DIXFIELD — Dixfield Town Manager Alicia Conn has warned the Select Board of an impending penny shortage and how it will affect making change when people pay taxes or other financial transactions.

“Every town in the state is kind of freaking out (about) what we can do about the penny situation because we can’t change our pricing on anything,” she told selectmen at their meeting Jan. 12. “It’s all by state, Select Board mandate, etc.” she said.

President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Treasury Department in February 2025 to stop minting pennies for circulation to cut costs.

Conn explained what that may mean for residents.

“For example, if someone was to pay on their taxes and get 78 cents in change, if we run out of pennies, we can’t get them back their proper change,” she said. “If it’s a tax account, we can credit it onto their next bill. But like, if it’s their car registration, in theory we’d have no way to pay them out for the change they’re owed.”

She said some towns are creating a penny donation policy.

“For anybody who is over or under the round amount, they would be able to donate it to one of these causes,” Conn said. “Like we could set ours to go to the food pantry or something like that, on a voluntary basis, once we’re out of pennies. We haven’t run out of any yet, but our bank will no longer issue us pennies.”

Curtis Smith, branch manager at Franklin Savings Bank in Rumford, confirmed Jan. 15, that the bank is no longer taking requests for large numbers of pennies.

“We have to make sure we’re taking care of our customers as best we can for as long as we can during this transition,” she said.

Conn said that at the Town Office, it won’t be long before “we’re going to be digging into our own penny stashes at home to try to make it work, but I’m hoping we’ll get some straight guidance that comes down from the state about how we need to be treating these transactions.”

She told the board, “It is small change but it is owed back to the residents. We can adopt an exact change policy if we want to. People making transactions have to make the exact change. The change will be reflected to the nearest nickel instead of the nearest penny.”

Conn said about a third of the transactions in their office are made in cash, adding that the biggest issue will be coming up in April when tax payments are due. There are people who will elect to pay their taxes in cash at the Town Office to avoid the $3 credit card fee, she said.

Other countries which have stopped producing their lowest-value coins include Canada in 2012, Australia in 1992 and New Zealand in 1990.