Town Meeting and Local Government

Local government in New Hampshire is the city or town, the school district and the county. There are 234 cities and towns. A city has an elected council or board of aldermen. Most towns have no council: the legislative body is the town meeting, and the registered voters adopt the budget themselves.

A town settles its business once a year, and there are two ways it can do it. At a traditional town meeting the voters debate each question and decide it in the same room on the same day. A town, school district or village district may instead adopt the official ballot referendum form of meeting (RSA 40:13), called SB 2 after the 1995 bill that created it. Under SB 2 the debate and the vote happen weeks apart, and the vote is cast at the polls.

Warrant: the notice of the meeting and the list of business to be decided at it. Nothing done at a town meeting except electing its officers is valid unless the subject was stated in the warrant (RSA 39:2). A petitioned article is one the selectmen must put on the warrant on the written application of 25 registered voters, or of 2 percent of the town's registered voters, whichever is fewer, and never fewer than 10 (RSA 39:3). The articles are debated and amended from the floor, and the budget is decided in the room: where an article asks for a sum of money the meeting may vote more or less than it asks (RSA 39:2), though in a town under the municipal budget law the meeting may not raise the total more than 10 percent above what the budget committee recommends, with some exceptions (RSA 32:18).

The meeting is held in two sessions. The first is usually called the deliberative session, though the statute calls it only the first session, and it handles everything except the ballot. Each article is explained and debated and may be amended, and the session votes on those amendments — so a great deal is decided there, even though no article is passed or defeated. An amendment may not remove an article's subject, though changing a sum of money does not count as doing so, and an article whose wording is set by law cannot be amended at all (RSA 40:13, IV).

At the second session every article goes on the official ballot, worded as the first session left it, and is voted on at the polls with absentee voting as in an election. It passes by a simple majority unless a law, contract or written agreement requires two thirds, and nothing decided at the second session can be reconsidered (RSA 40:13, XIII and XV).

A town or district adopts SB 2 by three fifths of those voting on the question, after a public hearing, and can return to a traditional meeting by the same three-fifths vote (RSA 40:14).

Default budget: the figure an SB 2 town or district falls back on if the operating budget on the ballot is defeated. It starts from last year's operating budget, is raised or lowered for debt service, contracts and other obligations already incurred or required by law, and is reduced by one-time spending and by the cost of positions the proposed budget eliminates (RSA 40:13, IX). If the proposed budget fails the default takes effect, unless the governing body instead calls one special meeting to try a revised budget.

The voters cannot amend the default budget. The governing body — the selectmen or the school board — can adjust it, on relevant new information and only until the ballots are printed (RSA 40:13, XI(b)). That is why the argument at a deliberative session is so often about the default rather than the proposed budget.

This site covers the state legislature only. It holds no town meeting warrants, no local budgets and no municipal votes. This page is here because bills about towns are in the record constantly and the words in them assume you already know all of this.

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• New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotatedgc.nh.gov
• Secretary of Statesos.nh.gov