A few March Hanover updates

Hey folks, this is your Town Manager Alex Torpey here with summaries of a few updates. As we eye emerging from this year’s “winter” into “spring” soon, there’s always a lot of activity as we gear up for budget and Town Meeting.

Hanover Happenings Spotlight on Civic Engagement

In the latest episode I discuss the importance of civic engagement and recap a project several dozen state and local officials worked recently to produce a produce a free, nonpartisan guide on how to boost participation at Town Meeting. It was covered on NHPR and you can download the guide at nhtownmeeting.com.

In the episode I talk about the phrase “Authentic and effective public engagement” and why it’s important to have shared definitions of terms such as these. We go through some of the reasons behind the handbook, and then go through the five best practices we identified, as well as some quotes from local officials in NH and VT who have put these in practice in their communities. This all should help give some background to why these sorts of efforts are so important to the Selectboard and all of us in the Town government in Hanover.

Check out the episode by searching for “Hanover Happenings” wherever you cast, or at hanoverhappenings.com!

FY25 Budget Discussions

On Monday night, the Selectboard will discuss six key topics from the budget presentations that took place at the end of February. You can watch or view the slides from those at our online budget dashboard at hanovernh.org/budget.

If you would like more of an overview, you can check out the 5-10 minute read of the “Top 12 FY25 Budget Highlights” that we put together summarizing some key takeaways.

Monday night, we will discuss the following topics, making any final tweaks to the budget, and then anticipate voting on the budget on 4/1, holding a pre-Town Meeting hearing on the Warrant for 4/15, for Town Meeting on May 14th (Mark your calendars!)

1. Fund Balance Tracking. This is a bit wonky for those who like to dive into budget details, but important. We have made some updates and based on FY22 audit results, and we have more money in our “reserves” than we thought. Still, it’s important to carefully track and ensure these funds remain healthy, as they can do things such as help prevent one-year spikes in tax rates.

2. Capital projects. This year was the first year of the newly formed Capital Improvement Program Committee. Doing this now gets Hanover in line with state law, and creates a more transparent multi-stakeholder environment to evaluate large-scale projects (buildings, roads, vehicles, etc). There are millions of dollars of costs we aren’t aware of in town that this will help to flesh out, for example Recreation fields and Town buildings (beyond basic equipment/maintenance) have not been evaluated or budgeted for in the past, yet we know there are costs there and we need to know what they are.

3. Retention and Recruitment. Around 2/3 of the budget is related to personnel. And this is another year of some sizable increases in both fixed costs, but also really important increases to salaries and benefits where Hanover has fallen behind the market in the last five years and that has been challenging existing staff and producing prolonged vacancies and lots of turnover. We did a comprehensive year-long study with our staff to identify the proposed changes in the FY25 budget and feel that this budget helps us better support our greatest asset - our staff.

4. Childcare services. We all know that childcare is a major critical need in Hanover and the Upper Valley. In fact, we have lost several employees who left working for the Town because there was nowhere to get childcare services nearby. We have worked with our Parks and Rec department to bring a very exciting proposal - at no budgeted cost to taxpayers - a pilot program for a 12-seat childcare service run through Parks and Rec. Putting this in our budget allows us to explore this potentially great new service with minimal risk. The trick? Finding an affordable space we can rent within this budget and plan as we don’t have Town facilities that can accommodate providing these services.

5. Social services. The Selectboard annually funds more than a dozen organizations that provide important social services in Town, and some have asked for increases, and several new organizations have requested funding.

6. Forecasting the future. We have a lot of work to do to understand how to pay for existing programs (forgetting new programs) in future years without overly burdening existing taxpayers. We discuss this in detail on Day 3 of our budget presentations, and intend on making it an even bigger part of the FY26 budget next year. Doing comprehensive revenue planning (which in our case aligns nicely with the Master Plan’s goals) will help ensure we know how we will pay for things in the future. But this is a big lift, and it is taking several years to do the necessary legwork to get to the point of being to more accurate forecast out.

Find all budget information at hanovernh.org/budget.

Hanover nominated for Top 10 Small College Town

Hanover has been nominated for one of the best small college towns in the US by USA Today! This comes at a time of a lot of new initiatives that have brought new events and public spaces to the downtown, and we are proposing a new way to help revitalize and support the downtown while helping to implement the newest Master Plan goals. We are discussing some exciting ideas that may help us do that on 3/18 with the Selectboard after nearly two years of meeting with business owners, property owners, Dartmouth, the UVBA, and many other local stakeholders.

In the meantime, you can visit hanovernh.org/top10 and vote once per day to get Hanover some much deserved visibility as one of the best small college towns in the US!