LEBANON — Voters will elect candidates to four City Council seats at this year’s Town Meeting, with two of those races contested.

Lori Key, Carline Roberge and Laurel Stavis are competing to fill outgoing Councilor Karen Liot Hill’s at-large seat. Incumbent Devin Wilkie and Paul Roberts are competing for Wilkie’s Ward 2 seat. Both seats will be filled for two-year terms.

Assistant Mayor Clifton Below who represents Ward 3 is not running for re-election; Nicole Ford Burley, who is currently the city historian and chair of the Heritage Commission, faces no competition for the vacated seat. Whittlesey is also running unopposed to renew his seat as Ward 1 councilor.

The elected councilors will join Mayor Tim McNamara, Doug Whittlesey, Chris Simon, George Sykes, Karen Zook and Erling Heistad on the Council.

For many candidates, the city budget is top of mind after City Manager Shaun Mulholland announced last May that residents would see a 12% municipal tax rate increase every year for the next four years. Another common goal is reaching more people and improving communication from the Council.

At Large

Lori Key, 69, has lived in Lebanon since 1980. She retired from a career at Dartmouth Health in 2021 where she was a registered nurse and associate chief quality officer. She has not previously held an elected office.

Key was motivated to run for City Council after the tax rate announcement, she said in a Monday interview. Her main goals include reducing the city budget to keep Lebanon a “socioeconomically diverse” place and avoiding pricing people out of the city.

The tax rate has been a “growing problem over many councils over many years, but this has come to a head,” Key said.

On the council, Key said one thing she would look closely at is the capital improvement budget. She wants to try to find a balance between waiting to do projects until they become more expensive and fixing things all at once, which could result in further “ballooning” the city’s debt service.

Roberge, 52, has lived in Lebanon for more than 20 years. She described herself in an email as a “mother, entrepreneur and restaurateur.” Roberge co-owns The Karibbean restaurant, with locations in Lebanon and West Lebanon, and has not held elected office.

Roberge said she is running because she “believe(s) that representation matters when it comes to ‘who is at the table,’ ” and that her “views on education” and experience running a small business “can provide a helpful perspective.”

One of Roberge’s main focuses is supporting young people in Lebanon, like her son.

“I want to ensure he and other youth are supported and empowered to do their best in school while also having places that help them with their overall goals and development outside of school,” Roberge said. “We need to embrace our youth and help them become upstanding healthy citizens in ways we (The City) can promote.”

In general, Roberge said she would use her role on the council to promote “community and togetherness” by increasing community involvement in the municipal process and “preserving place(s) like the Lebanon Green.”

Stavis, 74, is a Democrat representing Lebanon in the House of Representatives in Concord. She also serves as a member of the West Lebanon Revitalization Advisory Committee. She has lived in Lebanon for 25 years and previously worked at Dartmouth College.

For the past five years, Stavis has worked at the Price Chopper on Miracle Mile where she has been able to connect with residents daily. “The cost of living is the biggest problem they face, and we must find ways to make life easier,” Stavis said in an email.

Stavis’ top priorities include the price and availability of housing, and the pressure Lebanon faces as a regional hub to support a daytime population that is much bigger than its residential population.

Stavis also is a former member of the Planning Board; she hopes to combine her different roles to support her work on the council. For example, in Concord, Stavis said she hopes to form a working group of New Hampshire cities to “find commonalities and possibly solutions that will help us right here in Lebanon.”

Ward 2

Roberts, 60, is a lifelong Lebanon resident and a former police officer. He retired as Plainfield Police Chief in 2021, after 40 years working in Lebanon, Lyme, Hanover and Plainfield. He has not previously held elected office, but was drawn into the race by the city’s rising tax rate.

On the City Council, Roberts hopes to improve transparency and accountability of the council and city staff, and combat increased spending, he said in an interview.

“We need to think a lot more outside the box of what we’ve done in the past as far as the standard budget…” Roberts said. “Do we privatize things, do we look at different ways of funding things?”

Roberts said the 2025 budget process revealed that the council and city staff “just aren’t in touch,” and he was concerned that the council did not consider the impact of the school budget on the tax rate.

Wilkie, 35, has lived in Lebanon for 12 years and was first elected to the council in 2021. Wilkie currently runs finance and operations at Steerforth Press. If he is re-elected, Wilkie said he wants to focus on tackling difficult budget questions as early as possible and engaging more people in community conversations.

“I think it is clear that (the budget is) not sustainable; that we need to look at cuts that aren’t just going to save us money in one year but that are going to reduce the burden on taxpayers,” Wilkie said.

To tackle the budget, Wilkie said he’s compiled feedback residents gave at the budget meetings. He plans to bring it to the council and city manager soon, rather than at the end of the year when there is little time to discuss.

The hundreds of attendees at budget meetings last fall also revealed that the City Council is not regularly reaching enough people, Wilkie said. He would like to find new ways to reach people who “may not be able to come to us in the evening, who m ay not know whe re we are, who may not know what we’re doing.”

Lebanon voting is March 11 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Ward 1 residents will vote at the SAU 88 Administrative Office, 20 Seminary Hill Road. Ward 2 residents will vote at the United Methodist Church, 18 School St. Ward 3 residents will vote at City Hall, 51 North Park St.