TurboTax to “e-file” through the IRS website you will understand the concept of LibTax, which is very similar.  These programs ask you stuff like, “Did Robin receive any W-2s?  What is listed in Box 7?  Did anyone else live with Robin?  During 2014, did Robin get married, join the military, become incarcerated or drop dead?”  You just check boxes and fill in blanks.  Anybody could do it.

The Human Condition

We spent longer on LibTax than on 1040s.  You had to do 39 sample returns so you could get fast.  The classes were long and boring and I felt defeated just being there – working for free in the hope of making $8 an hour! – but I began to see that the others were in the same boat. 

Nursie told me she’d been looking for work for months without success, and sometimes felt so low she had a hard time leaving the house.  She dropped out shortly after that. 

The Blob’s husband worked in a factory where the heat had made him faint, necessitating an emergency room visit and complicating the young couple’s child care.

Boots was a single mother whose child had some kind of special needs.  Autism?  Asperger’s?  “He wants to play with other kids,” she explained, “but he don’t know how.”

The manager, Twinkle, was also a single mother, and in December she told me she had had to choose between Christmas and paying the electric bill.  She said Liberty paid her $10 an hour to teach for a maximum of six hours a day, or $60; but actually she had to stay there more or less from 9 a.m.-9 p.m.  She had missed her daughter’s Christmas play at school.  

So if compassion can be defined as expanding self-pity to encompass others, I guess that’s what happened to me.  Once the Blob was sitting in my usual place when I arrived and I noticed that beneath the pregnancy and the sweatpants she was quite a pretty girl, with blond hair and periwinkle-blue eyes.  Anyway, she was young, helpless and pregnant in a dog-eat-dog world, and I was older and wiser and should have been kind to her like Nursie.  Instead I’d been thinking of her as the Blob.  I beamed love and apology at her.  She moved away uneasily.

Liberty’s Piece of the Action

But back to taxes:  As a former preparer, I already knew the basics, but some things had changed since my first go-round.  The Earned Income Credit, in effect a cash handout to help working poor who are raising children, had increased from a few hundred bucks to upwards of $6000, and on top of that there was the new Child Tax Credit of $1000 for each kid.  These days, a modestly-paid worker with children, even one who had had no income taxes withheld at all, could receive thousands and thousands of dollars in tax “refund.”

And it shortly became clear that that’s what Liberty Tax was all about, getting a piece of that action.  As Twinkle put it, “What do they care about giving us $3- or $400 if they’re getting back $6000?”

In addition to 1040s and LibTax, Liberty’s Free Tax School included courses in “Bank Products” and “Closing the Deal.”  What was meant by “Bank Products” was an arrangement whereby clients could have their tax refunds channeled through Liberty, allowing Liberty to deduct its fees from the total before passing it on.  That cost clients an additional $40 or so but Twinkle said almost all of them went that route because it was the only way they could afford Liberty’s fees. 

What were the fees?  That was always a mystery.  When I asked in the beginning – because I wanted to know how much commission would come to – Twinkle explained they were wildly variable because the computer generated them based on which forms were involved, but that the minimum was probably $150-$250. 

The computer added an amount for each W2 form, and if there was untaxed compensation on a 1099 – such as is received by many construction workers and house cleaners – it tacked on $200 for Schedule C plus $80 for Schedule SE, the form for computing the self-employment tax.  Twinkle said that if you had self-employment income of any kind you couldn’t expect to get out of there on less than $500.

Shh!

Now, as for “Closing the Deal,” what that meant was keeping the clients from getting up and leaving when they found out what the fee was.  And the way you did that, I learned shortly, was:  You didn’t tell them. 

The procedure was first to ascertain there was a refund, then enter all the tax information, finally reviewing the return with the client, ostentatiously turning the computer monitor around so he could follow along as you said, “You made $12,000 in wages, you’re head of household with two children, you had $550 in federal income tax withheld and you qualify for $4810 of Earned Income Credit.” 

But when you came to the refund, you told him the amount he would receive after Liberty’s fees were deducted, not the gross amount.

But if the screen was turned toward the client so he could see the finished 1040, I objected, couldn’t he see the refund amount listed on line 75?

“You turn the screen back around before that,” said Twinkle.

The client was sent home with an information pack, but not, notably, with a copy of the 1040.  “We’re a green company and we don’t waste paper,” said Twinkle.  She said if customers came back later, though, and asked for a copy for whatever purpose, Liberty would in fact furnish one – free of charge, she added proudly.

That’th Dethpicable!

This all emerged bit by bit and there was never a point at which I did a big Daffy-Duck, “That’th dethpicable!”  A mitigating factor was the instant cash offer, which the “wavers” advertised with signs they would flash at traffic:  Anyone who allowed Liberty Tax to file or even “pre-file” their returns – entering their wage and withholding information from check stubs into the computer, pending arrival of W-2s –  received $50 in cash up front.  Then there was another $50 they could get for referring a friend. 

I figured these offers (a) should alert even the most trusting that Liberty intended to charge them enough to make the freebies worthwhile; and (b) at least offset the $40 clients paid for the “bank product.”

It was clear that Liberty Tax was cashing in on the innocence and financial desperation of the poor.  On the other hand, I was financially desperate enough myself that I took comfort in the assurance I had at least minimal employment lined up come January. 

Lady Liberty Weeps

But January came and I didn’t!  I finished the tax course and then the LibTax course, and as the new year progressed there was always something else I had to come in for – training modules in the Affordable Care Act or office procedures or bank products.  We preparers were also all encouraged to come hang out and watch Twinkle prepare tax returns if anyone walked in, maybe prepare some ourselves – we had had to pay $65 to the IRS for preparer ID numbers – but it was “on commission only” and there was no talk of putting anybody on payroll. 

So far, the only paid workers were the “wavers,” who were now prancing around at the intersection, trying to drum up business.  They wore what looked like green velveteen tablecloths and on their heads little diadems.  Some looked more like the Statue of Liberty than others.  Once when I went out to the parking lot I saw one of them, still in uniform, sitting in his car smoking a cigarette and crying.  Well, it couldn’t have been anybody’s dream job.

Anyway, I hung around and hung around, waiting for something to happen.  Other preparers kept disappearing.  Once I went into the back, where there was a refrigerator and microwave, and found a goodbye note scrawled on a paper plate:  “Sorry Twinkle this job ain’t for me.  Love, Boots.”

That made me smile – like everything else about Boots, it had a certain style – but I inwardly quibbled at the word “job.”  Didn’t that imply wages?
Finally, toward the end of January, Twinkle held a “mandatory staff meeting” (which didn’t involve wages, either).  She wanted to show us how to finalize a return, and because that entailed completing and printing 16 separate forms, and she didn’t like wasting paper, she wanted to show everybody at once and not have to go through it twice.  I thought:  Good luck with that.

Does It Mean I Don’t Get the $50?

But of course she didn’t have any luck at all.  Equipment failed and anyway the meeting was never finished because clients chose that day to finally start coming in.  Twinkle told me to wait on one and I surely would have though, “staff meeting” or not, I was still not on the clock.  However, the computer wouldn’t accept my sign-on so in the end I sat beside another preparer as she keyed in the information.

Our customer wasn’t eligible for the Earned Income or Child credit, and his refund was small enough that it was mostly eaten up by Liberty’s fees.  I found it awkward telling him how much he had coming back – and not telling him how much we were charging him – but fortunately all he seemed concerned about was getting the $50 cash giveaway.

Meanwhile another preparer at another desk had another client, a cement worker or something, who had brought in a 1099 for $1900 in nonemployee compensation from which no taxes had been withheld.  (I wasn’t precisely eavesdropping but this was a lady I had internally nicknamed the Foghorn because of her voice like a sonic boom that smoked Marlboros.) 

The Foghorn was earnestly trying to help the guy come up with expenses against the income, but Twinkle was hearing all this too and she went over to the Foghorn’s desk and said, “This is your problem right here,” jabbing a finger at the computer screen.  I knew she was pointing at the fee – remember, $200 extra for Schedule C, $80 for SE, and the guy had less than $2000 in income and no big federal dollars coming back. 

So Twinkle and the Foghorn gathered the guy’s papers up and sent him packing.  He went peacefully.  His only regret was:  “Does this mean I don’t get the $50?”  It did.

Not a Team Player

That was the last day I ever went to Liberty Tax.  But I didn’t quit!  Before I left, I said to Twinkle, “Call me when you need me.”  She never did.

I didn’t mind.  I thought what Twinkle wanted was for everybody to  keep coming in unpaid indefinitely and I had had enough of that.  Meanwhile, though I hadn’t landed a job offer, I had scraped up a couple little freelance gigs.  So things weren’t quite as desperate as they had been chez moi and it wasn’t as if I’d ever really ached to help Liberty cheat the poor anyway.

So I didn’t have anything else to do with Liberty Tax until recently, when I found out the IRS wouldn’t refund my $65 for the tax preparer ID.  Then I formally requested Liberty to reimburse it to me, since I had paid it as a requirement of employment, in the understanding I would be employed.  I sent copies of the request to the corporate office and to Twinkle at the local one. 

I hadn’t had much hope and I wasn’t surprised at being refused, though I was amused at the reasons Twinkle provided for not having employed me, among which was that I was “not a team player.”  (I wondered whether that had anything to do with me not smoking Marlboros.)  

The Reason I’m Telling You This

Anyway!  For me, Liberty Tax was the most preposterous waste of time, but it struck me – and this is the reason I’m telling you all this – that the experience was a perfect metaphor for, and microcosm of, the economy, and basically What’s Wrong With America Today.

Liberty Tax makes its money charging the poor and unsophisticated exorbitant fees for something they could easily do themselves or, lacking the concentration to sit down and try, have done free by the IRS or volunteers at the local library.  And the poor let them do it, not asking the fee but cheerfully exchanging their future $4- or $500 for the $50 bill offered to them by some schmo in a green tablecloth. 

It reminds me of that saying about “trickle-up economics,” that the rich shouldn’t worry because no matter how much money you give the people at the bottom, the people at the top are always going to end up with it anyway.  Liberty takes its cut of the federal handout before the poor even set eyes on the check.     

So the poor are getting gutted but what’s worse is that the hands-on gutting is done by another set of people also being cheated by Liberty, the ground-level “employees” who are working either for almost nothing or just nothing-nothing, in the hope of eventually graduating to almost-nothing. 

These “employees” are in the same, or worse, economic boat  as the clients –  Liberty actually recruits for its “Free Tax School” from its prior-year customer base – but they keep on helping Liberty gouge their brethren.  For most of us – for me, anyway – this is due to sheer financial desperation, but others dream of buying their own store and collecting the big bucks themselves.

It’s the hallowed Free Market gone wrong, everybody screwing over everybody else and nobody allowed to opt out because we all have to eat, the haves cheating the have-nots and the have-nots cheating other have-nots instead of demanding change. 

Me, I want to shout STOP STOP THIS IS WRONG but I’m not sure who to shout it to, so I reckon I must settle for finding a paper plate of my own and summing it up:

“Sorry America this ain’t the economy for me.”

                                            END

Sidebar: What is the Georgia Land Trust, and What Does It Do?

What is the Georgia Land Trust?

By Robin Ford Wallace

One of the matters addressed by Katherine Eddins, executive director of the Georgia Land Trust, at the June 4 meeting she conducted at and about the former Preserve at Rising Fawn was what the land trust is and what it is trying to accomplish.  Since ambiguity on that point may well be at the root of some of the confusion swirling around the trust’s intention to sell the Preserve land to developer Royce Cornelison (see related article), the Planet here outlines what Ms. Eddins said on the subject.

“We are not a government,” she repeated at the Thursday meeting.  Rather, she said, GLT is a private nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization with a staff of 15 employees and a 12-member board of directors.  The land trust derives its income from soliciting checks from its donor pool, doing contractual work for other land trusts, and applying for grants, she said.

As for what GLT does:  “Our mission is to protect land for present and future generations,” said Ms. Eddins.  The object, she explained, is to preserve land in a rural condition to safeguard water quality, wildlife and other environmental concerns.  To quote from the trust’s website, galandtrust.org:  “Our focus on forests and farm land and rivers and streams is to create green corridors with clean water and air and fertile farmland.”

The Georgia Land Trust recently announced it now has a quarter-million acres under such protection and has been proclaimed an accredited land trust by the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, which at the meeting Ms. Eddins clarified was “a real prestigious thing.”

Ms. Eddins said that of the 250,000 acres the trust protects, the greatest concentration, or about 75 percent of the land, lies in this area, much of it in Dade, Walker and Catoosa counties.

But the way the land trust protects the land is not by owning it.  Rather, explained Ms. Eddins, the organization’s main tool is the conservation easement, a legal arrangement whereby a private landowner may keep, use and pass his land on to his heirs.  The easement spells out restrictions on what he may do with the land, with the object of protecting its conservation value; but by signing it the landowner may save money on estate, income and property taxes.  The land trust proposes to sell the Crook land to Cornelison subject to such an easement.

Presently, the land trust has in effect over 700 of these conservation easements, said Ms. Eddins.  Working farms account for a lot of the land, she said, though the trust has also concentrated on areas along streams to protect water supplies.

  Protecting water quality was one element in the trust’s decision to buy the Johnson’s Crook land out of bankruptcy, said Ms. Eddins.  The Crook is a “recharge area” for the local drinking water supply, she said, as well as rich in caves, natural beauty, and rare or endangered plants and probably also animals.

So the trust exists to protect land “for present and future generations”; but in the case of Johnson’s Crook the proposed sale would seem to limit that naturally to present and future generations of Cornelisons.  When the trust acquired the Crook land, there was talk of public foot trails that would connect it to Cloudland Canyon and even Chattanooga.  At the Thursday meeting, however, whereas Ms. Eddins was not ruling it out, her only reference to any such public access was “probably, maybe, a trail option.”

In any case, the Planet asked Ms. Eddins after the meeting for whom or what the Georgia Land Trust was ultimately protecting the land.  Her answer:  “For the bats.  For the nature.  For the habitat,” she said.  “There are other things other than humans.  They need a place, too.”

As far as public benefit, she said, there is the consideration that protecting the Crook helps ensure clean drinking water for Dade County.  But otherwise, she concluded:  “There are endangered plants, there are endangered animals, there are caves.  They don’t need the public to be as they are.  They have an innate worth that is not about money.  It’s about nature and beauty and honoring that.”   

robinfordwallace@tvn.net

Land Trust Discusses Sale of Former Preserve At Rising Fawn To Second Developer

Royce Cornelison of P&C Construction is the developer the Georgia Land Trust proposes to sell its Johnson Crook acreage to.  Cornelison already has 2300 acres under conservation easement, knows how private-sector conservation works, and would be "a good steward of the land," says the trust.   

Land Trust Discusses Sale of Former Preserve At Rising Fawn To Second Developer

By Robin Ford Wallace

It is true that the Georgia Land Trust is negotiating to sell the 1800-odd acres it owns in Rising Fawn’s Johnson’s Crook to a developer, and it is also true the developer will likely build houses there.

But not enough houses to amount to what is called a subdivision – much less a development – and in any case not in such a way as to offend either the land trust’s environmental requirements or the sensibilities of the neighbors.

That was the message at a June 4 meeting conducted by Katherine Eddins, GLT’s executive director, at what was once the Mill Creek Clubhouse of failed development The Preserve at Rising Fawn.  Invited were the press, politicos and neighbors who had watched the Preserve morph from local land boom to interstate bank fraud, as well as the few individual landowners who retained property at the Preserve when the smoke had cleared.

“You can still protect the land and have a few houses,” Ms. Eddins told these assembled concerned parties at the Thursday meeting.

Ms. Eddins had called the meeting amid consternation about GLT’s rumored intention to sell the scenic Crook land, which it had acquired from Tennessee firm Southern Group, whose attempts to develop it had culminated in scandal and jail time, to yet another developer.

Ms. Eddins identified the new developer as Royce Cornelison, founder and president of P&C Construction, and she confirmed that the land trust is in fact negotiating with him on a deal whereby he would buy the Crook acreage. 

But she specified that Cornelison will be subject to a conservation contract that would require him to keep most of the acquisition in a rural condition.  “Our interest in the land is to make sure the land is not developed,” said Ms. Eddins.

She specified that so far no such deal has been finalized.  “There’s no sale pending,” she said.  “We don’t have a contract yet.  We’re hoping to but we don’t have one yet.”

Cornelison was on hand at the meeting to answer questions, and  he confirmed that he had already bought a smaller property at the former Preserve including a standing horse barn and the ruins of a larger clubhouse that was never completed, which he said he and his outdoorsy sons intended for private use.  “We’ll probably fix it up as a retreat, for the family, and to lease it.” 

As for new development, Cornelison said plans are still hazy but that he may consider building replacement homes where such had already been started.  “We may [or] we may not sell some lots there and build some houses there,” he said.

Limited building, confirmed Cornelison and Ms. Eddins, would not violate the terms of the proposed conservation agreement. 

But for the most part, said Cornelison:  “What you see is what you get.”  Not much would change.

“Primarily, we like it like it is,” he said.  “I like nature.  My boys like nature.” 

The family would use the land for hunting and fishing, and possibly for cattle, he said. 

Questioned after the meeting, Cornelison said that’s what he does with the approximate 2300 acres he already has in conservancy with the land trust at other locations.  “We farm it.  We have cattle.  We do timbering some, but we don’t clear-cut unless it’s a property that like the tornado’s damaged,” he said.

Ms. Eddins had earlier explained that limited timbering is also permitted under the terms of a typical conservation easement, subject to no-harvest zones in sensitive areas such as creek banks.

And she explained that such conservation easements with landowners are GLT’s primary tools in its preservation work.  “We specialize in helping the private sector protect land,” she said.

Ms. Eddins said that the federal government grants substantial tax breaks to landowners for giving up the right to develop their acreage.  “It’s a way to incentivize the private sector,” she said.

Asked about that incentive, Cornelison said that the conservancy benefit was a long-term and complicated one to claim but that he isn’t going into the red with the Angus cattle operation he runs on his other easements.   “It don’t make a fortune by any stretch of the imagination but it does make a little money,” he said.  

Ms. Eddins said that her group had discussed gifting the Crook acres to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources but that DNR had declined because it didn’t have the budget to maintain the land.  Neither, she said, does the land trust.  In fact, she said, GLT needs funds from the proposed Cornelison sale to pay off a loan of more than a million dollars it took out to facilitate its conservation work. 

She did not disclose what price, if any, is being discussed for the acreage.

Ms. Eddins said GLT couldn’t afford simply to donate the land to some other preservation group such as the Southeastern Cave Conservancy Inc. (SCCI), which she said her group is still working closely with to protect the myriad caves that lie beneath the Crook.  “Anybody we gifted it to, we’d need to get some foundation money from,” she said.

That would have been a consideration even with the DNR, she added. 

Anyway, she said:  “We want whoever ends up with this property to be a good steward.” 

That would knock out groups like the SCCI, she said, because:  “They don’t have deep pockets.  They can’t step up to pay $5000 to fix a dam.”

Ms. Eddins said she felt Cornelison would be a good steward.  “He’s here because I called him and asked him, would you please consider helping us out,” she said.

Dade Executive Chairman Ted Rumley, present at the meeting along with the  county’s district commissioners, questioned whether selling the land might incur repercussions from the banks that had donated foreclosed Preserve lots to the conservancy. 

Ms. Eddins said probably not; that though the trust was deeply grateful to the banks, their donations had been mutually beneficial. 

“When they gave us the land, it wasn’t a total gift,” she said.  “We accepted all the liability, and the liability was more than the value of the land.”

Now, she said, her group had solved liability problems well enough to obtain title insurance and was actively working on acquiring other Preserve parcels, as well as on fixing another potential legal issue, the Preserve’s currently inactive property owners association.

Attending the meeting additionally was Frank Hughes, a representative of Chattanooga’s Cornerstone Community Bank.  Cornerstone, like other banks, foreclosed on multiple Preserve lots after the housing market crash of 2008-9 revealed the on-paper-only nature of what had looked like robust sales there.  

But Hughes clarified that Cornerstone was not one of the banks that donated land to the conservancy.  Cornerstone still retains 80 to 90 Crook acres, he said, and:  “We’re going to sell it.”

Hughes said his bank was entitled to sell to any interested buyer for any purpose but that he was here to support Ms. Eddins and  the land trust.  “Anything that she does helps the area and helps the market,” he said.

Also supporting Ms. Eddins were the Lookout Mountain neighbors who had earlier watched doings at the Preserve with worry.  “I have total faith that Katherine is going to do the right thing,” said Lookout’s Nona Martini.  “Everybody’s happy that what they look down is not going to turn into some subdivision.”

But Dade Executive Ted Rumley, questioned after the meeting, said that the future of the Crook now seems solidly residential.  “They will build houses,” he said. “There’s no doubt.  That’s what they do.”

Dade County Executive pauses after the meeting at the Johnson’s Crook grave of Eugene Johnson.  The Crook’s latest contretemps started when Johnson sold the Crook to developer Southern Group, setting off a chain of events that ended in an FBI investigation, bankruptcies and a federal trial.  Johnson himself died in the middle of the scandal, of injuries sustained in a single-vehicle automobile crash.

But he said the number of houses must necessarily be limited – 50 to 75, say – by the difficulty of percolating septic tanks in the Crook.  “This is not an unknown place to the Environmental Division of the State of Georgia,” he said.

Tax-wise, said Rumley, those houses will be a boon to the county, as will the return of the 1800 acres to the tax rolls, even under a conservancy reduction.  “It’s better than zero,” he said.

Nevertheless, said Rumley, he had had high hopes of earlier talk of public access, and a foot trail that would link the Crook to Cloudland Canyon State Park    “Personally, not speaking as a government official, I would like to see where everyone could enjoy it,” he said.

robinfordwallace@tvn.net

Dade County Festival of Life

Kelly Moore poses with her family in this shot from the Festival of Life's Facebook page.  This year's festival will benefit the Moore family directly as they struggle with overwhelming medical bills, 

Saturday’s Dade Festival of Life To Benefit Local Individual Battling Cancer

By Robin Ford Wallace

            Dade is a county that takes care of its own.  This weekend, the county will put a slightly different spin on that tradition with Saturday’s “First Annual Dade County Festival of Life,” a music and family-fun event in New Salem to benefit a county resident battling cancer.

            Dade “First Lady” Diane Rumley, one of the festival’s organizers, developed the idea after spearheading last year’s local version of the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life.  Raising money for cancer research was wonderful, she said, but with friend and neighbor Kelly Moore quietly battling cancer for her life – and accumulating overwhelming medical bills in doing so – Ms. Rumley as well as other Dade citizens felt the need for something more up-close-and-personal.  Thus they set a date for a fundraiser, reserved the New Salem Community Center, and began lining up attractions.

            Well, besides being neighborly, Dade also has a rep for being musical – anybody ever heard of an act called the Forester Sisters? – and pretty soon the thing had snowballed into a full-blown country-style hootenanny.  Besides the Forester Sisters, scheduled acts include AoK, Wil Martin, the county’s favorite Dade County Boys, and let us not omit the First Lady’s First Gent, “Executator” Ted (“The Boss”) Rumley, Dade County’s own guitar-pickin’, bluegrass-singin’, joke-crackin’ barrel-of-fun-slash-head-of- government.

            A schedule of live music is available at the festival’s website, dadecountyfestivaloflife.com.

            Other events include a cornhole tournament and raffles for quilts, a donated gun safe and two decorative cornhole boards.

            The Dade County Festival of Life will be held between 11 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. this Saturday, April 5, at the New Salem Community Center.  If you can’t come, you may still donate online at the website – http://dadecountyfestivaloflife.com/donate -- or by check directly into an account set up for the purpose at the Bank of Dade.  Here’s the address:  Attn:  Joan Hixon, FBO Kelly Moore, Bank of Dade, P.O. Drawer 9, Trenton, Ga.  30752.  Make checks payable to Kelly Moore.

            For more information, you may leave a message at the website or call Cindy Cross at (423) 710-5885.  The Festival also has a Facebook page.

            As the name indicates, organizers expect the Festival of Life to become an annual tradition, to benefit a different local individual each year.

robinfordwallace@tvn.net 

March 15 Georgia Land Trust Party Old Home Week For Players in Preserve Saga

The scenic Waterwheel House was the site of a March 15 gala to celebrate the Georgia Land Trust's acquisition of the beautiful Johnson's Crook acreage that was once called The Preserve at Rising Fawn 

March 15 Cocktail Party Old Home Week For Preserve At Rising Fawn Players

By Robin Ford Wallace

The Georgia Land Trust, with local hosts Richard Rothman and Nona Martini, both of Lookout Mountain, threw a bluegrass-and-cocktail shindig at failed development the Preserve at Rising Fawn on March 15 to celebrate its ownership of much of the Preserve acreage.

But though the trust acquired another 40 or so acres in donated Preserve lots at the end of last year, Katherine Eddins, executive director of the conservancy, said the Ides of March gala was intended more to thank all parties involved in the acquisition of the Johnson’s Crook land than to announce anything new in the project.  “We’re exactly where we were,” said Ms. Eddins.

The trust has not yet worked out a conservancy plan for the land, she said, nor completed any arrangement for public access, though anyone wishing to see the Crook may apply by email for permission (katherine@galandtrust.org).

The Georgia Land Trust bought 1200 Preserve acres out of a bankruptcy sale last year, later acquiring more land in donations from banks that had foreclosed on it.  Ms. Eddins said the trust now holds about 1800 acres in all at the Crook and is finalizing the acquisition of 16 more on which it had retained a 120-day option at the time of the sale.  Meanwhile, she said, it continues to solicit additional parcels in donations.

“Once we figure out what we have, then we’ll start the process of figuring out how do we best protect it,” she said.     

Guests were encouraged to show up early to observe the beauty of the land in early spring, but the Ides party was also a good opportunity to observe some of the lead players in the Preserve’s long and convoluted saga. 

The gala was held at the Waterwheel House, once used as a Preserve clubhouse, now a rental property belonging to Debbie Johnson, widow of Eugene Johnson.  It was Eugene Johnson who originally sold the Crook land to developer Southern Group, retaining a mortgage on much of it.  When Dade County in 2009 threatened to seize Preserve land for unpaid taxes, it was Johnson who stepped in and paid the county to protect his investment.  Later, quarreling with the developer, Johnson periodically – and rather publicly – threatened to foreclose. 

Eugene Johnson died in an automobile accident in May 2010.  Now Debbie Johnson, after settling lawsuits brought by Johnson’s adult children as well as by Dade Magistrate Judge Joel McCormick, a former Southern Group employee and investor, owns parcels of Crook real estate including the Waterwheel House, which fronts on a scenic waterfall.  Ms. Johnson rents the site out as a venue for weddings and other special occasions – such as the Ides party.

Ms. Johnson attended the celebration, as did Georgia Land Trust Development Director Bobby Davenport, who in January 2012 spearheaded the conservancy’s first bid for the Crook land.  Dade County, by then attempting to collect another couple of years’ backlog of real estate taxes, had arranged a special auction exclusively for Preserve acreage.  Davenport attended that sale and bought for the conservancy – or thought he had bought – much of the same Preserve acreage the trust acquired last year. 

 That 2012 tax sale was invalidated, and Davenport’s check returned, when it emerged that Southern Group had transferred the land to TAS Properties, a sister corporation with the same ownership, and that TAS had declared bankruptcy a few days before the sale.

John Deffenbaugh, District 1's current member in the Georgia House of Representatives, now up for reelection, talks to party host Richard Rothman.   

 Also attending the party was Rick Jahn, trustee for that TAS bankruptcy case.  TAS had originally sought Chapter 11 reorganization protection, proposing during subsequent court proceedings a transfer of the land to yet another corporate entity.  But that sale was never approved, and after months of delays in which the legality of the Southern Group/TAS land transfer was debated, the case was converted to Chapter 7 bankruptcy, with Preserve assets to be liquidated to repay creditors. 

Thus it was Jahn – incidentally, the second trustee assigned to the case – who did finally arrange the sale of the Crook acreage to the Georgia Land Trust for $1.2 million in 2013, delivering to Dade its half-million dollars in accumulated back taxes and penalties, with the balance going to the three banks that were Southern Group’s other main creditors.

Jahn said he is still in the process of selling off to individual buyers smaller pieces of the Preserve that he retained from the Georgia Land Trust sale.  He said it was his responsibility as trustee to get as much for the property for creditors as he can, and that like an individual landowner he is allowed to spend money on improvements in order to get a better price.  For example, he is installing a septic system to make the old 1990s-built fishing cabins off Newsome Gap Road saleable.

“I’ve got a good bit of money still on hand,” said Jahn.  “I can afford a little septic system.”

Jahn said he has sold some lots and houses but still has three of those five older cabins for sale.

 Another chore Jahn is tidying up is replacing the Preserve’s property owners association (POA).  An older POA had thrown a further plot twist into the Preserve story by sending out letters in 2011 and 2012 demanding years of back membership fees assessed on individual lots – many of which were by now long-foreclosed and in the possession of banks – and by filing liens on the lots for nonpayment. 

Another politician who attended the Preserve party was Lamar Lowery (center), a once and would-be future Dade County commissioner.  Lowery is shown here with wife Kathy and, on the left, New Salem Fire Department and Friends of Cloudland Canyon volunteer Tom Pounds, who was clearly fascinated by the speeches.

Jahn explained that though that POA now seems to have subsided into history, and that in any case buying from an official bankruptcy sale erases many title and lien problems, he and the land trust still feel it prudent to address the POA issue.  “It’s been inactive, but theoretically the lots that have been platted could be assessed a fee every month even though nothing’s ever happened,” he said.

Jahn said the process would involve calling a meeting of the present owners, electing officers for a new POA and formally unseating any old ones.

Among those current owners, and also present at the Ides party, were representatives of the Southeastern Cave Conservancy Incorporated (SCCI), on hand to give attendees tours of the caves in Johnson’s Crook.  The SCCI is now the owner of one such cave, Lost Canyon Cave, and is partnering with the land trust toward comprehensive conservation of the Crook area.

It was cavers’ concern for the environmental impact development would have on the cave-riddled Crook land, together with the stack of liens for unpaid taxes at the county courthouse, that in 2009 drew the interest of a local newspaper reporter – who was also present at the gala – to the Preserve.  An Atlanta couple attending the Ides party said they had invested early in the Preserve, lost contact with the Southern Group as the financial situation went south, but managed to keep up with developments there through the years via the local newspaper’s investigation. 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service later made their own investigation, resulting in the May 2012 arrest of two Preserve principals, Southern Group partner Josh Dobson and bank loan masseur Paul Gott III.  Dobson and Gott were found guilty on federal wire fraud and money-laundering charges at a Chattanooga trial last April and are scheduled for sentencing at the end of this month after a long series of continuances.

At issue in the trial was the Southern Group’s Ponzi-esque no-money-down, no-monthly payment scheme for selling Preserve lots.  Prosecutors said Gott and Dobson, by slipping down payment money up front to “straw buyers” who in many cases never saw the lots, and certainly never planned to build on them, deceived banks into parting with $45 million in loans. 

The loans were secured only by the lots, mostly two to three acres and often without access to roads, electricity or public water, which had nevertheless been valued at $100,000 to $250,000.

In exchange for allowing the developer to arrange loans in their names, lot “buyers” were promised exponential profits when the developer bought the lots back.   Meanwhile, the developer promised to make monthly loan payments.

But when the housing market collapsed over the 2008-2009 period, lot sales stalled, income sagged, Southern Group stopped making the payments and the straw buyers were on the hook themselves.  Several testified at the trial that they had met financial and personal ruin as a result.

Lending officers also testified about the millions lost by their banks in the Preserve scheme.

Sentencing for Dobson and Gott is scheduled for 10 a.m. on April 29 at the federal courthouse in Chattanooga.  Court papers filed by Summers & Wyatt, the law firm retained by Dobson for the post-verdict phase of proceedings, refer to a sentencing guideline for the applicable counts as 188 to 235 months, which is to say up to 19 ½ years.

But the court papers were filed in support of Summers & Wyatt’s request for a “downward variance” of the guideline because:  “It does not differentiate between an individual running a Ponzi scheme and an individual like the defendant who was a land developer and trying to keep his business afloat while reinvesting the money he was earning back into the land.”

The pleading asserts:  “Dobson relied on others in the mortgage, banking, and real estate industries and did not set out with an intention of defrauding anyone.”

Dobson and Gott have remained free pending sentencing.

Neither at the 2013 trial nor in subsequent proceedings have either prosecutors or defense attorneys mentioned the two previous projects – Long Island Overlook in Alabama and The Cumberlands at Sewanee in Tennessee – in which Southern Group sold lots via a similar program, for developments that similarly did not materialize. 

robinfordwallace@tvn.net

Recreators in brightly-colored plastic boats enjoy the lake at the former Preserve.  Bankruptcy trustee Rick Jahn says that he's sold off some of the Preserve's existing cabins, which were not included in the land trust's acquisition, but that others remain up for grabs  Jahn says buying from a bankruptcy sale erases most of the title and lien problems that may have discouraged earlier attempts to market the properties.

Dade County Board of Education

Morgan Bradford (left) is honored for her participation in the school system's mentoring program.  Presiding is Cherie Swader (right), interim superintendent. 

Board of Ed Invites All To Take Superintendent Search Survey; But Good Luck With That

By Robin Ford Wallace

Monday’s Dade County Board of Education meeting was short and routine, but the board did adopt the 171-day school calendar presented at a work session last week by acting Schools Superintendent Cherie Swader. 

That means three instructional days will be added back into the 2014-15 scholastic year, a step toward restoring the full 180 Dade students enjoyed – or not, according to individual temperament – before the state began the series of funding cuts that have put local public schools over the financial barrel.

Board Chairwoman Carolyn Bradford reported that brochures had been sent out and advertisements posted online in the system’s search for a new superintendent.  Ms. Swader is interim head of the system as a permanent replacement is sought for Shawn Tobin, whom the board showed the door rather abruptly in February.   

Ms. Bradford also said the board had posted a “Superintendent Search Survey,” in which all are invited to furnish their input, at the B of E’s website, www.dadecountyschools.org.

“That’s basically where we’re at right now,” said Ms. Bradford.
The school system's website says the survey is open until March 21, but The Planet made two stabs at accessing it and found that earlier, it was described as currently unavailable, while today it was listed as closed as of March 18.  

Acting Superintendent Swader said the system’s numbers guru, Doug Eza, will be in town this week to work on a system budget for the upcoming year.  He will appear at the board’s regular meeting at 6 p.m. on April 14 to go over the budget.

Also scheduled to appear at a 5 p.m. work session before the April 14 meeting is Tony Cook, facilities director at the state B of E offices.  Cook is to advise the Dade system on obtaining funds to replace its ailing heating and air conditioning system.

Ms. Swader conducted ceremonies honoring student speech award winners and participants in the school system’s mentoring program.

After an unusually brief executive, or closed-door session, the board approved the hiring of one teacher and several substitute teachers.

Ms. Swader as previously requested by at-large member David Powell, provided resale or so-called “blue book” value for a school car she wishes to replace:  $4,796 resale, $3431 trade-in.

The car and one other, now used for staff travel, were originally bought for driver’s education, a program the school system later decided it could not afford.

robinfordwallace@tvn.net