Lori Key

Ward 3

1. Why are you running for City Council?
My journey to this decision began in 2024 when the city manager warned residents and businesses about the need to increase our municipal taxes by 12% or more, year over year, for at least the next 4 years.  That meant a municipal tax increase of over 50% by the end of 2028. Over the past year, I’ve been reaching out to my fellow residents, as a founding member of the non-partisan Lebanon Residents Tax Coalition. I’ve witnessed the anxiety of homeowners who fear they are being priced out of Lebanon. Much more action needs to come from our Council to change the course of unsustainable property tax increases. Our residents deserve better and that will only come with a slate of new councilors who have the courage to look for solutions that work for everyone.

2. What skills and experiences would you bring to the position?
I worked at Dartmouth Hitchcock for 41 years as a Registered Nurse and during that time I earned a master’s in business administration and joined the leadership team.  I have direct experience in all facets of running a large department, (including budgeting, resource allocation, strategic planning, measuring and monitoring program effectiveness and efficiency, and people management) within the context of NH’s largest employer. Most importantly, after months of attempting to work collaboratively with the City Council to stand up a Finance Advisory Committee, as a means to provide councilors financial insights/guidance. We got as far as developing a proposal, but when the effort stalled, I led a binding ballot initiative in the fall of 2025 to amend the Lebanon city code to adopt a Finance Advisory Committee. I served as the Petitioner Committee Chairperson and coordinated the effort to gather the required 818 signatures from registered voters to move the ballot initiative forward. We gathered almost 1100 signatures and the Lebanon Council ultimately decided to move to adopt the Committee. This experience provided me with the opportunity to speak to hundreds of Lebanon residents about their concerns and values. This serves as an example of how I will use my experiences, abilities, and resolve to work collaboratively to find solutions to our problems and to maintain the socioeconomic diversity of our community. 

3. What’s one thing you want other people to know about you?
I consider myself an independent voter who strongly believes in fiscal accountability and social progress

4. What are your top 2 priorities that you want to address if you win?
1. Achieve a sustainable budget by establishing an aggressive general fund budget goal that refocuses budgets on meeting the needs of our residents and recognizes the constraints of our local economy and aligns with the reality of our taxpayer’s ability to pay.
2. Direct the Council’s focus on re-evaluating the 2012 Master Plan, then developing a strategy that supports actions and solutions to our problems that fairly balance the safety, social, and fiscal realities of our community.

5. Lebanon, like many other cities, is facing challenges with rising property taxes. If the city were required to reduce spending, which service or program would you consider for reduction first? Which should be protected most strongly from cuts?
There are actually two ways to address our property tax problem: address spending and non-property tax revenues. The solution will be in balancing both. I don’t believe we necessarily need to cut any service or program. I’ve been working with experts in municipal budgets over this past year as part of my work on the Finance Advisory Committee proposal and this committee will bring new insights to the Council. When benchmarking our budget with other similar municipalities, we seem top heavy and some of the revenues we generate from regional services are not covering our costs. We must think about innovative solutions, including rethinking how our relationship between the city and Dartmouth Health and Dartmouth College can become win/win. We simply cannot expect taxpayers to continue carrying the water for these very large non-profits.

6. Lebanon is home to residents from widely varying economic, generational, and cultural backgrounds. Please share a few ideas for how to make Lebanon a place where these residents can thrive.
What makes Lebanon special today is our diversity and I hope to keep this as part of what binds us together. During a discussion on the Budget Cap initiative at a recent Council meeting, one Councilor spoke about many people wanting to live in Lebanon, and that Lebanon will always draw in people who have the means to pay the taxes. Really? What worries me is that if we don’t address our financial health now, we will become a community of well-paid professionals.

7. What’s the best way for voters to reach you?
lori@lorikeylebanon.com