Dorchester Times: NEWS ROUND-UP: New Housing Development Being Considered For Dorchester?

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

NEWS ROUND-UP: New Housing Development Being Considered For Dorchester?

Here's the latest news taking place in and around Dorchester:

New Housing Development Coming to Dorchester?: We have heard from several reliable sources that Dorchester town leaders and landowners are looking at options to attract new housing, especially on the outskirts of town. And that effort may have just gotten a boost, according to a reader who has inside knowledge of state government. According to conversations our staff has had with at least four town residents, the Dorchester Village Board is looking at options to use something called "tax increment financing" (TIF) to provide an incentive to build new homes. Options would be the farm ground just north of town, as well as empty lots in the northeast section of the village. Of course, there would have to be sufficient interest in building at least a handful of new homes. But according to an e-mail we received, that interest may be sparked more easily now that Gov. Pete Ricketts has signed into law LB496 allowing TIF to support the construction of workforce housing, thereby lowering the cost of building new. The bill authorizes rural communities -- which the bill defines as any municipality in a county with fewer than 100,000 inhabitants -- to include the construction of single-family or multi-family housing as part of a redevelopment project eligible for TIF. Workforce housing under the new law is defined as "owner-occupied housing units that cost no more than $275,000 to build or rental housing units that cost no more than $200,000 to build," according to the e-mail we received. Stay tuned.

Kyra Creamer Honored for Tech: Dorchester High School continues to solidify its well-earned reputation of providing a superior education in technology and computing. The latest example is the news that DHS sophomore Kyra Creamer was one of 12 members who received honorable mention from the National Center for Women and Information Technology. She was recognized earlier this month in Omaha at an awards ceremony attended by her family and DHS teacher Kyleigh Lewis. Creamer is accustomed to getting statewide honors: She received second place at Nebraska's FBLA State Leadership Conference along with her DHS group in the category of "Public Service Announcement." She also represented Dorchester at the State Fair with her presentations using Power Point and computer graphics.

Saline County Getting Worse in Obesity, STDs, Physical Inactivity: The 2018 report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows Saline County is going the wrong way in key measurements of health. The report shows we are getting fatter, with 34% of Saline County residents categorized as obese. That's up from 25% in 2004 and is higher than the Nebraska average of 31%. Meanwhile, 32% of Saline County residents are "physically inactive," compared to just 23% of Nebraska statewide. Saline County had 365 confirmed reports of sexually transmitted diseases in 2015, up from 70 in 2010.

1 comment:

Village DwellerApril 25, 2018 at 5:44 AM
Readers:

One of our staff members, who is not the most tech savvy, accidentally deleted legitimate comments along with the daily spam this blog receives.

Please resend if your comments were among those that were deleted.

Thank you.

Dorchester Times Staff
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Dorchester: A Good Little Family Town

Dorchester, Nebraska (est. population 630) is located in northern Saline county. Close in proximity to Interstate 80, Dorchester is only 25 minutes from the state capital of Lincoln (est. population 250,000) and about 55 minutes from Omaha (metro population 725,000).

Dorchester's median resident age is 37 years. In 2005, Dorchester had a median family income of approximately $35,600. The median house value was about $63,000. About 95 percent of Dorchester residents commute to work via Interstate and highways.

The village has a quality public school, which received a $4.1 million expansion and modernization in 2008; it offers a small classrooms and individualized attention. Total enrollment of grades K-12 is around 230-250 students.

Ancestries of the Dorchester area are primarily German (42.4%), Czech (24.9%), Irish (12.5%), English (5.4%), and Dutch (4.9%).

Dorchester Historical Facts

* On July 4, 1871, the railroad reached Dorchester.
* Incorporated in 1881, Dorchester's population grew from 200 to 500 by 1882.
* In 1882, Dorchester had 90 buildings, 35 of which were businesses or public facilities. Brick buildings lined both sides of Washington Avenue for two blocks.
* Dorchester's longest-running newspaper was The Dorchester Star, which was published until the late 1940s.
* By 1889, Dorchester's population is said to have reached 800, while the town housed an opera house, a two-story brick schoolhouse with a bell tower, and four churches.
* By the 1910s, Dorchester had electricity, a water tower and a fire department.
* Dorchester's main arteries, Highways 6 and 33, were graveled in the 1940s.
* Dorchester's first irrigation well was drilled on Chris Weber's farm and rural electrification was finished following WWII.

A Village with History

Dorchester is one of the "alphabet towns" on the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad line built west from Lincoln. The town site was selected for its pleasant location in the northern part of Saline County, about eight miles west of Crete. This situation is an attractive one, being on the level prairie land, midway between the West Blue River and Turkey Creek. The first named stream is three miles north, and the latter about the same distance south from the town. Dorchester was platted in 1870 and incorporated in 1881. The name "Dorchester" came from either for a suburb of Boston by that name or a town in England. No one is sure. Two of the very first settlers were James Seely and Edward McIntyre, who both made Dorchester their permanent home.

Dorchester: In The Beginning

Here is a look at Dorchester around 1890, less than a decade after its official incorporation, as documented by Andreas' History of the State of Nebraska:
* POPULATION: "About 300, and is made up of a substantial and progressive class of citizens, who are moral and industrious. ... The town grew but very little until the year 1879, for the reason that Pleasant Hill, on Turkey Creek, a short distance south, was the county seat and naturally drew a trade for quite a large scope of country."
* BUSINESS: "The business and professional interests of the town are represented by three general merchandise stores, two drug, one grocery, one furniture, two hardware, and two millinery stores, one bank, two restaurants, two hotels, three livery stables, a post office, one newspaper office, two elevators, two lumber yards, two coal yards, two blacksmith shops, two lawyers and four physicians."
* SCHOOL: "The schoolhouse is a good one. The schoolhouse was built in 1872, since which time the public schools have been continually kept up. The present schoolhouse is 24' x 40' in size, two stories high. The school is graded and consists of three departments. The house is found too small, and arrangements will soon be made to increase its size."
* CHURCHES: "There are three substantial churches."
* HOMES: "The residence portion of the village is made up of neat houses of different styles of architecture, but none of them very large."
* NEWSPAPER: "The Dorchester Star, which was established August 21, 1881, by H. C. Bittenbender, who edited it until January 19, 1882, when he sold it to Ryerson & Bullock, the present proprietors. The Star is a bright weekly paper, five-column quarto, in size, and is Republican in politics."