In the Franklin Middle School cafeteria, with early autumn darkness falling beyond the windows, Justin Ethier marveled at the quality of the city’s school district.
Today’s offerings are a far cry from what he remembered of his own time at Franklin High.
“We were lucky to have doors on the bathrooms,” he said. “I think it’s never been better. I would love to go here right now.”
He was speaking with Dave Pollak, a Franklin High teacher since 2022. The two had never met, even though Ethier’s daughter is one of Pollak’s students. Ethier’s son attends the middle school.
Pollak looked on quietly as Ethier described distributing hundreds of signs that read “Protect Franklin’s tax cap” ahead of the town’s municipal elections earlier this month, when the city’s existing tax cap emerged as a prominent issue.
As a longtime New Hampshire educator now working in a district that frequently faces difficult funding choices — between paying for extracurricular instructors or facilities repairs, athletic programs or adult education — Pollak might have bristled.
“What I thought would be a better sign would have been, ‘Protect Franklin’s taxpayers,’ not the tax cap, because the tax cap has put us in a situation where — have you driven down the roads?” Pollak said. “And you can’t walk on the sidewalks. City Hall is shuttered, and you can’t get services because there aren’t enough people working, and they’re all working on old computers. And on and on and on. And the schools obviously are getting strangled.”
After voicing his own opinion, Pollak sought to engage Ethier’s ideas and search for common ground. “So what I asked Justin was whether there is a model that would be fairer for the people in Franklin,” Pollack said afterward.
The pair were among the 40 or so attendees of an interactive presentation hosted by NH School Funding Fairness Project last week. The event was the organization’s stop in Merrimack County for its School Funding + Property Taxes: 10-County Tour, which was meant to present data and foster dialogue across the state.
Organizers urged community members to explore new perspectives: consider new sources of tax revenue or increased funding from the state; think about school funding on both state and local levels; and reach out to their elected officials and to one another, even and especially if those conversations reveal disagreement.
Franklin is ‘the proving grounds’
The NH School Funding Fairness Project advocates for a taxation structure that it says is equitable for both schools and homeowners. And though the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization also aims to educate the public about school funding, the Franklin residents who’d come to the middle school for the project’s presentation likely heard information equal parts novel and painfully familiar.
Attendees listened intently to the breakdown of their school district’s funding sources. Papers rustled as they flipped to a graph of Franklin schools’ expenditures, featured in the provided handouts.
They took notes on yellow legal pads or snapped pictures of the projected slideshow as Micaela Demeter, the project’s advocacy and outreach coordinator, charted the tangled lines linking state budget policy to local property taxes and public school funding.
They knew all too well how those links can bring heavy financial strain to a community. In large group discussions during the program, they critiqued the state’s reliance on property taxes for the burden it places on local homeowners. They noted the inequity of how an identical property tax rate in a “property wealthy” municipality can yield more revenue than in Franklin, whose lower-value homes have earned it the label of “property poor.”
It’s a struggle the city has long found untenable. In the 1990s, Franklin sued the state, alongside schoolchildren, taxpayers and four other districts, on the grounds that New Hampshire’s education financing system violated the state Constitution.
The New Hampshire Supreme Court agreed with them, and in 1993 and 1997, respectively, handed down the decisions that would come to be known as Claremont I and II. Together, the two verdicts established the state’s constitutional responsibility to provide an adequate public education, funded with taxes collected at a uniform rate across the state.
But by then, Franklin residents had already capped municipal property tax rate increases to the prior year’s rate, plus the federal Cost of Living Index, which closely parallels inflation. With that decision, they anticipated the court’s later ruling that “[c]ompelling taxpayers from property-poor districts to pay higher tax rates and thereby contribute disproportionate sums to fund education is unreasonable,” and addressed that problem with local means.
The town’s tax cap made headlines again this year as district officials struggled to propose a budget that stayed within acceptable limits without cutting basic services.
On the doorstep of Election Day, every Granite Stater is now deciding whether to institute a tax cap in their own community. They will answer “Yes” or “No” to a new state-mandated ballot initiative that some say creates a false binary.
To vote “Yes” is to cap their school district’s property tax rate increases and school administrative unit spending — which opponents consider a deliberate attempt to choke public schools that have long been gasping. Voters answering “No” would preserve the district’s power to raise and spend what it needs for the provision of an adequate education for all students — or, according to cap supporters, let property taxes spiral until they topple on those least able to afford them.
This question may seem unprecedented to many communities around the state. But according to Demeter, the outreach coordinator, we’ve seen the results of its answer.
“Franklin really is the proving grounds for what happens in and to a community that chooses locally to enact a school budget cap,” Demeter said.
‘We should keep talking’
As attendees entered the cafeteria, Funding Fairness Project staff asked them to place dots on two whiteboards. On the first board, they put a blue magnet under a series of statements that could answer the question, “When lawmakers make decisions about taxes, what should matter most?” The options ranged from diversifying revenue sources to guaranteeing that the tax system can fund the services residents expect and deliver a reliable stream of state funding to cities and towns.
On the second board, attendees placed red, green or yellow magnets beneath forms of taxation they opposed, supported or had questions or reservations about. “Business tax” was a smattering of green and yellow; “income tax” warranted a sea of red; “cannabis tax” drew mostly yellow magnets; “millionaire tax” was primarily green with some defiant red spots.
Later in the presentation, Demeter highlighted some of those prospective taxes as ways to achieve the values residents had identified.
“We might not all agree on what solution is the exact best, but is it pretty fair to say that the situation every taxpayer is in right now feels unfair and unsustainable?” Demeter said. “We can agree on that and still maybe have different opinions on the pathway that we take to get there.”
After the event concluded, Bill Strong expressed that a tentative cordiality may be emerging in Franklin.
“I think we’re finally getting past the ‘Oh, we shouldn’t pay any more taxes, and we could have all the services we wanted if we got rid of all the corruption and all the slush funds,'” said Strong, a Massachusetts transplant who has called Franklin home since 2023. “I think we’re maybe finally getting past that.”
That voters in Franklin’s recent municipal elections mostly steered clear of firm supporters of the tax cap may be evidence of Strong’s feeling. Still, as Strong and his wife Linda considered the attendees who lingered in small groups, they said they saw many faces they recognized: neighbors who agreed with them, state and local officials whose policies they supported.
While others trickled out of the cafeteria and into the parking lot, Ethier and Pollak continued their conversation. Staff and volunteers cleared pastries and coffee from the table by the door, gathered supplies into boxes as the parent and the teacher still spoke. They agreed on the urgency of reducing Franklin’s property tax burden and keeping the city affordable. They disagreed on how best to realize those goals.
Once the cafeteria was empty and the two men were alone, a staff member motioned to them from outside the doors, hurrying them out. Standing in the parking lot, they exchanged goodbyes that lacked a hard finality.
“It was nice meeting you, Dave,” Ethier said.
“Absolutely,” Pollak said. “And I really do think we should keep talking.”
