Here’s a little story about why we’re putting a property tax cap on the ballot. In 2024 I went to our local school deliberative session. If you’ve never been to one of these, it’s where the public can vote to amend the school budget. One of the school nurses spoke up. “We need more nurses!” she says. She seemed very stressed. Our student population has been in decline, why do we need more nurses? Well, apparently it’s because if a teacher is out and they can’t get a sub, they use the nurse as a backup sub, which leaves a gap in nursing. Everyone reading this is probably thinking “it sounds like you need another sub, not another nurse.” And that’s the correct position. Why on Earth would we hire another fully qualified RN so she can go be a sub instead of just hiring a sub (at less than half the salary)? This is the mentality you’re dealing with with these people. And this is just one example. In the same session, the school board talked about repaving the parking lot. They wanted to spend $150k on a survey first, so they could take that to paving companies and get a quote. A member of the public spoke up and pointed out that was unnecessary — the construction companies will come out and quote it. “That’s not how it works.” was the response from the school board. 🙄 The rest of the meeting was full of similar suggestions and challenges. They wanted $20k to eliminate the rear parking lot and add basket ball courts at the middle school. There is a public park literally across a side street with basket ball courts already that the school has been using. 🤦‍♂️ $15k for this. $60k for that. $10k for the other thing. They sat there and argued over the SMALLEST parts of the budget, while ignoring the elephant in the room — the $20 million admin/non-teacher expense. If you broke our $37 million budget down into 3 columns (teacher salaries, admin salaries, and everything else) it’s literally $10m / $20m / $7m. They only ever want to talk about cutting from the $7m column. All of the teachers and staff sit together in these meetings. Every time someone suggested cuts, they would shout them down. It was honestly like being in a room full of middle schoolers. And they all left as soon as the budget was closed. Didn’t care about staying for the rest of the meeting. To me it seems like a conflict of interest for school staff to even be in these meetings. When 100+ staff members show up and vote for their own raises, some of whom don’t even live in the district, that drowns out 100+ votes from the residents paying for it. We talk about “local control” a lot in New Hampshire. But there’s a fine line between local control and local tyranny. The system is set up in a way that favors the system. Every time we send more money to schools, whether it’s local, state, or federal, the budget just increases to absorb these new funds instead of offsetting what property taxpayers already kick in. Enough is enough. We tried keeping it local. We really did. But the SAU’s have consistently failed us. Republicans have put forth a property tax cap on the ballot this year. Democrats tried to block this in the courts — they don’t want you to cap their endless stream of funding. But they failed. The tax cap doesn’t cap teacher pay or necessary expenditures. It caps runaway “admin” costs, which have doubled (both in headcount and expense) and in recent years. Meanwhile Democrats, expecting this cap to pass, have responded this week by filing a bill to add state income and sales taxes. Show up to vote this November. Support the tax cap and vote R down ballot on state races. It’s the only way to keep the pocket pickers at bay.