The Goffstown deliberative sessions of Town and School District Meeting next week are much more than just deliberation.

Those meetings also make important decisions that affect how much money the town and school district can spend next year and the kinds of choices voters will have at the election in March. Voters who sit this one out may be surprised come Election Day.

The school deliberative session is at 7 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 2, at Goffstown High School. The town deliberative session is the same time and place on Wednesday, Feb. 4.

Once upon a time, all towns had traditional Town and School District Meetings, where voters had three official duties: deliberate over what the town or schools should do, determine how much they should spend and decide whether to approve it all.

But, in the mid-1990s, low attendance at those meetings was cause for concern among some state lawmakers, who thought a few hundred people should not be making decisions about million dollar budgets in towns with thousands of registered voters.

Their solution was to invent the deliberative session, which retained the duties of deliberating and determining appropriation amounts, but deferred final decisions to voters at the election, where turnout tends toward thousands, not hundreds. This is known as official ballot law, or SB-2.

At the deliberative session, voters cannot remove or add articles to the ballot, but they can adjust the amount up or down as much as they want. A multimillion dollar budget or program could, in theory, be reduced to only a few dollars. Such a scenario is unlikely, but the very possibility it could happen shows the power deliberative sessions still wield.

Yet attendance remains low, leaving such power in the hands of a few.

“Historically, the first session of Town Meeting has a very low turnout of about 100 voters,” said Town Administrator Sue Desruisseaux. “This is unfortunate because Goffstown has about 13,000 registered voters, but less than 1 percent of those registered voters determine what will appear on the official ballot. We encourage voters to participate in the first session to ensure that the official ballot reflects the views of a majority of the registered voters.”

Superintendent Stacy Buckley issued a similar appeal for voters to show up for the school session.

“I would encourage all voters to be out there and be informed either way,” Buckley said.

This year, these sessions are as important as ever due to concerns about the impact local property taxes will have on homeowners hit hard by the recession. Consider the rollercoaster ride the budget process took in just the past week. On Monday, Jan. 19, the School Board came down to the Budget Committee’s proposal, which was about $561,000 less. But the next night, the committee said the dire economic situation and cries for help from taxpayers justified another $995,000 cut.

The committee had to meet again on Friday, Jan. 23, because it had not specified the line items that would have been affected.

At that meeting, instead of sticking with the $995,000, the committee approved a reduction of $400,000. That vote determined what will be presented to voters at the deliberative session. But in a separate vote, the committee recommended that voters not approve that amount.

The committee met for a third time Sunday, Jan. 25, because a legal technicality meant that it had inadvertently limited the school district to a budget of $59,000. That is because an obscure state law states that school districts cannot have appropriations in excess of 10 percent more than what the Budget Committee recommends.

Prior to Sunday, the committee had recommended just one school article: $54,000 for a school resource officer. At the school deliberative session, three articles will be under consideration:

Article 2 is the operating budget of $34,660,647 to cover teacher salaries, utility bills and other costs associated with running the five schools in the district next year. The budget also includes Goffstown’s contribution to the budget for SAU 19. The other contributing towns are Dunbarton and New Boston.

Article 3 asks voters for $60,000 to study space needs in the elementary schools. The school district had planned on turning Glen Lake School into a third elementary school in 2012 for $16.2 million, but now officials instead might take a scaleddown, cheaper approach, adding on to Maple Avenue Elementary School and moving forward with more renovations at Bartlett Elementary. The study will identify the best option.

Article 4 allocates $54,043 for the school resource officer at Goffstown High School. This may seem like a new expense, but it is not. The town traditionally has had this position in its Police Department budget. The school district will now be footing the bill – either way taxpayers would be paying the same $54,043. The difference is that the district will be able to bill Dunbarton and New Boston for their shares of the cost, actually saving money for Goffstown taxpayers.

At the town deliberative session, four articles will be under consideration:

Article 10 is the $19,362,358 operating budget for 2009. It will fund all the costs of running the town, including the police, fire and Public Works departments.

Article 11 asks for $500,000 to be deposited into a municipal savings account for fire apparatus.

Article 12 requests $15,000 for the Goffstown Main Street Program. The amount may not seem like much, but it is a big part of the program’s annual budget and helps fund events such as the Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off and Regatta, according to executive director Robbie Grady.

Article 13 seeks approval for $300,000 to purchase land next to the library for possible expansion in the future. The money would not affect the property tax rate, but instead would be drawn from existing library trust funds.