Best thing my wife and I ever did was move from Nebraska to Wyoming. That was back when I retired from the daily newspaper editing biz.
Don't get me wrong. We met a lot of wonderful people over there in North Platte, people who are still our friends, before picking up and moving to Cheyenne in the fall of 2006 – 19 years ago. I found that most people in Western Nebraska are a lot more like Wyoming people than the pro-government, liberal-dominated city slickers back east in Omaha and Lincoln.
(I noticed the same thing when we lived in Craig, Colorado. Folks on the Western Slope think a lot more like we do in Wyoming than their fancy-pants Front Range counterparts in Denver and Boulder.)
No, I'm not talking about the friendly Nebraskans we lived among for four years. I'm talking about the property taxes those poor folks pay.
The arrival of my property tax bill here in Cheyenne last month made me think, once again, about those over-taxed Cornhuskers.
Let me explain.
In 2003 we bought a swell house in North Platte, right across the street from Memorial Park. Brick, two story, full basement, one-car garage out front and a huge, multi-car garage out back. I could walk to work. Great neighbors. Purchase price: $165,000.
I knew property taxes were going to be high, but the amount still got my attention: Around $3,600.
Fast forward to three years later, when we moved to Cheyenne. We ultimately built east of town, on almost five acres. Nice house, plenty of room, three-car garage, out-of-town but close enough to run into town if you forgot something at the grocery store. Purchase price: $272,000.
Since then, I've finished the basement, fenced the back yard (digging 37 fence post holes, sacrificing my rotator cuffs in the process), installed sprinklers in the lawn, and Soil Conservation planted about 150 trees. We paved the driveway, and I built a mower shed that matches the house. (It's been called a cute “she-shed,” but it isn't.)
And here's where the stark difference between Nebraska and Wyoming comes in.
Only last year, 19 years since moving to Wyoming, and 12 years since building the house we're now in, did we pay more in property taxes – only slightly more – here than we paid on that $165,000 house in Nebraska.
I am not kidding.
Due to a booming economy in Cheyenne (data centers are cropping up all around us), the onslaught of Coloradoans moving in to avoid the high Front Range housing costs (and jacking up ours), plus plenty of sweat equity, we now have an assessed value four times higher than that house in North Platte. And yet only last year did our property taxes here exceed what we paid in Nebraska, 19 years ago.
So, when I hear people complain about their property taxes in Wyoming – with the exception of folks up in Jackson, where valuations are suddenly on a different planet – I smile and think about the poor, property-tax beleaguered folks in Nebraska.
And here's the final kicker. Thanks to a long-term property owner exemption of 25 percent here in Wyoming, allowing us to count houses we owned in Laramie and Casper back in the 1970s and '80s, and the Legislature's 25-percent cut in property taxes this year, we're back to paying about half of what we paid on that house, 19 years ago, in Nebraska.
Is this a great state, or what?
Cheyenne is booming, so I'm not losing sleep over local governments getting less in property taxes from us. The schools here are funded well enough to install artificial turf athletic fields next to their new buildings. And the state has a huge savings account, so they're not missing any meals, either.
Nevertheless, you hear a lot of criticism of Freedom Caucus members in the Wyoming Legislature, who are currently in charge in the House, but less so in the Senate.
Well, this delighted property tax payer supports the Freedom Caucus, wholeheartedly, and I hope we add to their ranks in future elections. I think they're doing a great job.
Meanwhile, lets all say a little prayer for our poor, over-taxed neighbors – nice folks, like I said – over in Nebraska.
To quote Bill Clinton, I feel their pain.
Dave Simpson can be contacted at: DaveSimpson145@hotmail.com
