LEBANON — The City Council approved the creation of a finance advisory committee at a special meeting last week. The question of whether to create the committee will not come before voters.
The committee, proposed in a petition by a contingent of residents, will offer nonbinding advice to the City Council on spending and the municipal budget process.
The councilors opted unanimously, with two members absent, to approve the petition as written. The city code amendment to create the committee goes into effect July 1.
Councilors agreed that the committee would be a useful tool and that petitioners’ ability to collect over 800 signatures demonstrated public support.
“I don’t think we need to send it to the public if we’ve heard from the public that they want it and we see value in it,” Assistant Mayor Devin Wilkie said.
The petition was brought as a binding referendum, so if the council took no action after a public hearing last Thursday, it would have been placed on the municipal ballot in March.
Only a few members of the public spoke at Thursday’s hearing.
Ralph Akins, a former Lebanon mayor, city councilor, planning board member and state representative who changed party affiliation multiple times over the years and ran most recently as a Democrat, said the petition had an unusual and impressive amount of collective public support.
Akins, who helped initiate the city’s Capital Improvement Plan in the late 1990s, said the theory behind the effort was to allocate funding and plan projects in advance so the investments that would pay for them could appreciate. With this system, the project is mostly paid for by the time it is ready to get underway.
He said this is a practice the finance committee could help Lebanon get back to instead of borrowing for projects and paying them off after they are completed.
“I urge you to adopt this tonight so we can start planning projects the proper way,” Akins told the council.
In general, bonds allow the city to complete projects sooner “without waiting years to save up the full cost” and can work in conjunction with saving up funds, according to City Manager Andrew Hosmer’s 2026 budget packet.
But, as part of the 2026 budget process, Hosmer slimmed down the capital improvement plan at least through 2027 to reduce new borrowing and focus on retiring some of the city’s existing debt.
Resident Joan Townsend also cautioned the council against “putting the cart before the horse” when it comes to big projects and expenditures. She said sometimes it seems as though the city does not look far enough ahead at costs and impacts when planning major investments.
“We all want to better Lebanon where it helps everybody,” Townsend said. “We need to keep helping those in need, but we need to help the people that are helping those in need” too.