Dateline: Jan. 15, 2026

January 11, 2026 was a cold breezy morning when the hearing convened at 9 a.m. in the Allenstown Community School on River Road. The anticipated meeting was to present details about the school, town, and sewer budgets and allow residents to ask questions or make suggestions.

The first surprise was that the gym was empty and locked. Jim Boisvert came along and said "Maybe it's in the cafeteria." And so it was.

A view of attendees

The second surprise was how poorly attended the meeting was. They must have expected a low turnout and chose the much smaller cafeteria as an alternative to the gym. A quick head count tallied about 20 officials around tables and no more than 30 residents in the folding chairs.

Melaine Boisvert of the Budget Committee opened the meeting by reviewing the school warrant articles and allowing for questions.

Residents on the left and officials on the right

During the school budget session, one resident spoke in opposition to the budget, which had increased from the $13.95 million that was approved last year (School Article 1) to $15 million for 2026-27. This is a 7.5% increase (over $1 million). He noted that the school handout explained that almost 30% of the budget is to be spent on Special Ed. No one could answer why so many children are coded that way other than it was due to unfunded mandates by the feds and the state and there wasn't anything they could do about it.

Even if other NH towns are experiencing similar expenditures for Special Ed, taxpayers might wonder if that was a satisfactory answer, since the taxpayers are, as they say, being thrown under the bus.

The text of the school budget warrant article also had these negative assessments from the NH Dept. of Education: English Language Arts (ELA) Proficiency: 48%, Math Proficiency: 35%, and Science Proficiency: 38%. For $14 million this year, one would expect it would result in higher proficiency scores for students. Because of all these unresolved problems, that resident would not support the school budget.

Keith Klawes, School Board Member

Later a resident asked why the default budget was slightly higher than the proposed budget. School Board member Keith Klawes explained how they had worked hard to keep the budget increase small. With the divestment of AES and ARD, those expenses were gone. But it was still evident that the budget had increased.

Selectboard Chairman Scott McDonald questioned the budget since school enrollment had been dropping. One school district official mentioned that Pembroke Academy was also experiencing declining enrollment and mentioned that they were going to try Open Enrollment, meaning that children from outside the SAU could apply for enrollment. The unanswered question that remained was why the school budget increased if enrollment had decreased.

After a short recess, Melaine Boisvert reviewed the contents of the town and sewer warrant articles. After one resident asked if she could review each board, committee, and department budget, the town portion of the meeting lasted a very long time.

Resident Jim Boisvert lead the charge of asking numerous questions, mostly about the Highway Dept. budget and trash collection, and the Fire Dept. budget and the ambulance revolving fund.

The unfortunate upshot of this hearing was this: low attendance, and the fact that residents spent much more time discussing the smaller town budget than the bigger school budget. All this consumed about three hours of a Saturday morning.

After the meeting, Selectman McDonald said, "Tell the residents how hard everyone has worked on this year's budget and we hope the citizens will give it serious consideration."

What You Can Do

The Deliberative (Smack down) Session is to be held at 9 a.m. Saturday January 31 at the same school, maybe in the gym if enough residents stop complaining about taxes on social media and get off their butts to attend the session.