The data is from 2008, which might be a bit dated given the recession that’s deepened since then, but it’s the newest stuff we have. Central Nebraska generally doesn’t fare too well, with most of its counties shaded in some form of red, representing the lowest pay categories on the map. Garfield County, home of Burwell, has the lowest average compensation in Nebraska at $28,383, good for seventh-lowest in the United States.

A little ways south of Garfield County, Sherman County (county seat: Loup City) comes in 36th-lowest in the nation at $30,092. In between the two are two other Nebraska counties, Boyd in the far northern part of the state and McPherson in the Sandhills.

On the higher end of the area’s pay scale were Hall and Buffalo counties, home to Grand Island and Kearney, Hamilton County (Aurora) and Wheeler County, a sparsely populated county just east of Garfield County in the Sandhills. And judging by one of the lower maps on the post, many of Central Nebraska’s wages went up from 2007 to 2008, even as much of the rest of the country was dropping.

Of course, what’s not taken into account in these statistics is cost of living, and a dollar goes a lot farther in Burwell than Chicago, or even Omaha. Still, this is a not a great list to be on if you’re trying to attract new families.

So what say you? Are these statistics discouraging or meaningless? Or do they even reveal something encouraging?

Last year’s Hidden Treasures and Fading Places are detailed at Heritage Nebraska’s blogs, but I thought I’d highlight the ones in Central Nebraska:

Hidden Treasures:

Hamilton Avenue Church, Hastings
Prairie Loft Center for Outdoor Agricultural Learning, Hastings

Fading Places:

Archeological sites statewide
Aurora Apothecary/Knights of Pythias Hall, Aurora (which was partially rebuilt last year)
Hastings Junior High School and endangered schools statewide (Hastings’ school was bought last year with plans for renovation)
Naval Ammunition Depot, Adams and Clay counties
Oregon Trail statewide
Rural schools statewide

A couple of friends asked me yesterday what nifty small-town sites were worth visiting in Central Nebraska, which got me thinking about my own list of Central Nebraska hidden treasures* (as you can tell, I’m a bit of an outdoorsy type):

*You’ll notice there’s several very cool, outdoorsy spots in Central Nebraska I didn’t include, like Calamus and Sherman reservoirs, the Nebraska Nature & Visitor Center, Rowe Sanctuary and so on. I didn’t include them because while they may be treasures, they’re not very hidden.

Olson Nature Preserve, Albion: I visited last March and was amazed at the juxtaposition of so many ecosystems in such close proximity — a spring-fed river, forest, wetlands and even the eastern edge of the Sandhills. Worth a stop if you’re headed north on Highway 14.

Happy Jack Chalk Mine, Scotia: I’ve only checked out the mine while it was set up for Haunted Hollow, which was pretty cool (and scary) in its own right. But Happy Jack is more than scary: It’s the only underground diatomic mine in the U.S. that’s open to the public.

Central Nebraska’s vineyards and wineries: I’ve only visited Miletta Vista near St. Paul and Cedar Hills near Ravenna, and both have sensational views and a wonderfully relaxed ambience. I know George Spencer Vineyard near Gibbon (which is apparently temporarily closed?) and Prairie Creek Vineyards near Central City have been popular, too.

Fort Hartsuff, Elyria: In the last year, Fort Hartsuff has gotten a lot of support from surrounding towns and beyond, which is a great thing — it’s one of the country’s few remaining Plains and Indian Wars forts, and it’s in great shape. The wide open-ness of the Valley County hills give it as ”Old West” of a feel as anything else in Central Nebraska.

Broken Arrow Wilderness, Fullerton: This former church camp, now owned by Doug and Darla Russell, includes a beautiful bluff along the Loup River that also boasts some cool history (it was the site of the first Independence Day celebration in Nebraska, in 1844). Great place for a getaway.

That’s my short list of Central Nebraska’s hidden treasures: What would you nominate? I’d love to hear your picks.

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.

*District 34 consists of Hamilton, Merrick, Nance and parts of Polk and Hall counties, including the cities of Aurora, Central City and Fullerton.

The plan sounds for now like it makes sense: Dubas, a registered Democrat in the formally nonpartisan Legislature, doesn’t have an opponent, and I haven’t heard any opposition to her within the 34th District (although I haven’t solicited any opposition, either). But that may change, if the Nebraska Republican Party has anything to say about it.

The week after Dubas’ announcement, state party chair Mark Fahleson held a listening session in Aurora, with Dist. 34 one of two districts in which the party has already targeted a Democratic incumbent (the other is Dist. 16, home of Sen. Kent Rogert of Tekamah). The party is actively recruiting candidates to run against Dubas and Rogert, and in a post on his blog at the state GOP website, Fahleson had some fighting words for Dubas:

“Senator Dubas is a likable person, but the reality is she votes against her district and sides with the liberal special interests in Lincoln. There are a lot of nice people that I wouldn’t want representing me in the Nebraska Legislature.”

Fahleson went on to compare Dubas’ voting record with the state Chamber of Commerce to former state Sen. Ernie Chambers. (He didn’t specify which special interests Dubas was beholden to, other than to briefly mention the state’s trial lawyers.) He seemed quite exuberant based on the meeting’s turnout, saying, “I’m confident that a Republican will be elected to represent District 34 in November 2010.”

That may seem like crazy talk in a district in which the incumbent senator has drawn little, if any, public opposition. But let’s remember that Dubas nipped her Republican opponent in 2006, Greg Senkbile of Central City, by only about 230 votes, or about 1.7 percent of the vote. On the other hand, the heads of both the state’s political parties are no strangers to rose-colored hyperbole — see their wildly differing takes on Nebraska’s opinion of Obama in this Lincoln Journal Star piece — so talk may be a long ways from action.

At the very least, though, this may be a more interesting campaign than we initially expected.

Albion (and Ord)
— The Albion News reports that city sales tax receipts are on pace to beat the numbers from 2008, with $492,294 collected through June, compared with $485,597 last year. Ord is also ahead of its 2008 sales tax numbers, according to Valley County Economic Development Executive Director Caleb Pollard. That’s a solid economic indicator that the proverbial corner may have been turned in two north-central Nebraska towns.

Loup City
— Loup City’s new Subway held its grand opening Saturday. I visited earlier this month on the restaurant’s first day, and the excitement was palpable. This is the town’s first fast-food restaurant in recent memory, and it’s a pretty nice-looking place, at that. It had its own living-room-style seating area, complete with mock fireplace. Very impressive. The Independent‘s photographers are Subway addicts on the road, so I’m sure that won’t be my last visit.

— Also, per the Sherman County Times, the 35-page booklet by Dennis Welty about the history of the 1934 Loup City riot is now available for $10 at King’s Variety and the Sherman County Historical Society. I wrote a bit about Dennis’ work and the riot here.

Aurora
— I missed this one from the Aurora News-Register a couple of weeks ago: The China Garden restaurant, which was closed in February when part of the downtown Temple Craft building collapsed, has reopened in the former Chuck’s Drive-In along Highway 34 in Aurora. When I visited in July, they were concerned about having to revamp their renovations after some of them got a thumbs-down from the fire marshal, but it’s good to see them back open, and their place looks sharp. I wrote about their journey since the collapse here.

“I hope that they walk taller and hold their heads higher and live up to the expectations that the whole community has for them,” Brodine told me after school. “I’m expecting them to step up, and I think they will.”

It’s a refreshing way to look at the privilege of a new school building, and Brodine is right, too: Gibbon’s taxpayers have made a remarkable sacrifice for the sake of a new building. In retrospect, I’m still amazed that bond issue was passed on the first try. That got me thinking: How does Gibbon’s bond issue compare with those other districts have tried over the past few years? Here’s my back-of-a-napkin table:

*The enrollments come from the Nebraska Department of Education’s figures from the opening of the 08-09 school year.
**This was Aurora’s fourth try at this bond, dating back to 1999.

Obviously, not all bonds are created equal. Some of these were tried within wildly differing economic contexts — think February 2006 vs. November 2008 — and all were for different projects. But I think the most telling number here is the second half under “Amount,” and that’s the impact on the tax levy, expressed in cents per $100 in taxable valuation. (Fourteen cents, for example, extrapolates to $140 per $100,000 in valuation, 20 cents is $200, and so on.)

By that measure, this chart is a classic case of “one of these things is not like the other.” Nearly every bond falls in 8.5-cent to 20-cent range — it seems as though school districts have determined that no matter how much they need, there’s only so much they can ask voters to pay for. The only bond that falls outside is Gibbon’s whopping 49-cent asking, more than double what anyone else has even tried. And it passed on the first try. Think about that for a second: Gibbon’s bond was, on a taxpayer-impact level, 3.5 times the size of Broken Bow’s; yet it passed reasonably easily, while Bow’s got hammered.

Maybe, though, Gibbon’s voters just got snowed; they had no idea that was how much they were paying. That’s what a group of taxpayers claimed in calling for the recall of three of the district’s six school board members in May 2007. The vote became a de facto referendum, a mulligan on what the district’s voters had decided just eight months before. And the margin came out even wider in favor of the school board members. The message was clear: The voters understood what they were doing, and given a second chance, they affirmed it.

I’m entirely sure why Gibbon was so much more favorable toward such a huge bond than any other district in Central Nebraska (that’s another topic for another post), but the numbers are clear. For better or worse, Gibbon’s voters chose to make a financial sacrifice that no other community in the area has come close to touching in recent history. No wonder Brodine is so insistent on returning on an investment.