Budgets continue growing, despite hard times for families

Nebraskans, generally, are fiscally conservative by nature. That's served the state well in this economic downturn, although balancing the budget promises to be challenging for the foreseeable future as the state adjusts to federal cutbacks.

Local governments are keeping in step, judging by news stories Tuesday and today, but face challenges as well. McCook school board member Larry Shields expressed one concern, the loss of property valuation as irrigated land is reclassified as dryland because of Natural Resources District restrictions on irrigation.

Still, as the largest property tax "consumer" in the county, the board approved a budget calling for $5.7 million in local property taxes, up from $5.6 million last year, generated by a tax levy that is slightly lower than last year.

The county followed suit, asking for $2.9 million in property taxes on a levy of $.380743 per $100 in property value, a slightly lower levy but generating more tax dollars than last year's $2.7 million because of higher valuations. At the same time, commissioners are considering building a new jail; an important project but a difficult undertaking during a recession.

The Mid-Plains Community College board of governors is expected to approve a budget holding the levy at 8.7994 cents for $100 of valuation tonight, but because of increased valuation, it will generate an additional $613,244 in tax money from the 18-county service area.

The City of McCook showed similar results, asking for $990,000 in local taxes, up slightly from last year, but generated from the same .319044 levy in place since 2002.

All well and good, business as usual, right?

Only if you're not paying attention.

According to the Census Bureau, the number of Americans living below the official poverty line stands at 46.2 million people, the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing such figures.

The percentage of Americans living below the poverty line last year, 15.1 percent, was the highest since 1993. A family of four earning $22,314 or less in 2010 was considered to be in poverty.

And consider this: U.S. median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1997.

It was the first time since the Great Depression that median household income, adjusted for inflation, had not risen over such a long period, Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard, told the New York Times.

"This is truly a lost decade," he said. "We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we're looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s."

But those are national statistics, not indicative of conditions in Southwest Nebraska and Northwest Kansas, right?

Consider this:

The McCook Pantry served more than 5,500 people from Jan. 1 to July 31 of this year, a 17.8 percent increase over the same period last year. If that rate continues for the rest of the year, according to officials, the food pantry will have served nearly double the number of people it did in 2005.

Clearly, governmental budgets at all levels are out of step with personal budgets.

Any increase, no matter how slight, comes directly out of family bank accounts that are more and more stressed.