Bebe Casey

The Town of New London is currently a member of the Coalition Communities 2.0. I am asking that you oppose HB675. This bill does not solve the problem of an unequitable funding formula for education the State of NH. We currently raise $2,359,231 through the SWEPT portion of the tax rate. All that money is used for educational purposes, and we also spend additional funds for education through the local education portion of the tax rate. Under this bill, we will have to raise a little more than $5M through the SWEPT portion of the tax rate and we will have to send approximately $$2.4M or 50% of that amount to the state. Once we send those funds to the state, we will have to raise the amount again through our local education tax rate to fund our schools. That is a significant increase in our overall property tax rate and our taxpayers will have no say in how it is spent. New London is part of the Kearsarge Regional School District, and all the money raised from our local tax payers for education goes to the Kearsarge Regional School District along with the 6 other towns. Please opposed HB675.