The three-way May 14 primary contest to succeed outgoing North Platte City Councilman Mark Woods includes first-time candidates Nick McNew and Aaron Edwards as well as Tracy Martinez, a 2008 mayoral candidate making his sixth Ward 4 council bid.
All three boasted at Monday’s primary election candidate forum of lifelong roots north of the Union Pacific tracks, with Martinez, 63, saying his family has lived there for a century. He criticized generations of city leaders for neglecting that side of North Platte.
“They have just let the north side just go stagnant,” he said. “The problem is our 4th Ward councilmen don’t get off their butts and don’t do anything for the north side.”
Edwards, 40, the son of Lincoln County Surveyor Boni Edwards, noted his involvement in local affairs working for her surveying firm, serving as a member of the county’s Planning Commission and working as a right-of-way agent for Dawson Public Power District.
People are also reading…
“I’m very familiar with what’s going on, not just in North Platte but in the Lincoln County area,” he said. “I can get into this and hit the ground running.”
McNew, 35, owns the North Platte McNew’s Unlimited golf cart dealership with his wife, Catie. Both have been president of the Nebraska Jaycees, in which McNew — the current state president — said he learned to “find needs in the community and figure out how to solve them.”
Edwards called for infrastructure upgrades in the ward, as did Martinez, who said North Platte needs “to get an urban renewal program back in here” to help remove dilapidated houses and upgrade others.
The trio each pledged to be smart with city spending and find ways to keep lowering property tax requests.
“We have been pounded with property taxes since the ’70s,” Martinez said. “The problem is how they’re wasting your money.”
“If we had endless amounts of money, we would have everything we needed, right?” McNew said. “Unfortunately, that’s not the case and times are getting tougher and tougher.”
Edwards reminded listeners that North Platte Public Schools, not the city, accounts for the bulk of their property tax bills.
“We have city services that we have to take care of first, like police, fire, those kinds of things that are a necessity for the community,” he said. “I don’t like how much I pay in property taxes,” but “your taxes are going to good causes when you’re talking about all these city services that we do have.”
When the candidates were asked about economic development, Martinez pointed to the growth at Interstate 80’s Newberry Access exit since the Walmart Distribution Center opened in 2003.
“It’s bringing in the businesses that’s the important thing,” he said. “That intersection over there is turning in millions in sales tax.”
His opponents were upbeat about North Platte’s progress but said “affordable housing” that costs $275,000 to buy remains out of reach for many north-side residents.
“‘Affordable’ in some areas isn’t affordable in others,” McNew said. “I don’t feel like we’re meeting that for most of the town.”
One should speak of “attainable” housing instead, Edwards said. At $275,000, “I know there’s a lot of dual-income families with kids and whatnot (for whom) that’s not an affordable house.”
Woods and fellow Ward 4 Councilman Ed Rieker have often criticized and voted against tax increment financing for redevelopment projects. None of the Ward 4 candidates approached that level of opposition to TIF in their comments at Monday’s forum.
“I think the biggest thing about TIF is the education (about it) and the lack thereof,” McNew said. “We sat on the sidelines for way too long, and we have to do something to keep up with other towns and other communities.”
“TIF is a tool that we need to use,” Edwards said. North Platte also needs to use microTIF incentives, which target single older structures and vacant lots, “to fix up some of these homes and some of these properties to make them more viable for the north side.”
Martinez said “TIF is not a problem” but needs to be managed correctly. Ward 4 could have been declared TIF-eligible soon after Nebraska voters authorized it in 1978, he said.
But Martinez said he opposes the “enhanced employment tax” tool used by North Platte for the first time in 2021 in redeveloping the city’s 52-year-old mall into District 177.
“If I get into City Council, we will never do the mall plan again,” he said.