They do that in Wisconsin to set school district budgets. Hardly anybody knows that it is happening. When I go to those meetings, I see District personnel taking head counts, and suddenly an influx of people shows up just before the vote is taken. The School District always get their tax increase. The last couple of meetings I’ve attended, they don’t even ask for ID. The room is filled with teachers and students. They just count the show of hands.
At the last election we managed to get a couple out “outsiders” elected. Methinks things will change. At least our folks are going to try asking those atending to prove that they live within the district and are over 18.
We had “Prop two and a half” some time ago in Massachusetts, which requires any vote to raise property taxes in a town by more than 2.5% per year be subject to a plebicite using a secret ballot, just like a regular election. Officials are reluctant to call such an election, and probably more than half fail. Since the 1980’s overall state and local tax burden (as a percentage of income) has actually fallen to the point that Massachusetts is now about median for the U.S., which is remarkable considering voter registration is more than 2:1 Democrat to Republican.
Because or declining real estate values, my real estate taxes have fallen considerably over the past several years, yet we do not hear horror stories about shutting down the one fire house or laying off police. Of course, it helps to live in a town with only 5,000 inhabitants. They are talking of closing down our only school (k-6, 7-12 are regionalized) but I think we would approve an override to keep it open.
The problem with schools is that there are so many State and Federal mandates that impose a huge overhead, so small schools become expensive on a per pupil basis.