As the Concord City Council weighed both the revenue growth and the citywide investments made in its golf course over the last several years, Bethany Clarke held a carboard sign in their line of sight.
“Why are we subsidizing golf and defunding amenities?” it read.
Clarke was unable to stay until the public hearing at the end of the work session, but in letters to the council, she outlined her frustrations.
“I’m a 33-year-old public school teacher. My husband and I want to have kids, but we are very wary of doing so given the current conditions,” Clarke wrote. “We need a people-first budget that considers who and what we actually want to support in this community. That is not city salaries far above the cost of living, golf courses, luxury condos, tree removal, or hasty bleacher tear downs.”
She wasn’t alone. Multiple residents have written to city leaders or taken to the microphone to ask for a break from the growing tax burden they feel in Concord.
“Cost of living keeps going up, but my husband’s and my paychecks do not. It feels really hopeless,” wrote Erin Nevin. “We’re cutting our personal budget in just about every way we can. I feel like maybe, with the financial pressure so many of us are feeling, maybe the city can do the same.”
On Thursday night, city councilors will hash through and potentially finalize a spending plan for the 2027 fiscal year.
As they’ve crunched the numbers, the expenses tied to past decisions have had a strong presence – both on paper and in public feedback.
As proposed by the city manager, the 2027 budget would carry a 5.5% increase in the city portion of the property tax rate. This plan assumes flat growth going into next year, as officials don’t know for sure yet how the citywide revaluation will factor in. Every $550,000 in new costs amounts to a 1% increase in taxes under current estimates.
With debt payments on a handful of bigger city projects, including the new police station and the clubhouse at Beaver Meadow Golf Course, as well as 5% wage increases included in new contracts, the city set the stage for many of these expenses long before workshops began last month. Nearly 85% of the city’s general operational spending is tied to wages, compensation, and debt service.
Of the approximately three dozen people who have written or spoken publicly to the council about the 2027 budget, about a third pushed broadly for cuts.
Others pushed for specific projects or programs.
Rockingham Street resident Jackie Whatmough wrote to encourage councilors to prioritize changes to Broadway that would make her neighborhood safer. She also backs the current plan’s reliance on reserves to avoid larger tax increases.
“1 know you will be looking for ways to reduce the proposed 5.5% tax increase, ‘ Whatmough wrote. “Unfortunately, I don’t see any easy solutions.”
City officials often caution that substantial cuts, the kind that would deliver a meaningful edge off tax increases, will mean a reduction in services that people say they value.
Few councilors have shown openness so far to staff reductions to lower the tax rate increase. The manager’s proposal keeps the total number of positions on the payroll roughly flat.
Police and fire unions are responsible for the largest compensation increases as a result of the new contracts. Public safety overall is about 40% of city’s operational spending.
More so than major cuts, the current plan diverts rising expenses from the tax rate by transfers in from some reserve accounts and an increase in money coming in from the city’s TIF districts.
Money from the city’s rainy day fund and community improvement reserve is going towards police station debt, while recreation reserve money is paying roughly half of the debt on the golf course clubhouse this year, alongside course revenue.
The amount of TIF money coming into the city’s general fund this year is rising by about half, up to more than $900,000 from $600,000 last year.
The fire department has also put forward a push to add staff positions as an on-ramp to bringing back an engine at the city’s central station, which is currently relying on a Tower Truck.
Using these positions as extra hands to lower the department’s reliance on overtime could work to reduce net staffing costs, but it raises questions about whether the full staff-load needed to add an engine and the cost of the truck itself is something the council would go for.
A few other items not currently included in the plan have drawn public attention.
The city is holding mostly steady its contribution to the county-run bus system, Concord Area Transit, or CAT.
While the bus system receives a majority of its funding through state-administered federal grants, money from the state itself, local communities and private donors make up the critical “match” required to receive federal money.
The state cut a $36,000 contribution toward the bus agency, according to CAT’s director, Terri Paige. County contributions, largely from pandemic relief dollars, fell off too, partly leading to the closure of a connector bus with Laconia in February.
The transit company asked for an additional $100,000 on top of the $170,000 it has been receiving from the city of Concord for its area transportation center that’s not currently in the budget. More broadly, some residents have spoken in support of the bus system and even suggested giving it more funding to help it run longer hours and more days.
In the last few budgets, the city council has sets aside $150,000 for the city manager to use to support various events in the city. It’s been doled out as seed money for newer festivals, helping them to get off the ground in years when traditional fundraising is the hardest. The manager hasn’t ever given out the full amount, and the grants are structured to decline each year, “weaning” festivals off the support as they gain popularity.
Organizers from festivals have turned out to urge the council to include this grant program in the budget.
Others, especially from local groups, have reached out to support smaller capital improvements, like the plant-clearing and shaping of the pond in White Park, currently slated in the budget. Backers of the skate park continue to ask for help matching the federal grant that makes their plans possible.
Capital projects for the budget on the table most prominently include $3.2 million of a mechanical overhaul at the Everett Arena. With the arena going further into the red as an operation in recent years, it’s drummed up talk about whether changing the space’s uses could bring in more money. In the warmer months, it hosts trade and hobby shows and roller skating. In the winter, it is the primary ice facility in Concord and is also used by schools around the region.
David Jodoin lives in Concord but is the town administrator in nearby Pembroke. He sympathizes with writing a municipal budget, given how fast costs are rising, he wrote. (Pembroke’s town tax rate increase would be about 14% this year, as approved by voters.)
Still, he wants to see the council get a city tax increase down to about 3%. The much larger 12% increase from the Concord School District, he argued, can’t be ignored just because it wasn’t the council’s doing.
“We are one and we pay the bills out of one checkbook, so in my opinion, there needs to be better communication between both to eliminate all these large projects bunching up all together, resulting in numerous bonds being issued at the same time,” he said.
Moreover, he noted, the school board made dozens of layoffs just to get down to a 12% increase as it shoulders the costs of a new middle school and felt the floor drop out of its state funding.
Jodoin hopes his city leaders present options for cuts to the public and what the trade-offs would be.
“While I don’t agree with the schools building plans,” Jodoin added, “I do give them credit for making the tough decisions and making cuts.”
