Do road improvements, damage mitigation justify raising taxes?

County leaders spent about an hour mulling six “options” for managing Antelope County’s finances in the coming year, when they met last week at the courthouse in Neligh.

Lisa Payne, county clerk, presented the commissioners with six scenarios for the annual budget, ranging from what she called the “golden egg” with its seven-cent levy increase, to one that called for no change in the county’s slice of a taxpayer’s pie.

She cautioned that the figures were “very preliminary,” intended to give the commissioners a picture to work from.

The high end of the spectrum would include funding budgets pre...