The County Tripled My Ranch’s Property Taxes Overnight. The Woman Who Signed the Assessment Came to See It in Person

My name is Marcus Reed. I’m 50 years old, and for twenty years I flew helicopters for the United States Marine Corps.

Iraq. Afghanistan. Disaster relief in Haiti and the Philippines. I’ve landed in sandstorms and typhoons. I’ve carried men home who didn’t make it, and men who did.

When I retired, I used my savings, my military pension and a VA loan to buy two thousand acres of cattle land in the high desert outside Sedona, Arizona.

Red rock cliffs. Juniper. A creek that runs in spring. A sky so big it makes you feel like you’re still flying.

I run about two hundred head of cattle. I keep an old Bell helicopter in the hangar that I use to check the herd and, once in a while, to help the county with search and rescue.

I live alone. I’ve been divorced for nine years. The military was hard on my marriage. I don’t blame her.

The ladies at the feed store in Cottonwood like to tell me I look like a recruiting poster. I tell them the poster is twenty years out of date.

Sedona has changed a lot since I bought the place. Celebrities. Resorts. Luxury homes on every ridge. Land that sold for a few thousand dollars an acre now sells for a fortune.

Last January, the county assessor’s letter arrived.

My ranch had been reappraised.

Under the new valuation, it was worth eleven million dollars.

My property tax bill tripled.