Most significant tax reform bill signed-retirement/income

[atler8]

Originally Posted by BeaumontPark

Agree, Omaha taxes are high. It will be interesting if Iowa, as I suspect Nebraska will do (I live in Omaha), outlaws abortion. If older/retired folks decide to move into Iowa due to taxes, will some younger people move out of both Iowa and Nebraska, feeling personally constricted by such reductions of reproductive freedom? I guess we will see.

Perhaps the 2 issues you discussed will work out to be a "wash", so to speak... The radical, extremist abortion laws situation, look at what happened in Ohio recently for example, will likely push younger people to leave just as you put it where in contrast, more retirees may be persuaded to stay or to relocate into Iowa.

As for the Omaha-Council Bluffs area, I've long pondered what has happened in the Iowa side of that metro given that the last time Council Bluffs grew at or above the national average in population growth was in the 1950's!!! Since then, the Iowa side has suffered a decades long period of out migration in which they failed to take advantage of their proximity to a thriving large city (Omaha) in terms of claiming a share of inbound migrants over to the Iowa side.
I would postulate that some measure of the failure is to be shared with Iowa governmental leaders and departments who have utterly failed to do their best for that close-in, core area of the metro.

Good grief, what has gone wrong with the mentality or leadership quality in Pottawatomie County such that essentially my entire life time has seen the county and Council Bluffs seemingly fail to attract people and surrender and give over to the notion that people moving to that metro might as well move to the Nebraska side of the border?

[jmgg]

Originally Posted by atler8

Perhaps the 2 issues you discussed will work out to be a "wash", so to speak... The radical, extremist abortion laws situation, look at what happened in Ohio recently for example, will likely push younger people to leave just as you put it where in contrast, more retirees may be persuaded to stay or to relocate into Iowa.

As for the Omaha-Council Bluffs area, I've long pondered what has happened in the Iowa side of that metro given that the last time Council Bluffs grew at or above the national average in population growth was in the 1950's!!! Since then, the Iowa side has suffered a decades long period of out migration in which they failed to take advantage of their proximity to a thriving large city (Omaha) in terms of claiming a share of inbound migrants over to the Iowa side.
I would postulate that some measure of the failure is to be shared with Iowa governmental leaders and departments who have utterly failed to do their best for that close-in, core area of the metro.

Good grief, what has gone wrong with the mentality or leadership quality in Pottawatomie County such that essentially my entire life time has seen the county and Council Bluffs seemingly fail to attract people and surrender and give over to the notion that people moving to that metro might as well move to the Nebraska side of the border?

You're right in stating that for the most part, the city Council Bluffs hasn't taken advantage of the tax benefits from being across from Nebraska. It wasn't like Council Bluffs was ever a thriving business mecca. It's always been a river and huge railway hub involving the types of business and people that gravitate to that.

Commercially, the city HAS grown dramatically. All one has to do is follow I-29 on the south edge of the city. With the 3 large casinos and an extremely large retail growth area, you can't say the city is stagnant. Most all of this was built in the last 40 years or less.

The city's residential growth within it's city limits has been minimal, but if you take Hwy. 275 on the bluffs above the city going south and out of it's city limits, you'll see where all the growth is. Whole developments with fairly upscale houses all along this area continuing all the way to Glenwood.

These people don't even have to send their kids to the inner city schools in Council Bluffs. They've created their OWN school call Lewis Central. Somehow, this school was built within the city limits of the town, yet is not in any form connected to their school system, making it a much more affluent PUBLIC school. I don't know how this was accomplished, but I have first hand knowledge that this is fact.

Area towns like Underwood, Glenwood, and Treynor have definitely benefited, I'm sure partially due to the tax structure differences.

[atler8]

Originally Posted by jmgg

You're right in stating that for the most part, the city Council Bluffs hasn't taken advantage of the tax benefits from being across from Nebraska. It wasn't like Council Bluffs was ever a thriving business mecca. It's always been a river and huge railway hub involving the types of business and people that gravitate to that.

Commercially, the city HAS grown dramatically. All one has to do is follow I-29 on the south edge of the city. With the 3 large casinos and an extremely large retail growth area, you can't say the city is stagnant. Most all of this was built in the last 40 years or less.

The city's residential growth within it's city limits has been minimal, but if you take Hwy. 275 on the bluffs above the city going south and out of it's city limits, you'll see where all the growth is. Whole developments with fairly upscale houses all along this area continuing all the way to Glenwood.

These people don't even have to send their kids to the inner city schools in Council Bluffs. They've created their OWN school call Lewis Central. Somehow, this school was built within the city limits of the town, yet is not in any form connected to their school system, making it a much more affluent PUBLIC school. I don't know how this was accomplished, but I have first hand knowledge that this is fact.

Area towns like Underwood, Glenwood, and Treynor have definitely benefited, I'm sure partially due to the tax structure differences.

What you noted about the commercial growth in Council Bluffs is on the mark from what I'm aware of.
Much of that growth occurred in the 1990's and since then. Coincidentally, after losing population in the 1970's and 1980's, Council Bluffs reversed it's decline and began a modest but yet slow growth in population that stalled during the recently ended last full decade.

One would have hoped that the Iowa side of the metro had done a better job of marketing living there to the employees of those more recent commercial additions to Council Bluffs.
Perhaps the new tax policies set in place will be an effective draw going forward that shakes things up there.

As for the Lewis Central School District, it's high school was built in 1959 or thereabouts according to a source in that school system. I'm guessing that it was an amalgamation done at that time frame that mirrored the trend in Iowa in the 1950's for consolidation of hundreds of small, rural districts together into larger units; a process that continues yet today but in a less drastic numerical rate as compared to the consolidation trend of the 1950's.
In essence, small towns and rural township schools found south and southeast of Council Bluffs united to become Lewis Central at that time. In the intervening years, Council Bluffs has annexed south and a fairly large section of the school district now lies within that city limits area.
Similarly, the city of Des Moines extends into the Carlisle School District on it's south side. In Iowa a city can overlap school district boundaries which may not always be the case in every state.
Anyway, Lewis Central is the closest thing to a "suburban" type of school district setting to be found on the Iowa Side of metro Omaha-Council Bluffs.

See 2 links below with additional info.
At the map in the 1st link, it is shown that the Lewis Central District includes the beautiful Loess Hills scenic area on Council Bluffs south/southeast side. The hills there are a ruggedly, attractive residential area.
At the 2nd link, the web site main page for the Lewis Central School District has a large main photo of a school district facility with the Omaha skyline easily seen in the distance.
As such, that area should be a prime location for Iowa to attract new residents who are moving to the metro area.

https://educateiowa.gov/sites/files/...%20CENTRAL.pdf

https://www.lewiscentral.org/

[jmgg]

Wow, talk about an affluent public school as to tax dollars. Not only do they reap the rewards of the huge retail area south of the interstate, but they have the ethanol plant, the huge electrical power plant ( which normally pays a ton of taxes) AND the Google building. Throw in that the housing south and east of the school are well above the average as to appraised valuation and they have no $$$$ worries.

https://educateiowa.gov/sites/files/...%20CENTRAL.pdf