Incline beach access fight leads to questionable land sales
By Anjeanette Damon, Reno Gazette-Journal
Five years ago, Washoe County handed 87 parcels of land over to the Incline Village General Improvement District, forgiving more than $800,000 in unpaid property taxes on the land in exchange for a promise from Incline Village to use the land as publicly owned open space.
The lots, most of them unbuildable scraps of land, had wound up on Washoe County’s delinquent tax rolls because the owners hadn’t paid property taxes for at least three years. Under state law, those parcels can be given to another government agency if that agency will use the land for a specific public purpose.
But after telling the county the land would be used for open space, an IVGID official, without approval from the agency’s elected board or public notice, sold three parcels to private buyers, a Reno Gazette Journal investigation found.
