In 1881, when good times created a surplus in the town treasury, they voted at a town meeting to give everyone a tax-free year. And in 1909, not long after it first declined to fund a fire department, Grafton stymied a plan to build a $150 police station, leaving a chain of police chiefs no choice but to work, conduct interviews, and store criminal records in their own homes for the next eighty-two years.
