Conservancy’s Technical Services Director Takes Part in Preservation Conference Roundtable
Conservancy Director of Technical Services, Alex Herrera
The Conservancy’s Director of Technical Services, Alex Herrera, participated in a preservation easements roundtable at the annual National Preservation Conference held in Nashville Tennessee on the week of October 12. The theme of this year’s conference was “Sustaining the future in harmony with our pasts”. In addition to educational sessions on preservation and open space easements, other sessions dealt with green design guidelines and the special challenges of preserving the recent past.
The preservation easements roundtable, which took place Saturday morning, provided an overview of how easement-holding organizations tackle challenging issues in their programs with a focus on enforcement concerns and management practices. It also presented updates on recent IRS activity including audits of charitable deductions connected with easement donations.
The speakers also addressed the application of best practices in the operation of their program and the audience raised a variety of questions about the management of preservation easement programs in their hometowns.
The session was moderated by Ross Bradford from the Trust’s Legal Department who opened the session with a recap of recent and ongoing court cases from around the country. These cases will doubtless set the new ground rules for how appraisers will set the values of preservation easements from now on.
In addition to Mr. Herrera, the other panelists were Winslow Hastie from the Historic Charleston Foundation and Jim Peters from Landmarks Illinois.
