#

With his town facing skyrocketing local taxes, state Rep. Keith Ammon (R-New Boston) had enough of the annual spending sprees.

“Our taxes have gone up 30 percent in the last six months,” Ammon told NHJournal. “People cannot afford to live in town anymore. I just figured somebody’s gotta do something.”

Ammon is behind an effort to get spending under control by instituting a 2 percent cap on the town budget. That cap does not cut spending, but would limit future budget increases to 2 percent over the prior year’s approved budget. 

“Two percent is the standard inflation rate,” Ammon said.

But Ammon had to go to court this week to keep his tax cap proposal from being gutted by opponents. 

Rep. Keith Ammon (R-New Boston)

New Boston is already reeling from massive school spending spikes coupled with continuous town government increases. Some residents have seen their annual tax bill go up $2,000 in the last year. Meanwhile, the town’s proposed budget for 2025 comes in at $7,476,141, nearly a 5 percent hike, or $355,539, over the 2024 budget. That increased spending will result in a 2.6 percent tax increase for New Boston homeowners.

New Boston education spending has been soaring for years. Between 2001 and 2019, the school population grew by 22 percent, but spending jumped by 104 percent. Per pupil spending rose from about $16,000 to more than $27,000 over that same period.

After following state and local law, and collecting enough signatures to get the proposed cap on the upcoming Town Meeting ballot as a petitioned warrant article, Ammon learned last week there was a campaign to illegally change the cap article at the last minute.

New Boston is an SB2 Town Meeting municipality where voters decide on the budget and other warrant articles through a secret ballot vote, as opposed to a traditional open Town Meeting where nearly every question is put to a floor vote of the people attending the meeting.

In SB2 towns, voters are able to discuss and amend warrant articles during a deliberative session held at least a month before the ballot vote.

During the Feb. 3 deliberative session, however, New Boston voters were able to discuss the tax cap article, but not make any changes to the language of the article. Ammon told NHJournal there are people in town who wanted to derail the tax cap by amending the article via voice vote at the deliberative session and raising the 2 percent limit up to a whopping 50 percent. 

The problem with that plan, however, is that it would have been illegal. The town’s attorney and the town’s moderator both informed voters at the Feb. 3 deliberative session that under the law, the tax cap limit cannot be changed at the session. Town Meeting rules allow voters to amend appropriations up or down, but the cap percentage is not an appropriation, Ammon said. 

Days after that meeting, however, voters opposed to the tax cap went to selectmen and demanded a new deliberative session. They claimed a new deliberative session was required to correct the fact they were blocked from changing the tax cap on Feb. 3, which they called a “minor procedural irregularity.” The board agreed with the tax cap opponents, and scheduled the new deliberative session for Wednesday.

Ammon engaged attorney Richard Lehmann and filed an emergency motion in Hillsborough Superior Court — North in Manchester. Lehmann’s filing makes clear the tax cap opponents are trying to get their way by breaking the law.

“The petitioners do not seek to correct a ‘minor procedural irregularity.’ On the contrary, they seek a re-do of the meeting, at which time they will, presumably, seek to amend the language of Warrant Article 31 by changing (or removing) the percentage of permitted growth in the tax cap,” Lehmann wrote. 

With 24 hours to go before the “do-over” deliberative session, New Boston’s Select Board blinked and canceled the meeting.

“After reviewing this lawsuit with legal counsel, the Select Board is canceling the Special Deliberative Session scheduled for February 19, 2025, to avoid unnecessary expense to the Town litigating this matter,” the board said in a statement released Tuesday.

New Boston Town Administrator Carl Weber did not respond to a request for comment. Ammon said the board did the right thing by canceling the re-do session.

“I commend the Select Board for doing the right thing. It’s not always easy to make decisions on the fly like that,” Ammon said.

As of now, the tax cap question will go to voters on March 11. Ammon hopes voters choose to fix the out-of-control spending that is hurting their community.

“If we’re not going to do something about it now, when are we going to do something?” Ammon said.

After taking heat for picking the $180 million design for the proposed new Strafford County Nursing Home over a $50 million bid, and then saying he never saw the less expensive bid, Commissioner George Maglaras said Wednesday the low bid wasn’tould work.

“The commission picked the firm we thought had a track record of building larger nursing homes and there are other written responses required within the answering of the RFP,” Maglaras told NHJournal.

Republican members of the Strafford County Delegation blasted Maglaras, a Democrat, and the two other Democratic Commissioners this week after learning about the lower bid from EGA Architects. Rep. Cliff Newton said the Commission kept him and other delegates in the dark about the lower-cost bid on the 215-bed proposal.

“Strafford County Commissioners and administration never informed the delegation of the EGA’s lower cost plan. Instead, they chose a much more expensive and institutionalized building plan without exploring different options that would have been acceptable to the entire delegation,” Newton said.

When contacted Tuesday about the EGA bid, Maglaras initially told The Rochester Voice he never saw EGA’s bid. That’s despite the fact the NHJournal found records showing the Commission was presented with all six bids, including EGA’s, on the project in 2022 when they voted to go with Warrenstreet. By Wednesday, Maglaras blamed politics for the kerfuffle, and said he was misunderstood.

“I said that there was never a $40 million proposal put before us,” Maglaras said. “These claims by some of the Republican members are misguided and are inflammatory and political in nature.”

According to Maglaras, the EGA bid quoted the Commission a cost of $350 a square foot to build the new home. But that number was never going to work, he said. EGA cited its work building the Carroll County Nursing Homes 10 years ago in its bid to Strafford. However, the construction company hired by EGA in Carroll told a slightly different story, Maglaras said.

“I brought in Bonnette, Page and Stone who was the contractor that actually built the Carroll County Nursing Home designed by EGA and they told the entire delegation in a public meeting it would cost $600 a square foot to construct a similar facility today and that the (Carroll County) home does not meet present federal design standards,” Maglaras said. “Architects don’t build buildings, construction companies do. You need to compare apples to apples not apples to cherries.

Comparing Maglaras’ math, that means the EGA bid would have cost as much as $83 million at $600 per square foot, instead of the $50 million the company quoted. The Warrentstreet project costs close to $1,300 per square foot.

The Republicans on the delegation have twice blocked the Commission from getting bonds for the $180 million proposal, and the Nursing Home project is currently stalled out. Maglaras wants to see the project get back on track.

“We have offered to meet with all the parties to see if we can’t move the process forward. The offer still stands and we will be reaching out to them,” Maglaras said.