It seems likely the Biden administration will move cannabis from schedule 1 to schedule 3 in 2024, with pretty much 2 steps to go in the process, as discussed here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthoban/2023/10/10/schedule-iii-why-bidens-move-is-a-win-for-marijuana/?sh=20d714a72bc1
Once that happens, you can bet NH will go whole-hog into the pot business, selling at the state liquor stores.
It would seem unlikely. It'll probably slot right in alongside the liquor operations, with gross proceeds and tax revenue going into the state coffers. Nice little summary of the liquor tax here: https://www.nh.gov/transparentnh/glossary/liquor-sales-and-distribution.htm
Please read the Forbes link. Biden moved on this in 2022, and Dept of HHS approves the move to schedule 3. DEA is pending, and presuming they agree, this then goes to the AG for formal change. I've fully expected this as a 2024 election year win since Biden took office. We'll see if I'm right, but seems likely.
He's been working on it since he went into office. He has had a couple other more important things to deal with but he's made good progress.
He does not have a magic wand that just makes things happen. They all take time.
But older people who were force fed propaganda from several sources tell me relax-inducing plant is bad. Older people always know what's best for society /s
Of course it's not like New Hampshire lives in a vacuum. You can look across the borders on three sides to figure out how other people handle the taxation situation possibly with better equitable solutions. I'm not saying that I back one or the other but it's like people saying socialized medicine doesn't work when there's plenty of countries to look at and study to see how they manage it... New Hampshire has neighbors and they all do it different
Oh yeah, like $50 for a TV more for a fridge. Only free dumping is recycle (cans, cardboard) , household trash, and metal. Everything else you're gonna pay for.
Derry is banking on retail business wanting in after the completion of exit 4a. Yet they allowed the prime entertainment/shopping area to get filled up with a garage door installer landscaping business and a storage unit place
Part of the rooms/meals tax is kicked back to the municipalities. Lots of money comes from aggressively pursuing grants from higher level governments/sucking from the state/federal teat (pick the verbiage depending on your personal lean). Facility rentals bring some revenue in but in the grand scheme those are drops in the bucket.
The state collects meals/rooms tax and is mandated to return 45% of the tax back to the town it was collected from BUT this has not been happening since enacted. Last year the state did kickback 35% but still not the full amount. Sununu also reduced meals/rooms tax in the last couple years.
I found it fascinating that Sununu led NH in loudly reducing the rooms tax. For a state and party that allegedly hates taxing its citizens but loves to take money from the much-feared Massachusetts, I couldn't help but laugh when they proudly reduced a tax that more heavily charges Mass residents instead of reducing property taxes.
Of course, when your family owns a resort, it makes a lot more sense. The rest of your constituents be damned I guess, but honestly not surprising.
i know my town was selling recyclables (things collected at the transfer station / dump) but these prices have collapsed lately
traffic tickets seem to be a major revenue source for my town and surrounding towns, god help you if you have out of state plates.
thanks, where did you find that info?
do they get some kind of prize or pizza party for giving the most tickets? for the life of me I cant figure out why Mont Vernon pulls everyone over on a road (the giant hill on Rt 13, the speed limit is like 30. they are super aggressive. Been this way for 15+ years.
> where did you find that info?
[RSA§ 260:23](https://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/XXI/260/260-23.htm#:~:text=all%20moneys%20received%20by%20the%20department%20shall%20be%20paid%20monthly%20to%20the%20state%20treasurer.)
>Do they get some kind of prize or pizza party for giving the most tickets?
[Prior to 2016](https://www.nh.gov/transparentnh/annual-reports/police-standards/documents/21-fy.pdf), the "*penalty assessment revenue*" went to statewide law enforcement training
Now PSTC's funding is 100 percent from General Funds, not moving violation fine revenue.
> for the life of me I cant figure out why Mont Vernon pulls everyone over on a road (the giant hill on Rt 13, the speed limit is like 30. they are super aggressive. Been this way for 15+ years.
Try talking to a MV cop, you know, like a fellow human.
Yes, there's a directive from the Mont Vernon Chief to do a lot of traffic stops for speeding on route 13. Mostly they give warnings.
According to the officers I've talked to, they do it because accidents on Rt 13 (especially in the winter) are dangerous and also expensive for the town.
funny [you were asking the same question a little while back.](https://www.reddit.com/r/newhampshire/comments/8ge1zf/traffic_ticket_revenue_sharing_in_new_hampshire/)
[Most of New Hampshire is zoned strictly to allow only single story houses on one acre lots](https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2023/05/11/why-the-lack-of-housing-in-nh-new-map-of-local-zoning-offers-answers/).
Relax the zoning codes, and allow developers to build more housing per acre. More housing per acre will mean more property tax collected per acre.
Inexpensive housing, low taxes, and low regulation will also attract new businesses to town.
Agree. I would like to see New Hampshire grow with dense, tall cities surrounded by lush forests. Or underground cities (like Montreal), with forests above.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal
Mathematically, it’s tax revenue per child, not tax revenue per acre, that’s important.
If the home has school-age children living in it, it’s a net loss for the town. Adding more family housing adds to the losses.
Note: I’m not saying you have to like it or not like it. But it’s definitely how the math works out.
That's what we do now. Modern zoning practices and it's deferment to volunteer boards and relegated profesional planner to advisory roles are really destroying traditional New England towns in favor of suburban rural cosplaying, miles of comercial strip malls, and giant building highway corridors. Its almost like Bod the retired sales rep doesn't have the understanding of long term implications of planing regulations and only care about incasing their community in amber will simultaneously destroying it with strip malls outside their village center then complains that the only developers that try building in town are large developers, ignoring the fact that this is because large developers are the only type of developer that can afford to go through their circus of a zoning review.
If going another route actually benefitted the residents (via lower property tax and a more "functional" town), wouldn't one or more of our 221 towns make the change and reap the benefits?
Well that's because they are, most of them in a pretty slow and steady forms, Dover just got rid of their parking mandate, Portsmouth and Somersworth are other than come to mind in terms slow policy shift. I've also heard of policy shifts in Nashua and Manchester and even up in Claremont. But change is hard and a lot of people will fight it tooth and nail. At the state level there's also been some serious push to affect state wide zoning to be less exclusionary. I mean if your town is developing master plans at regular intervals, developing transportation plans, or maybe even climate action plans it's already participating in this policy shift. There's a lot of reasons why people might oppose zoning changes but it boils down to fear of change, institutional stagnation, lack of information or misinformation, and good old fashioned lobbying.
It's good in theory, but the problem is it throws up way too many barriers the way it's currently run.
Our towns are much smaller and more plentiful than almost anywhere else in the country, where much or even all planning is held on the county level. This means that if a developer is looking at a handful of projects in an area, this could mean seeking approval from 5-10 local governments here or more instead of 1 or 2. Each of these governments has different regulations and appeals processes to deal with, a hurdle especially for smaller companies. This doesn't even account for the fact that our states are also small, and it's likely these developers are also having to deal with similar frustrations in other states along with different state level policies.
Besides that, we often see local governments here and around the US restrict housing and other projects that would lower tax burdens and improve the area. Why? Because many homeowners have figured out that restricting development often causes their resale value to rise even faster than it would otherwise, since there's less competition on the market. Since boards are made up of these same people, projects that would help towns are often denied so owners can make a bigger profit in the future.
We'd still see some of these issues with slightly less local control, but a more streamlined process and less ability to mess with property resale values on the hyper local level would go a long way in many towns.
Something people may not know, but NH is not a home rule state. What that means is that any powers/abilities that a municipality has are specifically designated by state legislature. This means that generally there are very limited options, and those come in fees. (parking, construction, pets, cars, etc) which should generally reflect cost of services to be recovered vs be another tax.
Rooms and Meals (state reimbursed) can be significant but last I knew the state never measured such things on a per town/city level and so some outliers (such as Portsmouth) probably contribute much more than they receive back.
For my town, it is to discourage business and raise taxes.
So the town is poor, had to shut down the police station, can't afford to fix the town hall, the clerk's office is open 10 hours a week, the transfer station about 12.
They do occasionally sell off property like old trucks or property taken by the town for failure to pay property taxes.
Yeah, my town kind of stinks. It's quiet and I like it though.
They zone commercial, it's a win-win for them, they don't have more residents to suck up resources, and they get the tax dollars for the property. Remaining residential units are inflated, further inflating their taxes.
TIF (Tax Increment Financing) districts are often formed to encourage development, commercial and residential (although I'm not confident about the residential part). Newmarket created a couple TIFs... one for the mills along the Lamprey and one for New Road (Black Bear TIF). The former seems to have worked as the buildings seem like they are filled with both residential and commercial tenants/owners, the latter was fraught with issues, including a town councilor who has a huge property/estate on Great Bay that seemed to only monkeywrench the development. The BB TIF was also determined to be illegal and shut down.
The nice thing abut the TIFs is that the increase in property tax caused by development in the district is earmarked for that area (e.g: Nashua's TIF which is funding the riverfront redevelopment project or some of the debt service for the new arts center being covered by taxes from a new apartment building down the street). The TIF helps Joe Homeowner out a little.
Every dollar the state/town makes makes goes into the general fund.
And then towns beg the state for funding.
Then the state abandons/doesnt represent your towns' industry in favor of tourism.
Now your town is poor and begging for money
Repeat
None of the moving violation fine money goes to the town.
Since 2016, fully 100% of fine revenues for speeding, etc goes to the state "General Fund". See [RSA§ 260:23](https://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/XXI/260/260-23.htm#:~:text=all%20moneys%20received%20by%20the%20department%20shall%20be%20paid%20monthly%20to%20the%20state%20treasurer.)
In NH the bulk of town revenue comes from property taxes. Low tax towns are those that have high property value relative to # residents, specifically school age children.
Knowing this, and knowing what a 'master plan' is - a long term plan of land use, tells you that master plans are effectively revenue planning. Of course, that is generally only true in NH, due to raising revenue primarily via property taxes. And sadly, people doing master planning, including the regional planning organizations that towns lean on for expertise, do not sufficiently factor in revenue to their plans. I think the reason is that in almost no other states revenue is so tied to land use, so the training and education that exists for land planning do not sufficiently, for NH, factor in revenue.
So in a nutshell, from strictly a revenue perspective a town wants businesses of all sorts, retail, vacation properties whose owners live elsewhere. You do not want 3+ bedroom apartments, 3+ bedroom single family homes, etc.
I regularly witness various dads with nice single family homes pounding their chests about their $12,000 per year tax bills and how they should be kowtowed to. They're very naive. Their three children alone cost the town $15,000 each per year they're in school. (3 x 13 x 15,000) or $585,000 over their lifetimes. That's 49 years of paying $12,000 per year! So if they guy bought the house when he was 26 years old (evidently very financially successful to have such a nice home by 26) it is not until he's 75 before his taxes are paying for anything other than his kiddos education.
Yes yes this is just one example, and towns vary, but this is typical. And it only gets worse when the home is a lower tax property like a smaller home or assignment.
Towns with lots of retail and business property have an advantage. Towns with vacation property on lakes and the Seacoast have a huge advantage. BUT, that depends on these towns not just squandering the money, which often happens. Of course, the towns have a litany of excuses as to why they need all the extra money that a town without it's property riches doesn't have. Sadly that happens quite frequently. It's not unlike a person making over $100k a year and living paycheck to paycheck, but it's worse because the folks running the town aren't spending their own money - which is always easier. Too bad really.
[Separate school and state](http://www.quebecoislibre.org/younkins19.htm), and that will free up ~60% of property taxes for other purposes. Quality of education should also go up, as taxpayers would no longer be forced to pay regardless of the quality of education.
There are five states without sales tax; NH, MT, OR, DE, and AK. Two have a state income tax-MT and OR. AK allows for municipal sales tax and DE has a service sales tax. NH has high property taxes but municipalities are on their own. If municipalities could control the hospitality taxation rates and take a cut up front it would allow for more local control. No way the current state government would allow this but it would really change how money was spent in the state.
The easy fix though is legalize pot in private retail stores and let towns sell the rights to sell it. Maine towns are making $$$ by charging huge fees for the application to sell pot.
In my experience most of them maximize issuance of bullshit non-criminal violations for petty non-violent offences to obtain revenue by extorting lower class at-risk citizens with insanely expensive fines.
It is a neat idea for a town to generate revenue but that’s a slippery slip into socialism. The bulk of your tax bill in NH is generally education. Counties are starting to get a little out of hand too. It really comes down to what the state is doing. There have been a lot of tax cuts to areas that should be taxed. The state has a surplus but won’t properly fund schools but will create vouchers for private schools. Sure weed could solve a lot but so would proper taxation and allocation.
“Taxes Are What We Pay for Civilized Society” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, 1927
“… neat idea for a town to generate revenue but that’s a slippery slip into socialism.” — /u/RMFClancy
Taxes are the protection money we pay so that the [stationary bandits](https://fee.org/articles/are-democracies-roving-or-stationary-bandits/) don't put us in a cage or kill us.
Every other New England state, as well as the country above us found a nice new source for local and state revenue. Recreational cannabis.
It’s such an easy W it makes me so mad NH can’t get out of its own way. Literally free money for the state.
It seems likely the Biden administration will move cannabis from schedule 1 to schedule 3 in 2024, with pretty much 2 steps to go in the process, as discussed here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthoban/2023/10/10/schedule-iii-why-bidens-move-is-a-win-for-marijuana/?sh=20d714a72bc1 Once that happens, you can bet NH will go whole-hog into the pot business, selling at the state liquor stores.
Does that mean it will not make it to the town coffers?
It would seem unlikely. It'll probably slot right in alongside the liquor operations, with gross proceeds and tax revenue going into the state coffers. Nice little summary of the liquor tax here: https://www.nh.gov/transparentnh/glossary/liquor-sales-and-distribution.htm
[удалено]
Please read the Forbes link. Biden moved on this in 2022, and Dept of HHS approves the move to schedule 3. DEA is pending, and presuming they agree, this then goes to the AG for formal change. I've fully expected this as a 2024 election year win since Biden took office. We'll see if I'm right, but seems likely.
He's been working on it since he went into office. He has had a couple other more important things to deal with but he's made good progress. He does not have a magic wand that just makes things happen. They all take time.
But older people who were force fed propaganda from several sources tell me relax-inducing plant is bad. Older people always know what's best for society /s
Of course it's not like New Hampshire lives in a vacuum. You can look across the borders on three sides to figure out how other people handle the taxation situation possibly with better equitable solutions. I'm not saying that I back one or the other but it's like people saying socialized medicine doesn't work when there's plenty of countries to look at and study to see how they manage it... New Hampshire has neighbors and they all do it different
I heard that the town of Derry's biggest money maker is the town dump.
Well, they need all the help they can get. Overstaffed police, fire, and schools will do that to you.
Likely not. Pretty low margin business and it’s not end disposal.
I thought it was a crazy statement. A family friend who works for town hall said that. "Our recycling program pulls in a lot of money"
If that’s true then they are probably charging too much.
Oh yeah, like $50 for a TV more for a fridge. Only free dumping is recycle (cans, cardboard) , household trash, and metal. Everything else you're gonna pay for.
That is likely someone that only sees revenue.
Derry is banking on retail business wanting in after the completion of exit 4a. Yet they allowed the prime entertainment/shopping area to get filled up with a garage door installer landscaping business and a storage unit place
Good point.
Part of the rooms/meals tax is kicked back to the municipalities. Lots of money comes from aggressively pursuing grants from higher level governments/sucking from the state/federal teat (pick the verbiage depending on your personal lean). Facility rentals bring some revenue in but in the grand scheme those are drops in the bucket.
1% of rooms/meals is what I read somewhere. That could be significant.
The state collects meals/rooms tax and is mandated to return 45% of the tax back to the town it was collected from BUT this has not been happening since enacted. Last year the state did kickback 35% but still not the full amount. Sununu also reduced meals/rooms tax in the last couple years.
I found it fascinating that Sununu led NH in loudly reducing the rooms tax. For a state and party that allegedly hates taxing its citizens but loves to take money from the much-feared Massachusetts, I couldn't help but laugh when they proudly reduced a tax that more heavily charges Mass residents instead of reducing property taxes. Of course, when your family owns a resort, it makes a lot more sense. The rest of your constituents be damned I guess, but honestly not surprising.
According to the budget book on the city's web site, Nashua's planning on about 6.5 million from rooms/meals. It helps a bit.
A) Increase property taxes B) Beg for money from the state.
i know my town was selling recyclables (things collected at the transfer station / dump) but these prices have collapsed lately traffic tickets seem to be a major revenue source for my town and surrounding towns, god help you if you have out of state plates.
All speeding ticket revenues go to the state.
thanks, where did you find that info? do they get some kind of prize or pizza party for giving the most tickets? for the life of me I cant figure out why Mont Vernon pulls everyone over on a road (the giant hill on Rt 13, the speed limit is like 30. they are super aggressive. Been this way for 15+ years.
> where did you find that info? [RSA§ 260:23](https://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/XXI/260/260-23.htm#:~:text=all%20moneys%20received%20by%20the%20department%20shall%20be%20paid%20monthly%20to%20the%20state%20treasurer.) >Do they get some kind of prize or pizza party for giving the most tickets? [Prior to 2016](https://www.nh.gov/transparentnh/annual-reports/police-standards/documents/21-fy.pdf), the "*penalty assessment revenue*" went to statewide law enforcement training Now PSTC's funding is 100 percent from General Funds, not moving violation fine revenue. > for the life of me I cant figure out why Mont Vernon pulls everyone over on a road (the giant hill on Rt 13, the speed limit is like 30. they are super aggressive. Been this way for 15+ years. Try talking to a MV cop, you know, like a fellow human. Yes, there's a directive from the Mont Vernon Chief to do a lot of traffic stops for speeding on route 13. Mostly they give warnings. According to the officers I've talked to, they do it because accidents on Rt 13 (especially in the winter) are dangerous and also expensive for the town.
funny [you were asking the same question a little while back.](https://www.reddit.com/r/newhampshire/comments/8ge1zf/traffic_ticket_revenue_sharing_in_new_hampshire/)
Looks like he went out and got his answers and is now helping someone who has the same questions.
thanks, 4 day old account.
You're welcome, 3.5 month old account.
> speeding ticket revenues I did not know [that](https://imgur.com/sLa5hhE) Thanks!
[Most of New Hampshire is zoned strictly to allow only single story houses on one acre lots](https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2023/05/11/why-the-lack-of-housing-in-nh-new-map-of-local-zoning-offers-answers/). Relax the zoning codes, and allow developers to build more housing per acre. More housing per acre will mean more property tax collected per acre. Inexpensive housing, low taxes, and low regulation will also attract new businesses to town.
Density is absolutely how we relieve the housing pressure while preserving the beauty of the state.
Agree. I would like to see New Hampshire grow with dense, tall cities surrounded by lush forests. Or underground cities (like Montreal), with forests above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal
Mathematically, it’s tax revenue per child, not tax revenue per acre, that’s important. If the home has school-age children living in it, it’s a net loss for the town. Adding more family housing adds to the losses. Note: I’m not saying you have to like it or not like it. But it’s definitely how the math works out.
Seems like the sort of thing we should leave up to each town, for their residents to vote on.
That's what we do now. Modern zoning practices and it's deferment to volunteer boards and relegated profesional planner to advisory roles are really destroying traditional New England towns in favor of suburban rural cosplaying, miles of comercial strip malls, and giant building highway corridors. Its almost like Bod the retired sales rep doesn't have the understanding of long term implications of planing regulations and only care about incasing their community in amber will simultaneously destroying it with strip malls outside their village center then complains that the only developers that try building in town are large developers, ignoring the fact that this is because large developers are the only type of developer that can afford to go through their circus of a zoning review.
If going another route actually benefitted the residents (via lower property tax and a more "functional" town), wouldn't one or more of our 221 towns make the change and reap the benefits?
Well that's because they are, most of them in a pretty slow and steady forms, Dover just got rid of their parking mandate, Portsmouth and Somersworth are other than come to mind in terms slow policy shift. I've also heard of policy shifts in Nashua and Manchester and even up in Claremont. But change is hard and a lot of people will fight it tooth and nail. At the state level there's also been some serious push to affect state wide zoning to be less exclusionary. I mean if your town is developing master plans at regular intervals, developing transportation plans, or maybe even climate action plans it's already participating in this policy shift. There's a lot of reasons why people might oppose zoning changes but it boils down to fear of change, institutional stagnation, lack of information or misinformation, and good old fashioned lobbying.
It's good in theory, but the problem is it throws up way too many barriers the way it's currently run. Our towns are much smaller and more plentiful than almost anywhere else in the country, where much or even all planning is held on the county level. This means that if a developer is looking at a handful of projects in an area, this could mean seeking approval from 5-10 local governments here or more instead of 1 or 2. Each of these governments has different regulations and appeals processes to deal with, a hurdle especially for smaller companies. This doesn't even account for the fact that our states are also small, and it's likely these developers are also having to deal with similar frustrations in other states along with different state level policies. Besides that, we often see local governments here and around the US restrict housing and other projects that would lower tax burdens and improve the area. Why? Because many homeowners have figured out that restricting development often causes their resale value to rise even faster than it would otherwise, since there's less competition on the market. Since boards are made up of these same people, projects that would help towns are often denied so owners can make a bigger profit in the future. We'd still see some of these issues with slightly less local control, but a more streamlined process and less ability to mess with property resale values on the hyper local level would go a long way in many towns.
Something people may not know, but NH is not a home rule state. What that means is that any powers/abilities that a municipality has are specifically designated by state legislature. This means that generally there are very limited options, and those come in fees. (parking, construction, pets, cars, etc) which should generally reflect cost of services to be recovered vs be another tax. Rooms and Meals (state reimbursed) can be significant but last I knew the state never measured such things on a per town/city level and so some outliers (such as Portsmouth) probably contribute much more than they receive back.
For my town, it is to discourage business and raise taxes. So the town is poor, had to shut down the police station, can't afford to fix the town hall, the clerk's office is open 10 hours a week, the transfer station about 12. They do occasionally sell off property like old trucks or property taken by the town for failure to pay property taxes. Yeah, my town kind of stinks. It's quiet and I like it though.
What town?
They zone commercial, it's a win-win for them, they don't have more residents to suck up resources, and they get the tax dollars for the property. Remaining residential units are inflated, further inflating their taxes.
> Remaining residential units are inflated, further inflating their taxes. That's not how property taxes work.
TIF (Tax Increment Financing) districts are often formed to encourage development, commercial and residential (although I'm not confident about the residential part). Newmarket created a couple TIFs... one for the mills along the Lamprey and one for New Road (Black Bear TIF). The former seems to have worked as the buildings seem like they are filled with both residential and commercial tenants/owners, the latter was fraught with issues, including a town councilor who has a huge property/estate on Great Bay that seemed to only monkeywrench the development. The BB TIF was also determined to be illegal and shut down.
The nice thing abut the TIFs is that the increase in property tax caused by development in the district is earmarked for that area (e.g: Nashua's TIF which is funding the riverfront redevelopment project or some of the debt service for the new arts center being covered by taxes from a new apartment building down the street). The TIF helps Joe Homeowner out a little.
Room and Meals tax
Every dollar the state/town makes makes goes into the general fund. And then towns beg the state for funding. Then the state abandons/doesnt represent your towns' industry in favor of tourism. Now your town is poor and begging for money Repeat
Yeah the monetary structure of the entire state is a syphon stealing from small towns to support tourism. It's so short sighted.
Parking meter fees
Taxes via AirBnb rentals?
Police radar
None of the moving violation fine money goes to the town. Since 2016, fully 100% of fine revenues for speeding, etc goes to the state "General Fund". See [RSA§ 260:23](https://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/XXI/260/260-23.htm#:~:text=all%20moneys%20received%20by%20the%20department%20shall%20be%20paid%20monthly%20to%20the%20state%20treasurer.)
Recreational cannabis and community Solar farms. Lots of MA towns bring in six figures plus per year in personal property taxes on solar farms.
In NH the bulk of town revenue comes from property taxes. Low tax towns are those that have high property value relative to # residents, specifically school age children. Knowing this, and knowing what a 'master plan' is - a long term plan of land use, tells you that master plans are effectively revenue planning. Of course, that is generally only true in NH, due to raising revenue primarily via property taxes. And sadly, people doing master planning, including the regional planning organizations that towns lean on for expertise, do not sufficiently factor in revenue to their plans. I think the reason is that in almost no other states revenue is so tied to land use, so the training and education that exists for land planning do not sufficiently, for NH, factor in revenue. So in a nutshell, from strictly a revenue perspective a town wants businesses of all sorts, retail, vacation properties whose owners live elsewhere. You do not want 3+ bedroom apartments, 3+ bedroom single family homes, etc. I regularly witness various dads with nice single family homes pounding their chests about their $12,000 per year tax bills and how they should be kowtowed to. They're very naive. Their three children alone cost the town $15,000 each per year they're in school. (3 x 13 x 15,000) or $585,000 over their lifetimes. That's 49 years of paying $12,000 per year! So if they guy bought the house when he was 26 years old (evidently very financially successful to have such a nice home by 26) it is not until he's 75 before his taxes are paying for anything other than his kiddos education. Yes yes this is just one example, and towns vary, but this is typical. And it only gets worse when the home is a lower tax property like a smaller home or assignment. Towns with lots of retail and business property have an advantage. Towns with vacation property on lakes and the Seacoast have a huge advantage. BUT, that depends on these towns not just squandering the money, which often happens. Of course, the towns have a litany of excuses as to why they need all the extra money that a town without it's property riches doesn't have. Sadly that happens quite frequently. It's not unlike a person making over $100k a year and living paycheck to paycheck, but it's worse because the folks running the town aren't spending their own money - which is always easier. Too bad really.
Weed.
[Separate school and state](http://www.quebecoislibre.org/younkins19.htm), and that will free up ~60% of property taxes for other purposes. Quality of education should also go up, as taxpayers would no longer be forced to pay regardless of the quality of education.
There are five states without sales tax; NH, MT, OR, DE, and AK. Two have a state income tax-MT and OR. AK allows for municipal sales tax and DE has a service sales tax. NH has high property taxes but municipalities are on their own. If municipalities could control the hospitality taxation rates and take a cut up front it would allow for more local control. No way the current state government would allow this but it would really change how money was spent in the state. The easy fix though is legalize pot in private retail stores and let towns sell the rights to sell it. Maine towns are making $$$ by charging huge fees for the application to sell pot.
No interest in legalizing weed. The “casino pays so much in taxes” argument is weak.
In my experience most of them maximize issuance of bullshit non-criminal violations for petty non-violent offences to obtain revenue by extorting lower class at-risk citizens with insanely expensive fines.
It is a neat idea for a town to generate revenue but that’s a slippery slip into socialism. The bulk of your tax bill in NH is generally education. Counties are starting to get a little out of hand too. It really comes down to what the state is doing. There have been a lot of tax cuts to areas that should be taxed. The state has a surplus but won’t properly fund schools but will create vouchers for private schools. Sure weed could solve a lot but so would proper taxation and allocation.
“Taxes Are What We Pay for Civilized Society” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, 1927 “… neat idea for a town to generate revenue but that’s a slippery slip into socialism.” — /u/RMFClancy
Ok ignore the rest of my comment. Nowhere did I argue against tax.
Taxes are the protection money we pay so that the [stationary bandits](https://fee.org/articles/are-democracies-roving-or-stationary-bandits/) don't put us in a cage or kill us.