Franklin’s starved infrastructure is a warning
A recent letter claims local spending is out of control and urges New Hampshire to replicate municipal tax caps statewide. Franklin has been under Republican leadership for over 30 years. The results are not pretty.
Decades of a strict tax cap haven’t created a thriving city. Starving local services hasn’t proven a “spending problem”— it proves that ignoring basic infrastructure catches up with you. City management has been robbing Peter to pay Paul. Now, Franklin is unable to properly fund schools, fix roads or even update police radios.
Property taxes are fundamentally regressive, hitting working families and fixed-income seniors hardest. When defenders claim state aid has increased, they ignore that those funds were mandated by court orders — not legislative generosity.
What they never mention is Concord’s massive cost-shifting. Among other things, state leaders eliminated the 35% state match for local police, firefighter and teacher pensions, dumping 100% of those costs directly onto local property owners. They capped local shares of the Rooms & Meals tax and slashed water infrastructure aid. When Concord “cuts” taxes, they simply hand the unpaid bill to local taxpayers.
When my Franklin neighbors open their property tax bills and shake their heads, they will be looking at the receipt for Concord’s downshifting and three decades of difficult trade-offs catching up to us. Franklin is not the model to copy, it is the canary in the coal mine.