Think tank gives city high marks for low property taxes

Despite the complaints on websites, call-in shows and Open Forum letters, the City of McCook takes a relatively small bite of your property tax bill -- and that's not just spin coming out of city hall.

A conservative Nebraska think tank, the Platte Institute, ranks McCook as a pretty good place to live if you don't like paying too much for city services through your property taxes.

How much do we pay?

The institute took a look at all 54 Nebraska cities with populations of at least 2,000 and found that York residents pay only $66 per person in property taxes for city services.

On the other end of the spectrum, St. Paul property owners chip in $323 per person.

McCook looks pretty good, at $126 for each of us.

Residents of Nebraska's two largest cities, Omaha and Lincoln, pay $283 and $190 per person, respectively.

The other "cheapest" cities behind York are Kearney with $81 in property taxes to the city per person, Lexington $94, Madison $98 and Norfolk, $99.

Like so many aspects of the economy, location and distance from a major highway makes a difference in the city's property tax bite. Some, like York, benefit from annexing property near the interstate and collect sales and occupation taxes from restaurants and lodging facilities.

City manager Kurt Fritsch told the Gazette he suspects those tourism dollars constitute "a major tipping point for those communities.

"Nevertheless, I still feel our results for McCook are exceptional when comparing communities, and how we have held the line in this community without bonded debt," Fritsch said.

The city, of course, takes only a small bite of the total bill for McCook property taxes -- about 15 percent of the total. Two-thirds of local property taxes go to the local school district, about 20 percent to the county and the rest to the Educational Service Unit, Mid Plains Community College, Natural Resources District and Historial Society.

We've asked voters to support the upcoming city facility proposal, which will be paid back through sales taxes, one of the fairer taxes, in our opinion, for a trade center like McCook.

Beyond that, we should give more thought to what we can do to expand tourism in our area, if it is true that industry is a "tipping point" when it comes to property taxes.

Area lakes, golf courses, hunting and other activities and attractions certainly have the potential to bring in more visitors -- and their dollars -- for our local economy.