By Dave Baumeister, County Correspondent
SIOUX FALLS – At this week’s Minnehaha County Commission meeting, it was reported that the auction for the old county gravel pit near Ellis netted over twice as much money as expected last week.
While the opening bid needed to be at least $950,000 to start the auction, by the end that amount had been bid up to over $2 million, which is a good deal of extra money to the county for a piece of land that had not been used for many years.
The winning bidder of the Feb. 12 auction was Great Bear Sand and Gravel, LLC of Sioux Falls.
On the day of the auction, Great Bear had to put down 10% of the total price, and the remainder of $1,822,500 needs to be paid at closing, which will be on or before April 9.
According to Commissioner Jeff Barth, the auction company had agreed to sell the property for a flat fee of $3,000, which leaves the county with a net profit of $2,024,700 on the sale.
Part of the agreement is that the county’s law enforcement shooting range, located next to the pit, would remain in operation at that location and still be owned by the county.
In other business, commissioners dealt with a long list of property tax abatements.
Approximately $27,000 of those abatements went to property owned by the city of Sioux Falls, the Sioux Falls School District, Crooks and Hartford.
Other abatements, amounting to almost $13,000, were for church payments and elderly freezes, as well as office errors that had been discovered in the process of migrating to new taxing computer software.
While the county assessor’s office goes out of its way to avoid errors and correct problems that may occur, Director of Equalization Chris Lilla pointed out that people still need to look closely at their assessment notices to look for possible inconsistencies.
“No system is perfect, but when we make a mistake, we are going to fix it,” Commission chairman Dean Karsky said.
The next meeting will be Tuesday, Feb. 23, at 9 a.m. in the second-floor meeting room of the Minnehaha County Administration Building at 6th and Minnesota Ave. in Sioux Falls.
The public is encouraged to attend, as there is always time allotted for public input.
