Lebanon
The study is a first step, rather than the end of their inquiries, city councilors told residents who also were hoping for more information.
The study, which was completed by the Concord-based Arnett Development Group, used five residential developments approved between 2010 and 2016 to review how city taxes were impacted.
Consultants found that developers often estimate their projects will negatively affect city taxes. However, they frequently underestimate how much each development will produce in tax revenue and overestimate the impact on schools.
“It almost raises more questions or at least identifies more areas that we would probably want to go deeper on,” City Councilor Karen Liot Hill said during a meeting on Wednesday night.
The study did not research the impact of commercial development, nor did it look into how new residences effect infrastructure, traffic, economic opportunities or quality of life.
City Councilor Shane Smith said while the research contains good information, it largely misses the mark.
Residents who initially called for the study wanted to see if Lebanon’s services could handle more units and when those services could become strained, Smith said, adding the study didn’t address those concerns.
The study largely resulted from the city’s preliminary review of the proposed Carter Country Club Houses on the Hill subdivision, which sought to build 306 single-family homes on 294-acres near Mechanic Street and Poverty Lane.
During the Planning Board’s nearly 2½-year review of the project, neighbors worried there would be few ways to track the tax estimates provided by developer Doug Homan, or those from any other developer in Lebanon.
Those neighbors were later joined by 400 residents across the city who signed a petition in February calling on the City Council to study the impact of developments “currently under planning consideration, and of every large project that has been approved, but is still unbuilt or unfinished.”
The city paid $7,900 to Arnett since the study was commissioned in May, and the firm sought to find whether past projects were promising too much during city reviews.
“The opposite happened. On most projects, they projected a negative, bad response,” said Stuart Arnett, the company’s owner and the former director of New Hampshire’s Division of Economic Development.
Instead, he found developers’ final projects delivered more in taxes than initially projected.
For instance, the Prospect Hill subdivision predicted in 2001 that each unit within the 170-home project would pay $4,029 in taxes. Only 54 were complete by 2016, and each paid about $6,211 in taxes, according to the study.
The same holds true for the school district, where Arnett found developers overestimate how many students each development would add to Lebanon’s schools.
In total, he said, tax increases likely would have been worse had the developments not been completed.
“Yes, any citizen is going to cost you something,” Arnett told the council. “But these didn’t have any more incremental costs or increases than anyone who resides here.”
But city councilors said they hope to dig deeper with future studies. Several signaled they’d support a report on commercial development, while others proposed a study on community services.
With those complete, they said, the Planning Board might have more standardized information on how potential projects will effect police, fire and recreation services in the future.
“We need to figure out what exactly each citizen costs the people of Lebanon,” Hill said. “We need to get our heads wrapped around that fundamental bit.”
Few who signed the petition spoke at Wednesday’s meeting. Those who did applauded the City Council’s willingness to look further at development while also stressing there’s more work to be done.
“I really like the conversation. I like the insightful questions being asked,” said Dean Sorenson, a former city councilor and planning board member. “It’s all worthy of an applause on my part.”
Looking to the future, Arnett also said the city should continue funding studies that might better tell them when city services would be stretched by a single project.
His company plans to present Lebanon’s planning office with a tool designed to help officials track the impact of projects. The firm is also recommending ways to standardize the applications for subdivisions and large residential developments.
“Keep doing what you’re doing, which is looking at ways of countering cost increases,” Arnett said.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.