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Articles written by Ryan Hoffman


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  • Valuation dispute could imperil thousands of affordable housing units

    Ryan Hoffman, Flatwater Free Press|Nov 2, 2023

    Kathy Mesner has a word for the potential fallout from a property valuation dispute in Lancaster County. Catastrophic. "I don't think it's too much to say it may be catastrophic not only in terms of bankrupting projects ... but displacing all these low-income households across the state," said Mesner, an attorney and president of Central City-based Mesner Development Co. In the past year, a narrow disagreement on how to value 21 Lincoln-area properties has morphed into a court fight over a...

  • Dementia claimed his wife, writing helped him survive

    Ryan Hoffman, Flatwater Free Press|Jun 8, 2023

    Brad Anderson still remembers the night his wife forgot hail. He was sitting on the front porch of their Lincoln home as a storm rolled in. "...I hear LuAnne running down the stairs hollering 'there's something hitting the house!'" She poked her head out the front door. "I said 'it's hailing,' and she looked at me like 'What?'" Brad grabbed a stone and showed it to his wife. It's frozen rain, he explained. "She said, 'That's amazing. I've never seen that before. What's it called again?'" That's...

  • A new megadonor family is silently changing Nebraska political races

    Ryan Hoffman, Flatwater Free Press|May 4, 2023

    A Nebraska family has plowed more than $1.6 million into the Lincoln mayor's race, an unprecedented sum and latest burst in a multi-year deluge that, at the federal level, rivals the political spending by a famed Las Vegas casino magnate and a Silicon Valley titan. It's not the Nebraska family you think. It's the Peed family and its business, Sandhills Global – not the Ricketts family – that have eclipsed all other donors while trying to help former State Sen. Suzanne Geist, a Republican, ous...