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.

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 [...]

I was out of the office (and out of town, too) all last week, and as is often the case when we return from time off work, I spent most of Monday catching up on everything that happened in Central Nebraska. I thought it might be helpful to round it up for you as well: [...]

Monday was a pretty cheerful first day of school for Gibbon students, with a new $18 million, 139,000-square-foot building to explore. But longtime business and technology teacher Linda Brodine wasted no time impressing on her students that with such a shiny new toy comes a lot of responsibility, too. Gibbon’s taxpayers have made an incredible investment [...]