SOMERSWORTH, N.H. — The Somersworth City Council voted Monday to cover about half of a $601,000 school budget shortfall with city savings, after a long debate over how much to give the schools. The school department will have to cut the rest.

Councilors voted 8-1 to take $300,000 from the city's undesignated fund balance for the school department. They then voted 8-1 to cut $301,000 from the department's budget to cover the remaining gap.

Councilors said the shortfall came from the state providing less money than the schools had budgeted for. One councilor said the school department had planned on 100% of a state revenue projection and received 95%. Another said the explanation from the superintendent and business administrator pointed to demographic shifts that weren't known when the budget was set.

"This was not like the schools made a mistake in their budgeting," that councilor said, adding that the state was once again reducing what it provides for education in the city.

Several amounts debated

The proposal that came out of the council's finance committee would have used $200,500 from the fund balance and cut $400,500 from the school budget. The committee approved that split 3-1, according to the discussion at the meeting.

The council voted on several alternatives:

• An amendment to take $300,500 from the fund balance failed, 3-6.
• An amendment to cover the full shortfall from the fund balance failed, 4-5.
• An amendment setting the amount at $300,000 passed, 6-3. The supplemental appropriation needed a two-thirds vote, and six votes was enough.

A motion to table the measure failed.

Councilors said the change has no effect on the tax rate. A city official told the council the fund balance was about $9 million as of the last audited year, June 2025, near the top of the city's policy range of 5% to 17% of the budget.

Worries about next year

Several councilors questioned whether the city can keep drawing on its savings.

One councilor said the shortfall is likely to come back next year. If the schools budget only for the 95% of state revenue they actually received, the councilor said, adding more from savings now could leave them with a gap of more than $900,000. The same councilor said no school board members attended the meeting, and that the board has recently struggled to reach a quorum.

"We're going to provide some additional money to a board that is barely surviving," the councilor said. "That's a struggle for me."

Another councilor said the school district returned about $620,000 of unspent money to the city from last year's budget. That councilor said they would have preferred to fully fund the shortfall.

The mayor said the decision needed to be made in time for the city's tax rate to go out to taxpayers. The mayor also said using the fund balance is better than asking taxpayers to pay more or overriding the tax cap. "To ask for our taxpayers to fund this unexpected cost is, in my personal opinion, unacceptable," the mayor said.

The debate turned tense at times. One councilor said it was disappointing that anybody "is willing to die on that particular hill at the cost of our children." Another objected to that remark, and the first councilor later apologized.

Before the final vote, one councilor said they would be open to revisiting the school budget later in the year if the school department runs into more trouble.