For anyone looking for a good land purchase, listen up: Mower County may be ready to deal.

The Mower County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday agreed to hold a public land sale of 16 properties, as presented by County Auditor-Treasurer Steve Reinartz.

The sale will be held at 1 p.m. on April 5 at the Mower County Government Center.

It marks the third sale of county property whose previous owners failed to pay taxes. Nine new properties were added to the current list. Two other sales were held in December and January.

But before you get too excited, understand this: some of the parcels are small, irregularly shaped – and, in one case, hard to find.

“I have to look again; I am not even sure where this is,” Reinartz admitted during the county board meeting on Tuesday. He was referring to an Adams property that is eight feet wide and 74 feet long.

County Coordinator Craig Oscarson said it would be not unusual to assume that an adjacent property owner might be maintaining the property. Some parcels may not be immediately recognizable as a separate piece. Some parcels on the tax forfeiture list date as far back as 1957. The most recent parcel to go into forfeiture was in 2014.

The parcels may also carry financial baggage with them – assessments perhaps levied by cities in which they are located, for work or maintenance done. Some parcels have buildings. One parcel in LeRoy carries an assessment of $23,700; others carry none at all, although properties will also carry recording fees.

Commissioners on Tuesday reviewed each property and, in most cases, lowered the asking price. A few of the properties can be had for $1.

The parcels are located in Austin, Lyle and LeRoy townships; and the cities of Austin, Adams, Grand Meadow, LeRoy and Waltham.

In other business, the commissioners:

Whoops: Heard the county had overbilled the city of Austin in one of its law enforcement funds by over $30,000. The county will refund the monies.

Solid Waste plan: Resolved to be a participating member of a Regional Solid Waste Management Plan, at a cost of $10,000, as long as the Southeastern Minnesota Recyclers Exchange, the joint powers board to which Mower County belongs, also secures funding for at least 50 percent of the cost of developing the plan and hiring a consultant. The plan will include common elements to all counties who are a part, but will also include items unique to each county.

Townships happy: Agreed that townships will no longer have to levy a minimum for their roads in order to qualify for state gas tax monies, distributed through the county. The board agreed to change the formula to reflect the elimination of the minimum requirement.

The number of township road miles will represent 60 percent of the formula. The assessed tax rate will be 30 percent; and the population factor will be 10 percent. All portions remain the same from the previous formula.