Ainsworth Community Schools and Lunchtime Solutions are doing their part to help youth ages 18 years old and younger by making sure they don’t go hungry on weekdays (excluding holidays) from May 24th - July 9th.

In June 2018 prior to the most recent election the state was working with Brown County Assessor’s office to equalize the homes in Ainsworth with helping Charlene build a new appraisal model in the computer system. This help included sales maps, land study, and depreciation study. I was not in office at that time but I spoke to Bryan Hill, appraiser for the state, who trained Charlene on how to create and use the model and then he caught me up once I took office. The model was completed in 2019 while still under guidance of the state. It was created at the time on actual Ainsworth sales for the prior three years. Part of that study was looking at sales over the entire town to see if homes sell higher or lower in any areas. It was determined at that time that North of the Cowboy trail those homes sold slightly higher if there were equal components to the home. Therefore two different neighborhood market areas were created. Features like square foot, age, quality, condition, number of bathrooms, roofing, HVAC, siding, etc help to determine the value. Of course, in this office it is done in mass versus for one particular home like the one a fee appraiser would do for a home loan. That means that we do not look inside many of the homes as they do. We would look in a home, along with the homeowner, only if there is a protest. This does NOT mean that you should not come talk to us in the office to ask questions about your value. We actually encourage that!! Just to be clear, the State of Nebraska has created a formal protest process that can be found here https://revenue.nebraska.gov/files/doc/pad/info/Real_Property_Valuation_Protest_Info_Guide.pdf.

The Ainsworth Track Team competed in the 2021 Class C NSAA State Track meet and earned four medals. The 2021 Class C NSAA State Track Meet was held in Omaha on Friday, May 21st and Saturday, May 22nd.

On May 18th at Long Pine Masonic Lodge No. 136, Troy Graf of Bassett was initiated to the Degree of an Entered Apprentice Mason. Assisting with the initiation were (Front Row - Left to Right): Alvin Benemerito, Don Coash, Phil Brown, Troy Graf, Garrett Weidner, Cody Croghan, Barry Frerichs, Terry Foxworthy and Murray Meller; (Back Row - Left to Right): Stan Weidner, Jeremiah Schartz, Pat Kellogg and James Nelson.

Ainsworth Irrigation District Board Meeting The Board of Directors of the Ainsworth Irrigation District will meet on Tuesday, June 1st at 8:00 p.m. at the Ainsworth Irrigation District headquarters building, one mile east and a quarter of a mile north of Ainsworth.

Since the advent of computers, there have been hackers whose goal is to log into someone else’s computer for mostly nefarious reasons. The recent cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline ended in a payment of $5 million paid to the hackers and encouraged other hackers to redouble their efforts to do the same. This cyber-extortion is happening even in small-town Nebraska. The problem isn’t going to go away soon, but there are steps that people can take to thwart would-be hackers.