Why isnt Nebraska pro-Omaha? (Lincoln, Chadron: homes, school, universities)

[ehenningsen]

I believe that there is a limit to annexing school districts that are outside the zoning limits, however, Omaha was about to annex school districts that were inside the city!! OPS actually has rights to do that, and the state of Nebraska is dividing the district now that will just be more costly to the tax payers!! If Omaha would've been able to annex those districts less money would be needed for legislation, if they left it alone everything would've been the same, but the state of nebraska just made it even more expensive than it was before!! Literally dividing OPS into three districts is just plain stupid.. and not letting omaha annex schools within city limits is beyond stupid too..

[DTO Luv]

It wasn't wrong for OPS to try to take over the other districts within the city. It's one state law that would work for Omaha but no one wants to use it. ONE CITY, ONE SCHOOL DISTRICT. I believe Grand Island (or some other central NE city) had issues with this is well. There was a school district in GI that was seperate from GIPS. The state was VERY CLEAR for Grand Island that the law said it was ONE CITY, ONE SCHOOL DISTRICT. So when Omaha tries to do the same thing, IN ACCORDANCE TO THE LAW WHICH, it is told no. That we're being hostile and greedy. New boundaries are thrown up that make no sense. So what does the state have against Omaha? If we aren't being held to the same rules as everyone else, why should we follow the rules?

BTW kosnebbear I'm a guy. Not a lady. I have more pics on the way though.

[Katiana]

The rural vs urban bias is a problem or a perceived problem in many states, including my state of residence, Colorado; the state of my previous residence, Illinois; and my birth state of Pennsylvania. I do not presume to know enough about Nebraska politics to know if it is actually happening in Nebraska, heck, I don't even know if it's really happening here in Colorado. However, this bias was the subject of some Supreme Court rulings in the 1960s. That is when the priciple of "one man (sic), one vote" was expressed. It meant that legislative districts had to be drawn to reflect relatively similar populations, to avoid a rural district with a few residents having as much power as an urban district with many more.


From wikipedia:

In various reapportionment cases decided by the Supreme Court, notably Wesberry v. Sanders, Reynolds v. Sims and Baker v. Carr it was ruled that districts for the House of Representatives and for the legislative districts of both houses of state legislatures had to be roughly equal in population. (The US Senate was not affected by these rulings, as its makeup is explicitly established in the US Constitution).[1] The cases concerning malapportionment ended the pattern of gross rural overrepresentation and urban underrepresentation in the US House and state legislatures. Eventually the rulings were extended over local (city) districts as well.[2]

Though now illegal, some state legislatures still today sometimes try to overpopulate the opposing parties' strongholds, generally through the use of gerrymandering.

So it's not supposed to be happening any more. I'm not sure of the point of this, except as I read it I thought of the "one person, one vote" principle. (I am a woman and the parent of two daughters. It's not just men who vote.)

[kosnebbear]

Sorry about that DTO Luv, I will not make that mistake twice, sir.

I lived in Grand Island for a period of time and I know about the two public school districts that is in Grand Island. You have Grand Island Senior High School that is inside the city limits. There is Grand Island Northwest that at one time outside of the city limits of Grand Island. With the growth of Grand Island and the development of the northwest part of Grand Island they annexed this part of the Grand Island area into Grand Island which brought Northwest into the city limits. Most of the kids that go to school at Northwest come from the rural areas around Grand Island. I feel that what happened in Grand Island was also wrong as the people who were the ones supporting Northwest were taken out of the mix without any say in what was happening. They never had the chance to vote about becoming part of the Grand Island School District. Omaha is growing which is great for Nebraska, but all I am saying is that the people who are going to have to pay for any merger of school districts should have a say in what would happen and not have it forced on them. We do still live in a country that is a democracy where the people are the ones who are the final say to what the government does. When we have laws that take this right away from us then these laws are wrong and need to be fixed. Also from what I was reading in following the OPS take over of the out laying school districts or a large part of these districts using the law that Nebraska has on the books was not about giving better education to the kids that go to these schools it was about MONEY. The system that Nebraska uses to pass out money to the schools is a mess as well and needs to be fixed using some common sense. When several school districts filed a law suit against the State of Nebraska a few years ago over the school funding we were being told that it was all about the education of the kids. I found a web site where this law suit was at. I read the law suit and it was about MONEY for better wages and benefits for the teachers, who by the way do a very outstanding job in Nebraska. I exchanged e-mails with one of the individuals who was part of the schools that started this and when I brought that after reading the law suit that all I could see was that it was all about more money for the teacher they stopped exchanging e-mails. I hope that the mess in Omaha and the rest of Nebraska in dealing with this issue gets fixed in a way where the people of the state has a say in how their schools are ran. Just like the people of Nebraska voted to repell the law about the Class I schools in the state in the last election when the State passed that law without considering what the people wanted.

[MattDen]

This is not a Nebraska issue this is a plains state's issue and if these rural areas continue to victimize the medium sized cities by starving them financially, the medium sized cities will be decreasingly competitive. These selfish rural legislators on the plains state should yield to the largest cities in their prospective states. It would be Kansas best interest to yield to Wichita and KC.

As far as the Nebraska legislator which has a bad case of rural nostalgia. Omaha and Lincoln areas could always vote in a bloc of protect their interests and almost shut off the rest of the state. Many legislatures and city councils have voting blocs, why cant Nebraska. The governor of this state also seems to spend way too much time with farmers, I guess thats what happens when he is from Falls City of the Lt. Governor is from Hastings! Anyway, how can the governor talk about low-taxes when he is pro-rural and its the rural areas that cause Nebraska's taxes to be so high. The only way to have a long-term tax cut in Nebraska not based on short-term economic cycles is to have big cuts on all this wasteful, rural spending going to places hours and hours from the edge of civilization.

Its amazing how the state of Nebraska state continues to flush down tons of money down the toilet by spending it on areas that are in a population free-fall. As far as I am concerned building things like a high-rise corridor in Omaha, big expansions for University of Nebraska-Omaha and expanding the cultural offerings in Omaha are much more important then spending on all those towns in this state that are in the middle of nowhere and have a population density of 1 person per square mile.

In response to an earlier post, I do think migrant workers should handle agriculture and agricultural should be corperate or at least run by large scale operations and not small farms. What ever it takes to contain food costs. Migrant workers work for just above minimum wage, alot of these so-called small farm people drive big top-of the line brand new trucks.

A strong city in a state does alot for a state's economy. Rural Nebraska is losing population so fast and has such a low quality of life (very low wages unless part of the elite and virtually zero amenities) that I think that Omaha should be first and foremost on the state agenda. Lincoln is also somewhat important but always Omaha first.

I dont see a problem with people having to go for hours to go school, after all that's the very point of requiring school districts to have at least a 1,000 students would be to increase efficiency and also then alot of those students would be home-schooled and thus not a liability for the state.
I dont see a problem with closing UNK, the state colleges (Chadron, Peru, Wayne) and the community colleges except for Omaha closing. Yes, enrollment would increase but I think that would be perfect because UNO could expand significantly. I also think alot of the university divisions at UNL should be closed and go to UNO.

I also think any state mental health hospitals and state nursing homes should be closed and moved to the Omaha area. Its sort of ridiculous to have these mental health hospitals and nursing homes where they dont have as extensive of medical facilities as Omaha.

Closing the community colleges (except Omaha), UNK and State Colleges alone would save around 120 million dollars a year. Over 5 years that would be around 700 million dollar (after what tends to be 4% increases each year in the state budget) that could go to expanding UNO and Omaha's infrastructure rather then rural towns that have no employment oppurtunities anyway.

[mattpoulsen]

Why don't you try and respond to the criticisms that have been thoroughly pointed out?

You keep stating these things as facts, when in reality, they are not!

The rural areas are not "victimizing" Lincoln and Omaha. That's simply just untrue and you state it as fact. You also act as though it is bad that our governor and Lt. governor are from areas that aren't Lincoln and Omaha! They were democratically elected! End of discussion.

You close all the outstate schools and you would have about 80,000 displaced students!! UNL and UNO can not possibly serve them all.

You also act as though all companies, hospitals, and nursing homes are government ran!! You act as though the governor chooses where to put a restaurant!!

Your ideas are nothing more than putrid rural hatred with a extreme socialist views. Again, the economy of Nebraska is based on agriculture!! You quit supporting that and Nebraska's economy goes into a free fall!

Not to mention you are constantly mixing federal, state, local and private expenditures together and acting as though you can just swap one for the other. Complete fantasyland!

Oh, and where do you get this idea that rural Nebraska has such a "low" quality of life?! I'm sure you're basing your conclusion on some sort of average salary or some such nonsense. Well, you might also consider that an acre of land cost less than $1000 and houses are a fraction of what you'd pay in Omaha (for the same house). Have you ever been to a ranch?? What they have would often cost millions in Omaha. As far as the amenities go, well, not everyone has the same definition of entertainment. You do think 500 acres of open land and wilderness can be entertaining?! Its a different lifestyle, but its not a less worthy one.

And you think its okay for a 1st grader to bussed for several hours to go to schoool?? Apparently, you don't have children!

[ehenningsen]

Somethings I actually agree with Mattden on this issue....
However, I believe that the Universities and state colleges in the other areas of Nebraska actually do provide economic advantages to the state as a whole, especially UNL and UNK... Kearney, Grand Island, and Hastings are growing at near average to even a bit above the national rate for population growth and really is not an economic drain... Grand Island is just years away from becoming the third metropolitan area and with Kearney, Hastings, Lexington and Cozad nearby the population of the area known as (the tri-cities) is growing and over 200,000 for the few counties, if the definitions of metropolitan area would change a little bit, this would be considered a large population base, well, for a northern plains state that is..
Omaha being the biggest contributer to the states economy should benefit the most, however, there are fundamental costs that rural Nebraska needs in order to remain in civilization, and unless the federal government steps in, the burden has to lie on Omaha, Lincoln, tricities areas...
One way is to abandon complete cities and centralize in certain areas, allow no family farms.. just huge corporate farmland that all workers would work from one centralized community that would vastly reduce decline, as it would remove people from their farms anyway and force them to either work for the corp or move to another city to find a job, the centralized city would see no more declines as all areas of labor is supplied, whether it be farmland, stores, docs office and their would be no more of a need to move out, and if someone does, there is always someone interested in an opportunity if good enough even if in the boondocks..sounds socialistic, but I really must say that outside of these three areas... Nebraska is rotting horribly and something close to this needs to be done... I cant wait to hear the responses from this one!!

[DTO Luv]

That sounds like a perfectly logical thing to do. I probably shouldn't have said state run farms but corporate farms. If the corporation wanted to pay for it's employees to live out near where ever needed to be worked that would be fine.

Our country is going to have to get it's ducks in a row. We're going to have lots more to worry about then weather 500 people in western Nebraska have decent roads and power between them.

mattpoulsen said: Its a different lifestyle, but its not a less worthy one.

I found this rather amusing. In the state of Nebraska awhile back people decided that same sex couples relationships were "less worthy" than those of different sex relationships. So by good ol' Nebraska logic it's perfectly fine for one group of people to tell another group of people how to live. I think rural areas are a drain on resources, which you can find concrete of evidence of, so the people should move or consolidate. Some people think same sex couples are less than human, based on something a little less concrete, and expect everyone to live accordingly.

Rural areas are more than a drain on resources for roads. Police for each county, Government workers (at courthouses) for each county, teachers, it all adds up. Even if money is distributed accordingly to population, continuing to pump money into a places that are too small to make enough financial impact aren't worth saving. That's not communism or socialism. That's capitalism right there.

If it doesn't make dollars, it doesn't make cents. If the state of Nebraska was a corporation, would you expect them to keep under performing divisions (towns, counties) operating while the bread winners (Omaha) have to pick up the slack to keep the company afloat? No. You cut out the money losing division. Nebraska (or every state) should look at if underperforming areas shouldn't be cut off. If certain areas were cut off of state money that would force people to move to a better performing area. The state would no longer be responsible for maintaining all of those areas and would save money. The better performing areas would see growth from the people moving in from the under performing, adandoned areas. I realize this will probably never happen but this country really does need to do what it can to get to better financial health. The way it is now isn't going to cut if forever.

[kosnebbear]

Look once again you are talking about a life style that did not work in the past. I have traveled around some of the former eastern block countries. I have seen where they have moved entire communities to new locations for the good of the collective. You see where they are now. Their intrastructure is falling apart. Where I am at now they don't have electrical power 24 hours a day because the power plants are so old that they can't keep up and the power lines are not heavy enough to carry enough power if they could make enough power. The water gets turned off for the entire city because the water lines have so many leaks and the pipes are falling apart that they have to turn off the water because the pressure get so great that the lines burst. They don't understand anything about land fills so they dump the trash in their rivers so you can't drink the water. So Nebraska does have it's problems with it's intrastructure and school systems, but it is small compared to the way it is here. You can't just tell people that they are going to be forced moved out of their homes like you are saying. I for one would fight anyone who tried to do that to me and so would everyone else. How would you feel if they would come to you and tell you that you had to move to a different location because that was what they wanted. That the city that you love Omaha was being shut down and flatten to make more room for farm land?Once again you seem as if you want to take away the rights that we have as a free nation for the benefit of a certain area. It takes all of the people in a country both rural and urban working together to make it work. Also I pay about the same as everyone else does in taxes to support Omaha and Lincoln. Not all of my tax dollars are returned to my home town, just part of it.

[Rumblebelly]

Originally Posted by DTO Luv

That sounds like a perfectly logical thing to do. I probably shouldn't have said state run farms but corporate farms. If the corporation wanted to pay for it's employees to live out near where ever needed to be worked that would be fine.

This is already happening. Family farms are producing less and less while corporate farms are producing more and more. It's not only happening to farms but small businesses, constantly getting gobbled by larger corporations. Then those corporations are getting gobbled by even bigger corps...

Face it folks, as time marches on we are all going to have fewer choices of goods and services. It all boils down to efficiency and cutting costs. We'll see a wider gap between the classes too. Personally, I'm not looking forward to a more homogenous world. I'm surprised some folks even advocate it, as a way to save ourselves.