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Resident alleges St. Louis County improperly treated private land as tax-forfeited, raises cartway dispute at public listening session
Summary
At a Jan. 2026 public listening session, resident Chester Cohen alleged county attorney Barb Ross claimed a 50-foot strip of his property was tax-forfeited without supporting records and criticized a cartway hearing that he said favored a neighboring family; no county official responded during the session.
Chester Cohen, a resident who spoke at St. Louis County’s first public listening session of 2026, alleged that county officials wrongly treated a strip of his private land as tax-forfeited and that the county’s cartway process improperly favored a neighboring family.
Cohen told the meeting he had asked the board to watch an 18-minute video and said "county attorney, Barb Ross, inappropriately claimed a 50 foot strip of land as tax state tax forfeited property," adding the county presented no records showing state ownership. He said the evidence he provided to the court showed the land was private and "was not maintained by the county, was not a road," but that officials nonetheless treated it as public property.
The allegation centers on a cartway matter Cohen said was heard by the county. He told the board that, during a subsequent cartway hearing, he heard Commissioner Frank call Commissioner Dahlberg "a little devil" while discussing fill activity. Cohen also quoted Brian Hutchinson as saying it was "more convenient for him to cross our property than go all the way around," which Cohen described as part of what he called "the complete manipulation of the whole situation."
Cohen described procedural concerns about the cartway statute, saying two rods equals 33 feet and arguing that if a petitioner is landlocked the property owner should have an opportunity to contest that status. He said the county attorney's office asked the board to approve a resolution that claimed the Hutchinson family was landlocked and entitled to a cartway across his property, and that the county should have requested a 33-foot easement rather than pursue what he described as claiming the land as tax forfeited.
Cohen said he will return in the spring with letters sent to the county board and that he plans to post related material to his YouTube channel. The transcript of the session records his statements but does not include any response from county staff or elected officials during the meeting.
No motions, votes, or formal board actions on the matter were recorded during the public comment period. The moderator closed public comment after Cohen and noted participants would be present until the scheduled selection of new officers.
