Norfolk Daily News

Saturday – March 1, 2008

Your View

Provide Greater Value
NORFOLK — In regard to the effort of replacing the current Norfolk administrative office spaces, this current space situation has been in existence for over 20 years. We must look beyond just the administration office spaces when developing a community solution that should involve numerous entities.

Have we looked at other communities and their community development activities? For those communities that seem to be doing things right, such as South Sioux City and Columbus, what capabilities do they have in common? I would venture to say they will have a higher percentage of co-located economic and community development resources.

Our community needs to grow. We have a flat sales tax revenue history for several years. We are graduating fewer high school seniors today than we did 35 years ago when the community had 10,000 fewer citizens. We have 50 percent of our Norfolk Public School District students receiving free or reduced lunches and 75 percent of the students receiving free or reduced breakfasts. Our average yearly wages need to increase so our citizens have more disposable income and, as a result, generate more sales tax revenue.

The community does not have an approved LB 840 measure to help with economic development activities. One method to overcome this shortcoming is to co-locate many of the economic development resources in one facility to help with the overall community efforts. We have a perfect opportunity to seriously consider this collaborative benefit.

Just as the city is spending many thousands of dollars for a color copy machine, what other resources could be shared to maximize our economic development activities? How did the tenants in the Lifelong Learning Center come to agreement for co-location many years ago? How was this situation different from the current endeavor?

When evaluating the options for renovation versus building new, we should be taking sufficient due diligence in using professional registered engineering services to validate the costs of different options. These engineering services should have previous experience in the total cost of similar endeavors that can be verified by third parties.

We should consider increasing the community’s value by co-locating other organizations and improving our economic and community development opportunities.

MARK HALL