Omaha to merge with Douglas County?

[golden eagle]

There's a bill in the Nebraska legislature to open the door for such a possibility...

http://www.omaha.com/article/20110303/NEWS01/703039800/101477#city-county-merger-may-get-study

[usends]

If it passes, I wonder if Omaha/Douglas would allow towns like Waterloo, Valley, and Bennington to continue their existence as separate entities... as enclaves within Omaha/Douglas?  Or would they just get swallowed up, becoming "neighborhoods" within Omaha/Douglas?  Since a city/county merger would cause each of these towns to be contiguous with Omaha city limits, it would give Omaha the legal ability to annex them.  (At least, that's my understanding of the Nebraska law that allowed Omaha to annex Elkhorn a couple years ago.)

[golden eagle]

I wondered how did that work. For instance, when Louisville merged with Jefferson County, some communities kept their autonomy, while Lexington was able to gobble up all of Fayette County. Were those communities able to vote on their fate?

[huskeroadgeek]

I don't know whether a full governmental merger would work-maybe just a merger of services. It's hard to tell because there is no current provision in state law for cities and counties to completely merge their governments like Louisville, Lexington, Indianapolis, Nashville, etc. The discussion of merging the Omaha Police Department and the Douglas County Sheriffs Department is interesting-even some cities with consolidated city-county governments still maintain separate city and county police departments. Indianapolis and Marion County have separate police departments-the Indianapolis Police Department is responsible for the areas within the boundaries of the city of Indianapolis as it existed before the city-county merger, while The Marion County Sheriff's Department is responsible for the rest of the county. In Nashville, the Metro Police are responsible for regular law enforcement while the Davidson County Sheriff's Department is responsible for running the county jail.

The controversy over the annexation of Elkhorn I think would probably preclude a full city-county merger. The western parts of Douglas County are very rural and Valley, Waterloo and Bennington all have a small, rural town feel to them. Putting all that within the city limits of Omaha would just be strange.