With property taxes on the ballot, New Hampshire’s caucus midterm turns hyperlocal

Pam Hicks has lived in Hollis her whole life. Not all of her neighbors have been so lucky.

The town’s rural charm, its scattered farms and orchards, and its highly ranked schools come with a price: eye-watering property taxes. Over the years, some families who moved there with kids figured that out, she says.

“We call it ‘educate and evacuate,’” she said. “They come in, the kids go through the school system, and then when their kids are graduating — their houses are for sale.” 

Hicks blames complacency on the Hollis Brookline Cooperative School Board and rising budgets. This year, she has a solution. When she votes Nov. 3, Hicks and every other Granite Stater will be asked whether they want to impose a cap on school district property taxes for the next two years. She plans to vote yes. 

“There’s no oversight for what they’re doing,” she said of the board. “So…let’s put some guardrails on.”

Not everyone is happy with that approach. 

New Hampshire’s tax cap ballot question has kicked off fierce debates and avid campaigns across the state, vaulting an issue normally reserved for spring meetings — school district budgets — into an already electric midterm election season. 

Suddenly property taxes, perhaps New Hampshire’s most animating and polarizing topic, have a dedicated space on a ballot otherwise reserved for partisan choices. In a year in which opinions on President Donald Trump’s second term have often stolen political oxygen, New Hampshire’s tax cap debate has managed to spawn mailers, signs, online advertisements, door-to-door campaigns, street corner demonstrations, and heated local meetings. 

To Democrats, who opposed adding the question to the ballot, the solution it offers is simplistic and potentially harmful to school districts. They say it subverts local control by bypassing the previous method to adopt a tax cap: at a town meeting, in the context of a budget. 

But Republicans say removing the debate from March town meetings is the point: Many residents are unhappy with rising school district budgets but too few of them attend the spring meetings to make a difference, they argue. Putting the measure on the November ballot will ensure a more representative sample of a district’s residents are heard, they say. 

The politics 

A successful “yes” vote on the ballot question would limit a school district in two ways. For two years, it would cap the total amount in local property taxes the school district could raise to the amount collected the previous year, adjusted for inflation and any new taxable property. It would also require the district to keep its School Administrative Unit spending to 6% of its overall budget for those two years. 

The measure requires the support of 60% of all voters who fill in the ballot question to pass. And whether or not the 2026 vote is successful, the law requires the question to appear on the ballot one more time, for another two-year approval period, in the 2028 presidential election. 

Once adopted, a school district’s tax cap can be overridden for a specific annual budget if at least 60% of voters at the school’s annual meeting in spring vote to do so. 

Polling suggests there is general support for the tax caps. A St. Anselm College poll conducted Oct. 19 to 20 found that 57% of likely New Hampshire voters supported the tax cap, including 83% of Republicans, 56% of undeclared voters, and 31% of Democrats. 

Yet as road signs and billboards blanket the state, it has been sometimes hard to separate the tax cap from broader politics. 

Some Republicans are hoping that not only does the ballot question lead to new school district tax caps, but that voters reward the Republican state candidates who put it on the ballot. In a midterm election environment traditionally difficult for the party in the White House, hyperlocal concerns with property tax could overpower unease with Trump, some believe. 

And some Democrats have argued Republican lawmakers passed the law specifically to drive that turnout. 

The messaging

Statewide organizations have helped drive messaging on both sides.

The Committee to Elect House Republicans helped launch a website, “NHPropertyTaxRelief.com,” advocating for voting “yes” on the tax cap, complete with a calculator claiming to show how much money a voter in a specific town with a specific home value could save.

The committee does not employ doorknockers. But after the September state primary, it did purchase nearly 10,000 yard signs urging “yes” on Question 2 and distributed them to the hundreds of Republican State House candidates it represents, said Chris Maidment, a Republican consultant who works with the committee. 

Asked Friday how many of those signs went out, Maidment ran a quick calculation. “There’s like 20 in my truck, so I guess like 9,980,” he joked. 

Because it has delegated advocacy to state legislative candidates, the committee’s “yes” campaign is necessarily entwined with Republican politics. Maidment says that’s by design.  

“The job of the Committee is to elect a Republican majority, and to win as many seats for Republicans as possible,” Maidment said. “And so, this tax cap question is more of a tool to help us do that rather than an effort to get this passed in all the various communities.”

On the other side, several organizations have mounted campaigns to oppose the ballot questions, including major teachers’ unions like the NEA-NH and AFT-NH and groups such as Engage NH and MomsRising NH.

More from this section

+3

How gas prices have changed in New Hampshire in the last week

On a frigid Wednesday morning near the Concord Hospital in late October, members of the progressive advocacy group Kent Street Coalition gathered to wave signs at passing cars urging a no vote.

Louise Spencer, a co-founder of the group, argued tax caps obfuscated the true cause of high property taxes: low state spending on education. While New Hampshire public schools collectively spend more per student than most states, the state ranks 50th in state per-pupil education aid. 

“If various spending needs to happen, and there’s this funding cap, then it’s not solving any of the problems. The real problem here is that the state is refusing to pay its fair share for public education,” Spencer said. 

The group, which organizes advocates but does not raise or spend campaign money, held other sign-waving events across the Concord area throughout the month. 

The local conversations

Despite the statewide campaigns, many of the liveliest conversations in recent weeks have taken place locally. In October, school boards across the state hosted information sessions, attempting to toe the line between informing constituents about the effects of a tax cap and advocating against it. And attendees of the meetings have brought plenty of opinions of their own. 

At an auditorium in the Hollis Brookline High School one Wednesday evening, the atmosphere was raw, bordering on explosive. 

Darlene Mann, the budget committee chairwoman for the Hollis Brookline Cooperative School Board, walked through a detail-laden presentation on the district’s current budget, tax rates, and the effect of the proposed tax cap to about 100 residents spread among the theater’s seats. 

The school board is already on track to propose a budget with taxation that would come under the proposed tax cap, Mann said. Additionally, the district already consistently keeps its administrative budget below 6% of the overall budget, she said. 

Still, Mann said the tax cap could force tough decisions in the event of unexpected costs from one year to the next, such as for diesel, health care, or food, all of which have risen recently. 

As they took to the microphone, some Hollis residents echoed that point.

“If we go over this tax cut, if this passes, and we go over the tax cut in our budget, what would we have to reduce?” Krista Whalan asked. 

Mann’s response: The district would have to reduce discretionary spending categories, including academic programs, technology, staff, extracurricular activities, sports, and operations, but it could not reduce its mandatory spending such as transportation, health insurance, special education services, and collective bargaining agreements. 

“I do trust the school boards, and I certainly trust our budget committees,” Whalan added. “They work extremely hard. This is not a simple process.”

But others asked why the tax cap would be so destructive if the district is already projected to obey it.

“I don’t understand why all the pushback from the school boards,” said Dave Perry. “And the point I’m coming from here is that there have been very large increases in the past, so the level of trust I have is low.”

Others took a more personal approach. Gerald Moore made his point with recent history. His tax bill in 2022 was $10,619, he said. It rose to $12,235 in 2023, to $13,069 in 2024, and to $13,981 in 2025. But the 2026 tax bill is set to be about $15,000, he said.

“I’m 82; I’m on fixed income,” he said, addressing the board. “And when you show me that everything is nice and even, and you’re doing a terrific job, and I see my taxes going up at the rate of 10% a year, when 70% plus of the budget goes to schools, I get the feeling that I’m down in Times Square watching a three-card monte game.”

One resident with kids in the school system, Mandy Hoffman, sympathized with the tax concerns. For every resident, finding the tax bill in their mailbox is an annual source of dread, she said. But she argued the tax cap would only delay the true costs of running the schools and lead to higher taxes down the line. 

“I fear that people are going to continue to open up their mailbox and not see any change and say, ‘Gosh, I voted a certain way. Why didn’t something happen?’” she said.

Like Hicks, Hoffman, who moved in six years ago, is enamored with Hollis. 

“We wanted our kids to be able to ride bikes just like we did,” she said in an interview. “We wanted our kids to be able to climb trees just like we did.” 

Hollis fit that bill. But a reduction of school services for her children is the one thing that might threaten her desire to stay, Hoffman said. 

“I don’t want my neighbors spending more,” she said. “I want my neighbors having a very smart budget with a great community and a great school system.”

SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE