College town with a Big Red focus
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6/25/2008
My family and I called Lincoln home for more than 45 years. I moved away last year for three primary reasons: 1)The (often) brutal winter season and humid summer season; 2)Sky-high property taxes; 3)Entrenched left-wing idiology. Housing costs rank as relatively affordable compared to Denver, for example, but you won't have the economic opportunities, etc. in Lincoln that a Denver supports. Also, Lincoln enacted an impact-fee policy in 2004. This adds about $4000 (certain to increase with time) to the cost of an average new home, and the annual tax bill of $3400 on a $175,000 home valuation will shock most of you, right? Lincoln has been very slow - due to a bureaucratic anti-growth stance, paraded as "controlled growth" - to improve and extend infrastructure, which has inflated the cost of buildable lots in recent years. Home prices are not as affordable as you may want to believe. It still takes about $250,000 to find new single-family home in a decent, family-oriented location. Getting around Lincoln can be a real hassle especially in Winter - as many main roads are far behind the growth of the city's increased traffic and population density. This leads to point three: the local politics are rife with partisan back stabbing, endless "studies" and "democratic" tax & spend policy. The university is the sacred cow here, and much of what does, or doesn't, happen in Lincoln revolves around the power and geographic location of the university. Also, gang-affiliated crime has increased exponentially in the city. Downtown Lincoln is not nearly as safe as days gone by. All in all, Lincoln didn't change much in 45 years of living there. It got bigger and ethnic "diversity" went gonzo, taxes & crime increased, and the city buses are still mostly empty. Overall, the place has a somewhat stifling feel, as city politics never can get out of the basic citizen's. On the plus side: Nice, honest people (mostly), good (but expensive) K-12 public education, trees, bike paths, parks.
Lou | Panaca, NV