Lebanon — Citing concerns about stretched city services and increased taxes, a group of Lebanon residents is asking the City Council to order a review of development projects and their effects on the city.

About 400 people have signed a petition calling on officials to “analyze the total impact on city services, facilities and roads on every project currently under planning consideration, and of every large project that has been approved, but is yet unbuilt or unfinished.”

Supporters plan to present the petition to city councilors tonight, said Melissa Billings, a Wellington Circle resident who helped circulate the petition.

“We’re petitioning the City Council because they are our elected representatives in city government,” she said on Tuesday. “We turn to them if and when we feel that the professionals aren’t being responsive or don’t understand our needs.”

The petition is largely a response to concerns that Lebanon’s planning department isn’t thinking of the city’s master plan or analyzing cumulative effects of development, Billings said. She said she and other petitioners are opposing a planned 283-unit subdivision slated for a lot currently occupied by the Carter Country Club.

The project has been under a preliminary review by the Planning Board for more than a year. But despite the board holding meeting after meeting, Billings said, she doesn’t see enough answers coming from the Planning Department.

“As we followed the Planning Board process, we began to see things about the planning office and city government and our paid professional work that alarmed us or confused us,” Billings said. “The more we investigated, the more concerned we became.”

Lebanon Planning Director David Brooks declined to comment on the petition when reached on Tuesday. Mayor Georgia Tuttle and Interim City Manager Paula Maville also declined to comment ahead of tonight’s meeting.

Every subdivision that comes before the Planning Board requires studying of environmental, traffic and other impacts to the surrounding neighborhood.

Yet those rarely seem to be implemented into a larger plan for the city, Billings said.

City officials say Lebanon’s master plan, which was adopted in 2012, is considered a guiding document rather than one that regulates developments, but ideas expressed in the plan have not been implemented into ordinances quickly enough, Billings said.

“(The city) isn’t being attentive to the needs of the residents,” said Dean Sorenson, a Wellington Circle resident and former member of both the Planning Board and City Council.

Over the last few years, he said, the feeling coming from City Hall is that residents are in the way of development.

“That should never be a feeling that residents have,” Sorenson said, adding he hopes the City Council will be attentive to the petition.

Former city councilor Steve Wood, who helped write the petition, agreed, and said the Lebanon planning department isn’t doing enough to inform the Planning Board, pointing to board members’ lack of knowledge on how projects will impact city finances.

In 2015, a fiscal study performed as part of the Carter Country Club review found the project would bring $2.6 million in additional property tax revenues to Lebanon. That same study also found the project would cost the school district $2.5 million and require the city to spend $463,000 in municipal funds.

When the study was presented, Wood said, officials in the planning department couldn’t answer questions on how all the development projects would impact the city. That’s information the Planning Board should have before approving more projects, he said.

“It just isn’t planning. It’s lumbering forward blindly,” Wood said.

It’s not just residents who are concerned with the city’s planning staff. Doug Homan, who’s developing Carter Country Club, has voiced agitation on several occasions about the time it’s taken to review the project.

Homan has proposed other configurations for the subdivision in the past, including plans for a mixed-use development closer to Mechanic Street.

“I think there are a lot better ways to develop the Carter Country Club,” he said on Tuesday. “Unfortunately, the only opportunity available to us is what exists today in the current regulations.”

Homan said those different configurations would have driven more money toward city coffers while leaving more land undeveloped, but he hasn’t been able to win approval to rezone the property.

Billings said the petition isn’t just about development, but also about how the city keeps track of what’s going on and how it will affect residents in the future. She wants to see information being used to create plans that make Lebanon a more sustainable, livable community.

“It’s not the end of the road. It’s the beginning,” she said. “It’s an attempt to alert the council and alert the wider community that there’s discontent.”

The Lebanon City Council is scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. tonight in City Hall.

Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.