The council meeting Monday the 2nd only lasted about an hour. At least half of that was spent in executive session but things turned out well. The best part was vindication of a stand that I took as a councilmember yo many years ago. A bit of background:

Fifty-plus years ago I was learning to fly from Ben Frank right here at McCook Airport. Ben was not only chief pilot, chief flight instructor, chief mechanic he also farmed the ground, that portion not devoted to being runways. Several times Ben got off a tractor from tending to summer fallow, joined me, hand cranked the Cub and off we went for a lesson. I don't remember Ben's agreement with the City, but would guess it was a share crop arrangement. More likely he paid no rent but kept the weeds mowed and looking acceptable in exchange for his right to produce winter wheat, milo or dryland corn. You can darn betcha that he didn't pay real estate taxes on the place!

Fast forward to the present where "our farmer" has a written cash lease arrangement with land owner, the city. Back when I was on the council, same farmer, same contract.

About 2001, some gifted individual in the Legislature or Department of Revenue decided that real estate tax must be collected from any airport property that was farmed, used to grow crops. Never mind that local governmental entities heretofore never paid themselves real estate taxes.

The state's new ruling caused great consternation for city staff, abetted by the city attorney. Who was going to pay the property tax, somewhere around $2,100, on the farmed ground at the airport? The matter was presented to council and I, for one, rejected the attorney's advice which was to force the farmer to pay the tax in addition to his agreed-upon cash rent. I had rented farm ground locally for almost 20 years and never heard of a tenant in Nebraska having to pay property taxes for the land owner. I felt that our farmer had a written lease and the city should comply as written. If the tax had to be paid, then the city, the land owner, would have to pay. Whether the rest of the council agreed with my position I remember not.

Evidently city staff ignored tradition and went to our farmer to force him to pay the additional taxes. He balked and took the advice of someone in the County Treasurer's office to simply refuse to pay the taxes that were obviously the landlord's responsibility. Now that would have eventually been an interesting tax action, having the airport property sold at auction to collect the back taxes that the city should have paid in part to themselves! Anyway, our farmer continued to farm the ground and pay his agreed upon cash rent. 

Meanwhile the Department of Revenue saw the error of their ways, following a spate of lawsuits, and rescinded the order taxing municipal airport property. The city clerk, I suspect at the order of the city attorney now long gone, had paid the taxes that first year.  Every year since the city dunned our farmer who recently threatened to go to court to get the matter straightened away.

Hence the long executive session where evidently the city staff, including Attorney Rhonda, and all the members of the council hashed over the long standing dispute. After the public was invited back into chambers Councilman Kircher moved to have the city rescind the pursuit of taxes against our farmer. The motion passed unanimously. Case closed, no court date and exactly the right result was achieved albeit six years late. Thank you City Manager Curt and City Attorney Rhonda. Sometimes it takes a long time and considerable expense to rectify bad advice from an eager former attorney! We, the taxpayers, got by cheap on this one.

That is the way I saw it.