Gilford somehow ended up being owner of record of lot at city-owned Laconia Airport

GILFORD — The Laconia Airport Authority is working with the town of Gilford to unravel and rewind a little piece of history regarding the ownership of a 1-acre lot inside a 400-acre airport.

According to Gilford Town Administrator Scott Dunn and Laconia Airport Manager Marv Everson, a 1.1-acre plot of land was leased from the authority to an aviation company, many years ago.

When that company fell behind on its taxes in the early 1990s, the town of Gilford acquired, by tax deed, the undeveloped piece of property in 1993. The problem is, the company didn't own the property — the City of Laconia, through the Laconia Airport Authority, did.

The city owns the land and the airport authority leases it as one of its revenue sources. Because the property is in Gilford, the town's zoning, taxing, and zoning laws apply and a person or company pays taxes on both the value of the lease and the value of any buildings on it. In this case, there never was any hanger or building constructed under the aviation company's ownership so taxes were assessed only on the leased value of the land.

When the taxes went unpaid for three years, the town took the property by tax lien.

"What astonishes me about it, and it's not worth looking deeper, is that the city had a piece of property legally taken from it and never knew it," said current Laconia Mayor Ed Engler who serves, by virtue of being mayor, as chair of the Laconia Airport Authority Board.

And for reasons nobody can answer, the mistake was never caught until recently.

Fast forward to recent times.

The current lessee of the property built a hanger in 1999 and has been taxed by the town of Gilford for both the value of his lease and the value of his hanger. What baffles Everson is that the building apparently went through the entire Gilford planning and permitting process but everybody presumed the property belonged the city.

When the current lessee also began to fall behind on his taxes, said Everson, he recently went to his bank to get a loan to pay his taxes and planned to use the hanger as collateral. When the bank did a title search it discovered that the town of Gilford owns the property and not the Laconia Airport Authority.

The issue before both bodies now is how to fix the situation.

Yesterday Dunn said that as far as he's concerned the problem can be rectified by having the town give the lot back to the city and the airport authority by a quit claim deed or a release of deed.

He said he is working with Everson and the Airport Authority to make that happen.

The town of Gilford has three representatives on the Airport Authority board, including Selectman Dale Chan Eddy.