Part 3: Who Actually is Raising Property Taxes in New Hampshire?

This is part 3 of our 3 part write up on how New Hampshire's property tax system works. Should we do a 4th? Let us know in the comments section!

New Hampshire’s property tax system places most authority not in Concord, but in the hands of local voters and the people they elect. While state policy shapes the structure of the system, roughly 85% of every property tax bill is determined at the local level through school budgets, municipal appropriations, and capital decisions. Local choice—not state mandates—is overwhelmingly what causes property taxes to rise.

Yet turnout in the elections and meetings where these budgets are decided is strikingly low, ranging from 5-20%. Compare this to the state General Election which ranges 70-85%.

New Hampshire’s patchwork of election dates and meeting formats often results in confusion, and small organized groups can wield outsized influence in processes most taxpayers never see. Understanding who is making these decisions is essential to understanding why property taxes increase.

School Boards: Small Elections, Big Budgets

School board members control the largest portion of the property tax bill—local education spending—which represents about 60% of the typical New Hampshire tax bill. These boards develop budget proposals, negotiate teacher contracts, set staffing levels, and shape long-term spending priorities.

Despite this influence, school board elections routinely see turnout in the single digits. In many towns, fewer than one in ten voters participate, even though school budgets total millions of dollars. This leads to very surprising election results as even in very Conservative or spend conscience towns, big spenders often get elected to the schoolboard.

Traditional Town Meeting: Direct Democracy With Extremely Low Turnout

Traditional town meeting remains the purest form of direct democracy. Voters gather in a single room, debate spending line by line, and adopt a final budget by majority vote. Though classical in spirit, attendance is often extremely low—sometimes under 5% of eligible voters. Most towns in the state do not actually have a venue that could accommodate this method if most voters chose to participate, as they are entitled to. That is to say, they do not have a venue that could hold even 50% of their voters.

The format gives disproportionate influence to the most organized and motivated attendees. A small group, present for one evening for 3-5 hours, can approve or reject spending that will later appear on every property tax bill in town.

SB2 Towns and School Districts: Ballot Voting, but a Crucial Gatekeeper

Many communities have adopted the SB2 system (Senate Bill 2), which divides the process into:

1. Deliberative Session – where voters can amend warrant articles, including budget amounts, similar to town meeting.

2. Election Day – where amended articles are approved or rejected at the ballot box by a wider swath of the electorate.

This format was intended to increase participation by allowing more people to vote on budgets. However, it has introduced new complications. Turnout at deliberative sessions, like at traditional town meeting, is often very small, enabling a small number of organized attendees to reshape or neuter warrant articles before most of the electorate ever sees them.

Graniteborough: A Clear Example of How SB2 Can Shift Control

Graniteborough, our fictional Hillsborough County town, uses SB2 for both its town government and school district, as is common for most of New Hampshire.

Each holds separate deliberative sessions on different days, followed by a single ballot election in March.

This year, some Graniteborough voters were tired of the ever increasing property tax bill so they collected 25 signatures and submitted a school tax-cap warrant article proposing to limit annual school spending increases to 5% a year, aiming to slow tax growth while preserving reasonable flexibility. They viewed this as a reasonable measure given that Graniteborough has seen its school enrollment decline while costs continued to climb. The warrant article must first go through the school deliberative session, where it can be amended and changed by the voters present.

But turnout at the school deliberative session was sparse—a common occurrence in SB2 communities. In fact, school deliberative was held on a school night (yes this happens) and being held at the school, so many of the attendees are school employees who simply stayed late at work. The local teachers’ union, familiar with the dynamics of the deliberative process and opposing any spending control measurers, mobilized members to attend.

With less than 40 voters in the room, the union successfully amended the 5% cap to 50% per year, a change technically allowed under SB2’s scope rules because it still pertained to an annual spending cap.

The amendment completely hollowed out the intent of the article. When the “50% cap” appeared on the ballot in March, voters rejected it overwhelmingly. But the version they rejected was not the version residents submitted. Graniteborough’s experience shows clearly how small groups can use the SB2 deliberative mechanism to alter or undermine tax-control efforts before the wider public votes.

This pattern has appeared in many real New Hampshire towns, with tax-cap proposals, spending limits, and transparency measures altered significantly at deliberative session—sometimes with the explicit aim of causing them to fail at the ballot.

Cities: Concentrated Decision-Making in the Hands of Officials

New Hampshire’s cities—including Manchester, Nashua, Concord, Keene, and Portsmouth—operate differently. Residents elect:

• A mayor

• A city council

• A school board

City councils adopt municipal budgets, while school boards adopt their own budgets subject to funding through the city tax rate. Although turnout for city elections is higher than for SB2 deliberative sessions, participation is still well below state-level elections, often falling between 15% and 25%.

The dynamic remains the same: a relatively small number of participants drive decisions affecting most residents’ tax bills. They do typically have higher turnout than SB2 towns, but even Claremont saw 9% turnout in its latest school board election.

A Patchwork of Systems That Confuses Voters

Unlike many states, New Hampshire’s local election system is not uniform. Towns and school districts may adopt:

• Traditional town meeting

• SB2 for the town

• SB2 for the school district

• Both at once

• Neither

• March ballot voting

• April or May school meetings

• September city elections

• Mixed date schedules

This creates genuine voter confusion. Residents often don’t know:

• When the budget is decided

• Which meeting controls which portion of spending

• Whether their town uses in-person meeting or SB2

• That budgets can be amended at deliberative session

• That school and town budgets may be voted on different days

The result is low engagement in the very events that determine the vast majority of what homeowners pay.

So Who Raises Property Taxes? The Answer Is Local Voters—Or Whoever Shows Up

When property taxes increase in New Hampshire, the cause is almost always local decisions, not state mandates.

The people who raise taxes are:

• Voters attending town meeting

• Residents at SB2 deliberative sessions

• Small electorates in school board elections

• City councils and school boards setting budgets in municipal governments

These bodies directly control the 85% of the property tax bill driven by local spending. And because turnout is often low, the decisions can be made by a very small share of the community.

Graniteborough’s experience illustrates the broader truth: The greatest influence over your property taxes is exercised at the local level, often by the few people who show up.