america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we'll start the meeting with the with a public hearing to approve changes
to chapter 2150 the county code of ordinance regarding regulating the use and display and sale of cannabis and cannabis delivered or derived products in the county to address lower potency hemp edible products shagger
good afternoon commissioners my name is Shagger Chowry i'm an associate director here at Homemstead County Public Health i just have a quick few slides here to kind of just recap what we're uh what we're doing here with our latest update to our cannabis ordinance so again just
to hone in the focus here is really around low potency and we're put updating our language in our ordinance to encompass some of those uh requirements so um so just minimum required updates so just based off of state statute and as uh the the rules
around cannabis are approved so we're going to have to register low potency uh retailers so that encompasses about 120 uh retailers um that sell low potency so that'll be for all jurisdictions except
Byron and Pine Island um as they've uh opted to do it on their own behalf um so also in there is enforcement and penalties so we will be responsible specifically for any violations of our local ordinances and then as well as
conducting age compliance checks so um again this will be housed in our environmental health unit within public health they're responsible for doing tobacco compliance checks already so they'll be following kind of a similar suit and um they have a handle on kind of recruiting youth and conducting these
compliance checks all other product compliance checks um for these low potency products will be conducted by the office of cannabis management um as well as any complaints for any of these establishments as well would be run through the office of cannabis management so really uh we're kind of
honed in on any local ordinance violations andor violations of those age compliance checks um kind of above and beyond that base level um in terms of ordinance language that we're proposing is a penalty for
age compliance checks so any sales that occur under the age of 21 so we followed um exactly our kind of pathway for tobacco compliance checks so the first violation would be 300 a $300 fine a second violation within a 36-month
period would be 600 third within that 36-month period would be a thousand with a 7-day suspension and then a fourth would be a $1,000 fine with a 30-day suspension um again that's all within that third 36-month uh time frame so no
registered uh we also propose that again no registered low potency edible retailer may allow on-site consumption unless it meets these three criteria so again the product must be purchased within the establishment all consumers must be the age of 21 or older and then
retailers shall not sell products to obviously impaired consumers um and then the last one is just like uh that's just cl building clarity within our ordinance and it kind of builds off of the clean indoor air act as well as our tobaccof free workplace ordinance as well and
that's just pro prohibiting all smoking within the retail establishments so again these products can be vaped and uh can be smoked although that's again not allowed per state statute but it can happen so we're just kind of u hammering
home that point so with um did I just go back yes I did all right um so with that I would entertain any questions others I would ask uh to
open the public hearing any questions before we open the public hearing mr chair I I just have one uh there's decisions by made by the county director of public health and so denying an application u may be appealed
and and it talks about chapter 4,000 of our ordinances relative to administrative enforcement and appeals procedure who who who is who who are those people is is that us is a county board the the appeal body for the
appeals process you want to speak to that i I can comment on that Commissioner we set up an administrative appeals process where we have three contract attorneys from uh Rochester that serve as our hearing officers so basically if there's a denial it will go
to that administrative hearing officer then for for an appeal hearing thank you very much any others before we open the public okay all right all right i guess we'll open the public hearing but anybody like to speak for or against this ordinance
here's another chance if you want okay anybody else like to speak for or against third time anybody like to speak i would okay we got somebody online great go ahead state your name and and uh make your statement
can you hear me oh me i thought you were referring to the other person my apologies i'm referring to you online my apologies can you uh can you see me now i don't think they Well I don't know if they brought you They're Yep they're bringing you on screen there you go okay
wonderful great good morning commissioners my name is Jesse O'Driscoll i am a uh citizen of the community lifelong Rochesterite um now on the citizens advisory of transit and I just wanted to say uh it
is a challenging situation you find yourselves in and I think many of us in the community understand that uh the legislation passed in 2023 was not something that most of us uh expected even many people who support the recreational use of cannabis uh because
of its specific dictates on local levels so we understand that's a difficult situation to be in um that being said uh things might not always be as cut and dried for local governments as the states like to make you think uh we want
you to know that if you feel any reason that you might want to go about things a different way there's a long history in this country of local governments jostling with state governments in order to uh bring about some sort of situational compromise or figure out
what is constitutional or not uh whether it's uh Fulton County resisting the state of Georgia's efforts to control their elections a few years ago or um you know several other examples throughout history such as uh sanctuary cities and states where the uh
government uh state government disagrees with them so all I'm going to say here is um if you ever feel like you don't want to do everything that you feel pressured to do there is lots of support for you in that if you want to go about
going things that way thank you thank you Jesse all right any other comments i'll say it one more time any comments all right i'll entertain a motion move to close the public hearing second okay we have a motion a second
all in favor say I i opposed carries okay thoughts mr chair I would move the uh ordinance i believe it's 25 related to uh to cannabis uh I would move approval of that ordinance second okay we have a
motion second i'll entertain one more time for discussion hearing none all in favor say I i opposed carries thank you mr chair I want to thank Shagger and the
public health department for working on these important for the public to know this isn't the first time we've we've seen and discussed all these all these requirements within the ordinance we've had very thorough discussions so thank you all right next up consent
agenda approve the state county board minutes for March 18th approve gambling permit for ridability enter into detour agreement agreement 1058066 with Mandot approve outdoor warning siren joint powers agreement
approve the consent agenda second motion second all in favor say I i i oppose carries all right no discussion decision items so next upformational item 2025 commercial property update
hello commissioners i'm Mary Heft director of property records and licensing julie is going to be bringing forward the 2025 commercial update and it is followup to information you received in a Friday report this is going to be highle information to bring
you up to date on where we are with some of our commercial properties if you remember some of you have been here um for the last two years we've been searching for appraisers we've had a very difficult time getting the staff i've worked a lot and Julie we've worked a lot with the HR trying to figure out a
way to to get more staff in umstead county however that isn't just Mstead County this is going on all over the state so struggling with staff and qualified staff commercial staff has a special nuance and not everybody wants to be a commercial appraiser so I just
want to make sure if anybody wants a more detailed discussion or understanding of how things work in the property tax system we are happy to meet with you at another time or just reach out thank you thank you Julie good morning commissioners whoops good
morning um I'm Julie Hackman the associate director of property records and licensing as well as the county assessor with me is Jason McCaslin um he's been with our office for about a year he is the deputy county assessor and the commercial supervisor um you all know um last week
our valuation notices and tax statements were put in the mail um people are now starting to see them in their mailboxes we've gotten a few calls you might as well you may as well um and so we thought it was a prime time just to give you an update on what our commercial properties have done
considering we've seen some properties with considerable increases this past year see if I can mess this up so uh the assessor's office the job and what we do is is heavily rooted in statute um a lot
of what we do the processes um the requirements that we have are over overseen by the Minnesota Department of Revenue um and so we look to them as for guidance as to our overall arching whether we're in compliance um and we'll go through a little later of what I mean
by when we're in compliance um there are a couple of notable statutes that we um can point out the first one um you'll see on the the slide is 27301 there's two notable pieces in that the first one is that the county assessor's office is required to
physically inspect each property at at least one time every five years that doesn't mean that we can't go out every year if we have a certain property type that is um leaps and bounds um lots of sales um changes in the market that type of thing we can go out more than one
time in that five years statute just says at least one time in a 5-year period the second piece of that is no changes in valuation or classification can be made after the board of review or the county of board of equalization has adjourned it's always in June and this
year for the county board it's June 17th so you'll see as we go through this presentation um a lot of what we are going to stress is we want to talk to people before that time comes because once that time has arrived it's um nearly impossible outside of tax court
um in order to help them address some of their concerns the second statute at on the bottom is 27311 um this says that assessors must value the property at a value that represents what that property
would sell for in an open market armslength transaction as of January 2nd of every year so you might hear us now in a future talk about our assessment date properties are assessed as of every January 2nd for taxes payable the
following year so for this example the assessment that we just completed on January 2nd 2025 the values established on that date will be used in the calculation of taxes and payable 26 so Minnesota is a current year tax
date based on a value the prior year this next statute is in regards to sales ratio compliance now we could talk a long time on sales ratio compliance but I'll try to keep it high level the sales ratio for our office essentially evaluates the accuracy and the
uniformity of the assessments so that we ensure compliance and what I mean by that in the second line is it measures the relationship between the appraised value and the actual sale price so for example if a property we have an estimated market value of of $9,000 on
it it sells for $10,000 we're at 90% of that sale price our value is Conversely if it's if we have $6,000 on the property it sells for 10,000 our sales ratio is at 60% state statute requires that our
ratio on each property be between 90 and 105% it gives us a 10 15% leeway um part of that reason um is because when you look at a mass it's a mass appraisal system so when you look at a grouping of parcels um one would have to assume that
if you look at a median ratio of all that group of parcels and say you shoot for a 95% ratio 50% of them will be above 50% will be a below so you have that 90 to 105% a notable piece in this section of the
statute is that our sales study is not necessarily what most people would assume it would be when we take calls from residents taxpayers um they talk a lot about current uh sales in establishing the market value something that just happened within the last
couple of weeks or the last couple of months based on the procedures set forth by the Minnesota Department of Revenue our sales study is actually up to 18 months prior to when we set values so I'm going to give you a series of of dates october
1st of of 2023 to September 30th of 2024 those are the sales that we used to determine market values for January 2nd of 2025 for taxes payable in 2026
so it goes back to by the time you pay taxes on that value the sales could be up to two and a half years old so it's really hard for people to understand why we use um sales so far back part of it is this process that we'll be having in April when we talk about the board's
equalization people have the ability to appeal their value without that if we used current sales and just went to the the um using that value for taxes there would be no appeal process um we are historians we use values that were that and sales that transacted in prior we
don't necessarily predict what they're going to have in the future as we talked about just a minute ago the sales ratio has to be maintained between 90 and 105% of the sale price to comply with the requirements set forth by the Department of Revenue and this is all over the state it's the it's the
same concept for every county um throughout Minnesota um an example and this is an actual sale that had happened um within the city of Rochester a property with an estimated market value of
595,300 sold for a million2 resulting in a sales ratio of 49.6% far outside of that 90 to 105% although we know not every sale it's mass appraisal it's not a perfect system not every sale will hit between
that 90 and 105% but really if we look at that percent range that ratio or that value should have come in at a million80 between a million80 and a million260 okay so this is where it comes in this is why we're in front of you having a
conversation um in regards to the property uh when we did revalue Jason and his team took a look at um the sales that we've had um if you take a look at um commercial sales versus industrial sales apartment sales what I mean by
going down a rabbit hole we could talk a lot about sales ratio one of the requirements of a sales ratio study to be a good study or to be an accurate study is six sales you have to have a minimum of six sales before the department of revenue will um hold you
to the compliance of the 90 to 105 minnesota still is a state where you have to value it 100% um but you have to have at least six sales of a property type so let's say industrial property and we're going to use that as an example um in order for
them to issue any if we don't meet that 90% compliance in order for them to issue any compliance measures on us like if we were at 85% they could say "We're going to add 5% to those values because you didn't meet that compliance." um in the industrial because we're
usually somewhere around five sales we usually don't have a compliance measure but when you look historically at this year's five sales last year's five sales the year before's five sales now over three years we have 15 sales so now we have a study and enough sales to take a
look at so that we can start applying what we're seeing in the sales towards the values um in this particular one industrial properties was the property type that came to this to the the top of the list the ones that we knew that we
were further out of compliance on so that's one of the property types that we focused on this year and taking a look to get them back into compliance good i'm sorry go ahead can I ask so I'm trying to get timelines straight in my mind yep you said we're out of
compliance let's say we're out by 5% we had the enough sales and the state says we're going to add 5% what is the timeline for that to happen because you're valuing everything on January 2nd does it happen after you do that valuation on January 2nd they look at
your compliance and then between that time and when the tax statements go out they would have added the percentage if we were out of compliance they would have told us that in order to get in compliance yes we would have had to add that so the timeline is we create the values in in January we send notices around March right so taxpayers would
have gotten the notice um and then county board meets in middle of June state board of equalization actually meets the beginning of June so at the beginning of June every year when the state board of equalization meets department revenue and their compliance officers meet they would have come to a
conclusion they would have said you didn't meet the requirements set forth by this portion of the statute therefore we will order you to add X number of percent in order to meet that compliance and it's typically in five so if you're at 89.8% you're not 90% the the least
they'll do is 5% so we always want to avoid that piece of it um and then the county board meets so we have choices we can either send new notices out to everybody or they get their notification when they get their truth and taxation in November that the value had increased
yeah uh luckily we haven't gotten to that point we haven't since I've been here we've not had that happen so um it's been a long time so um by you know doing some of this we're trying to avoid that happening in the future uh this
slide essentially uh goes over some of the different property types that our commercial division took a look at this year um and reviewed the sales that had happened um and determined what needed to happen to our values to get them into compliance compliance meaning in line
with what what actual properties are selling for and during this sales period for that assessment year you'll notice that uh the industrial properties um increased probably the most uh we also had some hotels uh that we did sea
stores meaning convenience stores quick trips you know Circle Ks that type of thing uh restaurants uh clinic space and then forplexes on our apartments forplexes actually this is the third year that we've increased their values
double digits based on sales and when we look at the sales coming in we're still low we're we're going to have tore do it again next year we're going to have to make that part of our revalue so you have anything to add on that in anticipation knowing that we were
making some very large increases to these property owners we wanted to um make sure that we drew attention um to that point to these property owners to give them ample time to call our office contest their value do what they needed
to do be to be comfortable um or to get the answers they needed in regards to what that valuation increase entailed and was about um and so um I think part of the Friday report you had seen the letter that we had sent out to property owners but about three weeks before valuation notices were mailed we
actually sent letters to 626 um commercial properties that saw prop increases in valuation over 20% um the first probably week we've pulled in a number of different property owners to date we've heard 57 property
owners 58 property owners as of this morning have contacted our office um so about 9% um which is not a lot um we're kind of hoping that um it with the valuation notices now hitting mailboxes they'll take a look at both of them and they'll
give our office a call and answer any questions um conversations have been good in the conversations that we've had thus far um a lot of the um a lot of the concerns I think initially over the percent increase um or the increase in
tax which has nothing to do with this percent increase because the taxes are based on a value from last year um but usually during conversation when our staff has conversation they go over sales they go over you know the different concept what process it is it's not necessarily the value they
realize the values have increased they realize that their value is probably not out of line as to what they might be able to get for it on today's market but it's the increase that they're seeing um that is causing more of the concern um than the actual final value that was
placed on their property um these are just uh a couple of slides about the different categories that we sent letters out in um and then the average percent increase for those people that are receiving uh you'll
notice vacant land is a big one on there uh our staff started this year looking at some of our land values in certain parts of the city um and that will continue over the next couple of years as we go through and and do our quintile because we're required to
revalue properties or view properties once every five years we call it quintile so oneif of the parcels whether it's commercial industrial apartments it also residential a still falls in the same category um and so when you look at our our overall parcel count is about
75,000 so we look at about I suppose 14,000 parcels a year um is what we're required to revalue over that fiveyear period this year was year one in our five-year quintile so in another four years uh the goal is essentially to hit
every property every property type within the county not just within the city of Rochester so that's it oh looks like oh for Pete's sake okay anyway as I'm hitting the button this essentially I thought we'd
check this i'm sorry um as we check this we just wanted people to know what their options were to appeal oh for All right you get it back please anyway the slide is essentially what their options for our Thank you what
their options for appeal are so really one of the reasons why we're here is we want to give you the opportunity to understand uh what we're asking um we want to talk to as many people as we possibly can so if we're getting calls we're assuming you're getting
calls um and with that um we just would like the opportunity to have conversation with the people who have those questions so if you get a call by all means send them to our office our staff we have a staff of five commercial appraisers more than happy to take um the time to educate them to go over the
sales with them to talk to them about the process what happens now what happens later that type of thing and to do some of those comparatives um you know sometimes it's just a matter of the education piece of it people don't understand you know what the requirements are of our office where we
find our sales how we take a look at items and our staff is happy to sit down and and talk to people in regards to that so by all means send those to our office so we can we can um get those in advance those questions in advance if they don't find satisfaction with the
answers they receive from us on the bottom of their valuation notice they'll see um their options for appeal um they can go to their local board of appeal and equalization um they are held in first well between the 7th I think and the 15th of April that date is at the
bottom of their statement about 10 of our jurisdictions are considered open book they don't have a meeting to go to so they go through our office and just talk to our office um if property owners wish to go to their their local jurisdiction their city or their
township um and contest their value they can do so the local board will will hear their appeal their reasons for it um and then make a determination they can raise the value lower the value they can keep it same if residents are unhappy or not
satisfied at the local board level they can go to county board of legalization so that's when that's when you all see um the people in June when they come so they either have an open book where they don't have that opportunity to go to their jurisdiction or they've been to their jurisdiction and they still
haven't received the satisfaction they were looking for after the county board I'll reiterate after the county board in June we cannot any we can no longer make any changes to valuation or classification that's by statute so the only option after that
point in time is to appeal to the Minnesota tax court and um it it's kind of it's odd we have until June to appeal locally but you can file in tax court up to April 30th of the year in which the taxes are actually due so they have up
to April 30th of 2026 to file in tax court for taxes payable 26 even if they skip the prior even if they skip Yep they don't have to go to any of the local board uh options they don't have to call our office they can file directly in tax court um residential egg
properties we very seldom see them do that u many commercial properties that's the the direction the route they go yep and then the last slide I usually show this slide at local board time or at the county board of equalization but I just I had finished the slide so we we
put it in here so you had the information um it is the comparison between the estimated market values in 24 for pay 25 and the estimated market values for 25 pay 26 um as well as the new construction that we um listed for
this last year the change column on the right hand side is actually it doesn't include we've taken out new construction in that so it's the growth not due to new construction so that percentage would be a little bit higher if we put that new construction amount in there but we subtracted it out of there as you
could see just in general I know this is a commercial update but just in general you'll notice that agricultural properties went up um about 11% i would say 11 to 12% is what on average they went up for tillable based on sales
um industrial properties about 17% which goes back to um the conversation about industrial properties being far below market value and trying to to make those more in line with where they are currently selling for residential hovering still around that you know four
to 6% depending on where it is we do have pockets of residential that too so you might receive some phone calls for residential um but that would be strictly based on physical inspections and revalue of property yep other than that that's my last slide
if you have any question happy to answer questions bob so how do you account for market anomalies in making these assessments for instance I'm looking at
the uh the graph that you provide you know parking lots drove up to 260% increase um commercial vacant land about 250% increase manufactured home parks you
know about 140% increase i it's hard for me to believe that these property types um would increase that much even within a five-year window unless there's certain market anomalies that are
driving the prices that perhaps um might be outside the norm like maybe a $5 billion investment in downtown yeah um in regards to um certain property types going up most of the time
uh the the properties with the staff that we had we focused on the properties that uh had the sales number of sales that we had required to keep compliance um probably maybe not a great strategy um but with the the time and the staff that we had we focused on the properties
that um required us to make sure that they were in compliance um mass appraisal is not a perfect system um we recognize that land in Mstead County in general has been low over a number of years and so as part of that quintile
number one we are working towards making sure that those now are in compliance um as to what properties are currently selling for so it's not necessarily based on an anomaly it's based on partially based on
um the fact that those values haven't moved in a while and we need to make sure that they um are in line with what properties are currently selling for you have anything to add to that yeah basically a lot of those increases that you're seeing and referencing those are
responding to property values that have not been touched in quite a few years in fact we saw a couple that haven't moved since 2009 2008 someplace in there so when we're seeing those big increases excuse me Jason can you use the
microphone please sorry so when you see those large increases you know it's not necessarily an anomaly that's causing the increase it's playing catchup from from years of those properties being essentially overlooked kind of like what Julie referenced where
with the staff we had available to accomplish the tasks that were required to complete we would focus our efforts on those specific tasks in order to maintain compliance with the department of revenue and unfortunately with the sta size of the staff that was in the
office a lot of these peripheral obligations weren't getting handled as diligently as they should have been so you're saying that even though the county is responsible for providing an
assessment within a five-year window um these types of properties may not have been evaluated or assessed in over what 17 years there are a handful of properties and why would a property owner be
responsible for that minnesota statute doesn't give us the ability to phase our increases in um we're required to value at its market value it is unfortunate that some of those properties are experiencing those
types of increases but um the staff that's in place right now is working very diligently to perform our obligations to the highest of our ability so what measures could be put into place to alleviate the undue burden
um on these businesses that are all of a sudden being um you know assessed um and looking at 260% increases in taxes um well it might not are there any
accommodations that can be provided to these businesses uh probably about 15 years ago there was a there was part of the statute that was limited market value and it did just that but what it did was it created additional inequities because you had two properties that were valued at the
same value and they were paying two completely different taxes so uh legisl the legislature um sunseted that probably back in 2008 or 2009 um and did away with the limited market value there is no um statutory nothing
statutoily in place that incrementally increases the value minnesota statute says properties should be valued at 100% of their market value of what they what they would sell for does the county have any leeway in
um uh adjusting that assessment or perhaps you know adjusting it over time we actually talked about that um and we when we looked there is nothing in statute that allows us to do that so no
i know you aren't kicking out those that are kind of leverage sales i own a forplex on second street wants to do an expansion there so they're a ransom for my property is that
does that get thrown out too or not we um maybe we verify every sale that comes in the office we either contact the buyer or seller or both in in many cases and try to identify the circumstances that would
allow that to be in our study or potentially kicked out ultimately though once we do our research the Minnesota Department of Revenue again reviews our notes on the sale and if they feel it's something that should be included in our sales study regardless of our opinions
on it they will leave it in but we do make a diligent effort to make sure that the sales that are in our sales study are as reflective as market as possible the problem with that example um commissioner is that it's open arms length willing buyer and seller right I
mean that's considered a good sale so if you have those in place you have a willing and a buyer and a seller you have somebody willing to pay um that price for it i it would take us a a lot to try to determine that that's a bad sale i mean you have two parties that one's willing
to buy one's willing to sell um could it be just if you've got one of them maybe it's an anomaly if you get a couple of them is it the start of a trend you never know um one of the biggest things we heard this year at least on the residential side is but I don't want to sell my property i don't know how much
it's worth um I don't care what they're selling their parcels for and we understand that but that's what we have to look at we have to have those sales historically when we look at it that's what helps us determine the value so um when I say maybe it really depends on the information that we get from either
that buyer or the seller sometimes if we can't get a hold of that you know not everybody wants to talk to us so sometimes you can call a broker and you can maybe get some information off that but um just because it's a for example a downtown Mayo Mayo's purchasing it
um it it's it's really a maybe it depends on each individual transaction of what we find out appreciate that you think that second street that value the same as if it was on street
or location location's going to come into play yep yep so then that in myical example it would probably come into play for other propert yep it's about location and it really comes down to what is somebody
willing to pay in that location and typically when you're looking at that it's how much rent can I get on a forplex in that location versus another location that is going to that is going to come into into play when you're talking value commercial properties income income potential comes into play
it does yep there's the three approaches to value yep we look at all of them yep a separate question related to what you guys do but county wanted to could the county set up a maximum increase in
property valuations for properties owned by a segment of society like Paris if you if you resign there your property value can increase% not that I'm aware of never but I I
don't know that for a fact I would caution you against pursuing that because that would create inequities in the assessment if you see a property increase and they're not carrying their fair share of the tax prevent
yeah but um people going to Florida mr chair Mr chair that that's a state requirement right not a county requirement i don't know whe I I I think in California that's a that that falls under a state
requirement okay um we have some conference with you we do yep uh thank you Mr chair i just want to I want to follow up on Commissioner Hopkins question at least
as I think I understood it because because I I'm not sure I understand the answer uh so under like 27301 which calls for that 5-year inspection if that doesn't happen
and and I'm kind of believing that's probably a a frailty all over Minnesota because you know through my other life I I just know how hard it is for small counties to find even an assessor to to do this work and uh it's it seems like
it's the most hated job in the world in a small county where everybody knows everybody uh but so if but if that doesn't happen the 5-year inspection cannot then was it 27311 which provides for the I thought the
continuing ability to to increase the values or or you know to re to re-evaluate that property just almost by virtue of a computer program can that cannot happen is that is that what I'm hearing unless you do that five-year
inspection no we can't values do change every year right but um the inspection helps us with any changes on the property physically looking at the property for conditions and ages and whether anything has changed so no we can change values but are we changing
values to the extent they need to be changed if we're doing it from our desks versus if we're out in the field so we might see smaller changes in between those quintile periods that five-year compliance and we might see larger increases in those properties that we're
actually physically inspecting so just a little bit ago I made a comment on residential properties increase five six% but we had some pockets that went 10 or 12% and those were based on inspections so you can increase every year if need be um but
we're still not increasing certain segments of the property the other thing is when you do a blanket increase to a certain segment of property let's say all industrial properties all industrial properties might not need it there's a lot of different property types in there it could be quaries it could be
manufacturing plants it could be mini storage it could be meat lockers it I mean it could be a number of different items if we have one segment let's call mini storage let's just pick on mini storage today okay if mini storage we had a number of mini storage sales and they were the ones that were throwing
that ratio off because the majority of those sales were that that's what we need to focus on and not necessarily do a blanket increase to everybody that falls within that category that's what the physical inspection helps us do we are required to look at it every five
years you asked if we were out of compliance you're right we've been out of compliance for quite a number of years as have a lot of counties throughout Minnesota most of it's due to staffing with 14,000 parcels and that's all property types in instead county
that we look on a given year it's a lot of territory for you know a small number of people we've now with the support of the board and the support of administration HR we've created a commercial team that is allowing us to catch up and do our quintile work the
way it's intended to do minnesota Department of Revenue when they look back at us and at the end of the year we get a report card from them what have you completed in compliance what have you done on time what have you submitted all of that stuff they look at all the functions of our office one of those
pieces is compliance how many parcels have you looked at to to have you looked at your quintile the number of parcels for your quintile they took a look at the number we have and they give us a percentage that we're over or under um I want to say last year don't quote me
it's probably about 20% that we were out of compliance that we hadn't looked at over a five-year period so now it's going to take the next five years for us to get caught up but can we do it in five years because if we're already out of compliance from the prior five years
catching up and making sure we're going to have to go that through that entire five-year process to make sure we catch all those properties if we don't and it's been a while since the state board and I think we've had this conversation in the past if we get to the point and it's going to be way
more extreme than we're currently at or we'll ever be at um I'll guarantee that um is that at some point in time the state then kicks in and says if you can't get yourself into compliance we are going to come and do it for you and then they'll send you a bill to do it to
make sure that all properties have been looked at now that's an extreme measure right you don't see that happen very often i probably haven't heard it happening for probably the last 10 or 15 years um but it has happened to ext like I say to extreme amounts
um we have staff in place now we have a plan in place that this is year one of our quintile so the next four years is not going to be easy um we're going to see probably some of these same increases maybe not to the extreme as some of the industrial properties that
we've seen this year because as we talked about that was the one that we knew was furthest out of compliance so that's the one we tackled first um but we probably we probably are going to have some more parcels over the next four years that are going to see increases
that are going to be maybe out of the norm for what we have in the past mr chair can I just chair perhaps this this would just be a request to me i don't know if the board but as as we get into budget discussions I think it'd be
helpful if if if there are things that the board ought to be doing relative to to budget to make sure that this doesn't happen to another board five years from now maybe we ought to know about that or at least have the recommendation we can accept or reject it
i I I know that the passport was knew that we were short of Yep assessors we just couldn't find assessors so Right yeah it took us probably three years to find enough staff or to find the staff that we had openings for wow
um so you know I I know that um you know I can get a comp pretty easily um and I could do that from a
laptop um that would give me a sense of what values are of properties that are um have been sold within a certain radius around me um why can't you use that as opposed to
individual assessments statute still says that we have to physically inspect there's no AI um but you have to inspect not every property a certain number once every five years every property has to be viewed once
every five years there is a caveat in statute that says that we can do desk reviews if we have the technology in place to do so what that means is that we have to have um and there's going to be some technicalities that I'm not
going to get accurate but we have to have within I think it's five years street level imagery where we can measure and we can see certain there's certain um direction as to what that street imagery has to look like we actually have some street imagery from
21 and 22 that we had done um but here in the next couple of years in order to use that for compliant inspections it will be out of date and we would have to have those street imagery done again um that street imagery um we did we did the
city of Rochester for the first round in 21 and then in 22 we did the small cities and then we utilized the townships that were probably most closely related to right outside of the city of Rochester or the areas outside of the small towns um only because it's
expensive um and we um knew that by driving Viola Township for example we weren't necessarily going to get what we needed out of it and so we didn't do the rural areas so some of those caveats don't even fit to the rural areas so we do have some parts of town um but again
that captures as of the date that that street imagery was drawing so any new construction any new updates any anything done to the property won't we wouldn't be able to capture in that imagery so we can utilize it we just can't use it as our only reliance of data for our revalue
yep um back in Jackson County I was an appraiser there for a number of years before I took over as county assessor and there was a property in in Heron Lake Township that um they had completely remodeled outside of the
house and it looked like a million bucks i went out there I reappraised it and you know I was not able to get inside the house um went back to the office and completed my work found my you know my
motivations for appraising it as it was um and then the property owner called me back and I got inside the house and um when I walked through that front door is like going into a time
machine where back to you know the 1900s when it was built um So obviously I adjusted the the value down um I apologize for the abbreviated story um but the
point of that I was trying to make is that on-site physical inspections are always going to be the best way for us to get the information that it's very difficult to appraise a property by only having half the information so fair
enough but I mean even a Google Maps photo uh of a vacant parking lot 5 years later is still a vacant parking lot that's now
260% assessed higher i mean it's just it's hard to fathom how that happens i'll just point out I I have a commercial property that got raised way up but the way I look at it is is essentially I got a gift for the last five or 10 years because I was
undervalued i should have been paying the higher taxes that I will be paying going forward so as much as I don't want to pay that next year's taxes I realize I'd be broker if I if they would have been on track so I was happy you guys didn't have commercial prices for a
number of years true very true any other questions okay well thank you guys very no I just want I just want to say I mean we we can all bemoone the frailties of this system but but I can't in a millisecond bemoone
the credibility of these two individuals from they are great and thank you for your work yeah thank you all right before you before you go away Travis has to say well thank you Chairman Ty and Commissioners um I just wanted to follow up on your last comment Commissioner
Sanjum actually because I uh I can appreciate the situation we're in right now um where you know we've seen some significant increases to valuations for some of these properties and and I really want to applaud where we're at today i mean the work of Mary and Julie
and Jason and the rest of this team to get us to the point that we're caught up is really something to frankly celebrate um and I know it it it it it doesn't excuse the fact that we've um we were in this situation but the the challenge
with assessors is is experienced across the state and to finally be getting to a point where we're getting caught up is something to celebrate so I just felt the need to say that real quick too that's right thank you thank you appreciate it
okay now we're on to board and committee reports frank no report thank you Dave i happened to attend an event at the University of Minnesota last night and I can report that uh and and Tony knows
this uh we brought our uh we brought our German intern to back to Rochester last night and so it'll be starting probably today okay so um we had an extension committee meeting uh last week commissioner Mueller and I
represent the board on that uh committee and heard reports from our 4 program as well as our a educator who just celebrated her one-year anniversary in Mstead County and um those meetings are every quarter and in in 20 minutes they can't even
begin to scratch the surface of the youth that are being impacted in our community as well as um the many new programs that uh Mary Nesburg our new a educator is starting in the county the the new meeting she's hosting um with just packed crowds at all of those
educational meetings um a lot on soil health she's helping um some of our cooperatives with what they're doing developing um direct to consumer markets and just bringing a lot of new information and and education to Mstead County so uh we are in the middle of uh
choosing our farm family of the year they'll be recognized at the Mstead County Fair and at Farmfest this summer so um just great things happening and uh learned a lot at that extension committee and the impact we're having great thank you Ryan
yeah bob no report okay i don't really have a report i I'll say that I was at Mark Ostrom's retirement party last week and it was great great party a lot of good speeches and big crowd so it speaks volumes to him and thank him for his 18
years he's done now he's retired as as of today so congratulations to him um I'll end with a very short quote from George Clooney he says "You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak." Move to adjourn
ajourn thank you i know crazy yeah he has access to a lot of things that we don't but he doesn't look like he's had work done but still i don't even know how old of a man is he i think he's very like
Love that you kept the quotes going it looks awful