To Hanover resident Rob Schultz, the tax cap question on his Tuesday ballot represented a “longstanding New Hampshire effort to do away with public schools.”
Like most voters in town, he voted no.
“We have to invest in our kids,” the 64-year-old said, standing outside Hanover High School Tuesday morning. “I think that all school budgets should be very carefully scrutinized, and they should be subject to vigorous debate. We should be as efficient as we can with all of our dollars, but a constitutional cap is the wrong way to go about that.”
Schultz is a parent, but his children are grown and out of the Hanover school system. He said his belief in funding public education comes from a desire for a “common experience” shared within communities.
While Ballot Question 2 was easily defeated in Hanover, in other parts of the Upper Valley, the tax cap question passed or failed by slimmer margins, indicating widespread frustration about the cost of living in the Granite State. Just 30 miles south of Shultz, in Claremont, which has been flummoxed by school spending for decades, the cap passed.
Prior to election day, signs across New Hampshire urged passersby to vote “yes” or “no” on Question 2. The results would decide whether or not to limit local property tax growth for school districts, adjusted for inflation and new construction.
Enacting the tax cap would mean controlling the amount of tax revenue school districts could ask for and limiting central office spending in each district to 6% of appropriations for the 2027-28 and 2028-29 budget years. When the two-year period ends for towns that have implemented the cap, they must vote on it again.
In general, Republicans sided with the tax cap, citing affordability; Democrats opposed it, arguing for the importance of investing in schools. For some Granite Staters, the question was a litmus test on their support of public education, but for others, it simply asked what they were willing — or able — to spend.
At the Canaan fire station Tuesday, Vanessa Morse, 67, an independent who said she voted for all Democrats on the ballot but supported the tax cap, told the Valley News: “I think for right now, I need to cap everything until things can change, start turning around, and then I’ll vote to uncap it.”
For the tax cap to pass, at least 60% of votes on the question had to be ‘yes.’ In school districts with more than one town, that 60% was counted across the whole district. Blank ballots didn’t count.
Of the 22 towns in the Valley News’ New Hampshire coverage area, five will see tax caps in their school districts and 17 will not.
Results are decided by district, so a town’s vote alone doesn’t approve anything in a multi-town district. The five towns comprising the Mascoma Valley School District, for example, voted not to pass the cap for their district, though almost 69% of Dorchester voters and 73% of Grafton voters approved it for their towns.
In Cornish, Grantham, Hanover, Lebanon and Plainfield, the tax cap failed by majority rule. Hanover and Lebanon received the highest number of votes on the issue: The former netted 5,122 while the latter saw 6,139. Hanover reached a strong consensus against the cap, with 65.38% of voters choosing not to enact a tax limit many saw as “arbitrary” or “artificial.”
Elizabeth Lincoln, 44, lives in Hanover and has two kids in the public school system. She voted against the tax cap and said she would have done the same even if she were not a mother.
“I believe strongly in funding our schools, and I also think that if we don’t have taxation to fund public services, our community suffers,” she said outside Hanover High School Tuesday. “I’m okay with trusting the folks behind our school districts to fund our schools appropriately.”
For Penelope Blatman, an 18-year-old senior at Hanover High School voting for the first time, the tax cap issue was personal. She said her family supports education funding for public schools, and she voted “no” on the cap Tuesday.
While Lebanon saw the same final result as Hanover, city residents were far more divided on Question 2. Of the 6,139 people who voted on the issue Tuesday, 45.37% voted “yes” — just 569 votes giving the nays the statistical majority.
Cove Geary, 28, is a PhD candidate at Dartmouth and lives in Lebanon. He voted against the tax cap.
“I think if we defund our schools, we have no hope of being a coherent society,” he said outside Lebanon City Hall Tuesday.
But Gus Storti, 73, voted for it, citing the “huge tax burden” Lebanon residents already face. He also doesn’t have any children in the district, so he said education isn’t particularly important to him.
In Croydon, Lyme, Orford, Sunapee and Piermont, the tax cap also failed, though more than 50% of voters in each town approved it. Because less than 60% of votes in these towns were affirmative, the proposal could not pass.
More than 60% of voters cast their ballots in favor of tax caps in Charlestown, Haverhill, Claremont, Unity and Newport, passing the measure decisively in all five towns. Charlestown and Haverhill belong to multi-town districts, the majority of which also voted to approve the tax cap. Conversely, more than half of voters in Springfield approved the cap, but the town will not see it in place, since the seven towns that make up Kearsarge School District — including New London — collectively voted against it.
Emily Sandberg, 74, voted in Claremont Tuesday at Disnard Elementary School. Sandberg lost her race for the Sullivan District 6 state house seat. As she sees it, the tax cap would benefit families and their children by limiting property taxes, which she feels are very high in her town.
“The real question is, where does that come out of? It comes out of food budgets, it comes out of housing budgets for families,” she said.
Sandberg also accused her school district of financial mismanagement, another reason she voted “yes” on question 2.
“The school district has not been careful with money,” she said. “They’ve crashed and burned financially, and it’s very clear that we’re going to have to underwrite the cost of that mismanagement for a long time.”
This story was updated at 2:25 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5, to reflect results from Sunapee that had not previously been available.
