At the Washington County Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, a Public Hearing was held to discuss the proposed ordinance related to the special valuation of wind energy conversion. Supervisor Marcus Fedler shared his thoughts, “So I had asked Christy about this specifically because we had talked about it, so the question was how were they taxed. This is from Christy, if no special valuation ordinance is adopted, then the wind farm would automatically be considered a utility. Thus taxed by the Iowa Department of Revenue, the county would receive some funds but I believe it would be less than if we had this special valuation in place. The way that I understand it, in no scenario is it possible to have a wind farm taxed at full market value as residential commercial property is. Utility taxed by the IDR or the special valuation by the county are the only two options. The way I understand it is, if it’s built here it’s considered a utility, and therefore its handled by the state, the state uses their replacement tax stuff for the utility and kind of kicks back a little bit to the county. If we institute an ordinance then it at least has some local taxing authority instituted if we have this ordinance.”  The board approved the first of three readings of the ordinance unanimously.