LEBANON — Lebanon will join the fight against efforts to return New Hampshire to a “donor town” system of education funding that saw property-rich communities send tax dollars to those struggling to pay for schools.

The City Council voted 8-0 Wednesday night to join the Coalition Communities 2.0, a group of towns and cities that plan to hire a lobbyist to advocate for its interests in Concord.

The coalition, led by the Seacoast city of Portsmouth, hopes to solicit 50 members to help pay for an estimated $120,000-a-year lobbying effort. Lebanon’s share is estimated at nearly $4,200.

The group’s main focus will be to dissuade lawmakers from using the statewide property tax to fill shortfalls in education, Lebanon City Manager Shaun Mulholland said during Wednesday’s meeting.

Prior to a 2011 change, part of the money collected through the tax was distributed to property-poor communities such as Claremont to help cover the costs of education.

Now, tax revenue raised within a given school district stays there, with any excess money collected returned by the state. It’s those additional dollars, which experts say could total about $4.7 million in Lebanon, that the city wants to hold onto.

“The concern is once we start sending money to Concord, we won’t see it come back,” Mulholland said, adding that the state should instead look to other options, including a business profits or even sales tax to better fund schools.

Locally, Lebanon joins Newbury, N.H. — one of three towns with frontage on Lake Sunapee and home to the Mount Sunapee Resort — as a coalition member.

The Sunapee Selectboard will discuss joining the group during a meeting on Monday, while Grantham and Hanover — which previously fought their donor town status — have so far declined offers.

“We’re watching it, just seeing where things are going,” said Melissa White, the town administrator of Grantham, which sent more than $1.7 million in excess taxes to Concord during its five-year run as a donor community.

The coalition — which was active in education funding fights during the early 2000s but went dormant after the 2011 change to property taxes — is being revived in response to a 181-page report released by lawmakers last year that characterized the state’s education funding system as “inequitable.”

In the report, legislators recommended again redistributing the statewide property tax, essentially bringing back the donor town system.

Officials in Lebanon say they were open to the idea until seeing how much it could cost the city’s taxpayers.

Using calculations from the education funding report, state Rep. Susan Almy, D-Lebanon, determined that returning to donor towns could increase the city’s property taxes by $1.09 per $1,000 of a home’s assessed value. That’s an additional $273 for a property assessed at $250,000.

However, she said, the report’s figures appear to be incomplete and don’t account for tuition (Plainfield and Grantham both pay to send students to Lebanon High School). Others also questioned why Bedford and Londonderry, two of the state’s most affluent towns, aren’t on the list of possible donors.

While there’s no legislation that would match the report’s recommendations, one bill, HB 504, includes similar goals.

It would force municipalities with excess property tax revenue to turn those dollars over for distribution to property-poor communities. But the measure also would expand tax relief to low-income and working-class families.

Almy, former chairwoman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the bill is unlikely to pass in a Statehouse that’s now controlled by Republicans who “are trying to cut taxes, not increase them.”

Still, the legislation presents enough risk that City Councilor Karen Liot Hill felt it would be “prudent” to join the coalition.

“It’s important enough, I think that we need to look out for Lebanon taxpayers,” she said, adding that residents have made it clear they’re struggling to pay bills during the COVID-19 pandemic.

News of the growing coalition didn’t appear to worry Claremont Mayor Charlene Lovett, who said that the return to a donor town system could sow more division rather than provide a permanent solution to funding problems.

“We all want to resolve the education funding issue but I don’t see any desire to do it in a way that pits one community against the other,” she said. “If (donor towns) had worked well, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

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

Clarification

Lebanon City Councilor Sue Prentiss attended the meeting virtually but was unable to vote on the coalition measure because of technical difficulties. She says she would have joined with her colleagues in making the vote unanimous. An earlier version of this story imprecisely described the vote total.