Loudon is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Left in the lurch by the Merrimack Valley School District’s overspending of $2 million last year, the Loudon selectmen said they’re pinching pennies after residents voiced concern about rising taxes. They cut $75,365 from the town’s proposed budget, which came mostly in the form of reduced merit raises for town employees.

Jeff Miller, who chairs the select board, knows that amount doesn’t seem like much. He also said he doesn’t like taking merit from hard-working employees.

“We’ve done everything we can,” he said.

Although the town and school budgets are separate, he blamed tax increases on the school district and urged Loudon residents to make their voices heard by voting down a proposed school budget increase.

One resident, Rick Bilodeau, floated the possibility of pulling out of the Merrimack Valley School District or the school administrative unit. That’s been done before: Last year, three towns voted to leave the Newfound Area School District and form their own SAU. Multiple towns in the Monadnock region are also considering leaving the Contoocook Valley School District.

“I think it’s time that the selectmen look at that and find out: What does the town have to do?” Bilodeau said. “Let the people decide if they want to pull out and go someplace else.”

Selectmen shared Bilodeau’s desire to “send a message” but said it’d likely cost the town some money to leave the school district. In the short term, Miller urged residents to make their voices heard at school board meetings.

“A message would be for as many people as we can get from Loudon to show up there and vote down what they’re presenting,” Miller said. “If everybody votes ‘no’ on their budget, they have to come up with a budget before they leave that evening … The strength is for as many people from Loudon to go to that meeting and vote it down.”

The Merrimack Valley School District on Tuesday proposed a 7% increase, taking its budget from $48.3 million to $51.6 million weeks after the superintendent disclosed that the district spent $2 million last year that it did not have.

About two dozen Loudon residents showed up for the budget hearing Wednesday and spent two hours debating the budget and a firetruck bond at town offices.

While multiple people thanked the select board for trimming the town budget, others, like Bilodeau, were unsatisfied with the cuts. He’s a lieutenant in the fire department and said reducing merit raises for town employees is unfair and risks losing them to other jobs or towns. 

“I know you guys are in a hard position, but … with the school board, we need to be doing something about that as a town – either vote those people out of there or something – because this is ridiculous,” Bilodeau said. “The people that go out and protect your butts and save your lives are getting crapped on.”

Miller sympathized but said he didn’t see any other option.

“I’m not willing to watch people get pulled out of their houses on the tax foreclosure to support somebody that wants to get more money,” Miller said. “I get it. But I also get the fact that we have people in this town that can’t afford their taxes.”

More budget, warrant article updates

After hearing concern from residents, the select board suggested drawing from the town’s savings to help pay for a new aerial ladder fire truck. If approved at town meeting, Loudon would draw $400,000 from the fire department’s capital reserve fund to contribute to a 10-year, $1.7 million bond that most people opposed at last month’s budget hearing. The tax impact would be roughly the same, with only a one-cent difference in the tax rate in some years.

As for the operating budget, the cuts made by the select board slim it down to a 7% increase instead of an 8% one, taking the estimated tax rate down 10 cents from $9.61 to $9.51. (For a $400,000 home, that’s a difference of $44.) The proposed operating costs total $6.92 million, a nearly $471,000 increase from the current budget.

Selectmen also reduced some of the funding they’d planned to deposit into the town’s capital reserve funds by about $325,000. Another warrant article added this week would increase the tax credit for veterans from $500 to $750.

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.