Some county officials are taking on a night shift to help keep residents informed.

Members of the Clay County Board of Supervisors have arranged a series of town meetings, featuring various branches of county government.

Clay County Assessor John Lawson will lead off the series. He'll be in the board room at the Clay County Administration Building for a 7 p.m. meeting on Monday, Sept. 22.

Regular Clay County Board of Supervisors meetings will continue on the regular Tuesday morning schedule, according to the board's chairman, Ken Chalstrom. County leaders hope the night format will give constituents, who work during day, a chance to be heard by their representatives.

The town hall discussions are intended to be informal. No minutes will be taken.

A different department, or different departments, will be featured each month. Discussion will dictate the length of the meeting, but most will last about an hour.

If participation is successful, the supervisors will move the meeting out to the smaller communities of Clay County.

For the inaugural gathering, Lawson will try to help participants navigate the complicated process of agricultural land.

"I have a power-point presentation on preliminary figures for agricultural land values for 2009," Lawson said. "Basically, I'm going to talk about the law as it relates to agricultural property, the formula on how land values are calculated, the formula as it applies within Clay County to the CSR value and the soil survey, agricultural buildings."

Residents won't be able to get answers about specific parcels of land during the meeting. That information is still available by contacting the Clay County Assessor's Office during office hours.

"Basically it's hard to comment on a specific problem or a property when you don't have the information in front of you," Lawson explained. "At that meeting, I will not have access to all of the property information."

Lawson does want residents to leave with a better understanding of the property tax system, so questions are encouraged.

"I'm for it 100 percent," Lawson said of the meeting format. "Ninety-five percent of the people who come to my counter with a complaint about their value probably don't understand the laws that we are required to follow in valuing their property."

State taxation laws are something Lawson has no control over, but he said Monday's discussion can serve as a building block for reforms.

"There are debates out there on the property tax system," Lawson said. "Should it be totally revised? But if people don't have the information and don't understand it in the first place, they don't even understand what they're looking at revising. So, the more knowledge we can get out there, the more information that they have at their fingertips, a better understanding they have of the system itself, the better they can make a decision as to whether or not they think the system needs to be changed."