After all, 70 percent of the land in this rural Delaware Bayshore town is tax-exempt and preserved from development. Downe Township residents have long complained that outsiders, such as the state government and land conservancies, control most of the land in town.

"We bought it to save it for ratables," Blizzard said. "Somebody had to buy this land so it didn't go to Green Acres."

Critics are skeptical. They question whether Blizzard, who became mayor in January, months after the deals closed, used her political clout to get huge tax breaks on the land. School Board President Stultz Taylor asked the state Attorney General to investigate.

"The fact is, right, wrong or indifferent, the town is going to lose out in taxes," Taylor said.

"It's good to have the space, the open space as it is," said John Murphy, mayor of Dennis Township, where about half the land is preserved. "But it handicaps us as far as (tax) revenue. Would I want it any different? I don't think so."

Blizzard and her husband didn't plan on starting their own personal land preservation program. Three years ago, they went looking for 30 or 40 acres near their home.

U.S. Silica wanted to sell. The sand mining company had begun closing mining operations in town in 2005 and had an impending deal with Green Acres. Blizzard and friend Kevin Nocon, who was also seeking land, could bid, but there was a catch.

"The sand company wouldn't sell just what we wanted," Nocon said. "We had to buy the whole thing."

So Blizzard and Nocon found partners. Their group eventually included three state troopers, two people now on the township committee and multiple limited liability corporations with different ownership combinations. Much of the land was marsh, but there were also plenty of woodlands.

In 2007, they closed the land acquisitions. The Blizzards, Nocons and Wilford family each bought land near their homes. Some tracts had actually belonged to their families before U.S. Silica bought it decades ago.

Most of the land had been assessed and taxed as mining lands, but the new owners have deed restrictions preventing mining. The group filed tax appeals to lower the rates.

Nocon, Jack Blizzard, and Jeremy Wilford - the three state troopers of the group - each filed appeals last year and sought extraordinarily low reassessments. For example, Nocon requested an assessment of $1,500 for a 75-acre tract of wetlands near Turkey Point that had been accessed at $47,200. The county tax board eventually agreed to $27,400. Jack Blizzard requested his 3-acre patch on Tom's Bridge Road be reassessed from $24,600 to $300; the tax board approved $1,400.

They missed the deadline for 2007 tax appeals on some tracts. Rather than repeat the process in 2008 and have to refund excess taxes, Downe Township Tax Assessor Doris Sanza chose to reassess them without appeal, a process that has no formal documentation.

"There's a period of time where the public is allowed to meet with the assessor and bring whatever proof they have and negotiate with the assessor," said Cumberland County Tax Administrator Patricia Belmont, whose board backed the reassessments.

Overall, Blizzard's group reaped tens of thousands of dollars in tax refunds and cuts. Some reassessments dropped land values by 80 percent.

Such savings weren't unprecedented. Other local landowners had seen similar savings after buying mined lands from U.S. Silica, according to county tax records.

Still, this infuriated Blizzard's political critics, particularly Taylor. When the two served together on the school board, Blizzard, who works as a school business administrator in Lindenwold, Camden County, accused Downe school officials of keeping a "slush fund" that resulted in higher school taxes. She also led campaigns to defeat school budgets.

Now, Blizzard and her partners were benefiting from tax reassessments that would reduce the tax base but, in some cases, had no paper trail.

Blizzard said Taylor's complaints were a personal vendetta.

"It is not a vendetta," Taylor said. "We've had our backside handed to us. Now I'm cutting four teachers and putting a budget together. This is because of the land issue and the assessments being dropped."

Taylor questioned whether the Blizzards were mining their land, contradicting the justification for the reassessments. Township Committeeman and former mayor Chet Riland photographed a truck hauling sand from one property. Jack Blizzard said they were just removing old stockpiles, and that's not mining. Zoning officer Bob Campbell said that might be considered mining.

In turn, Blizzard questioned land deals made by Taylor and Steve Fleetwood, a local businessman and former committeeman who has land assessed at $29 an acre.

"She's a really smart girl," Fleetwood said. "She's going to bend you and tell you exactly what she wants to tell you. She can sell daggone ice to Eskimos."

Jean Nocon, Kevin Nocon's mother, said the group's intent was simply to "save the land" and develop some of it.

"Here it is, we're turned out to be villains," Jean Nocon said. "And we're not."

What they may be are pioneers. In Cumberland County, only Hopewell Township has a local open space preservation program.

Now, so does Downe Township - sort of.

"Nobody gave us that land back there," Blizzard said. "If someone wanted it, they should have gotten their checkbook out. We paid more than Green Acres."

"If they want to buy it now," Kevin Nocon added, "they can buy it."

To e-mail Daniel Walsh at The Press:

DWalsh@pressofac.com