WINDSOR, N.H. – This triangle-shaped town, wedged into the woods well west of Concord, has no store, no post office, no police force of its own. It counts 250 residents, but fewer live here year round. On the dead-end road that runs through the heart of rural Windsor, from White Pond to Black Pond, passing drivers wave in greeting and look twice at any stranger.
Lately, though, some neighbors have stopped waving – and speaking – to each other. Windsor has been split by the recent revelation that for years, dozens of residents, including friends and relatives of the longtime tax collector, did not pay property taxes and faced no penalties.
To the tiny group of taxpayers who combed through stacks of handwritten ledgers to find the discrepancies, the findings mean the town must change the way it does business. But many more in Windsor do not agree. They are little concerned about the missing payments, and expect an ongoing review of town records to find bookkeeping errors, not corruption. Those residents are troubled by what they say is an unnecessarily personal attack against Beverly Hines, the former tax collector who resigned over the controversy, whose family tree goes back in town for generations.
Underlying the tax controversy is a philosophical divide, between a small group of people who think the town must follow the letter of the law, and the majority, who feel their traditional, small-town way of life, embodied by the informal approach to tax collection, is under threat.
“People have always been behind on their taxes in Windsor, and the selectmen have always worked with them to let them get caught up when they can,” said Ron Houghton, a Windsor native. “People say they want to move here because they love it, but then they want to change it. They don’t like it because it’s not big-town, by-the-book, but that’s Windsor – we could do things unorthodox and make it work.”
The uproar comes amid a statewide furor over increasing property taxes, driven partly by an influx of real estate buyers drawn to remote lakefront settings like those in Windsor. The town’s population, still tiny, more than tripled between 1980 and 2005, from 72 to 239.
But the members of the Windsor Coalition of Taxpayers, the small group of retirees who have pushed the town’s practices into public view, are not new faces here. One couple has lived in town since 1974; another has resided year-round for more than a decade. An electrician and a retired police officer, nurse, and bookkeeper, all in their 60s, they say they have been belittled and threatened by fellow townspeople since launching their campaign.
“Don’t try to change Windsor – change your address,” read a sign one resident posted outside his house, according to the coalition.
“We’re trying to get through to people that we’re not sticking our nose in their business – it’s our business, the town’s business, and we have a right to it,” coalition member Irene Palmer said. “Whenever we put them on the spot about something, we’re told, ‘That’s not the way we do it in Windsor – we do it the Windsor way.’ ”
Since the controversy erupted, a bookkeeper hired by the town to examine its records has found about $175,000 in uncollected taxes since 2000. The state attorney general’s office plans to investigate the findings, first reported by the New Hampshire Union Leader, for evidence of illegal activity. Hines, the former tax collector, declined to be interviewed for this story. Selectmen did not return calls from a reporter.
The taxpayers’ quest began last spring, after Town Meeting, where they noticed that, unlike in previous years, the tax collector’s report was missing from the annual report. It had been replaced by a handwritten note: “not available at print time.”
Bothered by the omission, coalition leader Eb Chamberlain said, he began attending weekly meetings of the three-member Board of Selectmen to demand to see tax records. After nine weeks, he said, the town had not produced the documents. (Town officials have said the records were hard to compile because the tax collector spurned computers and kept handwritten ledgers instead.) Frustrated, Chamberlain contacted the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers, which helped him go to court and win access to the tax collector’s books.
The concerned Windsor taxpayers then spent hours at Town Hall, combing through the old-fashioned ledgers and copying them by hand. They reconstructed the town’s records in a computer spreadsheet, tallied and re-tallied the numbers, and found startling results: Between 2001 and 2006, they say, $213,000 in property taxes owed by 58 residents on 85 properties went uncollected, not including the interest that should have been added to overdue payments.
One third of the unpaid taxes, $72,000, was owed by just nine people, according to the coalition – relatives, friends, and neighbors of the tax collector. The town did not place liens on properties with unpaid taxes, as is standard practice in municipalities.
Among those with unpaid taxes was the tax collector’s son, Pat Hines, who has served as town moderator for decades. In an interview, he dismissed the idea he was getting special treatment and said his mother had empathy for people struggling, whether they were close to her or not.
“As long as you were paying something, and you were going to get paid up, she let you do it that way, and I think she did it for everybody,” he said. “Over the years, she collected a lot more by being decent to people. But I guess that’s not the way it’s done anymore.”
Some residents remember a less sympathetic approach. Don Palmer, one of the concerned taxpayers, said he was late paying taxes once in the 1980s while he was between jobs, and the tax collector demanded he pay anyway.
The real problem, Palmer and others say, is that uncollected taxes forced the town to borrow money to balance its budget, burdening all taxpayers. They say they were stunned to discover that the state Department of Revenue Administration, alerted by a former selectman, had been asking the town to clean up its act for years. In letters dating back to 2002, state officials implored the tax collector to attend training sessions, hire an accountant, and begin placing liens on properties.
Since the controversy, Windsor has appointed a new tax collector and moved to computerize records and place liens, said the town’s attorney, Paul Apple. But change has not come quickly or easily.
“One selectman says the town is run like it’s the 1850s, so we have 150 years of ground to cover,” Apple said.
At Town Meeting this month, residents rejected the coalition’s proposal to appropriate $500 to send town officials to training workshops. Voters also dismissed a measure condemning the selectmen for not preventing the missed payments, and another that would have prevented town officials from serving while owing back taxes.
Coalition members want the state to audit the town. But they say their protest has already fortified Windsor’s finances: Last year, after they started making noise, delinquent taxpayers came forward with $147,000 owed, according to the coalition.
However, the bookkeeper who reviewed records for the town determined that 27 residents still owe $175,000. So far, only four have worked out payment plans.