What do you like/dislike about Lincoln, Nebraska? (Omaha, Grand Island: high crime, day care)

[alligatorboy]

I just wanted to see what everyone likes and dislikes about Lincoln. I have lived here my whole life, and I think Lincoln just isn't the place for me.
I will also share what I like/dislike about Lincoln.
likes:
1. Not too small or too big, as far as the population.
2. A lot of friendly people.
3. The crime is low for a city this size, and is restricted to certain areas rather than widespread.
4. Living here isn't very expensive, with the exception of property taxes!
5. I really like Spring and Summer here.
dislikes:
1. Winter is just too long, too cold, and too snowy!
2. Sometimes it just seems like there isn't much to do.
3. Lincoln doesn't have a river, or any large body of water.
I love to look at water, and I love fish and seafood.
I like Lincoln, but sometimes I wish it was more like Kansas City

[unwillinginNE]

Like about Nebraska:
It's close to Colorado

Dislike about Nebraska (Hastings in particular):
Excessively high property taxes, we've lived lots of places with the military and this is the highest we've ever paid, even in major cities.
No school transportation. Parents have to drop off / pick up their kids each day and there is no parking around the schools.
New middle school built on the other side of town, transporation voted down by school board. How is my 6th grader supposed to ride her bike 7 miles to school over major highways and roads?
High % of people dependent on welfare... generations living on it with no desire to get off of it. Small percentage work hard to get off welfare.
High crime rate, courts will do nothing to juvenille offenders. We sat in as a victim witness with 23 other vicitim witnesses for one kid, after he'd stolen cars, broke into houses, stolen property, and the judge said "next time, I'll blah blah blah blah blah" and that was about the fifth time he said that. So, the kids gets away scott free and goes out two days later and steals another car ~ has more charges pending for computer theft and distruction from the school. What do you bet they still dont do a thing to him?
Drugs...... meth is HUGE here and it should be an issue. People that think it is not an issue dont have to work with the people that are apt to use the drugs. I operate a home daycare because there are not jobs here in my career field. You would not believe the people that have some for interviews.... as a FACT, those that are on welfare that have interviewed, 9 out of 10 of them have felony convictions and have used meth or are still using meth.... I dont take their kids in my daycare.
No jobs... you're out of luck if you did not grow up here for have connections. It's not much better in Grand Island, either. But, who can work? You gotta be around to drop off and pick up your kids from school.

Need I go on? Hastings sucks! Stay away.

[Go Ne]

Originally Posted by unwillinginNE

Need I go on? Hastings sucks! Stay away.

How does this have anything to do with Lincoln.

[alligatorboy]

Originally Posted by unwillinginNE

Like about Nebraska:
It's close to Colorado

Dislike about Nebraska (Hastings in particular):
Excessively high property taxes, we've lived lots of places with the military and this is the highest we've ever paid, even in major cities.
No school transportation. Parents have to drop off / pick up their kids each day and there is no parking around the schools.
New middle school built on the other side of town, transporation voted down by school board. How is my 6th grader supposed to ride her bike 7 miles to school over major highways and roads?
High % of people dependent on welfare... generations living on it with no desire to get off of it. Small percentage work hard to get off welfare.
High crime rate, courts will do nothing to juvenille offenders. We sat in as a victim witness with 23 other vicitim witnesses for one kid, after he'd stolen cars, broke into houses, stolen property, and the judge said "next time, I'll blah blah blah blah blah" and that was about the fifth time he said that. So, the kids gets away scott free and goes out two days later and steals another car ~ has more charges pending for computer theft and distruction from the school. What do you bet they still dont do a thing to him?
Drugs...... meth is HUGE here and it should be an issue. People that think it is not an issue dont have to work with the people that are apt to use the drugs. I operate a home daycare because there are not jobs here in my career field. You would not believe the people that have some for interviews.... as a FACT, those that are on welfare that have interviewed, 9 out of 10 of them have felony convictions and have used meth or are still using meth.... I dont take their kids in my daycare.
No jobs... you're out of luck if you did not grow up here for have connections. It's not much better in Grand Island, either. But, who can work? You gotta be around to drop off and pick up your kids from school.

Need I go on? Hastings sucks! Stay away.

Wow. I thought I didn't like Nebraska, but you seem to dislike it even more than I do. Are you not from Nebraska originally?

[tpabes]

The one main thing I dislike about Lincoln is the roads. To me it is so much easier to drive around in Omaha than Lincoln. Other than that, no real beef with Lincoln.

[mattpoulsen]

Unwilling,

That was nothing more than a rambling rant. A rant that had NOTHING to do with Lincoln. It actually doesn't even have that much to do with Hastings or Nebraska. Rather, it has to do with you complaining about your life. Who cares that you have to take your kid to school...guess what...so do I! Its called being a parent.

Its also very moral of you to refuse children daycare services based on the crimes of their parents! My god...how callous and judgmental. Did it ever occur to you that if what you say is true then the best thing for those kids is to be in day care away from their parents. However, based on the tone of your post I really doubt that 9 out 10 welfare recipients you encounter have felonies AND are meth. Rather, its probably a handful and you simply bunch all welfare recipients into one big stereotypical ball.

[alligatorboy]

Originally Posted by tpabes

The one main thing I dislike about Lincoln is the roads. To me it is so much easier to drive around in Omaha than Lincoln. Other than that, no real beef with Lincoln.

Ha Ha! That's funny that you said you don't have beef with Lincoln, since Nebraska makes so much beef.

[unwillinginNE]

Originally Posted by Go Ne

How does this have anything to do with Lincoln.

It doesnt. My bad. But I still feel that way about Hastings. Lincoln has much more to offer than Hastings.

[unwillinginNE]

Originally Posted by mattpoulsen

Unwilling,

That was nothing more than a rambling rant. A rant that had NOTHING to do with Lincoln. It actually doesn't even have that much to do with Hastings or Nebraska. Rather, it has to do with you complaining about your life. Who cares that you have to take your kid to school...guess what...so do I! Its called being a parent.

Its also very moral of you to refuse children daycare services based on the crimes of their parents! My god...how callous and judgmental. Did it ever occur to you that if what you say is true then the best thing for those kids is to be in day care away from their parents. However, based on the tone of your post I really doubt that 9 out 10 welfare recipients you encounter have felonies AND are meth. Rather, its probably a handful and you simply bunch all welfare recipients into one big stereotypical ball.

It actually does have a lot to do with Hastings. I did not immediately notice the issues with Hastings and really liked the little town until we realized that we just could not make our work schedules happen with one of us working full time here and one of us working full time in Grand Island. I absolutely love being a parent, thanks for asking. I've always been able to work full time in an industry and balance life at home, too. My point was that nowhere that we have ever lived (Illinois, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Hawaii, Ohio, Georgia, Nebraska) have we NOT had buses for the kids. Not having buses is not the issue entirely. It's the fact that it really does handicap the people in this town that really want to provide for their families but really need to work outside of Hastings in order to do so. They cant take off work in Grand Island and drop off / pick up their children. And there are no after school programs, which is also really common everywhere else that we've been that children can attend with their friends and peers that they enjoy. Believe me, my knowledge of what goes on outside of Nebraska is pretty in depth. There is not a family that I know that does not have problems in one manner or another due to lack of school buses. Some business DO let their employees off work around here to go pick up their kids. But then who is home with them? Some kids walk to their parents' offices and hang out at the office with them until they get off work.

I may have sounded like a ranting person, but I've dealt with a lot here. Kids breaking in to our house and stealing our vehicle, and not getting punished for it in the system. That is why I do not like the courts. What happened to us was really mild compared to what happened to all of the other victims of these kids. Some people almost lost their lives when their home was smashed in to with a stolen car. So, I just cant say that I've ever lived anywhere that I've had police pull up in my driveway so much to serve us with victim-witness subpoenas before. My refrigerator has had at least one stuck to it for several months now. But as State witnesses, we are never allowed to testify, and nothing is ever done to the kids. So how am I supposed to feel? We've reinforced our doors and windows and we live on a farm. How ironic is that? To have an alarm system on your doors and windows on a farm? I just want to feel safer in my home than that. We have to lock our car doors at night.

I did not lump the welfare recipients into one category, or did not mean to. The reason I do not allow families with felony convictions in the daycare anymore is because the two times I've made an exception, both parents went back on drugs and back to jail. I do have one in my daycare whose father I had to ban from coming to the house due to the father making terroristic threats to one of my other daycare mothers. She happened to live in the same complex - the HUD homes - as this person, and has had foreign substances poured in her gas tank, destroying her fuel system, human feces placed on her doorstep, beer bottles broken in her yard and her child's foot sliced open by them, nails and screws placed upside down behind her tires flattening them, that kind of thing. Maybe you understand my frustration a little better now. I have lots of people that are dependent on the system whose children are in my daycare, and they are good kids and they are good people. But when someone shows up for a daycare interview with hickies all over their neck, late for the appointment because she just got back from a camping trip with her convicted felon husband, and her kids have to be dragged by her kicking and screaming and shoved in the car when she left here, and she informs me that she's an informant for the police department and is getting ready to bust her husband's friend for meth... well, I just dont think that I want that kind of thing around my house and around my daycare kids. Would you want your kids going to a daycare where really questionable people were coming and going, and where a father is picking up his son and runs into the lady that he said he would kill and a fight breaks out? I know I dont want my child in that kind of environment, and to tell you the truth, people that bring their kids here appreciate the fact that I have that policy. It makes them know that their kids are safer. I actually had one family learn that I did work for State cases and they said they did not want their daughter going to daycare with "welfare kids". How fair is that? The kids here are good kids, and they like coming here.

Here's the breakdown of my daycare:
Seven kids in the daycare.
One family with no convictions that they've talked to me about. Two mothers with drug/alcohol convictions, one of them being a felon, both involving meth, one mother a high school student and doing very well, - family involved in drugs - meth - and prison issues, but she is breaking free of that, one family with alcohol abuse problems but no known meth issues based on appearance, and one mother trying to get her career started but unsure how to do so, also dependent on the system. Of the seven kids, four are dependent on the system, three are not. And the interviews for the care are as much for me as they are for the people. I will not put any child in harm's way, and I have taken in more than my fair share of kids that needed a place to be, not only in the daycare but in general. They like coming here because it is peaceful, but they know if they get in trouble with the law (the kids) that they are not welcome here anymore. I dont see how I'm being judgemental about those things. I just dont want the lifestyles of people that make bad choices in their lives over and over and over again around me.

Whether this helped to clarify things or not, it really does not matter. What I feel about this place is real. I dont think I would ever have known the magnitude of what goes on had I not opened the daycare. I think the planning for the schools could be a little better where traffic is concerned on drop off and pick up for the safety of everyone involved, and I think it would really help to boost the economy here and give people more options if they offered programs for kids that are fun and also allowed families to earn a living. We are not the only family experiencing this here. Once the one mother moved from the HUD homes, her older child was no longer right next door to the school. So, now a bike has to be ridden across a major road and the child is 9. I feel for him when he has to do it in sub zero wind chill during the winter because his mom, his single mom who worked really hard to get off of public assistance has to WORK to maintain self sufficiency. It has nothing to do with not wanting to be a parent.

[itsMeFred]

Um yeah.

Back on topic:

I have very little that I either like OR dislike about Lincoln. I've been there a grand total of about 7 times in my life. However that does surpass my trips to Omaha. lol

(Lifetime Nebraskan, btw)

Unwilling, start a new thread about Hastings. You might find other opinions similar to your own and you mind find folks that disagree with you. You obviously have something to say, but it doesn't belong in a thread about Lincoln.