"Our hands are tied."

That's the mantra the Yankton County Board of Equalization has delivered repeatedly this year to an unusually high number of agricultural land owners disputing what they see as excessive increases in their property valuations. Many Yankton County agricultural landowners have significantly higher property valuations this year due to changes in how the value is calculated.

The County Commission, acting as the Board of Equalization, explained Tuesday there is nothing it can do to adjust the property valuations dictated by the state assessment system. Outside of mistakes on an assessment or situations on the land, such as annual flooding, that the county assessor is unaware of, the valuations must stand.

If there is to be change in the system, it will have to be done in the Legislature, commissioners said.

"I think it's important that people come in here and talk to us about this," Commission Chairman Allen Sinclair said. "We're hoping people throughout the state feel the same way so that changes are made in Pierre that tell us to do things differently here. They have been working on a new system of assessing agricultural property."

Sinclair said efforts by the Legislature to move valuations away from the current market-based approach and toward a productivity-based approach should be supported. Because some people are willing to pay much more for agricultural property than it is worth out of a desire to use it for hunting or building a home, the market-value system used in the state has become ineffective, he said.

Commissioner Bill Tamisiea was absent from Tuesday's meeting.

Rising rural property valuations locally are largely due to the lifting of parcel and township factors that once suppressed values in some parts of the county. Yankton County Director of Equalization Lori Mackey said the state Department of Revenue specified after a recent audit of the Yankton County office that the factors be lifted this year because of the method used to assess the market value of agricultural land.

Since the county did not have 15 agricultural land sales in the last three years that fell below the 150 percent rule, a process called bridging was used. The equalization office searched neighboring counties to find enough sales to constitute a market.

The parcel and township factors were used in the past to account for differences in the agricultural land market within the county. For example, agricultural land sales in the southeast part of the county may be very active and lucrative. Meanwhile, in the northwest part of the county, there could be no sales whatsoever.

The factors were established by the equalization office or by township boards to accommodate such market differences. In one case, a township was paying approximately 64 percent of the agricultural valuation calculated for the rest of the county.

"This year, using the bridging method to establish our market, you don't have sales happening within the county that we can use, so there's no justification for having township factors in place," Mackey explained to one landowner Tuesday. "That's why they had to come off."

Without the parcel and township factors, the top value of the land is determined solely by the market. A table provided by the state Department of Revenue then ranks the various soil types within the county and attaches a per-acre value to them. The best soil, of course, has the top-dollar value. The top dollar this year is $1,695, versus $1,903 last year, according to Mackey.

In the past, the local Department of Equalization may have adjusted the soil rating for land that was being used as pasture, for example, instead of the crops it was rated as being able to produce. Mackey said her department no longer has that latitude. Soil is now rated strictly on its believed capability to produce rather than its actual use, she said.

Commissioners expressed frustration with the situation Tuesday.

"It encourages people to break up sod that shouldn't be broken up just to get profit to pay the taxes," Commissioner Donna Freng said. "We don't want to encourage that, but that's what this does. We have to have some options, so either those of us (on the Board of Equalization) or the township boards have the ability to look at this ground and say, 'No, that won't grow beans or corn.'"

Sinclair said those currently working to adjust the state property tax system have to find methods that don't allow abuse, but at the same time allow fairness.

"The fine line you walk is, as soon as you start allowing for exceptions, then you allow chances for the system to really be abused, too," he said.

If there's one bright spot in the situation, it's that a large adjustment in valuation doesn't necessarily mean landowners will have a corresponding change in their property tax bill, commissioners explained.

"Just because your assessed value goes up does not necessarily mean your taxes will go up," Commissioner Mark Johnson said. "The mil levy may come down."

For example, the mil levy for the county was reduced by 4 cents last year, according to Sinclair.

"Assessments went up (last year), but we bump up against the state property tax freeze," he said. "To compensate for that, the auditor has to lower the mil levy."

The explanations offered little comfort to agricultural land owners whose assessments rose dramatically this year and who will almost certainly pay more in property taxes.

When Commissioner Bruce Jensen explained once again to landowner Robert DeJong that the board's hands are tied by the state system, DeJong offered what little help he could.

"Can I untie them?" DeJong joked.