Voters in at least 113 New Hampshire communities passed a tax cap Tuesday that will limit annual increases to their local school taxes. The ballot measure appeared on the ballot in every city and town but applies to only the communities that passed it by 60%.
But passing the cap does not guarantee property tax increases will be limited in those communities to the rate of inflation plus the value of new construction, as the ballot measure specifies.
That’s because the cap can essentially be overridden at the annual school district meeting. Voters will work their way through the warrant deciding each article individually, as they do now. One article will be for the budget. Staff contracts could be another article. If any article would increase taxes more than the cap allows, it would need at least 60% of the vote to pass.
Barrett Christina, executive director of the New Hampshire School Boards Association, cautioned school leaders to keep their budgets as lean as possible — even where the cap failed.
“Even though it didn't receive enough to pass, if a majority of the people in your specific community voted for this cap, that should be a sign to school boards that they're going to have to make some tough decisions come budget season,” Christina said.
New Hampshire has nearly 260 communities. According to WMUR, voters in at least 113 passed the cap. Some communities passed it by close to 70%, including Colebrook, Farmington, Allenstown, Hillsborough, and Barnstead.
Other communities narrowly rejected a cap, including Bedford, where it won 59.2% support, and Chichester and Manchester, where 59.8% of voters supported it.
The impact of caps on communities that passed them will become more clear in the coming months, once school district budgets go before voters.
The language on the ballot said a cap would not affect classroom instruction or school based services. School officials across the state have said a cap is likely to affect both, given that increases in mandatory costs, such as special education, health insurance, and transportation, have sometimes outpaced inflation.
A drop in federal or state funding could also force school boards to make cuts to meet a cap.
Londonderry school officials had warned residents they’d have to cut $2 million from the budget under a cap, likely by eliminating some bus routes, advanced courses, and extra-curricular activities. The cap failed in Londonderry with about 52% of voters supporting it.
“It's undeniable that there will be some impact to student services in some communities where the tax cap is passed,” said Christina, whose office serves school boards in New Hampshire.
Tuesday’s vote presents some complications for districts made up of multiple communities.
For example, four of the five communities in the Merrimack Valley School District passed the cap. But the cap will apply to all five communities, according to Sam York, the district’s business administrator.
The cap also requires school districts to spend no more than 6% of their budgets on the superintendent’s administrative expenses. The Merrimack Valley School District is well below that, at about 2.6%.
