Hooksett water precincts present budgets, seek voter approval for warrant articles; budget committee recommends support

Hooksett’s Central and Village water precincts presented their 2025 operating budgets, capital reserve transfers and a planned application for state funding to address lead service lines during a joint meeting of the town’s Budget Committee. Each precinct’s commission described near-term work on mains, tanks and service-line inventories and answered committee questions on water quality, rates and reserves.

The meeting focused on two practical questions: how the precincts will pay for an array of capital needs and regulatory responses (including a federally driven lead-service-line inventory) and whether those costs will affect taxpayers or ratepayers. Central and Village presenters told the committee their operations are largely rate‑funded and that the warrant articles would draw from operating revenues, reserves, loans or grants rather than town property tax levies.

Why it matters: both precincts provide Hooksett residents’ drinking water and manage assets that affect public health, fire protection and local development. The precincts also face evolving state and federal water rules (including EPA and New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services guidance) and have begun work required by those rules, such as lead service‑line inventories and PFAS monitoring.

Central Water Precinct superintendent Chris Culberson opened the presentation with an overview of the precinct’s system, its interconnections with Manchester Water Works and recent organizational changes. Culberson said the precinct has about 1,700 service connections and that, after the mandated lead-service-line inventory directed by federal and state regulators, “only one came back as galvanized,” a result he described as favorable for long‑term lead remediation planning. Culberson told the committee the precinct implemented a 3% rate increase this year to match an identical increase from Manchester Water Works and that the precinct’s proposed operating budget was “just under 2%…