After bidding Thursday morning on three troubled Fish Creek parcels in foreclosure, Rocky Mountain Bank decided to postpone the auction.

Tina Martinez, a lawyer for the bank, said Rocky Mountain Bank decided to postpone the foreclosure auction to allow time for more research on the property.

“The bank sent a letter this afternoon stating it wanted to postpone the sale and make sure the T’s are crossed and I’s are dotted,” Teton County Sheriff’s Office Civil Process Supervisor Cheryl Chidester said Thursday.

Rocky Mountain Bank holds the mortgage on the parcels, which belong to the Kip Konigsberg family. The parcels went to auction Thursday morning with starting bids of about $3.1 million.

At the auction, Rocky Mountain Bank was the lone bidder. It made bids of $230,000 for one 23.3-acre parcel and $23,000 each for a 2.25-acre parcel and a 2.24-acre parcel, Chidester said. A 4.26-acre property with a house on it is not in the county’s foreclosure process.

County records show the mortgage on that piece, with Chase Home Finance, was released, which means paid and satisfied, in August 2007.

Martinez said her clients want to do more research on the parcels, which are currently tied up in an appeal of a Teton County Planning Department ruling.

Konigsberg is appealing to county commissioners the county planning director’s decision from January that denied Konigsberg a boundary adjustment on some of the parcels.

Teton County’s planning department rejected the request, arguing that the New York lawyer violated state law and county land-development regulations when he used the state “family exemption” to state subdivision rules to divide what was originally a 32-acre parcel.

The Konigsberg family bought the 32-acre parcel and subdivided it in 2006 using the exemption. The state exemption law allows subdivisions of land to be made outside most county regulations if the property transfers are between or among family members.

The intent of the statute is to make it easier for ranching families to break out parcels for their children. In Teton County, officials fear land speculators can abuse the exemption.

Deputy County Attorney Jim Radda said Thursday the planning department and Konigsberg have made oral arguments via telephone before a hearing officer from Cheyenne. Radda said both parties are waiting for that hearing officer to make a recommendation to Teton County commissioners.

Meanwhile, the county treasurer and Deputy County Attorney Keith Gingery are considering what it would mean if the planning department is successful against the appeal.

In August, three people bought the right to pay Konigsberg’s property taxes on the three parcels because he did not pay them.

During the annual tax sale, individuals can buy the liens from owners who have not paid taxes. Then, if the lienholders pay the taxers for five years, they will own the properties. But Konigsberg also could pay those individuals back, with 18 percent interest, and retain his properties.

Gingery said officials have talked about what would happen if the planning department wins the appeal. Mainly, whether that would mean the property reverts to one parcel.

And if the four parcels revert to one, Gingery said officials have also wondered what that would mean for the tax-sale holders.

If the properties are combined through the appeal to the county, it’s likely that property taxes would decrease, he said. But the lienholders would have to be reimbursed the full amount they paid, which may mean the county has to make up the difference, he said.

“It’s bizarre,” Gingery said. “It may not even be an issue. ... The bank is probably going through the same conversations of ‘What does this mean?’”