Commissioners discuss leasing mineral land

While running titles, Tascosa Land Resources representatives were surprised at what they found: three miles east of Kimball on Highway 30 the County owns eight mineral acres.

The Tascosa representative, Jason Brown, attended the County commissioners meeting on December 17, to discuss and consider the action that needed to be taken in order to lease mineral land in Kimball County.

They brought that to the attention of the county commissioners and opened a discussion of what needed to be done in order to lease the land from Kimball County.

“We did research and found out that the County owns 8 mineral acres. We’re interested in leasing that land an we wanted to see what the procedures would be for obtaining that lease, placing a bid, that kind of thing,” Brown said.

Brown also said that from what he could deduct from his title research, the mineral acreage has never been leased out before. Another interesting fact about the land is that a lot of the time land owners are surface owners but do not own the minerals.

“Someone might own the minerals and someone might own the surface, so it’s always different. Which is why it came as a surprise to us as we were running titles that the County has these eight mineral acres,” Brown said.

Also present at the meeting was Attorney Robert Brenner, the legal counsel for the board. Brenner brought up a point concerning surface agreements. Since the County owns the mineral acreage and not the surface.

“Do you have a surface use agreement with the land owner? I would like to be able to anticipate who I should expect to hear from. I want to prepare properly for when we have the hearing. Surface use agreement people aren’t going to be upset by this, they’ll most likely propound it,” Brenner said.

Larry Engstrom wanted to know the terms of the lease with Tascosa, however, before any further discussion with Tascosa can occur the Board of Commissioners must follow certain procedures.

“They have to have a public hearing to decide if they are even going to lease it,” Brenner said.

The Nebraska Statutes dictate what must be done when there is real estate owned by the county going up for sale or lease.

First the board must hold a public hearing where they discuss whether or not the property in question will even be put up for sale or lease. Public notice of this hearing must be advertised in the newspaper for two consecutive weeks prior to the date of the public hearing.

After the public hearing, the county board will set a date within two months of the public hearing for the sale date. At that time another advertisement at least ten days prior to the sale must be put in the paper.

At the sale, the county board will accept sealed bids and then decide which bid is the best, in the sense of the county’s best interests, to accept. Depending the amount of bids received the board anticipates that they will be done making decisions concerning the bid they accept by February.