About this episode

The episode discusses a local government meeting in Nebraska focusing on budget items and community concerns.

The agenda is one page. Somebody ran it through the copier this afternoon and the toner is going, so item six is fainter than item five. You can read it anyway. Outside the county annex, there are nine pickups, a sheriff’s Tahoe, and a Buick that belongs to a woman named Arlene who has kept the minutes of this commission for thirty-one years. It is a Tuesday in March on the high plains of Nebraska. The wind is doing what the wind does. Inside, the fluorescent lights hum over four rows of folding chairs. Usually there are three people in them. Tonight there are twenty-six. There is a coffee urn on a card table by the door. It is older than some of the commissioners. Nobody has touched it. Item one is a culvert. Item two, a road easement. Item three is the ambulance service contract, and it runs long, because everything about the ambulance runs long in a county with one of them. Item four is approved without discussion. Item five is the fairgrounds. The grandstand roof failed inspection in October, and the bid to fix it came back at one hundred ninety thousand dollars, and the room takes this news the way you take news about a roof. Somebody says the fair is in July. Somebody else…

People in this episode

Host: Joel K. Douglas

Topics covered

• county budget
• local government
• community meeting
• public services
• fairgrounds
• ambulance service

Keywords

• county budget
• Nebraska
• community meeting
• ambulance service
• fairgrounds
• local government

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: county, ambulance service, fairgrounds

Places: Nebraska

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