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Budget

Welcome to Budget Central! The best place to find out about how the Town of Canterbury Budget works and how your tax dollars are being spent.

2025 Budget

Notice of Public Hearing for the Town of Canterbury
A public hearing on the 2025 town budget and warrant articles will be held Monday, February 3, 2025 at 5:00 PM at the Meeting House on Center Road in Canterbury, NH.

To see the lastest information about that meeting go to Board of Selectmen 2/3/2025.

2024 Budget

How is the budget made?

In Canterbury, the budget is created through collaboration between the Board of Selectmen, the Budget Committee, and Administration. Generally, regular expenses are accounted for in the main budget and one-time expenses are approved in separate warrant articles. The NH Department of Revenue Administration sets the rules for how things are sorted and worded.

At the annual Town Meeting in March, the Selectboard present the proposed budget and warrant articles for the voters to approve, modify, or deny.

If you would like to get involved in the process, we recommend participating early and often! Come to Selectboard and Budget Committee meetings in the fall, to see how the next year’s budget gets started.

How does the budget affect my taxes?

There are four components to Canterbury’s tax bill, based on the budgets for:

  • The Town of Canterbury
  • Merrimack County
  • NH State Education
  • Shaker Regional School District

The Town of Canterbury and Shaker Regional School District budgets are voted on and approved at our Town Meeting in March each year. However, the other two budgets (Merrimack County and NH State Education) are not finalized until much later in the year.

The Town of Canterbury sends Tax bills twice a year – in JUNE and DECEMBER.

THE JUNE BILL

The amount due for your JUNE tax bill is ½ of the total amount of tax dollars you paid in the previous year. This is a formula over which the Town has no control.

THE DECEMBER BILL

When the numbers for the County and NH State Education budgets are finalized in late October or November, the difference between their estimated costs and their real costs is calculated, and that difference is added to your tax bill to come up with the TOTAL amount you owe for the year. The amount you paid in JUNE is subtracted from the TOTAL, and the remainder is the amount you will be billed in DECEMBER.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to calculate the entire tax burden at the beginning of the year, so it is not possible to equally divide the amount that you owe between the June and December payments.

On page 30 of the 2023 Canterbury Town Report, there is a pie chart explaining our Tax Rate Breakdown. Note that it is the timing that is the big factor in determining the JUNE vs DECEMBER tax bills. The DECEMBER tax bill will always be making up the difference between your JUNE tax bill and the final rate used to determine your TOTAL tax bill.

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