[DTO Luv]

I'm always interested to hear what Nebraskans outside of the Omaha area have to say about Omaha. Both the good and the bad. Nebraska is kind of lopsided. It's a small population state but most of the population is in one small area.

What do some of you who live out west think about your states biggest city? Have you ever been? What do you imagine it to be like? Where in Omaha have you been to? I'm anxious to hear back.

[Earniefan]

I lived the first 21 years of my life in a smaller town near G.I. and never gave Omaha a second thought. There isn't much conversation about it really, not that I recall anyway. I guess we all figured we liked living in our small town and couldn't imagine living in the city, and vice versa. If we went anywhere it was to Lincoln and even then the real purpose was to visit with family.

[kosnebbear]

DTO Luv,

I grew up in rural Nebraska. As a kid we would make a trip to Lincoln for school shopping once a year. Other than that we did not care much about Omaha or Lincoln as we could always get what we needed right there in our small towns. We always heard the term Out-State-Nebraska alot, but that was always coming from Omaha and not from us who lived in rural Nebraska. Guess the people of Omaha was the ones who thought that they were the center of the world. For me Omaha is just as much a part of Nebraska as is my home town of Oxford. It might be the largest city in Nebraska, but it is just as important as any other town. Omaha is not Nebraska it is just one part of it. What Nebraska is all about is all of the towns in all of Nebraska. Also when they decided to come out with the new license plates a few years ago with the three letters and three numbers the State asked all of the 93 counties in Nebraska if they wanted these plates. As you can see only three made the change, Sarpy, Douglas and Lancaster. All the rest wanted to keep their identiy as a county and keep their individual numbered county license plates. That way we know where you come from in Nebraska.

As for having been to Omaha and where have I been, well I have been about all over Omaha. My wife and I like to come to Omaha to go shopping. She has to come to Offutt Air Force Base many times a year for medical reasons so we get to the Omaha area alot. We have friends living there on 13th Street north of I-80 and we go to see them when we can. We have a family pass to the Henry Doorley Zoo there as well as the Lincoln Childrens Zoo.

[DTO Luv]

The license plates changed because there are too many people in Douglas, Sarpy, and Lancaster counties to continue with the old way of numbering the plates.

[kosnebbear]

Well this turned out to be something of a false hood from what I have read. Seems as if there was a shortage of license plates then why did just Douglas County return over, what was reported to have been about 50,000 unused license plates back to the State shortly after the new plates were issued? If Omaha did have this number of unused license plates then you know that Lancaster and Sarpy Counties which are both half the size must of had unused license plates as well. For me I just did not see a need to change at this time. It also just seems as if most people living in Omaha just want to be different. As for me I really don't care personally. As a retired police officer with the county numbered plates you could tell where someone was from before. Now with the failure of the sticker county name that was to be on the current plates, that keeps falling off, you don't know from where they come from except for Douglas, Sarpy or Lancaster counties. Also with the new plates you still have to buy new ones when they change the design, at least in California, from where they seemed to want to copy, you keep your license plate on the vehicle that they are assigned to for as long as you own the vehicle. You don't get new plates every time they change them. You just buy the little corner stickers that say you have renewed them. So what was the big benefit it did not save the taxpayers any money, in fact it cost us more as you have to change the press machine to make plates for three counties that want to be different. One more thing to keep in mind that most of the State Senators come from Douglas, Lancaster and Sarpy counties so it was a done deal when they came up with the idea. As you can see the rest of the State did not fall in line with the idea. You still have the same number of vehicles and the same number of license plates. I still like Omaha and I come to Omaha as many times as I can. I just think that people in Omaha have some strange ideas at times and the license plates is just one of them. I will try to find the story about the number of plates that was returned to the State and send it to you. It will take some time so allow me the time to find it for you.

[mattpoulsen]

Its not that they didn't "have enough" plates. Its that fixing the first digit as a "1" or a "2" in the amount of possible individual plates is limited. And in Bellevue's case they had a "59" in the front, so they were even more limited. There was even at one point in which Bellevue had proposed swapping their "59" with another single digit county. That didn't go over too well.

It was also a case of looking to the future. It was clear something would soon have to be done. There is no metro snobbery involved here.

[kosnebbear]

Well this is just another example of why it is needed to reviewed the state laws and regulations every now and then to make sure that they still meet our needs. I think that by either state law or regulation that the Nebraska vehicle license plates that they are limited to have only six letters or numbers on the plates and that the county number counted as either two or one of the numbers. If they would have just updated the regulation by allowing for Douglas, Sarpy, and Lancaster and any other county that might grow, to have up to seven letters or numbers on their license plates then they also could have remained with the majority of the State of Nebraska by retaining their identity as well. Also when the counties were numbered many years ago they numbered them by the current popoulation of that county. Today Custer County, number 8, is not the eight largest county in Nebraska and everyone knows it. I agree with you that maybe the State could have changed the county numbers if they wanted to, but again why didn't they. In my opinion the power in the State Legislature, Douglas, Sarpy and Lancaster counties just wanted to be different. They thought that when they did it that all of the other counties would just follow along. Guess us rural Cornhuskers just don't like to follow along and for these three counties they found out this, but it does not matter as they got what they wanted and we still have what we want. I still enjoy going to Omaha and Lincoln to shop, have dinner, or just to have a fun day with grand kids. We go to Bellevue because we are a retired military family and use the medical benefits at Offutt Air Force Base hospital and go to the Commissary on post as well.

[mattpoulsen]

Well, Sarpy County, which used to be designated as "59", had long suggested a change to a single digit number. Do you remember the old "59" that had to run vertically to allow the other numbers to fit?? They didn't get switched because the county they would have switched with opposed the move. I don't recall which county it was though. It may have been Custer County...but I don't recall. So, you can't blame this on the big powers that be. Sometime change is necessary and in this case something had to be done. It was as much a situation of small counties being stubborn as it was big counties wanting to be "different". But in the end something had to be changed. Simply by adding numbers to the license plates would have been problematic as well because the size of the digits would have had to been reduced.

BTW, Hall County (Grand Island) is #8...Custer County is #4.

[kosnebbear]

Yes I do remember about the 59 for Sarpy County. You are correct Hall County is #8 and Custer County is #4. Also when the State of Nebraska numbered the different 93 counties they did it based on the number of motor vehicles in the county. Again one out of dated law that could have been changed, but was not. The law is still in effect today based on the times around 1920 and not now in 2007. As for adding numbers to license plates is becoming a problem in California and all of the other larger population states as well. They already have increased the numbers put on the license plates in California to seven numbers as they ran out of numbers and it looks as if they will have to add another number in the future as they are running out of numbers still. I can remember running a license check on a California vehicle which had the number seven in front of the six base numbers for California and that was a few years ago. There are always better ways to work out problems. The license plate problem in Nebraska was really not that much of a problem as I saw it. Just like the new one where they are telling the parents that we can not control our children, when they passed the law about cell phone use and having only one kid under the age of 19 in their vehicle. As a parent I did not need for the State of Nebraska to help me with teaching my son to be responsible. This law was a waste of time as the police can not enforce it as it is a secondary level law meaning that the kids would have to violate a traffic law in order to get stopped. What was the purpose other than a feel-good-do nothing law. There are much larger problems that the State Senators need to work on. One of them is the mess with Omaha Public School District or dealing with the high property taxes that we have. Yet they seem to avoid these issues.