ENFIELD — Residents will have a chance to weigh in on — and change — articles on Enfield’s proposed Town Meeting warrant during the town’s deliberative session on Saturday.
It will be the first time in more than 20 years that Enfield will hold a deliberative session: During last year’s Town Meeting, residents voted to change from a traditional floor Town Meeting to Australian Ballot — also known as SB2 — where all articles are voted on via ballot, as opposed to on the floor. Enfield had an SB2 form of government from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s and then voted to go back to floor voting.
Spending items up for discussion include a proposed operating budget of $9.6 million, a 3.1% increase over the previous year, Town Manager Ed Morris said.
The main increases are due to liability and property insurance, which has gone up by around $30,000; an additional $64,000, due to rising costs at the Lebanon landfill; and around $140,000 in salaries, which is primarily for a nationwide search to hire a town finance director, who will also serve as the assistant town manager.
Assistant town manager Alisa Bonnette-Leinoff — who has been with the town since 1989 — is planning on retiring at the end of 2026 “and is doing the work of a finance director,” Morris said. The additional appropriation will allow there to be some overlap between Bonnette-Leinoff and her replacement.
“We’re not planning that addition to be year to year after that,” Morris said.
The default budget is $9.39 million, which would go into effect if the budget fails.
Residents will also be able to discuss three bonds that are on the warrant: One for $517,000 to put toward a walking trail along Route 4A and another for $280,000 for a plow truck. A third bond — $1.4 million for improvements to the town’s water and sewer system — would be paid for through user fees.
Other monetary articles include around $614,000 to put into the town’s Capital Improvement Capital Reserve Fund and $20,000 to add to the Police Recruitment & Retention Bonus trust funds.
If all warrant articles pass, the town could be looking at an estimated tax rate impact of $6.32 per $1,000 of valuation, a 44-cent increase over the 2025 tax rate. The resulting tax rate would be $1,896 on a house valued at $300,000 — or a $129 increase from 2025.
In spending that will not affect the tax rate, residents will also be asked to use $361,427 from the town’s unassigned fund balance to put toward the Public Safety building loan and offset the losses from a cybercrime in 2024 when the town lost $742,000 in money that was supposed to go toward a contractor working on the town’s new public safety building, which was completed last spring. The town received $257,208 from Bank of America and another $123,661 from its insurance provider, but still needs to make up the difference.
“The big thing from the Selectboard is that it avoids adding this loss into the building loan, so we’re not paying interest on the fraud amount,” Morris said. “It needs to be recouped somehow.”
The deliberative session will begin at 9 a.m. Feb. 7, at Enfield Village School, located at 271 Route 4. Australian ballot voting on all warrant articles will take place from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 10, at the Enfield Community Building, located at 308 Route 4.
All Town Meeting-related documents are online at: enfieldnh.gov/administration-town-manager/page/2026-annual-town-meeting-0.