Assessors on trail of unreported ag construction

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BY ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

YORK — With the agricultural economy  humming across Nebraska, one result is a lot of new grain bins, machine sheds and center-pivot irrigation units.

York County Assessor Ann Charlton doesn’t expect to win any popularity contests with farmers as she works to get all that shiny new agricultural property on the tax rolls.

Her efforts to be thorough might go especially unappreciated among farmers who failed to get a building permit before they committed themselves to a sizable investment. The building permits, among other indicators, are the county’s clue to add property to tax rolls.

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(LJS file)

(LJS file)

In an effort to get an accurate accounting of what’s new, but unreported, and to be fair to all taxpayers, Charlton and her assessor peers try to drive hundreds of square miles of gravel roads periodically before they send out the tax bills in December.

“I don’t want to be a dirty dog,” Charlton said Tuesday. “It’s bad enough to be the assessor.”

All indications point to an especially busy year in farm-related construction in 2007. It was, for example, the busiest year in the 17 that Gene Snyder has worked at the Grain Products Co. in Stromsburg.

Farmers collecting on relatively high corn prices are spending some of their money on new and often bigger storage structures for the corn.

“We’re already quoting (prices) for next year,” Snyder said.

During a discussion Tuesday with York County commissioners about the outlook for related property tax income, Charlton referenced a machine shed and two grain bins that didn’t get reported in recent months for tax purposes.

“We’re talking about $25,000 in taxes for these three items alone that were not reported,” she said.

“The grain bins are just growing faster than you can say ‘Jack Spratt’ in York County.”

Counties require agricultural property owners to file for building permits, just like everybody else. But York County encompasses more than 575 often remote square miles and the question loomed again Tuesday about how to find out what’s what when they don’t.

Although commissioners took no action on the matter Tuesday, one suggestion was to delegate responsibilities as construction scouts to operators of the county’s road-grading equipment.

“It’s not always a pleasant thing to report somebody who’s doing construction,” Charlton said.

Pleasant or not, said Commission chairman Ken Stuhr, it’s a job that has to get done. “I think everybody has a civic responsibility to do it.”

In a follow-up interview in her office, Charlton cited one farmer as an example of why self-reporting is often a tall order. As a result of adding a grain bin, “he has an increase in his tax dollars of about $1,400.”

For a farmer in the same area who acquired a new center-pivot irrigation system, “that would be another $1,060 in taxes.”

Ruth Sorensen, the state’s property tax administrator, said some counties have resorted to hiring aerial photography services to keep up with rural property development.

“The ideal way to do it is to get out and drive the county,” Sorensen said, “because that’s how you see what’s happening in the country.”

Reach Art Hovey at 523-4949 or at ahovey@alltel.net.