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People who follow the agenda items on their local city councils have been seeing a lot about Green Acres. There is a movement afoot to get the Legislature to re-tool the whole agricultural land valuation system and supporters are gathering official resolutions from elected governing units to demonstrate to lawmakers the concerns about the system.

In an ordinary year the Chisago County Board gets a list of maybe a dozen or so parcels that have seen changes in their property tax classification in that year.

For 2010 the County Board got a package that included 23 pages of typewriter-sized paper, listing the county's classification changes in small type. The total numbers of parcels involved included 371 homesite updates (usually going to homesteaded) and one personal property/machinery switch. All the rest--a little more than 1,700 changes-- were related to the Green Acres property tax law.

County Assessor John Keefe said the law's revisions resulted in deputy assessors making up to three visits to many parcels, to be able to verify what is now being enrolled by the farmer into new "productive" and "non-productive" designations. The Green Acres rules require enrolling acres in either a 2A or 2B class.

Keefe said some of the parcel verification could be done using the county's database of aerial photos, but many of the decisions on tax classification necessitated visits.

In the last few weeks, local governing bodies have been asked to adopt official resolutions requesting legislators to change the Green Acres law, again.

Keefe agrees there needs to be a second look and not just because of the additional workload heaped on staff to meet the requirements. Keefe said anytime property tax law blurs the straight application of market value, it becomes a "nebulous concept" that assessors "struggle with."

He's heard that state lawmakers might consider returning Green Acres tax rules to where they were a few years ago, but no specific wording for provisions have been circulated, at least not among the county assessors.

Green Acres used to be a system whereby taxes could be levied assuming that any non-productive land in an agricultural zone was less valuable than the acres that are tillable or pastureland. The old premise was that non-productive ag acres might be one-quarter to one-half what comparable property was valued at. The recent round of changes created a much-increased value however, (more like what a developer would pay for the land) and that's what's got Green Acres property owners up-in-arms.

Will tax burden shift?

Some city councils questioned what Green Acres revisions might do to the county's overall tax base and if urban landowners will end up making up the difference if there are changes in calculating Green Acres valuation.

Keefe explained that the 2A and 2B enrollment is on-going until 2013, and there's no statistical information yet on how taxes overall would be impacted. "It is all still in flux," said Keefe.

He added that in Chisago County at least, the percentage of taxable parcels in Green Acres is a very small portion of the whole tax picture. The county is mostly residential class. Keefe said Green Acres is a "...fraction of a fraction of the county's overall valuation," adding, "theoretically city taxpayers might seem to have to be paying more, but we really don't have a handle on what the difference might be."

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