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 had a chance Monday to do some checking in on some of the things going on in some Central Nebraska over the past few weeks. Here’s what I found: Burwell — The big news out of Burwell is that the city council is taking bids for the Community Memorial Health Center, Burwell’s city-owned nursing home [...]

We’re nearing the end of summer, which means we’re also nearing the end of rural small towns’ community festival season. (This season never really ends, but it does slow down quite a bit from September to May.) I spend a lot of my time in the summer writing about these festivals, and I think they’re an [...]

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 [...]