A cost of living increase for county employees here … Funding for a city-county economic development agency there … With debt service, funding new projects and paying for the every-day operations of city and county government somewhere in between.

Those are the issues facing elected officials in both Natchez city government and Adams County government these days as they undergo the annual budgeting process.

With budgets due to be adopted by mid-September, aldermen and county supervisors are facing tight deadlines … and an as-of-yet-to-be-convinced taxpayer base.

With both the city and county officials saying tax increases are likely — city officials predict a 20-percent increase, county leaders are still trying to determine just how much they’ll raise taxes — thousands of taxpayers are asking &uot;why.&uot;

And it’s a legitimate question.

City and county leaders once again are missing an opportunity to involve, and yes, even sell if warranted, their constituents on the needs for a tax increase. That’s a difficult sell in ideal circumstances … and given our community’s political climate, the sell is even harder this year.

Many of the officials’ questions that probably were answered during the dozens of budget workshops held in both city and county government during the past month — workshops which city and county officials prefer to conduct without the presence of the public.

For the record, we’re asking &uot;why,&uot; too. We’ve got dozens of questions about the budgets, the expenditures and the fiscal management of both the city and the county — questions that can’t be answered in a simple one-time-only public hearing and questions that we’ll be posing to leaders throughout the next week.

We encourage officials to continue to provide the answers, the insight and the reasons behind their decisions and recommendations.