When presidential candidates visit, who picks up the tab? It’s a question cash-strapped communities are asking as presidential campaigns roll into New Hampshire towns and cities, visits that often cost thousands of dollars in unanticipated expenses, including extra coverage for public safety employees, opening and closing roadways, and using public facilities such as schools. The line between billing and not billing is especially blurry when a sitting president comes to town. Is a presidential visit in an election year a partisan political event that the campaign should pay for, or is it an apolitical state visit for which taxpayers pick up the bill?

Already this year, Durham, Rochester, Windham, and Milford have wrestled with how to handle the costs associated with campaign stops.

Most recently, members of the Rochester City Council’s Finance Committee voted not to bill President Barack Obama’s campaign for costs associated with a visit to the Lilac City on Aug. 18. Obama stopped in Windham that same day; however, town officials there are still undecided about whether to bill the campaign for public safety expenses.

While the final cost is being tallied, Windham town administrator David Sullivan said Obama’s visit cost the town somewhere between $5,000 and $6,000.

Bruce Breton, chairman of the Windham Board of Selectmen, believes the town should bill the campaign for the cost of additional police, EMT, and firefighter details. Other board members disagree and think the town should cover the costs. Sullivan said the board will discuss the issue at a meeting on Aug. 27. Campaign visits happen only once every four years, Sullivan said, and visit from a sitting president is even rarer. However, discussion of whether or not to bill presidential campaigns in the future might lead to a new town policy.

“Knowing full well a future board can change that policy at any time, I would think (selectmen) would entertain that as a consideration,” he said.

The town of Milford billed Mitt Romney’s campaign $1,001 for an ice cream social the candidate hosted in June.

Also in June, Durham hosted an Obama campaign event that cost the town $12,998. After discussions with town officials, the Obama campaign offered to reimburse the town for the cost of the visit; however, an anonymous donor stepped in and offered to pay up to $20,000 to cover the visit. Durham officials discussed at a town council meeting earlier this month how to handle future campaign visits, but no decisions were made.

According to Durham town administrator Todd Selig, the issue is complex. In an opinion piece about the cost of campaign visits, Selig wrote that while presidential campaign stops can have a positive impact for a community, the financial burden of such stops can have a downside.

“Municipal resources must be redirected, and often significant unanticipated local tax dollars are expended on a purely partisan political event,” Selig wrote. “This may mean that worthy projects that survived the scrutiny of an annual budget process in a community are foregone to offset unanticipated public safety overages associated with a presidential campaign visit.”

Selig believes that the question is not whether communities should bill campaigns, but whether the current system can be changed.