Earlier this week I wrote about a new University of Nebraska-Lincoln study that found that the spring crane migration generated $10.33 million for Central Nebraska’s economy last year. (It’s a lower number than the ones in two 1990s studies; the study’s researchers say its because of more precise methodology, a smaller coverage area and a focus only on spring migration, rather than the whole year.)

You can check out the whole study here, and one table on page 21 stood out to me: It details where the visitors to four of Central Nebraska’s main crane viewing sites came from. Here are the percentages:

Central Nebraska     12%
Other Nebraska        39%
Iowa                             11%
Colorado                     9%
Missouri                      3%
Kansas                         4%
Other states               20%
Other countries       1%

That’s only one out of eight crane center visitors who come from our area (they defined it as a 12-county area, but I can’t find out which counties). Almost as many come from Iowa alone. Almost exactly half come from outside Nebraska.

I’m surprised that the number of visitors from Central Nebraska is so low — particular in a year with a weak economy, when many people might be more inclined to take shorter trips, closer to home. Now, I’d imagine that many crane-watchers from the area are more inclined to view them from other places outside the main crane-watching sites; many of them may have a favorite out-of-the way spot or a friend’s piece of land that might work perfect. Still, this means that out of the 27,000 people who, the researchers estimate, visit one of these four sites each spring, just more than 3,000 are from Central Nebraska.

According to many migration and aviary experts, the crane migration in Central Nebraska is virtually unique — one of the Plains’ signature natural events. It’s also, with the possible exception of Nebraska’s Junk Jaunt, our area’s single biggest tourist attraction by number of visitors. It draws observers from around the country and the world, yet relatively few from our own area.

Why? I suspect it’s mostly because the phenomenon is so old-hat to native Nebraskans — we’ve been around it for so long that we don’t realize it’s special, or if we did, we don’t care much anymore. Renee Seifert, executive director of the Grand Island/Hall County Convention and Visitors Bureau, put it well: “Those birds have been coming here as long as people have been here, and so for them it’s just another normal, natural occurrence. I think people don’t understand that this particular phenomenon doesn’t occur anywhere else other than the central Platte River valley.”

So what do you think? Do we Central Nebraskans just not get it, or is there another reason so few of us visit the crane-watching centers in our own backyard?

In the past week or so, we’ve gotten some good news about Central Nebraska’s ethanol industry. As the Aurora News-Register first reported last week, Aventine Renewable Energy has announced its plans to finish the Aurora West ethanol plant sometime in 2011.

The completion would come five years after ground was broken in late 2006. The plant is expected to produce 113 million gallons of ethanol per year once it’s finished, but construction has halted since late 2008, and Aventine filed for bankruptcy soon afterward. The project’s contractor, Kiewit Energy Corp., canceled its engineering, construction and procurement contracts for Aurora West and an Illinois plant in early 2009.

But Aurora Cooperative president and CEO George Hohwieler announced at the company’s annual meeting that Aventine officials had informed him that they plan to re-emerge from bankruptcy and have the plant finished in 2011, according to the News-Register.

In a news release today, Nebraska Ethanol Board administrator Todd Sneller confirmed those plans.

I’m no lawyer, but based on a few documents filed in Delaware federal bankruptcy court, here’s what appears to have happened: Kiewit filed an objection to Aventine’s reorganization plan in December, in which it said it’s still owed about $15.2 million for Aurora West construction.

Kiewit’s attorneys objected to several aspects of the plan, including the following: One, Aventine laid out three options for reorganization but didn’t say which one it would choose; two, Aventine didn’t say how it would treat Kiewit’s secured Aurora West claim; three, Aventine’s plans for revenue depended on the plant being built by early 2012 but didn’t commit to finishing the plant and didn’t say what would happen if it wasn’t; and four, Aventine’s stated liquidation value of the plant dropped to about $2.4 million to $5 million without an explanation to Kiewit.

Aventine filed a new plan Jan. 13. In another document filed the same day, Kiewit’s objection is said to be “resolved in [principle], subject to documentation.” The document also says Aventine modified its plan in several ways to meet debtors’ objections. (How exactly this 104-page plan changed to appease Kiewit is where the I’m-not-a-lawyer part comes in. Sorry.)

All of which is to say, Aventine and Kiewit seem to have come to some sort of an agreement that will allow the plant to be finished in 2011. And that would mean 113 million more gallons per year of ethanol produced in Nebraska and one less unfinished eyesore for Aurora.

I have apparently become the gatherer of Central Nebraska top-story lists. NTV ran its top 10 stories of the year over the weekend, and I thought it might be interesting to get another perspective on the issue.

NTV, which is based in Axtell, covers a larger area than the Independent, including Kearney and a quite a few places south and west of there. It’s also, obviously, less Grand Island-centric than The Grand Island Independent. That being said, here’s their list in chronological order:

1. Hastings’ Armour-Eckrich meat processing plant closes
2. Gibbon’s turkey plant closes
3. A tornado hits rural Aurora
4. State Fairgrounds groundbreaking in Grand Island
5. The Buckle distribution center groundbreaking in Kearney
6. $45 million Kearney school bond passes
7. Tenneco closes its Cozad plant
8. Denise Withee sentenced for dumping dogs in a field
9. Kearney physicians announce plans for new hospital
10. House fire kills three in Hastings

For the record, here are the Grand Island Independent’s top stories of 2009:

1. State Fair
2. Recession
3. Weather and harvest (tornado, delayed harvest, snowstorms)
4. First Americans bankruptcy
5. Yund Street shootings
6. H1N1
7. Grand Island airport boardings
8. Hastings meat plant closings
9. Ethanol
10. CNH layoffs

The Independent published its top 10 stories of the year today, and it’s one of my favorite issues of the year. I know everyone gets annoyed with how list-crazy the media tends to get at the end of each year (and rightfully so), but they’re a great reminder of what happened this year (or, in this case, decade, too) for a culture with a very short attention span.

Here’s a link to the Top 10 stories in rural Central Nebraska this year. And as a decade retrospective, I dug deep into the paper’s archives to find all of this decade’s top 10s for small-town Central Nebraska — essentially, all of the Independent’s 16-county coverage area except Grand Island itself. (Beat-specific year-end lists began in 2001. I began at the Independent midway through 2006; the rest of the lists were compiled by former Independent reporter Gretchen Fowler, with the exception of a few 2002 items by Carol Bryant.)

Looking for the area’s story of the decade? A few stories were longer-lasting than others: Ethanol has appeared on every top 10 list since 2001, the Comstock music festivals appeared in five years, school bonds appeared in four years, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan appeared in three years.

2008

1. Tornadoes hit Kearney and Aurora May 29.

2. Aurora’s historic downtown Fidelity Building is burned down. Two teenage boys confessed and are sentenced in juvenile court.

3. Renewable energy: Ethanol plants in Ord, Albion and Central City shut down and construction halted in Aurora; NPPD seeks proposals for wind plants near Broken Bow and Petersburg.

4. Hospital construction/renovation projects in Hastings, Ord, Aurora, Albion, St. Paul and Broken Bow.

5. Adams County Treasurer Julia Moeller of Hastings is charged with felony tax evasion.

6. School bonds in Central City and St. Paul pass; Broken Bow fails.

7. Jim Proskocil keeps Comstock music festivals alive under new name while founder Henry Nuxoll is convicted of bad check charge.

8. Nearly a dozen Central Nebraska towns opt out of state’s mandate for fluoridated water.

9. Burwell City Council fires its economic development director; a new council is elected and reinstates director.

10. Al Klanecky of rural Wolbach is charged in federal court for storing hundreds of explosives at his farm.

2007

1. Ice storm (actually during the last two days of 2006) causes hundreds of millions in damage, leaves 100,000 homes without power.

2. School bond fights rage in Gibbon, Central City, Broken Bow and Ord.

3. One block of Broken Bow’s downtown burns down April 1.

4. Four Central Nebraskans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan: Kevin Gaspers of Hastings, Ken Locker Jr. of Burwell, Christopher Pfeifer of Spalding, and former Marine Michael Doheny, formerly of Broken Bow.

5. Zoning battles are fought in Ravenna and Boone, Howard, Greeley and Custer counties over livestock operations and paunch manure.

6. Controversial housing development in Ravenna leads to a failed mayoral recall.

7. Ethanol plants near Ord, Ravenna and Albion begin production, construction ongoing at Aurora and Wood River plants.

8. Farm Service Agency offices in Loup City, Burwell and Greeley are closed.

9. Hastings is named “The Greenest City in America” by Yahoo, gets $250,000.

10. NPPD pursues three new privately run wind projects.

2006

1. Ethanol: Ground is broken on plants in Albion, Aurora and Wood River; plans are announced for plants near Ansley and St. Paul (neither plant is completed); construction continues in Ord and on Central City expansion.

2. Thomas “Tiff” Varney of Arnold murdered, and Seth Strasburg of Arnold pleads no contest to manslaughter.

3. Aurora, Gibbon and Cross County (Stromsburg/Benedict) pass school bonds for construction/renovation projects.

4. Shelby native Curt Tomasevicz competes in the winter Olympics as part of the U.S. bobsled team.

5. Two Central Nebraska soldiers killed in Iraq: Brent Zoucha of Clarks and Jeffrey Hansen of Cairo.

6. Valley County Health System in Ord investigates and replaces its CEO, Neelam Bhardwaj, amid controversy. (She later sued for discrimination and settled.)

7. Voters repeal 2005 law dissolving elementary-only school districts, including 28 in Central Nebraska. (The districts remain dissolved.)

8. Fullerton farmer Annette Dubas defeats Central City farmer Greg Senkbile for Legislature’s 34th District seat.

9. The Catholic Diocese of Grand Island clusters nine parishes north of Grand Island, ending weekend Mass at six of them.

10. Comstock music festival organizers implement a 21-step plan to control underage drinking in order to keep their liquor license.

2005

1. Missing persons cases: Ord natives Janelle Hornickel and Michael Wamsley die in a snowstorm near Omaha after taking meth and becoming disoriented; Central City native Kendra Benham dies in a traffic accident in Gage County but is missing for a week; an Indiana woman is missing for a month before being found under a bridge near Grand Island; rural Gibbon farmer Gerald Gillming is reported missing but turns up alive in Kansas five days later and is charged with false reporting.

2. May storms cause extensive hail damage in Hastings and flooding in Wood River.

3. Howard County Sheriff Troy Kaiser resigns after his deputies quit and he is accused of threatening to cut the county attorney’s throat.

4. Six people die in fires near Doniphan, in Kearney and in Hastings.

5. Twelve-year-old Crysta Naylor of St. Paul sells a pretzel shaped like the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus on eBay for $10,600.

6. Central City, Ravenna, Ord, Albion, Wood River and Alda move forward with ethanol plants.

7. A significant amount of money is stolen in an armed robbery at Henderson State Bank.

8. Hastings Mayor Rick Sheehy is appointed lieutenant governor by new Gov. Dave Heineman.

9. Former Clarks police officer Ron Jones is convicted of criminal mischief and theft that occurred while he was an officer.

10. Wood River firefighters Bobby Heminger and Kenny Woitalewicz are remembered on the first anniversary of their deaths.

2004

1. Wood River firefighters Bobby Heminger and Kenny Woitalewicz die on Valentine’s Day when a burning home collapses on them.

2. Five members of the military from Central Nebraska and two others with ties to the area are killed in Iraq or Afghanistan: Noah Boye and Eric Knott of Grand Island, Edward Iwan of Albion, Dennis Corral of Kearney, Kyle Codner of Shelton, Linda Tarango-Griess of Sutton and Jeremy Fischer of Lincoln.

3. Ethanol plants in Central City and Ravenna begin operations.

4. A fire destroys a historic building in downtown Hastings. Two people are injured.

5. One person is killed and 16 people are injured when a Greyhound bus crashes on I-80 between Shelton and Wood River.

6. Tornadoes hit Wheeler County, and Boone County is hit with flooding.

7. James Graf of Laurel dies when a crop duster crashes south of Wood River on June 21.

8. Shari Vincent of Aurora pleads innocent to second-degree attempted murder of her husband, Christopher.

9. Doug and Susan Kyhn of rural Farwell are severely burned by a propane explosion at their home.

10. Greeley and Wolbach schools merge to create the Greeley-Wolbach Titans.

2003 (Top 5)

1. Jose Sandoval is convicted of five counts of first-degree murder for his role in the 2002 Norfolk bank killings. The trial was held in Aurora after a change of venue.

2. Daniel Gannon of Grand Island is stabbed and killed on a North Loup River sandbar near Dannebrog. Joshua Boord of Grand Island is charged with felony manslaughter, but the charge is dismissed.

3. Construction begins on Central City ethanol plant.

4. The main stage at Comstock’s Godstock music festival collapses because of high winds. One person is injured, and the rest of the festival is canceled.

5. Thirteen-year-old Daniel Burkhardt Jr. of Ravenna is convicted of four juvenile felony charges after attempting to sexually assault a 16-year-old girl and shooting the man who tried to help her.

2002 (The regional beat was split in two that year; the west list is first, followed by the Central Nebraska-related items from the beat’s other reporter, Carol Bryant)

1. Bombs were found inside mailboxes near Dannebrog and Scotia. No one in Central Nebraska was injured.

2. Twelve-year-old Daniel Burkhardt Jr. of Ravenna faces six juvenile charges after attempting to sexually assault a 16-year-old girl and shooting the man who tried to help her.

3. Bobby Joe Conn of Johnson is convicted of conspiring to kill his ex-wife, Alicia Siegel Conn of Litchfield.

4. Nordic Biofuels announces its plans to build an ethanol plant in Ravenna.

5. One person, Louis Lautenschlager, is killed and six others are injured in two separate explosions near St. Libory in June.

6. A mild earthquake (3.5 on the Richter Scale) in June is felt in Valley and Greeley counties.

7. A newborn boy is abandoned on the doorstep of a Shelton home with the umbilical still attached. He is placed with a foster family.

8. Rajitha Goli of St. Louis is convicted of operating a health care fraud scheme in Kearney and Sargent.

9. Justin Olson of Lincoln is convicted of first-degree assault and a weapons charge for shooting his parents in their Broken Bow home.

10. The first-ever Comstock Rock festival draws 30,000 people.

East-Central Nebraska:

5. Plans for an ethanol plant in Central City are announced.

6. A district judge rules that four hog confinement units near Cedar Rapids in Boone and Nance counties are a nuisance.

8. A sale of Allen’s of Hastings to Skagway of Grand Island falls through.

10. Atlantic Homes of Central City, with 175 employees, closes in August.

2001

1. Sixteen-year-old John Blume of Kearney sends a bomb threat to a network printer at Gibbon public schools. He is convicted of a juvenile terroristic threats charge.

2. Justin Olson of Lincoln is arrested for shooting his parents in their Broken Bow home.

3. Four men are arrested in the attempted murder of Alicia Siegel Conn of Litchfield.

4. Ten Central Nebraska counties discuss forming a regional health department. (The Loup Basin Public Health Department is eventually formed.)

5. Former Wood River resident Logan Flood of Lincoln survives a plane crash near Ainsworth.

6. The first Comstock Windmill Festival is held, and organizer Henry Nuxoll announces there will be a sequel.

7. $35 million worth of cocaine is confiscated west of Kearney on I-80, the largest-valued cocaine bust in Nebraska State Patrol history.

8. Wood River Jr./Sr. High school board votes to enter into an interlocal agreement with three elementary-only districts for a middle school arrangement.

9. Comstock Village Board President Dennis Johnson and board member Zelda Drake each call for each other’s recall. In a close, controversial election, Drake is recalled while Johnson is not.

10. Richard Huhman of Anselmo survives being struck by lightning while camping near the Calamus Golf Course near Burwell.

Could tolls be down the road for Nebraska? A new study says they could be an answer for the state’s roads funding shortfall.

The Platte Institute for Economic Research, a fiscally conservative thinktank based in Omaha, released a study last week calling for Nebraska officials to look at public-private partnerships  (read: toll roads) to help the state get through its funding crunch for roads.

In a public-private roads partnership, private risk capital is typically invested to design, build or maintain a road for a specific time period, and the private entity charges tolls on the road to recoup the cost, according to the study. After the contract expires, the state government can usually get the road back at no cost.

The study is authored by Shirley Ibarra and Leonard Gilroy, two analysts at the Reason Foundation, another California-based thinktank that advocates free markets. It goes into lots more detail about how these partnerships might work, but essentially it argues that these partnerships could jump-start several state roads projects that are stalled because of a lack of funding, like the $175 million Lincoln South Beltway project and the Highway 34/75 Missouri River crossing.

So will the Legislature give the idea a look?

The Legislature’s Transportation and Telecommunications Committee has its own report on highway funding due out this week. State Sen. Deb Fischer of Valentine, the committee’s chair, told the Lincoln Journal Star the report won’t include much on public-private partnerships, but she’d be interested to see if any private groups are keen on building roads in the state.

Another senator, Tim Gay of Papillion, told the Omaha World-Herald he’s skeptical about toll roads in a low-population state like Nebraska, but he’s interested in some of the study’s other ideas, like privatizing maintenance work.

In a blog post today, state Sen. Colby Coash of Lincoln called the partnerships “an interesting alternative” and asked his constituents what they thought.

This issue has a lot of hurdles to clear — logistical, procedural and attitudinal — in order to become a reality in this state. But with roads funding in a critical shortage, state senators sound open to anything. This could be an issue to watch long-term.

In this month’s Essent (PDF – it’s on page 6), the newsletter of the Nebraska Municipal Power Pool, I ran across some fun little factoids that illustrate just how closely linked many Nebraska towns are with their railroad-generated past.

Corrinne Pedersen, NMPP Energy’s manager of member development, noted a few Nebraska towns named after railroad officials. Here’s the few she mentioned:

— Shelton, for Nathan Shelton, auditor in the Union Pacific land department.

— McCool Junction, for Daniel McCool, general manager of the St. Joseph & Grand Island Railroad.

— Holdrege, for G.W. Holdrege, a Burlington exec.

— Kimball, for Thomas L. Kimball, a UP general manager.

(My favorite part about these names is the fact that Shelton’s doesn’t even seem to be named after a company bigwig — apparently even middle management got their own towns.)

A quick Google search comes up with several other Nebraska towns with railroad-inspired names: Brock, Sutherland, Ainsworth, Hastings and Coleridge (suggested by a railroad exec).

As this Omaha World-Herald article and this Nebraska Game and Parks information point out, many of Nebraska’s rural towns were quite simply built on the backs of railroad, having grown out of stations created every seven to 15 miles. This summary of Nemaha County history gives a fairly typical picture of how it worked: County bonds to help build railroads, towns built around depots, towns moved to accompany new tracks, and so on.

In some cases, as in Fairfield in this history, the railroads would actually name the towns themselves in alphabetical order by starting letter as they went down the line.

Just a fascinating reminder of how closely tied Nebraska history has been to that of its railroads.

The Platte Institute for Economic Research, a conservative Omaha thinktank, commissioned a study (very large PDF) by two UNK professors released this week proposing that Nebraska consolidate its 93 counties into 28. The Omaha World-Herald has an interesting story on the plan, along with a map of what county would go where.

The study doesn’t analyze how much money might be saved by this plan (or, as the World-Herald article notes, whether it would be politically possible), but it seems to be intended as a concrete plan that could be used as a starting point for discussion or further research. The study also provides an estimate of the amount of extra money it would cost the citizens of those regions to travel that additional distance for county services. (These numbers are across the entire regions, not just the counties I’ve named.)

So what does it give us? For Central Nebraskans, here’s how it breaks down.
— Greeley, Hamilton, Howard and Merrick counties: You’re now headed to Grand Island. Total cost for your region: $10,941.
— Garfield, Loup, Sherman and Valley counties: You’re going to Broken Bow. Total cost for your region: $8,484.
— Boone and Nance counties: You’re going to Columbus. Total cost for your region: $10,835.
— Polk County: You’re headed down to York. Total cost for your region: $18,549.
— Wheeler County: You’re going up to O’Neill. Total cost for your region: $2,946.
— Every other county I didn’t mention (that’s Adams, Buffalo, Custer and Hall): You lucked out. Nothing changes for you.
— Oh, by the way, the eight counties that make up the Omaha and Lincoln metro areas are unchanged, too.

So how does the map hold up? The researchers say their goal is to keep people from having to drive more than 60 miles for county services and keep overall populations for regions under 60,000 when possible. In Central Nebraska, at least, they seem to do a decent job with that. There’s a few spots that fall outside the distance goals in our area (Spalding-Grand Island is 67 miles, Petersburg-Columbus is 58), and the Grand Island-based area exceeds 60,000 people, but generally, they seem to meet their own goals.

There’s still the question of whether this would be desirable. While county government isn’t nearly the source of community pride that local schools are, most rural Nebraskans seem to resent anything that could be perceived as a loss of local control — especially when it would result in some inconvenience. And as Larry Dix of the Nebraska Association of County Officials noted in the World-Herald article, it wouldn’t change the amount of roads to maintain or crime to stop.

On the other hand, there could be some real savings in consolidating some the state’s smallest counties, though this study doesn’t tell us precisely how much. It might be worth looking into for the long-term’s sake, though a lot of things would have to happen for rural Nebraskans to be in the mood to support something like this.

What do you think? A reasonable idea worth taking a look at, or another misguided attempt to marginalize rural Nebraska?

As usual, Roger Welsch summed it up best: “I’m not sure there can be a Dannebrog without Harriett. It seems like she’s been there forever. She’s become an institution.” Welsch is the famous Dannebrog writer and folklorist, and the Harriett he’s referring to is Harriett Nielsen, longtime owner of Harriett’s Danish.

Harriett retired on Halloween, and this week, she was The Independent’s Extraordinary Person. For 23 years, her restaurant — in a converted house and telephone switchboard office, with no phone, no reservations and no menu — helped define Dannebrog as Nebraska’s Danish capital and one of its most homey and charming small towns.

Most small towns in Central Nebraska have a place like Harriett’s (well, maybe not quite like Harriett’s) — a place that, more than anything else, is what outsiders think of when they think of that town. It’s usually been around for quite a while and attracts a mixture of local regulars and out-of-towners coming on a friend’s recommendation. I thought I’d start off with a partial list of places like that in the area, and if I’ve missed your favorite place (since I probably have), please add it in the comments.

Dannebrog
The Danish Baker — Fortunately for Dannebrog, the cupboard isn’t empty without Harriett. Tom Schroeder’s Danish Baker, just a block away, has become even more widely known in recent years for his Thursday night pizza, a tradition he started in 1992. Tom pops out of the kitchen occasionally to sing and play guitar, serenading you while you enjoy his deep-dish creations.

Boelus
The Gold Nugget — This restaurant, opened in 1961, endured two shootings, a closing and a fire during the 1990s and early 2000s, but it’s going strong once again with a reputation as one of the best steakhouses in the area. I haven’t been there yet, but its reputation is, well, solid gold. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

Broken Bow
The Tumbleweed Cafe — I haven’t been there for a while, but when I’ve been on assignments in Broken Bow, our photographers and I have often made sure to stop in, even if it wasn’t at a traditional mealtime. It’s your classic fatty but delicious kind of restaurant where everything tastes like home cooking.

Chapman
Prime Time Steakhouse — The place looks like a hole in the wall along Highway 30, but once you start eating — whoa. Just imagining their steak filled with mushrooms, cheese and all sorts of goodies is making me hungry right now. That, and it’s almost lunchtime anyway.

Ord
Calamity Jane’s — I ate lunch at Jane’s for an interview earlier this year, and the vibe — even before noon, just after opening — was classic small-town steakhouse all the way. The owner, Jane John, is a pleasure to talk to, too — she keeps it lively but friendly.

I could go on, but I want to give you a shot to show off what your town has, too. Where should I stop for a meal sometime? Where do you love to get some good cookin’? Let me know.

Caleb Pollard, the executive director of Valley County Economic Development in Ord, wrote a post on his Ord Sunshine Pumpers blog last week about a fascinating Newsweek interview with Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, the authors of the new book “Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America.” It’s taken me a week to get around to it, but it’s well worth your time.

Carr and Kefalas, a husband-and-wife team, spent six months in a 2,000-person town in northeastern Iowa that they give the pseudonym “Ellis,” talking to just about everybody during that time.

What’s interesting about their findings — from what I could gather from the interview — is that they’re at odds with the recent conventional wisdom about reversing the rural brain drain. In recent years, many rural thinkers, planners and economic developers have latched onto sociologist Richard Florida’s concept of the “creative class,” and the idea that those (mostly young) tech experts, artists and musicians correlate strongly with growing economic development.

Many of those developers have pushed small towns to try to increase their “cool” quotient to attract the creative class — reinventing themselves as smaller, off-the-beaten-path versions of the creative class’s favorite urban areas.

Kefalas and Carr advocate a different way. In the interview, Kefalas says she agrees with Florida about the importance of the creative class, but says that trying to create a community of young, creative people isn’t necessarily the best place for rural towns to spend their resources. Carr puts it simply: If your goal is to create a “cool” vibe, it will fail, because there will always be cooler cities than yours.

So what to do instead? Just about everyone I’ve spoken to in rural development agrees that drawing and keeping young adults is one of the most critical aspects of keeping small towns alive and kicking. But Carr and Kefalas seem to propose that rural areas use their natural assets — their natural beauty, low cost of living, more relaxed pace, their ruralness — to attract young people. Instead of mimicking urban living, they suggest, rural areas should strive to sell themselves as the opposite of the urban life.

They also say towns should focus on students other than the cream of the local high school’s crop, working with community colleges rather than directing their energies strictly toward bringing in “the best and the brightest.”

So what do you think? What’s the best way for towns to attract and keep the people who will keep towns alive? How about combining Florida’s and Kefalas and Carr’s methods? What have you seen that’s worked?

I’ve covered several school bond issues over the past three years, and I often get questions from people in one town about how things happened in another town. Many of the area’s bond issues center on the same few general issues — “Think of the children!” vs. “But is now the right time?” is a big one — but there are several factors that set each one apart. Here’s a quick guide to the central themes running through each of the area’s school bond campaigns over the past three years. 

Ord
As I wrote in today’s paper, Ord’s $9.8 million bond issue seems to come down to one defining issue: Are the school’s fire and ventilation issues best addressed along with a new gym, or should they be considered separately? Pro-bond folks say it doesn’t make sense to fix one without the other, especially since the school says the cheapest way to resolve fire issues in the library is to move it to the current practice gym — thus necessitating a new gym.

People who oppose the bond issue say the school has other options for fixing all of these issues rather than lumping them together in one multimillion-dollar bond issue. They say the school district hasn’t done a diligent enough job looking at those alternatives and that they’ve been steadily guided toward a bond issue by their architects, Bahr, Vermeer and Haecker of Lincoln.

St. Paul
St. Paul’s $4.7 million bond issue for elementary and high school expansions along with fixes for fire and safety code issues passed last November. It never faced any organized opposition, but the big issue there had to do with timing: The vote took place just after the nation’s economy fell headlong into its recession. As Superintendent Doug Ackles noted last October, the bond’s chances were better in a poor economy because it was a nuts-and-bolts project designed to resolve overcrowding issues and meet fire code requirements.

Like Ord, St. Paul faced a fix-it-or-else order from the state fire marshal, which added some urgency. But had St. Paul’s project been a gym or an auditorium, Ackles said, it might have been a tougher sell.

Broken Bow
Broken Bow’s proposed $9.4 million bond issue for a new elementary school was pummeled at the polls in May 2008. The central issue there was somewhat similar to Ord’s: Opponents of the bond wanted the school to fix the current elementary buildings, which they acknowledged were in poor shape, rather than building a new one. This ended up setting up the “Resolve it all in one shot” vs. “Save money and fix things gradually” conflict that we’re also seeing in Ord.

Just as in Ord, opponents also lobbied for the school board to explore other options and questioned its exclusive use of Bahr, Vermeer and Haecker to plan the project.

Central City
Central City’s bond issue, a $4.6 million one for a new performing arts center, was the outlier among the area’s recent school bonds. First, it began with private fundraising, rather than a community facilities committee. The move toward a bond began when a local couple left $600,000 in their estate for an arts center. A school committee raised money to bring pledges for an endowment for the center’s upkeep to $1.5 million, and then the district voted to pursue a bond.

There was no organized opposition to this bond, either, but it failed on its first try in November 2007. Some of the opposition, as always, had to do with cost, but some of it also had to do with the center’s proposed location at the school and how much the community would be able to use it. When the district tried again in May 2008, it passed, though the vote total wasn’t much different from the first attempt.

Gibbon
Gibbon’s $16.3 million school bond for a new K-12 school was far larger than any of the others (a 48.9-cent levy), and while there was little organized opposition before the vote, much of the talk focused on the project’s sheer size. After the bond passed in September 2006, the opposition came out of the woodwork in the form of an attempt to recall half the school board.

The recall essentially served as a referendum on the bond issue six months after the initial vote (and it passed again, as the board members retained their spots). The recall group’s primary contention was that the school board had concealed the true cost of the bond and — stop me if you’ve heard this one before — didn’t consider less costly alternatives to building a new school. (And yes, the school also hired Bahr, Vermeer and Haecker.) Opposition died down after the recall’s failure, and the new building opened its doors in August.