Charlestown closes town offices for training, keeps Saturday clerk hours

Charlestown closed town offices Thursday and Friday for staff training, but the Town Clerk / Tax Collector kept regular Saturday hours on May 9 at 233 Main Street. For residents trying to handle tax questions, registrations, marriage licenses or other counter business, that left one in-person window before the regular workweek resumed.

The closure hit the part of town government most people use first. Charlestown’s Town Clerk / Tax Collector office handles marriage licenses and other municipal services, and the town’s normal weekday schedule runs Monday from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and Friday from 7:00 a.m. to noon. With town offices shut May 7 and May 8, those routine weekday errands had to wait, even as the clerk’s office stayed available for Saturday business.

The timing came during a busy stretch for the Charlestown Selectboard. The town listed a nonpublic interview session for May 7 at 4:45 p.m. at the town offices, following a Selectboard meeting set for May 6 at 5:30 p.m. and a workshop meeting on April 29 at 5:30 p.m. The board’s regular schedule is every first and third Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. in the Municipal Building Community Room, so the May meetings sat close together in a compressed spring calendar.

Charlestown’s RSA 91-A procedure says the town aims to provide access to government information to the greatest extent allowed by New Hampshire right-to-know law, which helps explain why a nonpublic interview session is reserved for confidential business such as personnel screening or other exempt matters. The town’s posted 2025 municipal tax rate is $36.36 per $1,000 of assessment, another reminder that access to the clerk and tax collector matters when bills, payments and paperwork are on the line. The practical message for anyone headed to Charlestown Town Offices was straightforward: skip the two weekday closure, use the Saturday clerk hours, and work around a schedule that was temporarily narrowed but not shut down entirely.