Liz Canada 0:00

Has there ever been a case in which the legislature is like, we've got a great idea. We want local communities to vote on something that is completely local to them, and they already have a process to do this, but we want to make them all do it. And we're sending this question to the November ballot. Has this ever happened before?

Alex Tilsley 0:15

I don't want to speak in absolutes because I do not know the whole history.

Liz Canada 0:19

But I love absolutes, they are my favorite things.

Alex Tilsley 0:22

But no, this is weird, right? And this and this.

Liz Canada 0:27

This is weird.

Why this question matters (and this episode, too)

Liz Canada 0:39

You're listening to New Hampshire has Issues, and I'm your host from the future, Liz Canada. This episode has stressed me out more than almost any other one, actually, which is shocking, because I actually know some things about education and feel most comfortable about education because I have an education policy degree, braggy. But I'm just gonna say this upfront that this is a mess, what we're gonna be talking about on this episode. Because today's episode is about a new question going on all of our ballots this November, no matter where you live in the state. The question on the ballot asks, do you want to put a budget cap on your school district budget for the next two years? This is extremely weird because what the legislature has decided is that a local issue, school district budgets and a potential budget cap, is gonna be decided on our state ballot in November and not through the usual process. You've heard me talk about this before. I had an episode with Nico Papakonstantis about select boards and deliberative sessions. For a local issue, we have a local ballot, and school budgets are on the local ballot. Here in Exeter where I live, we also have a deliberative session, which is where we debate and can amend questions like this one. If someone brings a budget cap to our town's budget or our school budget, at the deliberative session, Exeter voters can discuss it, we can ask questions about it, we can try to persuade people to vote for it, we can try to persuade people not to vote for it, and if we want, we can amend the question. That's not the case for the question in November. This time, even though it's our local town and our local community and our local school district, we don't get a choice in what the question says or how it appears on the ballot. Nobody in Exeter brought this forward, for example. The legislature has mandated this question on everyone's ballot in New Hampshire this coming November. This one size fits all question doesn't take into account our local conversations at all. Some communities had school budget cap questions on their ballots over the last two years. One of those places was where, where one of the lawmakers, who is in support of this new law, lives. The budget cap was voted down. That question failed. The school district budget also was voted down. What's interesting though, one of the questions on the ballot that passed was whether there should be more oversight to education freedom accounts from the state. That's not a to-date discussion, though. Okay, so why did the majority of the legislature pass this bill? Well, a few weeks ago I shared in my little intermission that they've actually said the quiet part out loud. Some of the lawmakers who push this through have said that they see this as an opportunity to increase Republican voters, that just having the question on the ballot is a turnout opportunity for Republicans. They said it out loud. As you listen to this episode, yes, you might feel confused. It's very possible. And I think it's by design, not by me, not by this episode, not by this podcast, but by the folks who drafted this language and pushed it through, because it is a mess. What it says it will do versus what it will actually do, they are not in sync. There are so many open questions to this one question on the ballot. When I talked to Alex, I felt legitimately confused. And so if I felt that way, and maybe if you feel that way, and you're a listener of this podcast who wants to know the issues of New Hampshire, imagine the voter in November who's never even heard of this thing. What are they gonna think? And how are they gonna vote? So that's my preamble. It's a long preamble, and boy, did I really try to talk you out of listening to this episode. So well done if you've even made it this far. Look, I promise this is an extremely important episode for an extremely high-stakes question on your ballot this November. If you would like to support this little podcast, New Hampshire has Issues, please go to patreon.com slash NH has issues, and you can become a supporter for as little as $5 a month if you so wish. Or just keep listening to the episodes for free and maybe share this one with other folks who live in New Hampshire so that they can start to understand the nightmare that is this ballot question. Thank you for listening. Welcome to New Hampshire Has Issues, the podcast that dares to ask how important are questions on a November ballot anyway. I am your host, Liz Canada, and joining me today is the Director of Policy at Reaching Higher, New Hampshire, Alex Tilsley. Alex, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much. Happy to be here. All right. So do you have a tagline for me on your episode today about House Bill 1300?

What is HB 1300?

Alex Tilsley 5:37

Well, I was thinking the podcast that dares to ask, is this actually going to lower my property taxes? But then since you led with how important are questions on a ballot, I was also thinking, how important are your local schools to you?

Liz Canada 5:51

Because that's the question we're going to be faced with on the ballot. All right. So we have a few taglines to choose from. Choose your own adventure listener of which one you feel adequately no pun intended, uh, covers this episode. All right. So let's start with just what is Reaching Higher? You work for Reaching Higher New Hampshire. What is that organization?

Alex Tilsley 6:11

Yeah, Reaching Higher New Hampshire is a small but mighty education policy organization dedicated to helping to advance public education in New Hampshire. So we do research, we do policy analysis, we work with communities, educators, legislators, and help to make things even better for New Hampshire's public schools.

Liz Canada 6:31

Terrific. We need we need somebody working on the help in the public schools. So glad that you are there. So let's start with a simple question about this, what I feel is a somewhat complicated conversation. House Bill 1300 was signed into law by Governor Ayotte. And I'm just gonna say regular people do not know what bill numbers are or what they mean, nor should they, frankly. Like it's just all mumble jumbo. But this is a law that requires a new question to go on this November's ballot for every town and city in New Hampshire. So my simple question for you, Alex, is what exactly are Granite Staters going to vote on with this question going on the ballot?

Alex Tilsley 7:20

It's a great question, and that's an that's an important one. What does this bill do? Um we've been referring to this as the tax cap bill, but it is important to note it does not mandate a tax cap. It mandates, as you said, a question on the ballot about whether voters want to implement a tax cap. The way it's phrased, and all of this is dictated in the bill. It has the specific language that has to be printed in a specific place on the ballot. It's there are lots of rules. Uh depends on what kind of municipality you're in. But the language effectively asks if you want to limit the total tax levy apportioned to your school district or districts for towns that are in multiple.

Liz Canada 8:05

You just said tax levy and apportion.

Alex Tilsley 8:08

I know. I know. I've been reading the bill too closely.

Liz Canada 8:11

Ooh, hey voters.

Alex Tilsley 8:14

Very simply, it is do you want to place a limit on your school district's budget for the next two years? And that limit is pegged to inflation. So if the cost of living goes up 3%, your school budget can go up 3%. Otherwise, no increase. The question also asks if you want to limit the amount your district spends on the administration of its SAU, so school administrative unit, um, which is sort of an umbrella, an umbrella over either one district or multiple districts, handles a lot of the, as the name says, administrative function, right? Already too wonky. But the question asks if you want to limit your SAU budget to 6%. Those are not separate questions. They're uh it's all one. You don't get to say yes to one part and no to the other. So voters can say yes, I want to cap my school district budget and limit administrative spending, or they can say no, I don't want any part of that.

Liz Canada 9:11

None of the above. It's either all of the above or none of the above. Right, exactly. Let me say back what I think I heard you say. You're saying part of the question on the ballot is do you want to limit your school district budget based on inflation? That's right. So, like hard stop. If if things remain the same, your school budget needs to remain exactly the same. Yep, pretty much. Well, we all know that costs continue to be just exactly the same year to year. Right. I know that we've all seen health insurance costs, for example, be exactly the same as they were. They only go up with inflation. Yeah. Only with inflation. Okay, so that's one part of the question. And then the other part of this same question is about the administrative offices, the SAU, and capping that budget at 6%. Is that right? That's right. So it's yes, I want to do both of those things, or no, I won't do either of those things. There's no like one or the other. Correct. Okay. This is actually worse than I thought, unfortunately. But I guess my next question for you, Alex, is like, is this a new concept to uh limit a school budget or like a municipal budget? Is this a new concept in New Hampshire to have a cap on a budget going forward for a community?

Alex Tilsley 10:39

It's

Don't we already have budget caps?

Alex Tilsley 10:40

not a new concept. School districts have always had the ability to institute budget caps or tax caps. And those show up in different ways. Sometimes they limit the total school budget, and then you kind of back into a tax rate from that, right? So if you have a total number you need to raise for your school, then the Department of Revenue Administration figures out, based on your property values, how much is everyone paying in taxes. So that's one kind of cap. Sometimes we see a per pupil spending cap. And then sometimes you see this actual cap on tax rates. We don't want the rate to go up more than a certain percent. So there are a few different mechanisms, all variations of a cap. But anyway, districts have always had the ability to do this through the school district meeting or school district vote process. So a citizen can submit a petition warrant article through the typical process. And that varies again by kind of municipality, but every town has a way to do this. And then that goes to the school district voters for a vote, typically in March as part of town meeting season. We've seen, and in the last couple of years, there were some legislation to make it even easier to bring these budget caps to a vote. We've seen an increase in the number of votes, but not an increase in the number of budget caps. By and large, these get voted down. I think even this past warrant article season, we had roughly a dozen. Um, New Hampshire has a lot of small municipalities, and so it's really hard to commit to exact numbers because some of these places the only way to know is to drive to the town hall that is open, you know, one day a week and talk to the town clerk who's there for two hours a day. And so I don't, I really hesitate to commit to numbers, but it was about a dozen warrant articles proposing caps, and none of them passed. Some municipalities, some towns have municipal tax caps. Um, and that limits the property taxes for things that aren't schools. Most of those towns do not also have school district caps. So their school district is can still build the budget that reflects its needs. And then we see tax caps, cities, of course, function differently, right? Um, and that the legislative body, the city council gets to decide or border selectmen, however they do it, um, has gets to set these budgets. And so tax caps for school districts are more common in the cities, usually paired with some sort of municipal cap. I think we have at least six or so cities that have some form of this cap. But I'll just say it's not new. We've always had the ability to do this. People could still bring this, say that this question goes on the ballot and doesn't pass in their district, they could still bring a cap to the school district warrant in March. So there's always been this ability. It just hasn't been a concept that's particularly popular with voters.

Liz Canada 13:22

And so

Who votes? What does it take to pass?

Liz Canada 13:23

when this question, this multi-part question, goes on the ballot in November, what's the vote that is required for it to pass?

Alex Tilsley 13:32

So it requires a three-fifths vote from the school district in question or the SAU in question. And that is where it gets maybe a little fuzzy too, because in some places a town has its own school district. And so that's very clear. If three-fifths of the voters in that town vote for a cap, the cap is in place. But in a lot of places, especially where we have some smaller towns, towns come together and they form a cooperative school district. And in that case, it takes three-fifths of all of the voters in that cooperative school district who are spread across different towns. And this is, of course, voters who show up to vote. I guess not, of course. That's not all a given these days, but in this case.

Liz Canada 14:16

Those who attend on Election Day and cast a ballot, it's three-fifths majority of the votes cast on Election Day. That's right. Okay, so I live in one of those cooperatives. Shout out to me and Exeter, I guess. But so maybe we can dig into that for a quick moment. Because in Exeter, we have a school board that is specific to our elementary schools. We've got two elementary schools in town. They're wonderful. The boys went there. We love it. So they have their own school board and school budget. And then we are part of the cooperative district that is shared with other towns around us, including Stratham and Brentwood. And that is for our middle school and our high school, and I think the Adult Learning Center and Seacoast School of Technology. I think all of those are in SAU 16. So how does that work for us? Because we've got the school board and the school budget for our elementary school. And I think that's true for all of the towns that we all share middle school and high school. And then we also have our middle school and high school. So how does that one multi-part question already fit with our multiple school district budgets that we have?

Alex Tilsley 15:30

Right. So functionally, when you vote on that one question, there are three different things that play. There's the budget for your elementary district for the Exeter School District. There's the budget for the middle and high school district, which is Exeter Regional, I believe is the official name.

Liz Canada 15:46

There's a lot of controversy about getting it right, Alex, the cooperative district.

Alex Tilsley 15:50

Then there's your your SAU budget, which is SAU 16. And so theoretically, the voters, maybe three-fifths of the voters in Exeter, don't want a tax cap. And so your elementary budget is free to grow as your school board determines or to shrink as your school board determines. I think it's important to note that budgets don't grow every year just for fun, right? The school board is trying really hard to make a decision. But the vote fails in the Exeter district. But maybe once you add in all those other towns that are part of the middle and high school district, now you see that three-fifths of voters actually want a tax. And so now the budget is capped for your middle and high school. That is doesn't necessarily mean that your tax rate is going to go down, right? You've got one of the items that feeds your local school property tax rate is free to grow or shrink as determined by the school board. And then the other line item feeding that rate is capped. And all of that, you know, all of those budgets, all that information is going to go to the DRA, it's going to figure out what your local tax rate is in Exeter. But it means you could have a tax cap in one district and not in the other, even though it's the same kids, the same town, the same taxpayers. Similarly with the SAU, SAU 16 is largely all the same towns that are in Exeter regional. So if they vote in the cap for the middle and high school, then you're automatically adopting that 6% SAU cap. But then that SAU admin spending cap may or may not apply to Exeter where you have not voted in the cap at your elementary district, right? So we know that the middle and high school budget can't be greater than 6% for the SAU. But could Exeter, the elementary district, pay more than 6% to the SAU? Or is it just automatically 6% for from everybody, even if some of these towns did not want this? You have other SAUs that similar similarly, right, have multiple districts within them. And so the district might not have a tax cap, but the SAU might have that 6% budget cap, or vice versa, right? So if we imagine that in this case, Exeter, little Exeter Elementary District, Exeter, voted yes on the cap, but the rest of the district did not. Well, now SAU spending is not capped, but Exeter's total budget amount is capped. And so your the amount that Exeter is able to contribute to the SAU is lower, which means that the other towns might be asked to pay more into the SAU to meet the SAU budget needs, and you just end up with a host of conflicting outcomes and motivations in these cooperative districts and then these multi-district SAUs.

Liz Canada 18:38

Alex, it's feeling a little bit like this is confusing. I got confused if I explained it to you. I was like, I think I feel like the meme where it's the woman with all of like the mathematical symbols near her head. That's how I feel right now. And so I and I have this, I host a podcast to try to figure these things out. So I can't imagine how voters are gonna figure this out for November, because it's coming up very soon. So it sounds like there's a lot of open questions about what the impact of this question could be. Because we in Exeter, our town, might say no. Like we might not reach the three-fifths majority in our town. But one of our towns that contribute to the middle and high school, they send their kids there, they could say yes. And so potentially it could cap their elementary school, but not the middle and high school. Right. And so that feels like that'll have consequences for them if they do that. Just feels very complicated and messy and confusing. I don't think I'm alone in that feeling, maybe.

Alex Tilsley 19:44

No. And I think that it is other than for the districts that are one town in a district that also has its own SAU, it is messy and confusing.

What would actually be capped?

Liz Canada 19:54

And we're going to see what happens. What gets capped? Because, you know, for school district budgets, they're not like a one-page document where it's like, how much money? That much? Okay, just figure it out. Like there are a lot of line items in these budgets. And there are things associated with salaries, there are extracurricular, there is like, do you get new Chromebooks this year? Technology. There's a ton of different line items. So, based on what is in House Bill 1300 and this law, what would actually be capped if a community votes yes at a three-fifths majority?

Alex Tilsley 20:33

You'd think that would be a simple question.

Liz Canada 20:36

Oh no. Oh, God. I did think it was a simple question. No, it wasn't an easy one.

Alex Tilsley 20:44

You were teeing me up for a layup. You know, one thing that has been confusing throughout this process about this bill, um, the language in the question, the question that towns have to copy and paste and put on their ballot, it says, and I'm reading, these caps apply only to administrative operations of the SAU central office and do not affect classroom instruction, school-based services, or other municipal expenditures. Okay. And that sounds great. That sounds great. But it's not clear whether that is actually reality. Oh certainly the six percent cap on total school on SAU spending, that can be true. But the first part of the question says that if we adopt this cap for a two-year period, the total amount we raise to spend on our schools can't grow more than inflation. What happens if that's the case, you adopt it, your budget only goes up by two percent or whatever inflation is for that year, but transportation gets more expensive. Or you ha you're due for a new teacher contract contract, which happens. And their salaries go up, right? What happens if something Something else in your budget grows more than inflation.

Liz Canada 22:03

What about the health insurance benefits that we saw just increase significantly over the last year? And that is year and two.

Alex Tilsley 22:10

You know, I think the biggest example recently of budgets just getting totally thrown off by something that nobody anticipated, right? Suddenly school care was asking for millions more dollars than these districts had budgeted for. And so if that happens and you're limited to a 2% increase in your budget, you're on the school board. Well, you've got to find other line items to pull from. Otherwise, your budget is not going to be approved. And at that point, you may well have to cut into things that affect classroom instruction or school-based services, right? At some point you run out of things to cut. And I don't think any school board wants to cut instruction or extracurriculars, right? No, no town wants that, no school wants that. But if you have to build a budget within these constraints and you have some things that are out of your control that put you over the budget limit, you'll have to find places to trim back.

Liz Canada 23:06

So even though it's in the question on the ballot and says, oh, we're not going to touch the classroom stuff, that might not be true. Like you can't predict the future of what will happen and all the other variables of the school budget. And so if there's a cap, then that's a cap. And so money would need to be cut from other areas. And there's only so much.

Alex Tilsley 23:27

And I guess that's a question school boards and frankly school district lawyers will need to contend with if you are faced with we can either violate the cap or we can cut this these things that says we're not going to cut, which of these can we do? Because there certainly will be situations where some unexpected expense or even some expected expense just rises more than inflation, right? That that we know that's how the world works. As demand for something goes up, as supply goes down, there are other factors at play besides inflation. And if you can't afford your school bus contract anymore, do you cut school buses or do you pay for that and cut somewhere else?

Liz Canada 24:06

I mean, I

Why do school budgets increase?

Liz Canada 24:07

feel like we've touched on this a little bit, but why do school district budgets go up at all? Like what are the factors that lead to budgets increasing? Healthcare. Yes. I mean, yes.

Alex Tilsley 24:23

That's one. I mean, some of it is, some of it is the economy, right? When things get more expensive, when gas.

Liz Canada 24:31

I feel like I'm in an economy 101 class. Yes, yes.

Alex Tilsley 24:34

Gas prices go up and you still have to run school buses, transportation contracts get more expensive. Right now, actually, they're, you know, we've you've probably seen some news about the shortage of school bus drivers. Well, that's gonna make transportation more expensive, too, because we need to be able to pay people enough to hire them. Um so some of it is just the basic supply and demand of these roles, these services that are critical to schools. Some of it is the economy, some of it is the cost of living. Fewer people want to enter these professions if they can't afford to do them and live where they are, right? So sometimes you just have to pay your teachers, pay your school nurses slightly more money to keep them showing up to work. By and large, it's the same things that drive any other, I don't want to call it a business because school is not a business, right? But any other business's expenses, which is organizations, any other organization. You need materials, you need staff, you need to meet your staff's needs. More and more the districts are on the hook for everything. There's less state support for things like teacher pensions, um, things like healthcare. And so as those costs fluctuate, districts have to have to stomach that. The other thing we've seen is that during COVID, there was an influx of federal funds to support COVID recovery. We saw a lot of investment in instructional coaches and additional positions, tutoring, right, at schools. And as that money has dried up, schools are left with the decision of either raising their local budget to continue to fund those positions or letting those funds and services trickle off. And not to say the COVID relief funds were a bad thing by any means, but that is something that schools have to deal with, is that we were getting money through this funding stream and now we're not anymore. And if we think this is crucial to our school, we have to find another way to cover it. So there's nothing, there's nothing insidious in the school budgets, right? It is just the real human capital, the human time, the human talent required to run a school, the technology, the materials, the services required to effectively educate kids, right? To give them a quality education, not just have them show up to a building every day. Um and these are things we take pride in in New Hampshire. We by and large have good schools that we are happy, you know, happy to show off, but it only stays that way if you pay for them.

Liz Canada 27:01

If

Will this lower property taxes?

Liz Canada 27:02

you support them, whether at the local level or the state level or in any way, if you're supporting them. In any way. Okay. So with the school district budgets, caps and costs and so forth. Alex, I'm gonna be honest with you. I have had some guests come on the podcast before and share with me that we have high property taxes in New Hampshire. Big news for everybody. I know. Shocking, shocking news. The lawmakers who pushed this uh uh legislation through, because this wasn't introduced at the beginning, they added this a lot later. But the folks who pushed this through have claimed that this is the answer and will bring down property taxes. So my question for you is is that true? Will this bring my property taxes down?

Alex Tilsley 27:53

It certainly won't bring your property taxes down, but it might stop them from growing as quickly as they would in an alternate universe, but it's not going to lower them. And frankly, I would be concerned about some long-term impacts, right? We we know that these things we know that there's a cycle here where when you have good schools, it increases the property values, right? It makes people want to move to that town, it makes businesses want to site there. And when you have higher property values, you can raise the same amount of money with lower property tax rates. But you only get there when you have a town that people want to move to. And part of having the town people want to move to is having the school that people want to send their kids to. If you were to adopt a budget cap and potentially make it harder for the school in your town to thrive, people aren't going to choose to move there. And so we might see some downward pressure on property values, which is then going to create upward pressure on property tax rates in those same places. So maybe, I mean, you could I suppose imagine people choosing to move to the town where taxes are kept because that's what they believe is right. And maybe that cycle won't play out. But as you frankly devalue your local public school, you run the risk of pushing people away from your town and making it even harder to raise the money you need to keep that school going. That maybe is too far down the road, or maybe is worst case scenario. But regardless, you pass this question tomorrow, your property taxes are not going to be any lower next

What about communities that already have tax caps?

Alex Tilsley 29:34

year.

Liz Canada 29:34

Okay, so the answer is no. Okay. All right. The answer is no. Well, let's look at a scenario. Biggest city in the state, Manchester. They have a cap in Manchester, is my understanding. I believe their cap is three percent. I read in the news, I looked at the news sources and saw that they had to override their tax cap this year, just a few weeks ago essentially, to just under 7%. So they had a 3% cap and they had to override that cap and introduce a budget that was just under a 7% increase from last time in order to pass the compromise budget. Will the November ballot question, multi-part question, going on the ballots this November, will that allow Manchester to increase their cap from the 3% that they're at now? Will that be allowed?

Alex Tilsley 30:33

It's really unclear how this question is going to interact with existing caps. There is language in there that says nothing in the new bill will supersede any more restrictive property tax limitation. So if if you've already capped your budget increases at less than inflation, then this bill won't supersede that. But most of the tax caps that exist seem to be things like Manchester's, like 3%, right? Which like a fur, like a this is the number, this is a percentage. Yeah. Maybe some years that's more than inflation, maybe it's not. The other thing that's really not clear is it seems like from the language of the bill, this question has to go on every ballot, regardless of whether the town already has a cap in place. If this doesn't pass, I would think that the existing cap remains in place. But if it does pass, what does that mean for the existing cap? What does it mean for the SAU piece of the cap? What is that in Manchester or some of these other cities that have both school district and municipal caps? What does it mean for the municipal part of the cap? There are a lot of, I think, open questions about exactly how this manifests, particularly in the cities that have these uh municipal caps already.

Liz Canada 31:56

So it's not a simple it goes on the ballot and it's replaced. The three percent is replaced. It's not straightforward like that.

Alex Tilsley 32:05

No, it's not straightforward.

Liz Canada 32:07

Okay.

How long would the cap last?

Liz Canada 32:08

And we didn't talk about this in sort of the earlier questions, but this question is applicable for two years, even though school budgets are based on a year-to-year basis. How long does this last? Like what time period are we talking about? It's going on the ballot this November, how long does it take effect forever?

Alex Tilsley 32:29

The ballot this November and then 2028. That's it. It's on the ballot twice. Two bites of the apple, okay. Right. And the question says if adopted for a two-year period. So it seems that if in 2026 this passes, you're under a budget cap for two years, and then in 2028 you get another shot to vote. So if you hated that life, I guess you can make a different choice. Or maybe at that point you want a cap. In 2028, same thing. And that was a little bit of a compromise. I there was, I believe the House version of this bill originally said every two years, and then the Senate wanted one vote. And so this is the compromise vote is that you get two votes, and the entire bill goes away in 2032.

Liz Canada 33:25

Just dissolves after redistricting when new maps are drawn, and it's it's gonna be totally different in 2032. It's fascinating that these are the years because it's 2026, not midterms, 2028 presidential election. And then it all goes away after the 2030 vote, which then determines how maps are drawn for the state legislature and Congress and so forth in our states. It's just interesting that these are the times. And yet not on any of the spring ballots when like my school district budget is actually being voted on. Yeah, it's weirdly coincidental. Extremely weirdly coincidental. Has there ever been a case in which the legislature is like, we've got a great idea. We want local communities to vote on something that is completely local to them, and they already have a process to do this, but we want to make them all do it. And we're sending this question to the November ballot.

Alex Tilsley 34:25

Has this

Why is the State doing this?

Alex Tilsley 34:26

ever happened before? I don't want to speak in absolutes because I do not know the whole history. But I love absolutes for my favorite papers. But no, this is weird. This happened because there have been so many attempts in the last few years to just implement these budget caps top down. And they've all failed. They have not gotten out of the legislature. There's not support for them. So this was sort of the backdoor way. We're not gonna implement them. We're just gonna make everybody take a vote that they could already take through these other channels that honor our local democratic processes that we love and cherish in New Hampshire. And of course, the people who support this bill, you know, have really said this is not a state mandate, but it is a state mandate. We're mandating a vote. And it sets a really interesting precedent. I don't interesting, dangerous, I don't know, but right, what does it mean if the state can tell you what you have to vote on at a local level, can prescribe the language that you have to put on the ballot that will affect how you run your municipality? That is pretty different from how we've seen the state-local relationship in the past. And I think it opens up a lot of questions about whether this is the right role of the state relative to our local governments.

Liz Canada 35:45

I guess I'm really curious to know how many of the lawmakers who pushed this through and passed it and voted for it have budget caps in their own community? How many have written their own warrant articles to have on their own ballots? I'm really curious to know how many have done this in their own hometowns and have seen that it has worked. And so they wanted to bring it to the to everybody. Just so curious to know how many of them have done this already. I mean, I think based on the process that already exists in law, that they can do this in their own community.

Alex Tilsley 36:19

Well, and even if they have done it, it hasn't passed. And I think that that really disappointed some folks in the last couple of years is that they made it easier to pass a budget cap and we had more votes at the local level on budget caps, and yet still nobody passed a budget cap. And there's there's some school of thought that more people turn out to the general election than to their town meeting or school district meeting. And so because this affects everybody, it's important to put it on the ballot that more people turn out to. But there's also a school of thought that we already have a process for this that involves budget presentations and meetings with the people who are building the budget and involves deep community engagement in making these decisions. And there are opportunities with this bill. One of the last minute changes was that towns are allowed to have a town meeting before the vote if they want to.

Liz Canada 37:12

Like a public hearing to come like share their thoughts. Yeah.

Alex Tilsley 37:15

But then we're just kind of recreating the process that we already go through in school district meeting season, but we're doing it at a weird time in the process and not making it part of the responsibility, right? There are plenty of towns that won't do this and they'll never get to have these conversations. And in small places like we have here, that's people like that. People want to engage. They want to understand why, why is the budget this way? Well, maybe in one town it's healthcare. Maybe in another town, it's because they're trying to open a new grade level. Maybe in another town it's a new curriculum, right? Understanding what is driving your budget helps you make those informed decisions. And we have a multi-layered multi-step process to help people understand what's in their school district budget. And none of that is going to happen before they vote on this question in November.

What other issues exist with this proposal?

Liz Canada 38:04

All I can do is take a deep breath and say. Feels like there's a lot of open questions about this open question that's going on the ballot this coming November.

Alex Tilsley 38:17

I think that one important thing to understand is how the timing of this question fits into school district budgeting. Because this question, right, goes on the ballot in November. And if it passes, that affects the budget that your school board presents in February, March, whatever your town meeting timeline looks like. Those budgets are already being built. And so right now we have school districts that are building multiple versions of their budget because they don't know if they're going to have a cap or not, and they don't know what that's going to look like. November is not a time to maybe making that decision. And so this really throws that really throws off the process. It's actually creating additional administrative work and interestingly, probably creating additional legal work for these districts, even though admin and legal costs are one of the things that the bill tries to limit. So it feels like, and this is not the only example, right? But it feels like one of those cases where, in trying to be able to say that we are reigning in costs, we are actually creating more costs, more confusion, more demand on our already topped administrators and more demand that are that's outside the realm of actually educating children. This is something that a lot of district administrators are going to have to spend a lot of time on that has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the education they're offering in their schools. And yeah, this is gonna be the thing that everyone's talking about this fall instead of thinking about what else we could be adding for our schools and for our kids. Yikes. That's all I can say. It's just yikes. And you know, not to now get on my soapbox. Please. The other thing that I want to note is the property tax problems are real, right? Yeah. Our property taxes are high. Yes. There are a lot of people who are finding they can barely afford to pay their property taxes on top of all their other expenses. I was talking to a superintendent in the North Country the other day who said that he has some folks in his community who pay more in property taxes than they do for their mortgage. And that is not a sustainable situation. But we don't have to force people to choose between paying their bills and supporting their schools. That is a decision the state has made. We, as I know other podcast guests have said, in New Hampshire, we fund our schools at the state level at the lowest rate of any other state. Not necessarily the dollar value, right, but the percentage of our funding that comes from the state is lower than anywhere else, which means that that burden falls to the local property taxpayers. And so we've created by this unwillingness from the state to raise the revenue needed, to distribute it in a way that supports all of our schools, to think more creatively about how to fund education everywhere. Through that just lack of willingness to engage, we've created this situation where people have to choose between having a quality, thriving school or paying their tax bill. And we've heard from an increasing number of administrators, school board members who say our community loves the school. They want to support it, but they can't do this anymore. And just forcing them to make that decision in November is not a solution. It is not going to solve this problem. As we discussed, it's not going to bring property taxes down. And so I think it's just really important to remind ourselves how we got here and that this is kind of a false choice, right? We don't have to live in this world where it is either a thriving public school or affordable taxes.

Liz Canada 42:06

We could have both, but we need the state to step up. The state has a job and a responsibility in funding public schools. And the answer is not send a question to the community and be like, but do you guys want to just not pay? Is that right the answer?

Alex Tilsley 42:22

That's not actually communities to ask a question.

Liz Canada 42:24

That's a whole new level of downshifting to the local community. It's is doing that.

Alex Tilsley 42:29

In fact, we've downshifted all these costs to you, and now we're going to give you the opportunity to just opt out of them. That doesn't seem sustainable, adequate.

Liz Canada 42:58

Let's start it out as a redistricting level. Let's start it out as let's redraw the map for this. So what other weird thing can we do right now? Nightmare.