County Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome this will call the meeting to order Monday, June 22nd 2026 at 6 p.m. If everybody could please rise and for the Pledge of Allegiance Item number three on the agenda is approval of the agenda do I have a motion to approve Second motion in a second do I have any comments? Hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed say nay motion carries Number four is an invitation for a citizen to schedule time on the commission agenda for an item that is not on the agenda. There will be a five minute time limit per person. Anyone wanting to speak during this agenda item must sign in prior to the start of the meeting. No commission action will be taken during this agenda item. Any requested action ITEM MAY BE SCHEDULED FOR A FUTURE DATE. WE DO HAVE DENNIS AND MARTHA SIGNED IN. WERE YOU GUYS WANTING TO SPEAK ON SOMETHING OTHER THAN THE PROPERTY TAX OR BECAUSE THERE WILL BE TIME TO SPEAK ON THAT? OKAY. ALL RIGHT. SO HAVING NOBODY THERE, MOVING TO NUMBER FIVE, REGULAR BUSINESS. LETTER A, PRESENTATION BY FINANCE OFFICER JEN BELLER.

So I've just got a few kind of papers here to give some examples of different scenarios if this tax was implemented and things, but we'll just, where's that, Stacy? Maybe if I'm on the right.

There you go.

It's been a long day.

It's been a long day.

This has got a lot of words on it, but it's just kind of an overview of what the, what the law is and things. So it's just saying a county may impose a gross receipt tax. It just has to follow basically all the same rules that state sales tax follows with the exception of the rate. So the rate would be 0.5 half penny versus the state's 4.2%. If the ordinance is adopted by the county, it can be referred to a vote by the people of Brookings County for approval or disapproval. nothing is done by the board there's also the option for it a petition to be passed to make it an initiated ordinance so for people to say we want this and they would want it to be voted on as an initiated ordinance if it's something that's passed and adopted a special revenue fund is established all the monies from the half penny sales tax go into that special revenue fund to offset owner occupied property taxes for the county. It doesn't affect any other entities, just the county. If there's additional monies after 100% of the county property tax levy on owner occupied property covered then you take the balance and it is applied to egg and non egg in an equal percentage so then it gets split out by all classes not just the owner-occupied will basically be zeroed out and then we split it out between the others classes we can use some of the money from the fund to offset costs of implementing this because there's going to be there would be changes to our accounting system, changes to our property tax system, all of those things have a cost associated with them, programming costs. So we're allowed to do 2% of all of the deposits the first year, and then each year after, up to 20,000. And using the estimates that we got from the state, 2% is 128,000. I can't imagine it would cost that much to implement this, but that's how much we would be allowed to use. Brookings County does have a lot of TIFs that have owner occupied parcels. And something that we have to keep in mind is that we do have to keep those TIF districts whole because we'd be reducing the levy. So we would have to then take from that special revenue fund and make them whole. We can't short them because of this. tax and then this isn't really the taxes we're talking about or the laws we're talking about today but they do affect property taxes and on my next page i've got some examples of it but the sb 245 in conjunction with house bill 1051 the state sales tax holiday is sun setting next year so july 1st 2027 it will go back up to 4.5%. The additional revenue generated from the 4.2 to the 4.5 is be putting in a special fund to, so then the state will use that money to increase its share of education funding. So basically they're gonna lower the property tax for owner occupied, the levy for the They're going to lower the levy for owner-occupied schools and replace that with sales tax money. Now, I have heard that this could possibly be referred, so that might all be not, but we don't know that yet. As of right now, it is in place. So this just shows kind of Brookings County numbers. The estimated sales tax revenue, and I rounded numbers, but the estimated sales tax revenue we got from the state was 6.4 million. Just estimating implementation costs of 20,000, that would leave us with $6,380,000 that could be used to credit those owner-occupied taxes. this is current year numbers current year the amount of owner occupied and those tiff owner occupied parcels revenue is the 7.9 million so if we used the 6.3 to offset that we would only have to levy to cover the 1 million 607 204. and i got some i have some examples of some parcels in Brookings County, so this, I have three parcels, a Brookings School District, a Sioux Valley School District, and then a TIF parcel, so I'll just explain them each separate. This is where they are at currently. This is the levy for the Brookings School, 14.3962, and this is what the amount is, and this house is valued at 372,000. If that school levy reduction bill stays in place, this automatically is gonna happen where the school levy would get lowered down to that. And right there, that would save homeowners from 53, it would go down to 4,662. And then using the estimates that we've gotten on the property tax revenue, our current county levy is at 3.92. Using the numbers with the $6.3 million, this property would get a credit of $1,166, lowering their tax bill to $3,495. So it started at $5,363. Using just the school reduction that is in place right now, it goes down to $4,662. If the county were to impose a half penny, it would go down to $3,495. And again, these are all estimates because we don't know what we would get. And this is all just the same numbers, but with Sioux Valley at a $250,000 home. It's about $500 from here to the school, and then it goes down to $2,500 if we did the sales tax. And then this is a TIF parcel. So currently the TIF... All $4,118 goes to Volga City to pay the TIF. The school levy one would lower that amount to $33,611. If we did a sales tax, it would lower it down to $2,751. However, that $859.52 credit That's hard to see. But it's 859.52 is the credit. That would be a portion back to the city of Volga to make the TIF whole. We wouldn't short that TIF district. And that money comes out of that special revenue fund just like these ones do so that each month would take the money out of the special revenue fund and put it into general fund building fund and the 402 is the debt service fund all three of those we would move money from the special revenue fund to those funds to to replace the credits that were taken out um these are just pretty simple Showing how much the increase cost would be for purchases if we increased so right now the state This is if you're in the city, so the say you're in Brookings and you buy something that's $50 right now Tax is gonna cost you three dollars and ten cents if we added that half penny go up to 335 increase of 25 cents and so that's just what you can see those are All cities in Brookings County except Bushnell and Sinai. I do have a 2% municipality tax and And this is sales tax only. It doesn't include any gross receipts or tourism taxes or anything. So that just kind of gives an idea of what the increase in a purchase would be at different amounts. That's all I've got. I don't need the camera anymore. I don't need the camera anymore. So what are your questions?

Can you kind of explain where the estimates and stuff came that you showed on that, the 1.6, or where did those numbers come, those estimates come from?

We got the sales tax estimate from the Department of Revenue. That's this spreadsheet. So they estimate that we would get, it's the second one from the left, $6,474,424. That's what they estimate our yearly sales tax revenue would be in Brookings County. And they estimated that based off of what the municipalities right now basically are getting for taxes. And then that 87% on the far right just means that they're estimating we would be able to cover 87% of our owner-occupied tax revenue would be covered by that sales tax versus a property tax.

Do you know how many owner-occupied structures we have in Brookings County?

I don't.

I talked to Jacob The other day, and he said it kind of fluctuates depending on you know the college is here and apartments and such but it Average it's in between 50 and 60 percent owner-occupied And I mean

Obviously, brooking city is gonna be the biggest sales tax draw and we are getting quite a few new New stores in town targets not open yet and targets drawing and other stuff over there. So that number could in theory increase But it's very We that's always gonna be always going to be the variable here is we're never going to know what the number is it's always going to go up and down every year we just have to basically know how much is in that special revenue fund and then lower our levy based on that every year we just we'll never have a it's not going to be consistent every year because we won't know what our sales tax revenue will be so then the payments would be

One year down the road if after your sale taxes Calculated I Mean when would count when would the county get yeah, how would a homeowner say you oh? I mean in your tax.

Oh well. There's two options If the county wanted to pass this and implement it January 1 of 27 We could estimate how much money we think we're gonna get in sales tax and basically cover that credit with money that we have in the bank. Or you can, if you say you want to do this and start the sales tax on January 1, 27, you can build up that fund for a year and then the sales tax savings would be seen in the 27 pay 28 tax year. You'd build up the fund and then you'd give those credits that in the 28 payable year.

Currently how many tips are there in Brookings County?

About 14 tips, but not all of them have owner-occupied we have Nine that have owner-occupied home parcels in them It's a value the value of the owner-occupied Tiffs is 177 million five hundred and twelve thousand so it's quite a bit I

On your first example there, the savings, if we were to do that, the estimated savings was 2,000 and change?

You mean this on here?

Yeah.

So they would start. They started at 5363. But see, we don't know if the school one is going to stay. We're going to assume it is because it's there right now. And then if we did, it goes all the way down. Yeah, I mean it goes almost 2000, not quite just shy of 2000.

So just as an example, just to just in my way of thinking, if we were to do this and. first example were to somebody who ever had this would see that just under $2,000 reduction in their sale in their property tax not including the raise in the sales tax that they'd have to pay as well but in a year if our sales tax revenue and everything went down they could see another thousand dollar or more jump in their property tax to make up for that sales tax is that correct yes it wouldn't be it wouldn't be as consistent Knowing what your tax is gonna be because it would jump around So for Individuals on budgets and things like that trying to budget for their sale.

It's there's a there's a big Question mark on what you need to do or how there is and I'd imagine it would make it quite a bit harder for escrow mortgage companies to estimate those escrow payments and Yeah

Does the board have any other questions? Any more questions that might come up?

Jen, how consistent are sales taxes from year to year?

I have no idea because we've never dealt with sales taxes before.

Be curious how much that fluctuates. You get a down in economy and that could affect that substantially.

That doesn't include don't know if the right term is leakage from purchasing I mean if our residents purchase something Sioux Falls Watertown traveling like that we don't get credit for that as Brookings County resident purchasing outside of the county that benefits the other county just as it would with anybody coming to Brookings correct right okay if Minnehaha were to adopt this anything you buy in Minnehaha County

You're giving money to their owner-occupied property owners, basically. You're helping them.

Board have anybody else? Any others?

I'm thinking there's some people in the watching us right now that may comment later that could answer this question too but do college students pay sales tax on their food plans and those type of things they do well and that's where you're talking big dollars too that's i mean the highest i went was 1500 i don't know sales of food plans probably closer to four or five thousand

So that's going to increase the cost. I mean, yeah, and increase that student's cost by $20 or so every semester, just for that part. I mean, not including everything else that they have to purchase, but.

OK. Anybody else? All right.

Good for now. All right. Thank you. Thank you, John.

WE'LL MOVE ON TO LETTER B. IF WE HAVE ANY LEGISLATORS IN ATTENDANCE THAT WANT TO COME UP AND GIVE SOME INSIGHT FROM PEER.

Good evening, Commissioner members. Tim Reed, I serve as the State Senator for District 7. And so it's most of the population of Brookings County, but District 8 also is part of Brookings County. First of all, Well, the sales tax back, I guess I've been following sales tax ever since I was mayor of Brookings, and it raises about 3 to 4% a year. So it hasn't taken very many downturns in the past 10 plus years that I've seen. It happens to be down right now for the city for the first part of the year, but it usually grows every year. So first of all, I just want to thank you guys. I'm grateful for how you guys have handled your finances. When these property tax bills came up in the legislature and people were showing me their tax bills, not in Brookings County, but in other counties, and i would compare the mill levy rate we're doing really well um and then the per capita spending too that you know that you guys have managed to keep down has been very helpful so i get where the sales or where the property tax amounts um have concerns for folks um but when we compare them to how good you guys have done in controlling uh costs or the amount that you spend is very well so thank you for that and we have as a citizen and just I can be kind of proud of it out in the legislature when other people are complaining about their counties. I can talk about how good ours does. A good example is your jail too. All these other counties send their legislators for special appropriation bills to build their jail. And it was a pretty easy no vote for me because I said, our county can pay for it. They've managed their finance as well. So I really appreciate that as you're thinking about what you want to do here. So for Senate Bill 96, I did vote for it. I like the aspect that it's local control. I mean, that's what we're doing here tonight. You know, it's a really is up to the county. You as a commission plus it can be, you know, it can be referred if the if the members of the county or the county constituents don't want it, it can be referred. So it really leaves it up to the people here. um i wanted to keep it alive also we needed some property tax relief and it was one idea out there that that i felt was you know reasonable to to take a look at um it came through the the senate first so i was finally sitting over the house to see what would happen with other tax bills that were going to come over to us There are some downsides to it. It was spoke about how if you go to Minnehaha County and you spend money there, you spend money in a lot of Sioux Falls, you're actually going to be funding their property tax relief fund. And it's nice that online purchases through Amazon or any of the other online purchases, the tax would be paid here at least in the county if that's where it's delivered. but there are some things you just need to go to sioux falls for at times and a good example is shoes you don't know if the shoe is going to fit you don't necessarily want to be ordering multiple sizes etc you know online so going there you will be benefiting them i understand in pennington county or anywhere out in the hills makes a lot of sense because they have so many visitors this is really a good way for them to collect more like money and reduce the county owner occupied now it's been spoken a lot but i think it has to be reiterated that it's owner occupied only right and so it does not affect the renters renters you know the the folks that own the commercial buildings are considered commercial if they're renting them they would not see reduction in those taxes so that of course wouldn't flow down to those folks that rent but they would see the increase in sales tax so it really is a tax shift it's moving property tax cost to sales tax so your food your clothes all of those would you know would be charged the extra amount that then would be used for though only those who own their homes they would get a property tax reduction I believe, too, what we have to be careful with, if you do decide to implement this or as you're discussing it, is that you don't necessarily want to have the lowest tax rate. We talked about students. I'm sorry, you don't really want to have a high sales tax rate. We're always trying to attract students into Brookings. It's good for the economy, and they will pay some of this cost, even though they don't see any of the benefits as owner-occupied. And so for students and also when you're trying to attract labor in to work at a lot of the places here, and if they're renters, they're just going to see their sales tax go up. They're not going to see any benefit because they've come to town for a new job and they just happen to be renting. On the other side, something that is good about this is, and it was shown well, you will see a line item for Senate Bill 96 on your tax bill. So you will actually physically see that there has been a deduction in how much it is. uh... i think it is also important to be thinking about senate bill two forty five it was as was brought up earlier that's where the point three sales tax holiday when it goes away those funds will be shifted and will be given you know it will be put into a statewide property tax reduction fund and then that will be used as was shown to lower the levees that are for school for school boards or for for for the school districts um and so basically it's just increasing the state aid you won't see that nobody will really see that on their bill they might see that when my the levy went down from last year but they won't see the actual here's what your discount is and that that is a one thing that's positive about senate bill 96 it does show how much that is done It was spoke about that Senate Bill 245 could be referred. There is a group that's trying to refer it. Haven't heard too much about it. I don't know if they're having much success to do it. They'd have to have the signatures, and I think it was 14,500 signatures. I could be wrong there, but it's quite a few signatures. They'd have to have those in by the 29th. And so I think that's next Monday, maybe, or by the end of the week, basically. They'd have to have these turned into the Secretary of State to get it on the ballot here in November to refer it. So there's probably a pretty good chance it is going to an effect. That one also, we set aside over $500 million so we could get started with it in the coming year. And then we'll take the sales tax over the next year to apply to other years for the reduction. So those are the basics that I have to talk about the bills. I would stand by for any questions you may have.

Board have any questions for Tim?

All right. Tim, thanks so much for coming tonight. You're welcome.

Yes, thank you. All right. I would assume letter C was comments from the commission to our legislator. Do we have any comments or concerns that the commission wants to bring up or raise other than the questions we've been able to ask?

All right. One other one I would like to see. Again, numbers, and I appreciate Tim sharing about the sales tax. If I could see some past numbers of years of how consistent the sales tax income is from year to year. My one concern on this is that you get fluctuations like that. You get a big drop, then all of a sudden we end up with a shortfall. So that's the one concern I have is I'd like to see those numbers would statewide Brookings or Brookings okay the city of Brookings of course because that just applies to us and we wouldn't have a shortfall though even if it went down it would just be that those properties wouldn't get as big of a credit

People people the county would be fine because the county is always gonna be made whole by that sales tax fund It's just that if if my property taxes were 3,000 because we had a good sales tax year and then we have a low sales tax year now my taxes might go up to 3500 the person's property taxes are gonna be what jumps up and down the county will always be made whole Thank you for that clarity and it like Senator Reed said it would it's only

owner occupied, not rental, commercial, and that would move that 40 to 50% of our residents, right? All right. Well, we'll move on to letter D on our agenda, public comment period. We will have a five minute time period for anybody who wants to come up and speak either for or against the Senate bill that we're we're visiting or the county property tax, sales tax. We do have a paper up there when you come up. If you would sign your name, state your name. I have some little cards that will give five minutes. I'll hold up a 30 second warning and then I will have a little timer that will go off and I'll throw up a stop sign when your time is up. I would open it to whoever would like to come up and speak.

I've already signed in. My name is Dennis DeBoer. Do I sign in again? If you would, Dennis. Do it now?

Yeah, just go ahead and scratch your name on there.

I just had a couple concerns. I'll be paying this extra property tax to reduce my property tax. Is that the way that works?

Yeah, you the Every resident in Brookings County will be paying an increased sales tax, but your property tax would be would be reduced Correct from what I understand in other words If you factor in what I got to pay in for this extra tax Every degree ain't gonna see that much back reading in return, correct? Good question

And also, there's a lot of, I know, elderly people on fixed income. How does that affect them, paying this extra tax? Because a little extra burden for them is getting harder and harder for them. The same way with disability people and low-income people. That's the only thing I had to ask. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to come up?

Larry Tiedemann from Brookings, South Dakota. The question was asked about the consistency of the sales and use tax. And about 65% of the state budget comes from sales and use tax. The years that it hit below the growth was in 2008, 2009, and 10, the great recession. And that's when state government had to cut 10% across the board on all the departments. I think they only cut like eight and a half percent against school districts and eight and a half against the Medicaid providers. But there was a cut that was made. So it does happen. Now, when we had the COVID dollars, the increase coming in on sales and use tax was about 14 to 15% above the previous year. So that was a real boost to the state coffers as well as to the local city coffers. But there is a point in time when everything flattens. Drought situations where farmers don't spend, you have situations that the sales and use tax does take a hit. I think you identified a couple concerns I have is that when you buy something in Sioux Falls or Lincoln County, it stays there. It doesn't help the people here reduce their owner occupied property taxes. I think they could have amended the bill and said that it goes back to the county where they originated, but they didn't do that. Again, that three-tenths percent that they're talking about coming back to sales tax and committing that just to education, my concern is that the state doesn't have, or may not have, the money to fund all the things they need to fund going forward if we hit kind of a recession. So thank you for your work. You've done a great job in keeping Brookings very much afloat and still doing the work for the people by making sure we have good roads to get products to and from market. So thank you.

Thank you, Larry.

I'm Jim Shady, resident of Brookings, but more interesting for me is that I was part of the team that drafted the owner-occupied and the current school aid formula when I worked for Bill Jankel as the director of property and special taxes. So the owner-occupied statute has always been intriguing to me on how it works. But I just have a question about the math that I saw here tonight about the The amount of money, the 6.3 million it would bring in, and the total owner-occupied tax of 7.9 million, that seems low to me. Can I ask that question? Sure. On your first slide, the 7.9 million you said was the total taxes of owner-occupied residents?

County taxes.

Just county taxes?

County, because that's the only thing that is affected by this bill. So it's just the county. So if you pay township, school, city, none of that is affected. It's just the county portion of your tax bill.

So it lowers all taxes for owner-occupied, but you just calculated the county portion?

No, this only lowers the county portion. It doesn't affect the Brookings City. Levees will stay the same.

Well, I know they say the same, but the tax bill to the owner-occupied resident for all the taxes that they're levied, city, school, county, are lowered.

No, just the county. So this, in my example, the county's, tax bill for this person was $1,460. The credit of $1,166 is only county taxes. It's not the school, it's not the city, it's not the water district, it's just the county.

I'm disappointed. I was wondering where I was going to spend that extra $2,000. That changes things a lot because I think individually we as taxpayers need to look at what's taxable, sales taxable personally. And I think Mr. DeBoer's comment, are we, I know who's gonna pick up the tab, it's the non-owner-occupied people are gonna pick up the tab. There's just no doubt about it. And how hard they are hit. I think for individuals trying to stay in their home, this is probably a pretty good deal. I think their sales tax exposure is small compared to their property taxes. I think this would be beneficial for people trying to stay in their home. As far as the individuals of, I think this is a, I think individually we need to look at personally how much do I spend as sales taxable and how much my reduction might be. So that's just a, I don't have a clue right now. I don't know. Something I need to scratch my head on. Thank you for the work you're doing and allowing us to come and talk. Thank you.

Thank you, Jim. Who else would like to come up?

I'm a resident of Moody County, so I'm out of your territory. And I came here to listen to understand this bill, and I was particularly interested in that section that talks about the taxes being collected and used to pay your owner-occupied residents of Brookings County. But until, and correct me if I'm wrong, until 100% of that is collected, there is nothing to offset agricultural land. Is that correct? Why, as a resident of Moody County, A homeowner in Flandreau and an owner of property in northern Moody County and a person who does a lot of business in Brookings and in Sioux Falls because this is where our implements dealers are. This is where our stores that we have to do business with because we don't have them in Flandreau. Why do I wanna come to Brookings and pay the real estate taxes for the people of Brookings and Moody County, or excuse me, of Brookings County, when Moody County got nothing, absolutely nothing? And I would ask the same thing of the people of Kingsbury and Dual. Why do they wanna come to Brookings when they're not gonna get any relief, especially the farmers and ranchers? And our taxes on farms and ranches in Moody County are pretty high. Quite frankly, fellas and ladies, this tax is a scam on the rural people of South Dakota, particularly farmers and ranchers, especially when you get out west where they've gotta go a long ways to get to a major shopping center. And they've got no base to, nobody's coming from Aberdeen to Buffalo, South Dakota to do business. Nobody's coming from Brookings and Sioux Falls to do business in Trent and Egan and Coleman.

This is a scam.

Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to come up and speak? All right, moving on to E, discussion next steps. Of course, this was basically an informational what should we do, what can we do, let's get some information. I would look for some comments from the board.

Well, I guess we'll wait for sure to see if it gets referred and what happens there. That's what, just next week?

No, that's the other Senate bill. That is for the school and the sunset, I believe. I misunderstood that. Okay.

Nothing, I mean if the Commission wants to take any action there is an ordinance that would need to be approved That process can't start until July 1 because this this law does not take effect until July 1 That's why we're here now trying to get information out to see if it's something that the Commission is even interested in We don't have to do anything. If you don't do anything, it remains status quo. That doesn't mean that citizens can't bring it forward as an initiated ordinance, and then it would go to a special, well, it would go to an election. I don't want to say it's maybe a special, I don't know, timing-wise with November's election and whatnot, but it would go to a vote of the people of Brookings County then. So you don't have to do anything if you want to implement the sales tax. And it can be up to the 0.5. Is that correct? It can be, or does it have to be the half cent? Have to dig into that a little bit more.

But the law says not to exceed one half percent.

just think there's a lot of questions that we don't know about this yet that it just I don't know if it is right or wrong for Brookings County I just there's a lot of questions it's there's not a lot of information and a lot of estimates that we are working on not good information as of right now

I agree with Commissioner Hosler's statement right there. I think that we need to take a good hard look at this and maybe this is the year we just stand on the sidelines and watch. There'll be some other counties that are going to dip their toe in this and see how that goes for them. We can watch some other counties make some mistakes and maybe in five years or next year we're going to go, well, we should have tried it, but I for one right now am not prone to bring this forward any further. I think we'll just leave it alone and watch. I do like the idea of coming to Brookings to do your shopping. If we don't have that extra half penny and our friends an hour to the south have an extra half penny sales tax, Here in Brookings County we can be proud of that and and maybe more people from the Moody counties and Kingsbury's will do their shopping here versus go to that big town of the South. Those are just my few comments, but I just see this as a tax shift. So if if my you know I own owner occupied home, So if I'm going to save $900 or whatever, but my sales tax increases by $900, it didn't help that. And I feel exactly for what one of these individuals said about the fixed income people. You know, the 90-year-old lady from church that rents an apartment, you know, in town. So hers is not going to get affected, but yet everything she's purchasing is. she will get taxed that extra half penny sales tax. I think we should just stand on the sidelines and watch this. There'll be other counties that are going to have informational meetings like this as well. We'll continue to learn and keep our eyes open for what's right for us, but right now I think we should just stand on the sidelines.

I see a lot of, especially on the east side of the interstate, the economic development, the growth, the businesses that are coming to town you know, we're going to see more revenue and less leakage going out with Target and Aldi and the two big gas stations and more stores. But it was mentioned today, it is, it's a tax shift to everybody with 50% seeing a bonus, but they're really not going to be seeing a they're gonna be seeing a reduction in their property tax, but they're gonna be paying more at the pump. They're gonna be paying more at the grocery store. And everybody's gonna be affected by that. So I just... I like the idea that we're growing economically in Brookings with the businesses coming. I like the trend that we're seeing and the recruitment coming to town. I just... Yeah. I'm in the same boat, Commissioner VanderWaal, too.

I'd like to say all the comments of the public, they were all good comments. I agree with not all the residents are going to benefit from this. We've got some tax incentives for the elderly, the disabled veterans, but with this tax, they're going to be paying. They do receive a benefit, but then they'll be paying. It'd be a lot easier if 100% of the county was owner-occupied, but it's not. Also, we had a discussion at a 10-county meeting, and a former legislator brought up some facts. He's now a county commissioner again, and he said, and Tim Reed referred to this as it could have been amended to include a zip code on all purchases within the state that would go back to your county where you originate from, which sounds like a good idea to me, but if we do make a decision, whichever way it is, I'd like to see it referred to a vote so that people, whatever they would choose, and that's the way we go.

I guess I better say something too. Yeah, I agree with what all these guys are saying here. It's just the tax burden to those people that are just getting started in life. They're renting they're just just getting going in life and they they don't need this extra burden on them for those of us that have made it to the point where we can own our own homes and not that there's not stresses on property tax that you know we could see some reductions there anyway we continue to see good growth in the county As far as businesses coming this way, we've got good reserves. We've got plenty of projects roadwise that we do need to tackle, but we can manage that within our budget. And there is potential to lower property taxes or not increase property taxes with the current revenue that we have. I would like to look into that further, and maybe we'll do some of that tomorrow. But I would not be in favor at this time because of our fixed income folks and our students.

I would agree with that. I'm on the wait and see list also. I think it would be wise and prudent to see how this plays out and some other counties want to jump in and do this. I don't see a big urgent rush to jump into this, so let's just take our time and see how this plays out. is my thought, but I'd sure like to hear from other residents. And I really like Commissioner Jensen's idea of taking it to a vote, and we know exactly what the people want. I think that would be wise.

All right.

Is there any other comments from the board?

course I would I would encourage all of our county residents to reach out if they have any any concerns our emails and numbers and stuff are online we are always willing are able to sit down and visit with and listen to any of your concerns but I would I would say that we will move on to number six on the agenda I would look for a motion to adjourn the meeting tonight second motion is second any comments All those in favor signify by saying aye all right. Oh say nay. We are adjourned. Thank you everybody