Dorchester Times: Saline County's Municipal State Aid: Winners And Losers

Friday, January 8, 2021

Saline County's Municipal State Aid: Winners And Losers

In Saline County, we have a tale of two different kinds of cities: those that are doing well under the state aid formula and those who aren't.

First, a quick explanation: The purse strings of Nebraska's government are controlled by the 49 state lawmakers in the Unicameral. One of their key roles is deciding how to redistribute taxpayer dollars -- derived largely from state income tax and sales tax revenues -- to make their constituents happy. (You can bash Nebraska's property tax system, but at least that's a form of local taxation and local control -- one that avoids the dog-and-pony show of sending dollars to Lincoln for recirculation by politicians.)

In state fiscal year 2019-2020, the latest year of data available, Nebraska's government sent cities, towns, and villages all across the state more than $27 million from an equalized aid program for municipalities. (Always be leery when the government tells you it's going to "equalize" anything.)

What is truly startling about the allocations from the Municipal Equalization Fund are just how unequal they are. In Saline County alone, five of the eight incorporated municipalities here received more in state aid than from their own property taxpayers. Consider:

The City of Crete received 6.2% in more in state aid than it collected from its property taxpayers. DeWitt received nearly 16% more.

Tobias took in 155% more in state aid than it's local property tax collections, while Western received 106% more.

And Wilber, which gets plenty of financial perks already from being the county seat, received 22% more in state aid than local property tax dollars.

Meanwhile, the municipalities of Dorchester, Friend and Swanton received much less in state aid than was collected in local property taxes. The City of Friend received roughly only half the amount of total property taxes levied.

Clearly, the state's formula is not only unfair, it's unsustainable.

Of course, this doesn't even begin to touch the $1.07 billion in "equalization" aid sent to public schools. That's another topic for another day.

For now, we'd like to see state lawmakers like District 32 Sen. Tom Brandt get serious about addressing the inequities in the municipal redistribution fund.

And if that's too difficult, how about just letting us keep more of our own money by lowering Nebraska's heavy income tax and sales tax burdens?

3 comments:

AnonymousJanuary 9, 2021 at 12:11 AM
How about pushing Ricketts to fulfill his campaign promise of lowering property taxes.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Village Dweller checks all reader comments to determine if they are appropriate for print.

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."