In April 2017, the Selectboard chartered the Lyme Community Development Committee (initially named the Lyme Economic Development Committee). Their charge was to gather baseline data and to consider the tax impact of various kinds of development in Lyme.
The LCDC privately raised $15,000 to retain a consultant. In the summer of 2018, along with members of the Planning Board, the LCDC worked with Resilience Planning of Plymouth NH to produce the attached report. The major conclusions:
* There is no “magic bullet”. That is, there are no likely kinds of development that will dramatically decrease our taxes.
* On the other hand, neither does any development cause the tax rate to get worse (higher). In fact, all the forms of development considered by the consultant lead to a small to modest decrease in tax rates, even considering any increase in school attendance.
We plan to hold our first public forum on Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 7:00pm in the Lyme School gymnasium to review the findings of the consultants. (There will be additional forums in February, at different times and days of the week.) We expect to use these forums as the beginning of a conversation about what Lyme would like to do regarding development.
Please plan to attend this forum. For more information see public forum information on web site and go to this link: Resilience Planning Report at https://www.lymenh.