City Council Workshop, Feb 18, 2026

School Department Budget Review

In Brief

The school department’s budget is developed around five strategic pillars — academic knowledge, well-being, equity, continuous improvement, and a team approach — to meet state accountability benchmarks by 2030.

Key Points

• Strategic Framework: The budget is built on a five-year strategic plan derived from stakeholder consensus to move beyond a season of sacrifice toward deliberate growth.
• Financial Drivers: The proposed budget reflects a $6 million increase, driven by increases in wages and benefits, higher health insurance costs, debt services, and fast-rising special education costs.
• Enrollment and Tuition: The district expects a $460,000 decrease in tuition revenue due to smaller incoming freshman classes from Nottingham and Barrington.
• Special Education Transportation: Costs for in-district and out-of-district transportation are projected to rise by 17% ($528,000) due to new placements and driver shortages.
• Capital Improvements: A major $510,000 furniture replacement project is planned, which is largely offset by $408,000 from capital reserves to minimize taxpayer impact.
• Staffing Requests: The district is seeking to fill three positions. The first is a new Social Studies teacher to meet the state’s Ed 306 requirement that students earn an additional Social Studies credit. The second is a Counselor (not new) for the Dover Adult Learning Center (DALC), a position previously funded by lost federal and matching state funds. The third role is for a psychologist (also not new), replacing a contractor-provided position, which will save the school district $30K.

Council Inquiry

• City Council: Asked about the feasibility of bringing specialized services in-house to reduce long-term transportation and placement costs.
• City Council: Inquired about the potential impact of budget reductions on student achievement goals and the specific number of students served by specialized transportation.
• City Council: Clarified the administrative structure, questioning if the district was “administratively heavy” compared to benchmarked peers. It’s not.

Revenue and City Department General Overview

Key Points

• Grant Funding Trends: Federal grant funding is leveling off as COVID-era pandemic relief funds expire, moving from $3.4 million in 2025 to a projected $1.4 million in 2027.
• New Revenue Sources: The city anticipates an increase of $175,000 in revenue. This is attributed to new franchise fee licenses resulting from competitive cable services, specifically Breezeline entering the market alongside the existing provider, Comcast. here is a projected $300,000 increase in investment income. These funds are generated primarily through the New Hampshire public deposit investment pool, a state program that allows municipalities to pool monies for better returns. The increase is expected due to positive returns on the investment of operating revenues and cash flow associated with issuing debt.
• Administrative Efficiencies: The city is implementing new Computer Aided Mass Appraisal (CAMA) for tax assessments and discussed a more integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to streamline financial reporting and billing. This was largely dismissed as not being economically viable.
• Personnel Adjustments: The city manager proposed eliminating two vacant part-time positions while transitioning others between departments to optimize operations.
• Planning Department: The Planning Department provides an overview of its services and key metrics. It has requested an additional inspector role that was not included in the budget proposal submitted by the City Manager.
• Welfare Department: The Welfare Department provided an overview of its services and explained how it has successfully contained costs by spending more time with residents. It removed $100,000 from its motel budget.

Council Inquiry

• City Council: Questioned the efficiency of current software systems and the challenges of managing disparate vendors for revenue and general ledger functions.
• City Council: Sought clarification on the financial disparity and timelines between different Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts: downtown and the waterfront. The city is earlier in the lifecycle of the waterfront TIF. Having previously invested in the downtown TIF, the city is now receiving revenue from it. Meanwhile, the city is still investing in the waterfront TIF.

Financial/Strategic Outlook

The city aims to finalize a bottom-line budget by April 1, 2027. Overarching strategic goals include maintaining elementary class sizes near 20 students and adhering to a 15-year replacement cycle for facilities to avoid deferred maintenance costs. While special education costs are growing at 15-20% annually, the district will explore the option of in-house specialized programming to eventually realize revenue from neighboring districts. The city also faces upcoming milestones for new assessment software, CAMA.