It’s been a little over a year since New Hampshire police departments started signing agreements with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help enforce immigration law in the state.

ICE now has 15 local partnerships, which are encouraged by Gov. Kelly Ayotte, and these so-called 287g agreements have contributed to a notable uptick in arrests here. Immigration arrests have doubled in the last 15 months. Of 429 people arrested, local agencies made 51 of them.

What’s in for local police? In part, money. ICE offers at least $100,000 in stipends, and local police departments are using that money to pay for operating expenses.

We talk about this on this edition of the New Hampshire News Recap.

Also, the state’s youth detention center continues to make headlines. Authorities are investigating recent allegations of abuse against children at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. Lawmakers and advocates are also raising concerns about leadership of the center.

In other news, there’s good news for Franklin. In a bit of a comeback story, the city’s high school was just named the top high school in the state.

Guests:

• Lau Guzmán, NHPR reporter
• Annmarie Timmins, NHPR Youth and Education reporter

In New Jersey, public libraries are treated as civic infrastructure under state law. They are primarily funded by a mandatory municipal tax under N.J.S.A. 40:54-8, known as the “1/3 mill” formula: 33 cents for every $1,000 of a municipality’s equalized, or true, property value. This minimum must be raised annually for library operations, regardless of local budget pressures.

Many municipalities choose to fund their libraries above this minimum. Libraries often receive additional support from grants, donations, and Friends of the Library groups.

But in municipalities like Princeton, where developers are receiving tax abatements known as PILOTs, or Payments in Lieu of Taxes, that baseline funding can be slowly and quietly eroded.

Under a PILOT agreement, a developer pays the municipality an annual fee instead of conventional property taxes. These agreements can last up to 30 years. The fee is typically far less than what full taxation would generate, and it flows directly to the municipality. The county receives 5 percent. The library receives nothing.

That matters because the 1/3 mill formula runs on equalized property valuation, which is the total taxable value of assessed property in a municipality. When a large apartment complex receives a PILOT, the building’s value is exempt from assessment. Only the land beneath it remains on the tax rolls. A development worth $60 million might contribute the taxable equivalent of a modest vacant lot.

The result: as a town grows — new buildings rising, new residents moving in, new cardholders walking through the library’s doors — the funding formula can stagnate. The tax base the library depends on reflects a version of the town that no longer exists.

The gap has drawn some legislative attention. A 2022 bill proposed adding the value of PILOT-exempt properties back into the equalized valuation used for state aid funding calculations, an acknowledgment that the standard formula fails to account for the full scale of development in PILOT-heavy municipalities. The bill never made it out of committee.

Bethlehem, Pa — A Pennsylvania musician is making the periodic table of elements fun!

George Hrab and his band, The George HraBand, sing about all 118 elements in the periodic table in his show, “Occasional Songs For The Periodic Table.”

As they go through the table of elements, there are various musical styles, from reggae to heavy metal.

“So heavy metal fans and reggae fans will then appreciate and learn about protactinium or learn about einsteinium,” explains Hrab.

“It’s sort of a fun opportunity to teach people a little bit of something.”

The project started as a way to get Hrab out of a writers block and he never expected it to turn into something more.

“And before I knew it, I had like 50 done and then 60 and an 80 and then 100,” says Hrab. “And then I finished them all off and hoped that someday I’d be able to play them live with a band.”