 Hi, this is Jim Gray, Southwest District Director, and I'm here with Mr. Reinhard Hauke. Reinhard is Chair of the Dunn County Commission. He's been a member of their county commission for about four years. Correct. And prior to that, he was the county auditor for 31 years. So he has a lot of experience in county government. And we're here today to talk about mill levies, what they are, and how they're used to fund county efforts. So let's start at the beginning. What is a mill levy? Mill levy is actually a number. It's 0.001. And when you take that 0.001, which is one mill, times a number, which in this case is a taxable valuation, you get a tax or you get another number that represents the property tax that you will be paying. So it's just a number, 0.001, of any particular valuation or any particular number. So it's a portion of the county's total property tax. Right. Okay. And what does that mill levy money used for? Mill levy money is used for budgets within the county, all the way from running general government, running the road department, and also running extension service. It is a tax which supports a portion of what the county needs to operate. Okay. So if a county says they have two mills there to fund their local extension office, then you're just taking that total property tax times a different number. What we're doing is we're taking the 0.002, which would be two mill levies, times the tax base of the county, the taxable valuation of the county. Okay. And there's a way that that is determined, the tax base of the county. And if you want me to go into that now, I can. Sure. Let's talk about how that property tax is levied and how that total taxable value is set at the county level. Each piece of property within a county, whether it be a section of land, actually it would be a quarter of land because you're not allowed to put a whole section on a property tax statement. So each quarter of land on down to lots and blocks in the city, to buildings within the city, to buildings on a residential property within a town or within the country where the person isn't on a farmer. And that's a whole different ball game, so we're not going to get into that. But each piece of property has a value. And that value is used to determine the taxable value for a particular county. So you put all the values together of all the property within the county that's taxed. And everybody, unfortunately or fortunately, gets to pay taxes. Without taxes, there wouldn't be much for services. So that's what it is used for. That's how it works. So all the property values are added up together and that becomes the tax base for that particular county. So is the value of a mill the same from one county to another? No. The value of a mill is .001 times the property value. So one mill is worth less or more depending upon the total value or your piece of property because actually it's .001 mill levy times your particular piece of property. And then you add all the mill levies together. You put in schools, fire districts, ambulance districts, all the county's various funds and that becomes a total mill levy of anywhere from, let's say, 150 to 400 mills probably depending upon the budgets in the needs of the rest of the county. So just because two counties each have two mills allocated to fund extension, if one's property value is higher, they're going to have more money. Correct. Would that be a better term? Correct. So do all counties allocate mill levies to fund local county extension efforts? As far as I know, yes. The law allows you to have at least one mill or two mills and then you can do some voting to get some more mills. And every county, I believe, does levy extension. So let's talk about that. Is there a maximum number of mills that can be levied to fund extension? I believe it's, what is it, two mills by vote and then you can go, I suppose you could go up to four if you voted again. So a county commission just can't arbitrarily change those mills. No. It has to go to a vote of the people. Okay. All right. So do counties, do they recalculate that mill levy every year since property values can go up or down? Right. So how has that done? What you do is when you get your total tax base put together, you divide that into your request. And that gives you the point, zero, zero, zero, whatever you need to do to make that budgetary number. Obviously there's a minimum or a maximum for each particular mill levy for each particular fund including extension. So if you ask for more than what two mills are going to produce here, you're not going to get any more than what two mills produce. It's not going to be there unless, and that's another ball game, unless the county decides to put some more funds into it from a county's own general fund, which usually or can get done in a lot of counties. I know in Dunn County we've been supporting extension beyond the mill levy for a number of years. So that was going to be my next question. So what if a county has established, for example, two mills to fund extension and that amount of money is not sufficient to fund extension at the county level? What other options does that county have? The county can put in some general fund money if they've got excess money. There's also state aid distribution money, which comes in, which is a portion of the state's property tax that's collected, that's allocated back to each and every county. And you can take that money and give a portion of that to various funds and one of them could be extension service. So you could support it with state aid distribution money or you can support it if you have excess general fund money. Okay, so I think I understand mills now. So it's a number, one mill is .001 times the total value of property in that county. Right. And then that is the mill levy. Counties set that depending upon the vote of the people and their budget needs and that can fund all or part of their local extension efforts. Correct. Great. Well, thank you very much for your time. I think it makes sense. You're welcome. Thank you.