Asked by El Commercio last month what “household task” awaits him during his “summer break,” U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO) replied, “I have to build a fence for the cows this summer.”
It’s a strange comment because Evans currently has no cattle on the property, having removed his three Longhorns from his land and put them under the care of a neighbor, who’s said he’ll give them back to Evans someday.
Evans’ office declined an offer to explain the comment about building a fence, including whether he’d finished it, why he’s building it, and when he plans to put any cattle back on his land, if ever.
Evans’ comment about the cow fence aligns with his long-running practice of presenting himself in his rural district as a “rancher” and “beef producer” despite raising just “two or three cows a year” as a hobby.
Such bovine self-promotion led former Colorado Congressman John Salazar, who owned about 500 head of cattle when he entered Congress in 2004, to characterize Evans as “all hat and no cattle.”
Another explanation for his comment about his fence could be that it’s meant to signal his intent to return the Longhorns to his Weld County property and retain his agricultural land designation and the tax break that comes with it.
“He doesn’t have to have cattle out there every single year, but his intent is supposed to be to be farming or ranching it to the best of his ability, every year,” said Weld County Assessor Brenda Dones, adding that the law gives assessors some flexibility in their designations. “… But if you go multiple years without any farming or ranching, then the assessor should be changing that property when we know.”
“The hard part is, in order to receive an agricultural classification, you have to use it for three years before you can get the agricultural classification,” said Dones. “So once you lose it, you have to work for three years before you can get it back. You have to show that you’re agricultural for three years before you get it back. So it does make the decision a little bit more difficult.”
If Evans loses the agricultural designation on his land, he’ll be paying more tax.
Dones provided a “very rough” estimate of how much money Evans is saving thanks to his agricultural-land designation.
“I would want it to be a rough estimate, because we haven’t done any official review on it,” she said, adding that Weld County is one of the few counties that keep two values in an effort to be more efficient.
If it weren’t designated as agricultural, Evans’ approximately 17 acres of land would be valued at between $18,000 and $20,000 per acre, said Dones, making the market value of Evans’ land $306,000 to $340,000. This range would be multiplied by the residential tax rate of 6.15% to get a range for the basis of Evans’ tax if his land were not agricultural. That works out to $18,686 – $20,910.
“So instead of [the local assessed value] being just over $2,000, it would be $20,000,” said Dones, who then multiplied the amount by the local mill levy to conclude that Evans would pay “about $1,000 more in tax, and that was all rough rounding.”
Evans paid $1,413.06 in tax on his property in 2025, according to county records, so the increase could raise his taxes to around $2,400. Thanks to the agricultural designation of his land, he’s saved thousands in taxes since he bought the property in 2018.
“The agricultural land tax break is appropriately used by the Evans family because the land is used for agricultural purposes,” Evans’ spokeswoman Delanie Bomar told the Colorado Times Recorder in June via email.
She also said at the time: “While the Left wastes time and taxpayer dollars questioning the validity of the Evans’ family farm, Congressman Gabe Evans is fighting serious battles to make Colorado a better place to live, work, and raise a family.” She added that Evans meets a federal definition of a rancher.
Evans’ property had the agricultural designation well before he bought it — at least since 1995 — and will remain agricultural “unless there’s proof that it’s not,” said Dones, whose office will not rescind an agricultural designation until it has evidence that the use has changed, and that’s hard to get. “So, for us, sometimes it’s hard to know, because it’s a big county,” she said.
For tax purposes, the value of Evans’ house, which is located on the property, is driven by the market, like other residential real estate. The value of his 17 acres of agricultural land, on the other hand, is assessed according to the profit that a rancher or farmer could potentially make based on possible uses of the land — not necessarily from the actual use of it. This potential profit could be from crop or beef sales — or even from renting the land to another farmer. The agricultural land valuation is based on 10 years of data to keep the taxes “stable over time.” It’s a “preferential value” for farmers and ranchers and is meant to encourage farmers and ranchers to stay on their property, says Dones.
“I’m the assessor for Weld County, which is a big agricultural community, and I’m a believer that it’s important to have this preferential value for agricultural land, especially in a place like Weld County that’s very high growth, especially on the I-25 corridor,” said Dones. “We will lose all agricultural land, and it just changes the character of your community. And so if we can keep farmers and ranchers farming and ranching, I think we should. So I’m appreciative that legislators haven’t eliminated this preferential value. But a thousand bucks for this property owner? It might be a drop in the bucket. It might not even matter, right?”
