WHAT DO THOSE PEOPLE DO?

Some of the parts of the jobs of county workers are not readily known by the public in general. An example is that this past week, I used approximately a half hour to forty five minutes of time from various employees in the assessor’s office. What for? Just so we could file our income tax returns for 2008. That may seem like a strange situation, but for farm returns we needed to know the amount of taxes we paid on a certain portion of our tillable land. That information is not readily available from our parcel statement when the parcel also includes a house, a barn, bins etc. As a result, the folks in our assessor’s office answer many questions for land owners during this time of the year. Let’s see – if there are 900 or more farmers in Nicollet County and each one uses 30 minutes of time from the assessor’s office that is 450 hours or eleven plus weeks of staff time. Then add to that, questions from non-farm citizens. Get the picture. These folks are busy people. end