In Loup City (pop. 1,000), the city government is working as the developer for the town’s first new housing subdivision in decades: It owns the land, is developing and paying for the infrastructure, and is crafting incentives to bring in people to build houses.

In Giltner (pop. 400), a group of families is offering the first lot of their new subdivision for free if the family can finish building a house there by October 2011.

They’re both examples of towns that think the rural life has something to offer young families — and are willing to be proactive in attracting them to small towns. It’s hard work to overcome the cultural pull toward the suburbs and cities, and towns like Loup City and Giltner are investing a lot of time and money in that struggle.

The same week, I also ran across an Associated Press story about a family that moved into a small North Dakota town that was offering a housing bargain like Loup City or Giltner. The family moved from Miami, bought a house and opened a bistro in town.

What they got for their trouble, the couple said, were cold shoulders, stereotypes and rumors, and even a competing business owner driving by their house shouting obscenities.

The article prompted a fascinating conversation on the Center for Rural Affairs’ Facebook page, and while this couple’s troubles are probably far from typical, I think it’s an instructive example of the necessity of the other side of recruiting new families: Welcoming them once they get there.

I see a lot of towns focusing on bringing in new families with incentives and promotions, but the work doesn’t stop with the people you’d like to see in your town; it has to include the people who are already there. Now, many of the towns I’ve covered have shown great kindness and hospitality toward people who are new, and I would venture to say that that kind of behavior is probably the norm.

But I also know that small towns have a real susceptibility to cliquishness, to wariness of outsiders, and that’s something that has to be overcome if they are to attract new people to live there. I know it because I saw my family experience it firsthand after we moved from Wisconsin to a small Nebraska town when I was 13. My parents lived there for about a decade, were active in their church and community, and even put four children through the high school — each one involved in loads of activities along the way.

They had plenty of friends and generally enjoyed their time in that town, yet even after 10 years there, they still felt distinctly like outsiders. It was communicated to them explicitly and implicitly in innumerable ways over the years. It wasn’t an outright resentment of them being there, but rather a continual reminder that this wasn’t really their hometown.

It wasn’t anything nearly so serious and “culture-shocking” as this couple in North Dakota describes, and as I mentioned earlier, situations are rarely as bad as the Miami couple’s. But it was the same type of thing that goes on in countless small towns across Nebraska and the Midwest. I’ve interviewed plenty of people who initially refer to themselves as being new in their small town — only to find out later they’ve lived there for a decade or two. That’s because the towns they live in are still subtly reinforcing the “you’re new here” message.

It’s a cultural phenomenon that new small-town residents need to be prepared for, but it’s also something of a blind spot in the Midwestern kindness that Nebraskans pride themselves on. If small towns are serious about attracting new residents, it’s something they need to work on just as hard as their housing developments and marketing campaigns.

The strategy, from a study (PDF) commissioned by the group last month, is remarkably thorough, with 47 suggestions for lawmakers and government officials. But at its core is one assertion: High taxes are a major barrier to population growth and revitalization within Nebraska, and they must be lowered in order for the state to flourish. That’s a philosophy I’ve heard quite often in rural Nebraska, particularly from politicians and business leaders.

It might seem at first like a no-brainer — of course high taxes are bad, right? — but it’s actually almost a bold one once you pick it apart. According to this philosophy, the primary thing that’s keeping people from moving into Nebraska and the state’s young people from moving back is not so much the state’s perceived remoteness or dullness, but its tax climate. Put that way, it’s certainly counterintuitive.

Does it hold up? Depends on how you look at it. In a direct sense, taxes are probably one of the last things people consider when deciding whether and where to move. More often, it comes down to proximity to family and friends, entertainment and recreational options, natural beauty, quality of schools and health care, and, of course, jobs.

That’s where the low-tax idea comes in. You can’t bring in more people without more jobs, the thinking goes, and businesses aren’t inclined to choose to create their jobs in a state that oppresses them with high taxes. So the lower-taxes-for-population-growth idea primarily functions on the indirect level, looking to attract businesses to create jobs that will then lure those coveted residents.

The conundrum is that lowering taxes can mean cutting some of the services and offerings that draw people into an area, like quality schools and recreational opportunities. (Of course, it can also mean trimming the fat of unnecessary government spending, but that’s often much easier said than done.)

So is cutting taxes the key to growing Nebraska (and since this is the Scenic Route, rural Nebraska)? Or is focusing on improving the state’s amenities and marketing them to potential residents the best tack to take to grow our state’s rural areas? Or, of course, is the right answer all of the above — in which case, how do we pay for it? I think these are fundamental questions when we look at the future of rural Nebraska, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.