Great expectations?

Welcome back!

Things are supposed to settle down after Annual Town Meeting, right?

Here’s what we have for you this week:

1. Reorg-a-palooza: Committees Pick New Leaders

2. Select Board Reflects On Town Meeting

3. Park and Recreation In Peril? Commission Level-Sets Expectations With Financial Reality

4. SudburyWeekly.com News Roundup

5. Draft Housing Production Plan Ruffles More Feathers

6. Energy and Sustainability Committee Pre-Funds Potential Composting Program in Schools

Let’s get into it!

Reorg-a-palooza: Committees Pick New Leaders

By Kevin LaHaise

Most of Sudbury’s boards and committees will “reorganize” after Annual Town Meeting. That generally means choosing their next chair and vice-chair, and for some it means shuffling their liaison assignments. Liaisons are usually individual members of a committee that provide some level of coordination with other relevant boards, committees, or key stakeholders. Chairs typically control the agenda for meetings which gives them a lot of power, while Vice-Chairs have very little power or responsibility beyond those of the rest of the members.

Here are the reorgs we caught this week:

Select Board

The Select Board voted 5-0 to make Jennifer Roberts their Chair. They voted 3-2 to make Dan Carty the next Vice-Chair. Charlie Russo made the motions. Janie Dretler and Lisa Kouchakdjian were the “no” votes on Carty. There was no discussion on the motions and they proceeded immediately to a vote.

Sudbury Public Schools School Committee

Nicole Burnard was voted Chair and Meredith Gerson was voted Vice-Chair. The votes were unanimous.

Lincoln-Sudbury School Committee

Ravi Simon was voted Chair, and Catherine Bitter was voted Vice-Chair. New member Maura Carty was a “no” vote on Simon for Chair, and Kevin Matthews abstained. Matthews abstained on the vote for Bitter to serve as Vice-Chair. All other members voted “yes.” Simon is starting the second year of his first term on the school committee. Though we haven’t been able to confirm it, he might be the first graduate of Lincoln-Sudbury to go on to serve as Chair of the Lincoln-Sudbury School Committee.

Goodnow Library Trustees

This one was quick. Jean Nam was voted to serve as Chair, and Lissa Iwasaki was voted to serve as Vice-Chair.

Select Board Reflects On Town Meeting

By Kevin LaHaise

On Tuesday the Select Board reflected on Annual Town Meeting with Town Moderator, Cate Blake. It has become a bit of a Sudbury tradition to talk about driving higher attendance at Annual Town Meeting immediately after Annual Town Meeting concludes. Some ideas included moving Annual Town Meeting to the weekend, as well as increased promotion with signage ahead of Annual Town Meeting. However, some changes, like changing the day it happens, would require a bylaw change first.

As reported last week, Sudbury’s attendance numbers are generally consistent with other municipalities in Massachusetts. However, many towns are looking at ways to improve participation. Some are studying options, and others, like neighboring Wayland, have advocated for the State to allow remote participation at Town Meetings. The Select Board did not decide on any actions to take on Tuesday, though discussions may continue.

Members Russo, Roberts and Carty raised questions and regrets about how the Town Moderator handled the first motion to amend Article 16 (firearms business zoning) at Annual Town Meeting the week prior. Member Roberts shared feedback from residents who felt Town Meeting was circus-like.

Members also voiced some disappointment that the proponents of the original article (the three-member Select Board majority) weren’t given the opportunity to weigh in on the motion to amend before a vote was called. That eventually led to a question if there was a standard or legally-prescribed process for handling motions to amend articles at Town Meeting. The Town Moderator offered to discuss that with Town Counsel and come back before the board at a later date.

Park and Recreation in Peril?

Commission Level-Sets Expectations with Financial Reality

By Kevin LaHaise

Sudbury’s Park and Recreation department has no shortage of challenges, and according to the Park and Recreation Commission (PRC), residents have been voicing frustration with their access to, and the utilization of, the new community center building in recent weeks. Those challenges were a major focus for the commission on Monday, but almost all of the conversations pointed back to how the department is funded and structured.

The Brass Tacks

The backdrop of the story is equal parts complicated and simple. The department has been operating out of a construction site (the new Fairbank Community Center) for a couple years, and has been facing staffing challenges for even longer. Both challenges would create difficulty for any department, but Park and Recreation is somewhat unique. It’s programs have to be self-sustaining; meaning that they cover the costs of their programs by charging fees rather than paying for them from an appropriated budget. That program revenue doesn’t come in if the facility is closed or they can’t staff programs.

On the staffing side, the department has been operating without an Assistant Director since before Fiscal Year 2020. That position remains unfunded in the Town budget. (Page 6) The Town is also advertising to fill a vacant Program Coordinator position.

Notably, the department has two program coordinator positions, but, as was explained in the meeting, the Town budget pays for half of each salary, and the rest is paid by revenue generated by the department through programs like the Sudbury Summer camps. Other seasonal positions within the department are paid for via the relevant/appropriate enterprise funds, and those funds also pay for two salaries in the Parks and Grounds division of the Department of Public Works, which maintains the fields.

Mara Huston presented the FY25 budget for the department late in the meeting and summed it up quite succinctly:

In terms of the Town budget, Park and Recreation gets approximately $250,000. (Page 75) There’s also another approximately $300K in the budget for the Parks and Grounds division. In total, the park and recreation related funding amounts to less than one-half of one percent of the Town budget.

From a taxpayer perspective, the funding the recreation department receives from the Town budget is modest, and quite consistent in recent years. It is about a fifth of what the Library receives within the Culture and Recreation “cluster.” (Page 73)

By contrast to the approximately $250K the department gets from the Town budget, the Pool Enterprise Fund and Recreation Enterprise Fund are expected to cover nearly $800K in direct and indirect costs in Fiscal Year 2024. (Page 82)

While the financial structure of the department is mildly complicated, the structure itself is reportedly creating much more challenging complications in the day-to-day operation of the department. (More on that below.)

Don’t Forget One-Time Projects!

There are, of course, other ways that money gets spent to benefit the recreation department. That includes capital projects, Community Preservation Act projects like the Feeley Field improvements that are underway, and the tax increase that pays the debt for the new Fairbank Community Center, grants and earmarks, and so on. As a result, the recreation department has a sizable list of projects underway, not just related to the new community center.

On Monday, the Park and Recreation Commission discussed the status of all those projects, which included:

• Fairbank Community Center — It’s open, though still under construction, and expected to be complete in late June.

• Atkinson Pool — Divers were evaluating the pool leak this week, and the major renovation was approved by Town Meeting last week. Bids were initially reviewed by the Permanent Building Committee this week as well.

• SMILE Playground Improvements — They’re hoping to get that done this summer.

• Feeley Field Phase 1 — The contractor has not finished some last-mile work and they’re struggling to get them back out to the site. The major parts of the work are complete.

• Feeley Field Phase 2 — This has not gone out to bid yet.

• Haskell Field Walking Path — They’re meeting with a landscape design contractor soon.

While many of those projects are underway, and commissioners were enthusiastic on Monday, the conversation painted a bleak picture for the department overall. Expectations from the public have increased since the new community center opened, but the department is still hobbled by staffing and financial woes which have largely gone unaddressed for many years. Commissioners worried that the public wasn’t hearing their message over the last few years.

The Source of Funding Matters

Also on Monday, Dennis Mannone, the Director of Parks, Recreation and Aquatics, explained how something as simple as an open gym for pickup basketball requires staffing, but they don’t have the staff to do it, and they would need to design some sort of recreation membership with a fee to fund a new position. But that highlighted another dilemma created by the self-sustaining financial model for department programming: do you hire someone first and just hope that those memberships sell like hotcakes? And how much are you willing to risk in sunk-costs to try something new?

Commissioners discussed how it’s risky to pilot new programs within this model. A newly-added “general expense” budget of $15,000 was cited as a possible funding source to seed a new program by Mannone, but that also has to cover some office expenses. That $15,000 is at least predictable since its in the Town budget, but it doesn’t change how topsy-turvy the revenue has been from programs in recent years.

Expectations, Meet Reality

Some of the reported resident complaints included frustration that room rentals weren’t available, and that certain types of programs were not being offered. Mannone addressed that head-on, stating that, in addition to being short staffed, it’s also difficult to pilot new programs or run existing programs when they know the pool will be closing for a renovation later this year. When the pool closes, they may need to use other spaces creatively for existing programs, or adapt their operation in other ways. And it’s not just a matter of space use; they also discussed how each closure means lost revenue for the department, increasing their financial stress.

Sandra Duran, Sudbury’s Combined Facilities Director, echoed much of what Mannone said, and she emphasized for the public that the facility is still under construction, they need time to “live” in the completed space to determine how best to utilize and operate it, and that the Park and Recreation Department has been the most disrupted by the construction process. She asked the PRC to help get a message out that they need patience from the public as they try to complete the projects and get things running smoothly in the building.

A Tangled Web

Further discussion during the Park and Recreation Commission meeting revealed that the Park and Recreation department maintains the fields at Ephraim Curtis Middle School at no cost to the school, and the school does not pay to use the fields like a youth league might pay to use Feeley Field. It’s just a “loss” on the books of a department that depends on field fee revenue to maintain the fields. But that also raised questions about which departments are covering which expenses, as well as reporting structures.

The maintenance work is done by the Parks and Grounds division of the Department of Public Works. But they don’t report into the Park and Recreation department, and the work they do at the school fields is in service of yet another Town cost center (Sudbury Public Schools). There was also discussion about which department should be covering expenses like bathroom cleaning and repairs at athletic fields. Sometimes the Facilities department covers that type of thing, other times Park and Recreation pays for it.

PRC Chair, Ben Carmel, voiced the frustrations of the commission, highlighting how revenue from field users was paying for salaries in other departments to maintain assets that had little to do with fields:

He went on to add “It’s insane to me that that’s not a Town-funded resource. I don’t even understand how it got here in the first place.”

One thing was quite clear at the end of the conversation: user fees will need to be increased if something doesn’t change. But there’s no specific solution on the table. Mannone mentioned that moving a portion of the Parks and Grounds salaries over to the Town could free up meaningful money for the department, suggesting that even small changes could make a major difference in the services delivered by his department. Doing so may even mitigate some of the upwards pressure on user fees. But they will likely need to engage Town Manager Andy Sheehan to make any meaningful changes; which the commission intended to do following their meeting.

Commissioners, along with Mannone, lamented the idea of raising fees, but ultimately seemed to agree that they might be left with little choice given the challenges facing the department, and the meager funding they feel they get from the Town budget. No decisions were made, and discussions will continue in the months ahead.

SudburyWeekly.com News Roundup

By Kevin LaHaise

Draft Housing Production Plan Ruffles More Feathers

By Kevin LaHaise

Sudbury is in the process of developing a Housing Production Plan (HPP). According to the Town website: “An HPP in Massachusetts is a plan that helps municipalities better understand local housing needs and demand, development constraints and opportunities, and their vision for the future preservation of housing and the creation of new housing opportunities.”

In short, the plan defines a vision for what type of housing should be built in town, and where it should be built.

We previously reported that the Sudbury Housing Trust was underwhelmed by the draft they reviewed. This week, the Council on Aging (CoA) added their concerns about the HPP, specifically with regard to how it addresses housing needs for senior citizens. (39:00)

The primary concern, as voiced by CoA member Jeff Levine, was that the plan didn’t contemplate market-rate housing options for senior citizens. He felt senior citizens were lumped in with a focus on affordable housing. Other members voiced a concern that seniors don’t have sufficient options beyond staying in the homes they’ve been in for years.

CoA members talked at length about their belief that senior citizens should be a priority in Sudbury not only because they are a significant portion of the population, but because their tax dollars contribute to the schools. Members cautioned the group not to pit families with children against seniors, and to focus on advocating for meeting the needs of seniors.

The apparent consensus was that housing options that are more appropriate for seniors, such as units that have first-floor bedrooms and wider doorways for mobility aids, don’t necessarily need to be affordable units. They expressed a desire to see the HPP address both affordable and market-rate options for seniors.

However, there were other aspects of the plan that caught interest, including the results of a survey that went out to residents. The top three responses to a question about where residents would like to see housing created included Route 20, Route 117, and Camp Sewataro. Members felt those responses indicated that Sudbury residents voice support for housing development, but never want it near their own homes.

CoA member, and Sudbury’s State Representative, Carmine Gentile noted that there are 243 parcels owned by the Town of Sudbury, and the HPP only contemplates development on three of them. In a prior Sudbury Housing Trust meeting, which Gentile chairs, members questioned why town-owned land like Camp Sewataro wouldn’t be considered for the HPP. There are already multiple housing units on the Camp Sewataro land, but those units are reserved for the use of the camp operator. The contract also states that the houses may be offered as a year-round “benefit of employment” to Camp Sewataro employees to live in, for which the camp operator may not charge any rent. (Page 2, section 1.2.1)

For next steps, the CoA discussed scheduling a joint meeting with the Sudbury Housing Trust to hold further discussions on the HPP.

Energy and Sustainability Committee Pre-Funds Potential Composting Program In Schools

By Kevin LaHaise

What’s Happening

• Sudbury’s Energy and Sustainability recently discussed a civics project from the 8th grade civics program at Ephraim Curtis Middle School. The project proposes to establish a district-wide composting program.

• As a result of those discussions, the committee voted to fund a two-year pilot of a composting program, not to exceed $30,000. They also voiced an interest in longer-term funding if the results of the pilot are compelling.

• There was much discussion about who should lead such a project and the financial impact. The Sudbury Public Schools school district has not proposed a composting program, but the committee wanted to encourage them with funding.

• There was also discussion about the approach, as food waste can be hauled off-site, or composted on-site. The details of such a program would be left to the school district to decide, if they opt to pursue such a program.

Why It Matters

• To quote the 8th grade civics team: “In Massachusetts alone, organic materials—primarily food scraps—make up over 25% of our waste stream (MassDEP). By implementing composting programs in all Sudbury Public Schools, we can significantly reduce this waste and teach students valuable lessons about sustainability.”

• The civics team also notes: “Food waste contributes to 58% of methane emissions. Importantly, composting not only reduces landfill use but also decreases emissions of harmful greenhouse gases such as methane, which is 25 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide. Further, the rich soil produced from composting can be used in school gardens or donated to local farms.”

Parting Thoughts

Well that’s (mercifully?) all we have for this week. Summer is fast approaching, and the weather is getting awfully pleasant out there. If you’re planning the weekend, or the week ahead, town departments have some compelling programming on the calendar. You might want to check out the Public Works Open House tomorrow, and a play presented by Drug Story Theater, in partnership with the Sudbury Health Department, on Tuesday.

Onward!