Members of the Pittsfield select board posed an open question Tuesday: How can we reduce the tax burden in town? And more than 20 residents turned out to offer their ideas.
Share services with surrounding towns. Switch to LED streetlights. Extend the lifetime of vehicles. Cut down on overtime and health insurance expenses.
Some of the suggestions are already under way; others will require further investigation. But for the select board, one plan is certain: Involve everyday residents early on in the brainstorming process.
Taxpayers statewide are feeling the squeeze as their property tax bills grow faster than their incomes. The reality in Pittsfield may be worse than most, since the tax rate is among the highest in Merrimack County and median household income is nearly half of average, according to census data.
As residents floated cuts involving different departments, they explained it’s not personal, but rather an attempt to find savings and reach a sustainable level of government.
“This is nothing personal against anyone who works for the town. I happen to think the police chief is a nice guy, but I have questions about how we can save money,” resident Noreen Rollins said. “The bottom line is everyone is in a tight pinch here. I’m on a fixed income. I have to be able to plan my life, my finances around the tax base of this town.”
She added: “We can’t keep spending and overspending and expect to survive.”
The group gathered at town hall Tuesday – still months ahead of the typical start of the budget season – included members of the website, budget, planning and school boards, as well as the select board and all department heads.
Louie Houle, a longtime member of the budget committee, said he didn’t like what happened at this year’s town meeting, when he recommended voters avoid an immediate tax spike by shooting down a handful of articles to save for future expenses.
“I did not enjoy standing up there saying let’s cut this, let’s cut that. . . . We cut out everything that we need to maintain, that we need to put money away for to replace, but at that point in time it seemed like the only way to do it,” he said.
Houle said it might take some soul-searching to determine what level of services the town can reasonably provide. As an example, he offered the ambulance service.
“We did have one of the best on-call response times in the state of New Hampshire. We were comparable to the cities on responding. If you compare us to Henniker or Hillsboro, we’re twice as quick with the ambulance going out,” he said. “All great stuff, don’t get me wrong. But can we afford that?”
Chairman Larry Konopka said his board is trying to “think outside the box” to save money now without affecting the services people have come to expect.
“We have to think ahead,” he said. “If we don’t start thinking outside the box today, where are we going to be in 10 years? Are we going to be cutting services so we don’t have no services? We don’t want that,” he said.
Konopka said members of the select board are in conversations with their counterparts in Epsom and Barnstead about sharing services. That’s not something that will happen overnight, he said, but he’s working to start the conversation now.
“It’s going to be a long-term process, but right now, the taxpayers just can’t afford it no more and we have to start doing something,” he said. “That’s why we’re holding these forums, so we can get your input on this.”
Another forum is planned for Oct. 11.