If the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center hopes to add 466,000 square feet to its Route 120 facilities, the hospital may have to pay for an expensive study of its regional impact and the effects of the proposed expansion.
The Lebanon planning board is considering asking DHMC to pay for the study, which a consulting firm hired by the city estimated as costing between $49,000 and $73,000.
City Planner Ken Niemczyk said the city intends to have DHMC pay for the study.
On Friday, the DHMC board was presented with a seven-page letter from the consulting firm that outlined areas of fiscal impact and possible mitigation steps that the study should address.
The letter cited areas in DHMC's plans that were not investigated, such as the cost of possibly increasing the city's police force, greater school enrollment and the strain an expansion would put on other municipal services.
How the expansion would affect future development along Route 120 should also be studied, the letter said.
"As a precursor to evaluating DHMC's expansion proposal, it is first necessary to understand the impacts of the institution's existing operations on the city and possibly, the surrounding region," Gary Mongeon, vice president of RKG Associates, wrote.
DHMC is undergoing review for the proposed $224 million project, but must receive city permission to begin any construction.
Rick Nothnagel, DHMC's vice president of facilities management, expressed concern to the board during the meeting that the consultant's outline did not provide a timeframe for finishing the study.
"This is a very important project. Every month means lots of money for us," he said.
The firm's letter also said that DHMC should evaluate how a major expansion would affect traffic on the Route 120 Corridor.
"The major proposed expansion by DHMC may provide an important impetus to evaluate traffic and capacity issues on the Route 120 Corridor in a more comprehensive manner than has been addressed to date in DHMC's Impact Statement," he wrote.
The board, along with a representative of the consultants, will discuss the study and whether to proceed with it during its September 6 meeting.
"We need to discuss exactly what the contents [of the consultant's letter] suggest," planning board member Ken Morley said at the meeting. "This proposal, in itself, is going to require a lot more meetings before we can agree on what it actually means."
The consulting team "will calculate the net fiscal and economic impact of DHMC's proposed expansion in financial terms, including traffic mitigation costs, net municipal service cost impacts, secondary growth impacts and related factors," Mongeon wrote.
