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.

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.

— The big story, by far, was the announcement by a group of physicians that they plan to build a new hospital in southwest Kearney. The physicians, many of whom work at Kearney’s Good Samaritan Hospital and all but one of whom seem to be remaining anonymous, are frustrated with what they see as Good Sam’s gradual shift from being community-run to corporate-run.

Good Sam, which apparently has seen this announcement coming, fired back, saying that Kearney doesn’t have enough people to support a second hospital. Regardless of whether or not that’s true, Good Sam clearly has a big problem on its hands and a lot of seriously disgruntled physicians to make amends with. What do you think? Would a second hospital be good for Kearney and rural Central Nebraska?

— Butch Hughes — who keeps popping up in just about everything going on in Hastings, from recall efforts to anti-fluoride campaigns — showed off his newly purchased former Hastings Middle School on Sunday. The old building, which was used for school until last year, was initially bought by First Presbyterian Church, then sold to Hughes at auction last month after the community found out that the church planned to demolish the building if it couldn’t be sold.

Now, Hughes is trying to figure out what to do with it. He tells NTV he’d like to use the first floor for office space and the second for condos, but he’s got to put in a lot of work and a lot of money to see that happen. With the Community Redevelopment Authority and Business Improvement District staying out of this, he has an uphill battle in front of him. But sentiment for that building is strong, and Hughes has shown remarkable community organizing power over the past few years.

— Two other Central Nebraska school districts, Hastings Adams Central and Ord, are looking at bond issues for building improvements, and both are gearing up for public votes. Adams Central, which is considering building a new consolidated elementary school, decided to push its vote back to at least next March, with the new building’s projected opening being bumped back a year to 2012.

Meanwhile, the rhetoric on both sides of Ord’s proposed $9.8 million bond issue for school upgrades and a new practice gym is heating up, as the emails and radio ads fly back and forth. If you want a taste of the spicy conversation surrounding the issue, the generally pro-bond comment sections can be found here, here and here, and the largely anti-bond forums are here.

— The Omaha World-Herald joined Central City school employees on a trip over to St. Libory for a nifty feature on locally produced food in school lunch programs.

— A new wind energy promotion group, the Nebraska Energy Export Association, announced its formation. What’s interesting about this group are its participants — namely, the Nebraska Cattlemen and Nebraska Farm Bureau, two groups that haven’t always been aboard the wind bandwagon. In fact, it’s typically been the Nebraska Farmers Union, the Farm Bureau’s counterpart on left side of the political spectrum, that’s been pushing wind energy in the state.

— And finally, just yesterday, we got word of the official approval of flights to Denver from Grand Island. I wrote in August about why the airport’s growth could be good for rural Nebraska, though the Kearney Regional Airport isn’t exactly pleased with this news.

“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.