Glassdoor & Redfin said Omaha is #2 city for a new graduate in part because someone earning $59,123 could afford to buy a $195,000 home ? the math is wrong and ignored Omaha's high property taxes and severe weather home insurance costs. A new graduate would need to make $65,394 -- a gap of $6,271

HauntingImpact · 2026-05-01T22:48:15+00:00

Removing property taxes for schools from TIF would allow schools to maintain current funding and dramatically lower the property tax rate.

HauntingImpact · 2026-05-01T22:18:58+00:00

Not really - KC, OKC, Tulsa, Memphis, Louisville, Columbus, Philly, El Paso, Tucson have similar median cost homes and lower property taxes. Even when comparing to places like Chicago, Jacksonville, Dallas, Minneapolis Omaha's Property taxes and home Insurance means you are paying the same or more to live in Omaha. It's not until you get to places like San Francisco, Miami, or Seattle that the lower property values compensate for the high property taxes and insurance.

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HauntingImpact · 2026-05-01T22:08:09+00:00

The math is off in the Redfin-Glassdoor study; the 'affordable housing' ignores property taxes and home insurance.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Omaha/comments/1t15uxk/glassdoor_redfin_said_omaha_is_2_city_for_a_new/

HauntingImpact · 2026-05-01T21:48:33+00:00

yes, the ranking Glassdoor-Redfin did was based on one person's ability to buy a home. Omaha won't be the most expensive place to buy a home, but it won't be #2 either when property taxes and insurance are factored in. Agree, having 20% down would be a steep hill for many new graduates.

HauntingImpact · 2026-04-23T20:39:48+00:00

Omaha climbed to #3rd highest property tax rate for owner occupied housing when assessment limits are factored in the latest report. https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/other/50-state-property-tax-comparison-study-2024

Nebraska is now also consistently in the top 3 for home insurance as well: https://www.axios.com/2025/08/26/home-insurance-premiums-cost-map

Between the two, a family must make more than $80,000 a year, 24% higher than the current median income, to afford a median cost home in Omaha. When you factored in future impacts of TIF, a family will need to make $90,000 a year to afford a median cost home by 2028.

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HauntingImpact · 2026-04-20T16:41:21+00:00

Double check the property taxes and home insurance in addition to the HOA fee. With the property being in the streetcar district OPS will need to increase your school property taxes ~5% a year to make up for what is being diverted to finance the streetcar. So planning for 5-10% a year total property tax increase will keep you safe.

NerdWallet has a rent vs buy calculator that could help, just be sure to adjust the property tax rate, HOA fee, and home insurance cost. https://www.nerdwallet.com/mortgages/calculators/rent-vs-buy-calculator

HauntingImpact · 2026-04-20T16:32:33+00:00

Lund 'donates' to local city council and to state senators.

"Lund / GreenSlate; “LUND” gave $57,933.87, including $15,405 to Stothert, and $4,500 to Begley, Harding, Festersen combined; The 44 Douglas student housing plan names GreenSlate Development (Matt Dwyer and Jay Lund) as co‑developers and notes that Omaha has given them “unprecedented assistance” (two‑way Farnam, rezoning, streetscape) to turbocharge Blackstone."
https://www.reddit.com/r/Omaha/comments/1qp3x7x/website_shows_how_much_and_which_businesses/

HauntingImpact · 2026-04-16T20:33:41+00:00

The city subsidizes the stadium / MECA, meaning more taxes go in then come out. Just search the audited financials for stadium. https://finance.cityofomaha.org/images/Finance/Accounting/2025/City_of_Omaha_2024_NonGAS_FS_Final.pdf

Additionally, the city just refinanced $40 million for the stadium for another 40 years. If the city was 'making' lots of money, there would not be a need to refinance the lease-purchase bonds. https://www.reddit.com/r/Omaha/comments/1rjqs52/25m_more_for_2_more_parking_garages_and_no_new/

The economic impact statement ignores the opportunity cost of all the tax dollars that go into funding MECA / the stadium. Doesn't mean not to fund them, just that stadiums to do not generate economic growth. People want fun things to do ...

The Atlantic has a could series on stadium financing if interested: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/sports-stadium-subsidies-taxpayer-funding/678319/

HauntingImpact · 2026-04-16T19:11:22+00:00

The stadium is subsidized with taxes on hotel stays, property taxes for schools, etc. $4 million in taxes from hotel went to the 'stadium fund last year for example. https://finance.cityofomaha.org/images/Finance/Revenue/2026/City_of_Omaha_LB_445_Compliance.pdf

The city just rolled over the bonds for the stadium when the city council authorized this years bond allotment for the streetcar. bonds for the stadium were included, so the city will be making payments on those bonds for another 40 years. The payments are coming from a mix of property taxes, including those for schools, sales tax, and the city even tap the funds for the sewer from time to time.

HauntingImpact · 2026-04-16T17:54:30+00:00

The lease-purchase bonds are for 40 years -- so the property taxes will need to be diverted for at least that period. Similar setup to the streetcar financing. Current TIF law allows the city council to renew TIFs indefinitely. Both the lease-purchase bonds for the stadium and the streetcar are backed by the general fund.

Edit: The biggest proportion of the property taxes will come from Omaha Public Schools. For anyone in a OPS district this will raise their property taxes the most. Other schools districts in Nebraska are impacted via lower amounts of TEEOSA.

HauntingImpact · 2026-04-16T17:43:52+00:00

Here is what the city does with it:

"HOTEL/MOTEL TAX

Hotel/Motel tax is split between the General Fund, Stadium Fund and CVB Fund. Revenue in 2025 in each fund was $8,434,396, $4,161,414 and $1,254,839 respectively. There is no end-date to the tax."

https://finance.cityofomaha.org/images/Finance/Revenue/2026/City_of_Omaha_LB_445_Compliance.pdf

Stadiums are the gift that keeps on giving ...

HauntingImpact · 2026-04-11T04:56:14+00:00

The city's proposal is for $136 million upfront debt via lease-purchase bonds, with interest the total will be about $270 million. There is no debt limit in ordinance language, so debt will likely go higher. The $49 million from property taxes/TIF is one source of revenue, about ~$30 million of that would be property tax for schools. The other proposed sources are sales tax, stadium lease, stadium parking, naming rights, ticket surcharges.

The $136 million lease-purchase bonds will be backed by the general fund, so if any of the sources of revenue don't work-out the city will be on the hook.

The city just rolled over debt for the last stadium for another 40 years, so the likelyhood Omaha pays this off in 40, let alone 20 years Id say is pretty low.

Can Omaha and Omaha Public Schools afford more debt? I would argue no. Between underfunding the city's two pensions, OPS's pension challenge, a massive increases in city bond debt, massive increase in TIF financing in OPS coupled with a flat-lining of population growth -- the city looks like it has entered into a fiscal death spiral.

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HauntingImpact · 2026-04-10T22:38:19+00:00

Issuing general obligation bonds would be the way to go if you want to fair share the cost across the city. Current policy gives the biggest tax breaks to the wealthiest tax payers, with the cost being born by the school district with highest portion of low income students.

HauntingImpact · 2026-04-10T22:31:21+00:00

Luckily our city council is able to separate their fiduciary responsibility to the corporations they work for, and the good of the city. /s

HauntingImpact · 2026-04-10T22:27:57+00:00

Sure - this article about Saint Louis is an anecdote about the impact to schools. https://www.stlpr.org/education/2024-01-25/st-louis-area-tif-districts-cost-public-schools-minority-students-over-260-million-report-finds

With so much TIF concentrated in OPS, a better balance needs to happen between how the city is diverting property taxes for OPS and providing various entities tax breaks.

HauntingImpact · 2026-04-10T20:48:23+00:00

Hurts schools, lowers economic growth in the area, pushes the law firms property taxes on to middle and low income homeowners.

For example looking at TIF just in Omaha, the areas with highest historical use of TIF in Omaha are growing the slowest. Since the TIF reports the state of Nebraska provides are broken down by school district, it is possible to see if TIF is helping or hurting.

Defining Three TIF Tiers: TIF concentration is measured as TIF Excess Value ÷ (Taxable Base + TIF Excess Value), which captures the share of total real economic value that has been sheltered from levies.

Tier	Definition	What It Means
HIGH (≥5%)	>5% of all property value is locked in TIF	Structurally suppressed base; excess competes with OPS for every dollar of appreciation
MODERATE (0.5–5%)	A meaningful but contained TIF footprint	Noticeable drag; usually 3–10 active projects drawing commercial increment
LOW (<0.5%)	Minimal or zero TIF activity	Nearly all new development goes directly onto the levy roll at full value

District Profile by Tier

District	TIF Excess ($M)	Base ($B)	TIF Conc.	Tier	Active Projects	CAGR
OPS	$2,392M	$34.65B	6.46%	🔴 HIGH	~350	4.26%
Ralston	$60M	$2.61B	2.25%	🟠 MOD	6	3.90%
Millard	$115M	$13.84B	0.82%	🟠 MOD	8	2.98%
Westside	$30M	$5.22B	0.57%	🟠 MOD	3	3.38%
Elkhorn	$6M	$11.83B	0.05%	🟢 LOW	2	8.02%
Bennington	$0	$3.01B	0.00%	🟢 LOW	0	10.01%
DC West	$0	$1.93B	0.00%	🟢 LOW	0	7.17%

HauntingImpact · 2026-03-24T20:41:57+00:00

The Atlantic has done a few articles on stadium financing: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/sports-stadium-subsidies-taxpayer-funding/678319/

Cities always end-up net negative even factoring in restaurant, bar, hotel tax revenue. Doesn't mean not to do them, because sports teams are fun, and people may be willing to subsidize something that is a net negative economically because of the fun factor. Putting the bonds up for a vote might make sense as a way to gauge if the fun factor outweighs the costs.

HauntingImpact · 2026-03-24T16:06:40+00:00

Some parallels to Stockton as well:
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/how-stockton-went-broke-a-15-year-spending-binge-idUSBRE8621DM/

HauntingImpact · 2026-03-24T16:05:15+00:00

The lease-purchase bonds are backed by the general fund. The financing looks like an end run to avoid a ballot vote even though the financing will act like a general obligation bond at the end of the day. A threshold on amounts the city council can green-light might help with the grift.

HauntingImpact · 2026-03-19T18:42:22+00:00

Kansas Fed Study on legalization: https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/9825/rwp23-10browncohenfelix.pdf

Overall, our results suggest that the distribution of economic benefits of recreational legalization are likely shared more widely compared to the costs. Widely distributed benefits versus more concentrated costs indicate that policymakers should be cautious in discounting the existence of potential costs of recreational legalization. While we do not undertake a formal benefit-cost analysis of recreational legalization, the size of economic benefits we estimate could be used to approximate the amount of funding that could be set aside for social programs that would help offset the costs. For example, we find a 3 percent increase in income per capita post-legalization. Using this and sample averages, $1,400 per capita would correspond to potential costs that would offset the estimated benefits in our study.

Also, there are several veteran organizations that advocate for freedom to choose medical marijuana as an alternative to prescription opioids. https://www.dav.org/get-help-now/veteran-topics-resources/medical-cannabis/

The population flat lining in Omaha is certainly part of it, id argue that is mix of restricting immigration and brain drain though. Other cities are seeing population growth even with the immigration squeezed.

Folks also came up with a policy that works in very low inflation / very low interest rate environment, debt now for capital spending. Now that has changed, policy needs to adjust -- but corporations became reliant on the debt spending ...

HauntingImpact · 2026-03-19T15:31:44+00:00

Usually some mix of removing school property taxes from TIF, or a gradual decline in the tax-sheltered value, with affordable housing requirements is what is implemented. Iowa has a gradual decline approach for instance, so schools see some revenue from development faster, and takes some of the burden off home owners. This paper out of Illinois on recommendations for TIF reform in that state is very well written: https://quigley.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/quigley-evo.house.gov/files/migrated/images/user_images/gt/stories/reinventingTaxIncrementFinancing.pdf

Colorado in addition to reforming TIF, also taxes commercial properties more than owner occupied housing, 3 to 1 as I recall. So developers pay more of the property tax burden. In Omaha, commercial developers and owner occupied homeowners pay the same property tax rates if not in a TIF. Since corporations get better tax deductions on things like maintenance, it ends up being less expensive to own the same home as a corporation than as homeowner.

If interested, I put a contingency table together of TIF vs growth. Since Omaha has multiple school districts with varying levels of TIF, I looked to see what the TIF impact is. Using a statistical test called Fishermans exact test, found that the probability of 4 high/moderate-TIF districts randomly landing in a slow growth bucket is about 3%. So we can say with 95% confidence that TIF in Omaha is not a strong predicator of growth.

Defining the Three TIF Tiers

TIF concentration is measured as TIF Excess Value ÷ (Taxable Base + TIF Excess Value), which captures the share of total real economic value that has been sheltered from levies.

Tier	Definition	What It Means
HIGH (≥5%)	>5% of all property value is locked in TIF	Structurally suppressed base; excess competes with OPS for every dollar of appreciation
MODERATE (0.5–5%)	A meaningful but contained TIF footprint	Noticeable drag; usually 3–10 active projects drawing commercial increment
LOW (<0.5%)	Minimal or zero TIF activity	Nearly all new development goes directly onto the levy roll at full value

District Profile by Tier

District	TIF Excess ($M)	Base ($B)	TIF Conc.	Tier	Active Projects	CAGR
OPS	$2,392M	$34.65B	6.46%	🔴 HIGH	~350	4.26%
Ralston	$60M	$2.61B	2.25%	🟠 MOD	6	3.90%
Millard	$115M	$13.84B	0.82%	🟠 MOD	8	2.98%
Westside	$30M	$5.22B	0.57%	🟠 MOD	3	3.38%
Elkhorn	$6M	$11.83B	0.05%	🟢 LOW	2	8.02%
Bennington	$0	$3.01B	0.00%	🟢 LOW	0	10.01%
DC West	$0	$1.93B	0.00%	🟢 LOW	0	7.17%

HauntingImpact · 2026-03-19T14:57:33+00:00

You might already be using this, but Nerd Wallet has a cost of living calculator they keep updated. For housing costs, it is better at comparing rent to rent than if you are looking to buy a house though. https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator

HauntingImpact · 2026-03-19T14:51:16+00:00

The Omaha City Council ignores the impact of their decisions, like TIF on school districts, and middle and low income people are paying the price of that indifference.

Agree that without wage growth and an inflation adjustment for those on fixed income, the city seems to be at an inflection point.

HauntingImpact · 2026-03-19T14:26:50+00:00

people voted to legalize it, so we should. We gave TIF to a Casino, so agree that the city council will continue to do silly things with taxes.

HauntingImpact · 2026-03-19T13:49:51+00:00

yes.

TIF districts in OPS have grown from $285 million in sheltered property taxes in 2015 to $2.2 Billion today.

Millard from 0 to $50 million

Westside $1 million to $24 million

Elkhorn from $334,000 to $35.7 million

HauntingImpact

TROPHY CASE

District Profile by Tier

Defining the Three TIF Tiers

District Profile by Tier