FAB 50:
THE VALUE OF OPPORTUNITY
Business Journal
FRANK HAYES’ SUCCESS BUILT ON GRIT, INTELLIGENCE
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CELEBRATING 50 YEARS
YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY ACROSS NEBRASKA & BEYOND
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VOLUME 52, No. 34
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AUGUST 14, 2026
Papillion’s Steady Hand DAVID BLACK REFLECTS ON A 17-YEAR MAYORSHIP BY DAISY HUTZELL-RODMAN
David Black voted against himself. In 2009, when the Papillion City Council elected its own president, Black cast his ballot for someone else. He didn’t think he was ready. Three months later, the mayor resigned under a cloud of scandal, and Black, now council president by default, stepped into the chair he had tried to avoid. He has been there ever since. Seventeen years later, Black is preparing to hand off a city that looks almost nothing like the one he inherited. Under his watch, Papillion grew from a single-source residential tax base into a regional economic hub, landing Nebraska’s first Facebook, Google and Amazon data centers, absorbing La Vista’s fire department, growing its police force fivefold and earning repeated national recognition as one of the best small cities in the country, all while maintaining the lowest property tax levy in the Omaha metro. Black has done it while holding down a full-time career as senior vice president of commercial lending at Pinnacle Bank, a dual role he describes less as a conflict than as an advantage. His governing philosophy fits in two phrases: manage growth, preserve community. BLACK, ON PAGE 06 A LEGACY PARTNER
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