City Hall: A pay bump for being bilingual; felons registering to vote; lowering rents
Lancaster County is considering a policy that would compensate bilingual employees who use that skill as part of their jobs.
Barb McIntyre, the city-county human resources director, said officials have been looking at ways to improve language access across the county and decided to start by looking at the resources already available — existing employees who speak more than one language proficiently.
"We really do want to improve our language access, and using the resources we already have is cost effective," she said.
Now, county employees who speak a second language are often pulled away from their work to help interpret for a person needing help, and they're not compensated for the work, said County Commissioner Christa Yoakum. The County Board recently gave McIntyre the go-ahead to move forward to put the new policy in place.
"I'm really excited about it," Yoakum said. "Not having the right language is so prohibitive for access to health care and governmental processes."
The policy would require employees to pass a proficiency test in the second language. They would be paid an extra $100 a month.
Use of the policy would be at the discretion of department managers. For employees who don't regularly deal with the public, for example, it might not be appropriate.
That pay bump is already available to some city and county employees.
The union that represents Lancaster County Sheriff's deputies recently incorporated the extra compensation into its most recent contract, McIntyre said. The policy the county is now considering would include all unrepresented employees, and other unions could incorporate it into their contracts, she said.
The bilingual pay bump is also part of the union contract for Lincoln police officers and employees, as well city bus drivers, mechanics and other employees who are part of the Amalgamated Transit Union, McIntyre said.
She said the city also is looking at ways to expand bilingual pay to employees.
The policy under consideration by the county would not include interpreters, whose job is specifically to interpret.
The Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department employs five full-time and two part-time interpreters in Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Dari, Kurdish/Kumanji, Pashto, Karen, Burmese and Thai, and has seven contracts with others to provide interpretation in other languages as needed.
Additionally, both the city and county contract with various service providers when they need in-person translation or document translation, McIntyre said. The Lincoln Commission on Human Rights also provides additional language services.
Court interpreters are coordinated by the state.
Felons registering to vote
In the last month Nebraskans could register to vote before the Nov. 5 election, 1,974 Lancaster County residents did so — including more than 200 convicted of felonies who have completed their sentences.
At least 273 people who have completed their sentences registered to vote between Oct. 16, when the Nebraska Supreme Court overturned the secretary of state's directive to local election officers to refuse registrations for felons who had completed their sentences, and the Oct. 25 deadline. That number includes any voters who tried to register after the law went into effect in July.
And more people with felony convictions could have registered: The election commission has no way of tracking whether voters registering for the first time have been convicted of felonies.
Four years ago, in the month leading up to the voter registration deadline before the 2020 presidential election, 711 more Lancaster County residents registered to vote than they did this year: 2,685 four years ago compared the 1,974 people this year.
Still, with those last-minute registrations, Lancaster County will have 206,570 registered voters on Nov. 5.
Making housing affordable
Three local foundations and an anonymous donor helped the developer of an affordable housing project in the South of Downtown neighborhood figure out a way to offer lower rents.
Center Terrace, an affordable housing project at 13th and E streets that will include a new location for Clinic With a Heart, will offer 125 affordable housing units targeting incomes between 30% and 60% of the Area Median Income.
Many affordable housing projects are created for households with income at 60% of the Area Median Income. In 2024, for a family of four, that's $61,260; for two people it's $44,020.
Hoppe Development worked closely with the South of Downtown Community Organization, and its members were concerned that 60% of Area Median Income was higher than the incomes of most residents of the neighborhood, said Jake Hoppe, the company's managing principal.
"They wanted us to see what we could do to decrease rents," he said.
So Hoppe worked with the foundations to come up with a way to further subsidize rents. The result: low-interest loans from the Cooper Foundation ($150,000), the Woods Charitable Fund ($150,000) and Lincoln Community Foundation ($600,000) that allowed Hoppe Development to lower those rents about $200 a month — making them affordable for people at 50% of Area Median Income ($51,050 for four people).
That $900,000 — which Hoppe will pay back — was supplemented with a $200,000 grant from an anonymous donor.
That allowed the developer to lower the amount of debt on the project, and the savings in debt service will allow them to lower the rents on 31 apartments, Hoppe said.
But it has a bigger impact than just lowering rent.
Typically, residents with incomes at 60% AMI aren't eligible for federal housing vouchers, but those at 50% AMI are, which means those residents — assuming they can get a housing voucher — could pay even less rent, Hoppe said.
They could have offered fewer apartments to residents at even lower incomes, but this allowed them to offer more apartments to people who will be eligible for further subsidies.
The project, through a federal housing program, will also offer 13 units to people making 30% of the AMI.
Affordable housing typically requires a complex combination of funding, and this one is no different.
It includes nearly $2.5 million in tax-increment financing, which allows developers to use future property taxes the redevelopment generates to pay for certain upfront costs; federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars; federal low-income tax credits; and up to $24 million in multi-family revenue bonds.
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