Voters approve budget, tax rate hike, and reserve investments in Pembroke

Town officials in Pembroke have learned from past mistakes. 

This year, when the wireless microphone sputtered out in the middle of town meeting, someone had prepared a package of batteries at Moderator Tom Serafin’s podium. 

“You’re a good man, Tom,” resident Steve Fowler said jovially as Serafin replaced the repowered mic into the stand at the center of the Pembroke Academy auditorium. 

The brief disruption didn’t sidetrack the otherwise efficient meeting, where about 125 voters overwhelmingly approved raising the operating budget to $12.2 million and investing just over $1 million into reserve accounts. 

Those moves will add an estimated $1.60 onto the tax rate, and bring it from $5.42 to $7.02 per thousand of assessed value. That’s an increase of almost 30% – or $640 on the bill of a $400,000 home. That aligns with a 30% jump on the school’s tax rate passed last week.

Nevertheless, the town meeting, like the school one, went smoothly in Pembroke.

The number of voter cards raised for ‘no’ votes throughout Saturday morning would scarcely have filled a row in the school’s auditorium. Residents praised town officials for clear presentations explaining the budget plan and town staff for having “a disease called ‘nice.’” Voters were racing to be the first to move and or second each article. 

“People understand that it is what it is,” Serafin said after the meeting.

Ann Lemoine was the successful second to nearly every motion – it’s Lemoine family tradition. When she was a kid, sitting through town meetings, her father was the relentless “second.”

“I had to keep the Lemoine name in the history books,” she said.

While consensus on the budget pleased Lemoine – a fourth-generation Pembroke firefighter – the meeting’s low turnout worried her.

Lemoine, with her mother Glenda and father Brian at her side, knows people will have plenty to say about their taxes. She wishes they’d follow her family’s lead and come to the town meeting to make their voice heard.

A combination of falling revenue, including motor vehicle registrations and rooms and meals tax money from the state, alongside rising operational expenses like a 16% increase in health insurance costs, drove the changes to the budget this year.

With just a handful of votes against, the town agreed to major investments in the town’s riverfront park. Memorial Park – or Memorial Field, as it is still more commonly known in town – is located at the Suncook River’s exit into the Merrimack. For years, the water has taken a bite out of the banks, now putting its boat ramp at risk. Voters signed off on the $800,000 project to shore up the park’s edge, along with another similar amount to replace a drainage pipe there, though both projects are well-positioned for help from state grants, per Public Works Director VJ Ranfos.

The most contentious votes of the day were the ones giving the selectboard the power to spend money from the capital reserve accounts without voter signoff at town meeting.

Town meeting voters still get the final say over how much money goes into town savings accounts, but in recent years, Pembroke has given its town leaders permission to make expenditures at their regular meetings. Residents with concerns about how the reserves are spent will have to keep an eye on meeting agendas going forward.

Among the planned reserve spending for this year is a stage at Memorial Park, sidewalk improvements and a new garbage truck.

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