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.

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.

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.