NELIGH — Two interviews followed by approximately 20 minutes of deliberation led to the choice of former Antelope County Road Boss Casey Dittrich to fill out the term for District #5 County Commissioner.
Dittrich was one of two candidates to be interviewed for the position held by Elgin’s Keith Heithoff who announced months ago that he would be resigning the position effective February 14 due to moving to Arkansas.
Dittrich and Elgin’s Duane Miller were interviewed by a trio of county officials led by County Attorney Joe Smith, County Clerk Lisa Payne and County Treasurer Deb Branstiter.
Smith, speaking at the start of the interview process to an estimated crowd of 20 citizens in the commissioners’ meeting room, said there was no need to go into executive session for the interview since neither candidate had a criminal history.
Dittrich is familiar to District #5 residents as he ran for the position in 2022. He faced Heithoff in the GOP Primary and was defeated. Before then, he served as county road boss starting in 2016. Since leaving the position in March 2020, Dittrich has been farming.
He said, at the present time, he’s not sure the county is going in the best direction in regards to roads as the commissioners have been put into a position to face a number of high dollar choices. He said commissioners have to be willing to dig their ‘heals’ in when it comes to budgets.
He cited his experience with creating road use agreements when the wind farms came to the county, each agreement improving from the beginning. While no new wind farms are on the horizon, he said there’s an opportunity to, with the proposed carbon capture pipeline looking to cut a swatch through the county.
Noting that he has had a good working relationship with the current commissioners, he said major improvements with county road employees starts here (at this table) with followup with the road superintendent.
As for Miller, he noted how he had worked for the county road department for over 40 years as well as serving two terms each on the District #18 Board of Education and the Elgin City Council as well as being a long-time member of the Elgin Volunteer Fire Department, as examples of his experience serving the public.
As for the issue of taxes, he said, “Taxes are a big thing with everybody, it doesn’t matter (school, city, county).”
He said the biggest issue facing the county is roads, keeping up equipment and using a common sense approach to what to spend tax dollars on. He said the sheriff’s department is running pretty well.
When asked why he wanted the job, Miller responded by saying he thought he could get along with the courthouse personnel.
He said you can’t make everybody happy, the commissioners or the road department …If you do your best and use common sense, that will go a long ways.
After deliberating for over 20 minutes, the county officials came back into the room. Smith said neither candidate had any bad points. He said they chose to go with Dittrich, in part, for his experience at the county level.
Dittrich will be sworn in this Thursday, February 15.
