Hot Air

Welcome back!

This week Sudbury’s youth returned to local saunas school. It’s a short week full of new experiences for many students, and a week full of big feelings for parents.

But it’s also a huge shift in the community. Family routines change, parents have to adapt their work schedules again, and those quiet August evenings turn into furious bedtime negotiations.

Here’s what we have for you this week:

1. Select Board Allocates ARPA Money for HVAC Project

2. Election Day is Sept. 3, Vote at Fairbank

3. The Blessing Barn Thrift Store Opens Sudbury Location

4. Airsoft Pistol Incident at Curtis Middle School

5. Park and Rec Sets Sights On New Basketball Court and Pavilion

6. Town Manager Calls For Fiscal Discipline

Let’s get into it!

Select Board Allocates ARPA Money for HVAC Project

By Kevin LaHaise

A weeks-long cliffhanger came to an end on Tuesday night when the Select Board voted 5-0 in favor of allocating $100,000 of American Rescue Plan Acts funds for a schools HVAC project that will replace the internal components of HVAC units on the roofs of Ephraim Curtis Middle School and Josiah Haynes Elementary School. There are two pieces to the project. The “base bid” replaces the HVAC internals. The “add-alternate”, which this allocation funded, is a control system for the updated HVAC units.

The allocation was the final piece needed in a patchwork of funding sources to keep the project moving forward. It had stalled after the base bid came in over budget, and then the project team learned that the bid’s add-alternate for a new control system was actually required. Those controls were priced at $223,000. According to Sudbury Public Schools (SPS) Superintendent, Brad Crozier, they are funding them with $100,000 in ARPA funds, $80,000 from the Town’s budget for school maintenance, and $43,450 from the SPS Building Use Revolving fund. (2:15:10)

The news will likely be well received by parents who heard about uncomfortably warm temperatures in various buildings after students returned to school on Wednesday, but it’s unlikely that the work is completed before average daily temperatures drop.

The discussions about this project may not be over. During the Select Board meeting Town staff and Superintendent Brad Crozier were unable to identify all the sources of funds they pulled together to cover the base-bid funding shortfall.

Member Janie Dretler pressed for a full accounting of the funding sources for the full project, not just the controls. She wanted to know how they closed the funding gap on the base bid as well as the control system add-alternate. Superintendent Crozier could only provide an accounting of the funding sources for the controls add-alternate. Dretler was not satisfied, and indicated that while she would likely end up supporting the allocation, she wanted full transparency and clarity on where the money was coming from.

A long silence ensued after she concluded her initial questions and remarks, until Member Charlie Russo added “The silence is deafening.” (2:19:00)

After Chair Jennifer Roberts asked a question about the original appropriations from Town Meeting and Combined Facilities Director Duran began to answer, Vice Chair Dan Carty jumped in and tried to focus the discussion on the control system add-alternate. “What’s really a question here is the controls, right? There was this add alternate that is now a requirement, so how much is that?” (2:22:10)

Duran responded that it was $223,450 for the controls. Carty added: “Okay, so let’s focus on that.”

Dretler jumped back in to press for direct and specific answers on the funding for the full project, and eventually unearthed that SPS was using unspent funds from other projects funded by the prior Town Meeting articles to close the gap on the base bid. Basically — portions of the work funded by the articles came in under the estimated budget, but nobody could say which pieces of the work or by how much.

Superintendent Crozier explained that he was unprepared to discuss the nearly $1 million main portion of the $1.2M project:

“As we completed those other projects that were listed in those warrants they came in under. I don’t have those exact numbers. Had I known that was going to be a topic for tonight, I thought we were only talking about the controls tonight, so we wanted to make sure that we had the calculations and that’s why did the presentation the way we did to explain how we could close the gap for the controls.”

Dretler lamented the incomplete information:

Later in the discussion, Member Russo commented: “It seems like we’re painted into a corner on this, which is a very frustrating place to be.” (2:31:50)

Russo, along with Member Lisa Kouchakdjian, voiced support for a full accounting of the funding when they made their comments. Russo also suggested that the motion include language that requires SPS to return any unspent funds from the project to the Town first. He eventually went on to make the motion for the board. The board voted unanimously in the affirmative to allocate the $100,000, and for any unused funds to come back to the Town first, then they moved on to other business.

Election Day is Sept. 3, Vote at Fairbank

By the League of Women Voters of Sudbury

The state primary Election Day is Tuesday, Sept. 3, the day after Labor Day. You can find information about who is on the ballot here, view a candidates’ forum for the Democratic candidates for Governor’s Council here and watch an informational forum explaining what the Governor’s Council is and does here.

Voters in all six precincts in Sudbury will vote at the Fairbank Community Center on Election Day. Previously, precincts 4 and 6 have voted at Town Hall. The polls on Election Day will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

If you have received a mail ballot, be sure to return it in time for it to be received in the town clerk’s office by 8 p.m. on Election Day. You must sign the yellow envelope, or the ballot will be rejected. You can verify that your ballot has been received at www.TrackMyBallotMA.com.

You can drop it in the ballot dropbox behind Town Hall, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is too late to mail a ballot and be sure it will arrive in time, especially with the Labor Day holiday. You cannot leave a mail ballot at the polling place at Fairbank Community Center.

Answers to frequently-asked questions about voting are here.

The Blessing Barn Thrift Store Opens Sudbury Location

By Kevin LaHaise

The Blessing Barn, which operates multiple thrift stores in Massachusetts, has closed its Beacon Hill location and moved to an expanded location at 348 Boston Post Road in Sudbury. According to their Facebook page, they opened on Saturday, August 24. They sell antiques and thrift goods.

A representative of the store told Sudbury Weekly:

Read the full story on SudburyWeekly.com 

Airsoft Pistol Incident At Curtis Middle School

By Kevin LaHaise

The Sudbury Police Department was called in to investigate an incident involving an airsoft pistol at the Ephraim Curtis Middle School on Wednesday. According to an email from school principal Jeff Mela:

According to Wikipedia, airsoft is “a team-based shooting game in which participants eliminate opposing players out of play by shooting them with spherical plastic projectiles shot from airsoft guns.” The game originated in Japan, and has grown in popularity in the United States. The small plastic pellets can leave small bruises or welts, but don’t typically cause significant injury.

One of the primary safety concerns is eye injuries, which can be much more significant than a welt on skin. And while the small pellets may not generally cause major injury, the guns themselves are often described as “look-alikes” for real guns. That can cause alarm, particularly in a school setting, and it has also created dangerous situations for police throughout the country.

No other details were shared in the message, which concluded: “The safety and well-being of our students and staff are our highest priorities. We appreciate your partnership and please continue to let us know about anything that could potentially be unsafe.”

Park and Rec Sets Sights On New Basketball Court and Pavilion

By Kevin LaHaise

After much discussion on Monday with Combined Facilities Director Sandra Duran, the Park and Recreation Commission voted to proceed with an application for Community Preservation Act funding that would allow them to develop a comprehensive plan for the Haskell Field and Fairbank Community Center parcels. As part of the application, they voted to include early action items for adding a second lighted basketball court and a pavilion near the recently-completed outdoor multi-sport court at the Fairbank Community Center.

The comprehensive plan would largely be focused on identifying other amenities that are needed at Haskell Field and at the community center. Amenities are not being evaluated in the separate Fields Needs Assessment project.

The basketball court would revive a previously-planned second court on the property, which was cut during the value engineering process of the new community center.

Commissioners voiced frustration that they went along with painful cuts during the value engineering process under the expectation they would have the support to add them back at a later date. They felt it has instead been an uphill battle to gain support to add back some of the key features.

The pavilion would serve the summer camp run by the Park and Recreation department, while also creating new opportunities for other programs and casual resident use. The summer camp program is a major revenue generator for the department, though numbers have been down a bit in recent years.

Applications are due to the Community Preservation Committee by Friday, September 6 and will go through some vetting and refinement with the Planning Department before the committee meets to review them.

Town Manager Calls For Fiscal Discipline

By Kevin LaHaise

On Tuesday, Town Manager Andy Sheehan provided an update on one of his major goals to “develop a long-term comprehensive plan to fund and manage the operating and capital budgets.” (Presentation here)

Time was short as the meeting was running late into the evening, so there was not a lot of discussion after the presentation. The board agreed to continue discussion at a later date. But the presentation revealed the tentpoles of the plan that Sheehan is building with Town staff.

Sheehan opened the presentation by setting the stage. He walked the board through the revenues and expenditures, then plainly stated that Sudbury has high taxes. “We’ve got high taxes here. There’s no getting around that.”

He emphasized that the average single family tax bill is in the top 17 in the state. “There are only 17 communities in Massachusetts that have an average single family tax bill above $15,000 and we are one of them.” As a result, he called for a more disciplined approach to the budget, making tough choices and defending them, and he also called out that an override may still become necessary in the future if the town wanted to avoid cuts to certain services.

From there, the framework of his plan began to take shape with a series of recommendations.

For first steps, Sheehan recommended that they look to maximize all revenue sources other than property taxes, including referencing the Municipal Empowerment Act.

From there, a series of cost-cutting measures like automating, outsourcing, privatizing and regionalizing functions wherever possible and appropriate. Next, he called for utilizing enterprise funds like is done in the Park and Recreation department. That basically makes certain operations function similar to a business where they fund themselves with the revenue their programming brings in.

The catch? He recommended that enterprise funds should not get subsidized by the general fund like is currently done with Park and Recreation. That’s going to be tough news for the Park and Recreation Commission, as they have been calling for more support from the Town.

The recommendations got a bit further into the municipal weeds from there:

There were a couple prevailing themes in the presentation. The first was a goal to get more maintenance work out of the capital budget and into the operating budget. That has been a longtime challenge in Sudbury, as evidenced earlier in the meeting when the Board discussed the schools HVAC project.

The second theme was policy, process and procedure. Challenges associated with the existing capital process, and adherence to it, have been on display in recent years. Sheehan also called for evaluating processes used for Town Meeting, which can have significant impact on the budget.

One recent example here is when the Goodnow Library Trustees submitted an article for the 2024 Annual Town Meeting to fund electric vehicle charging stations after the Library Director’s funding request didn’t make the cut during the Town’s capital process.

While the project didn’t make the cut during the capital process, the Town found other funding sources for the project to go forward before Town Meeting. But the Trustees went forward with the article anyway. The explanation provided was that the money could fund the project in the event its existing funding sources fell though. That article was unceremoniously booted out of Town Meeting with a decisive vote to indefinitely postpone, but it highlighted how maneuvers in and around Town Meeting have the potential to significantly impact, or possibly undermine, strategically developed plans for both the operating and capital budgets. (Article 28 and 4:30)

Sheehan’s broader message on Tuesday was that cooler heads need to prevail in order to build a sustainable budget, that it will take time, and collective discipline was a necessary component for success.

Members of the Select Board voiced a desire to see more details in future discussions, but appreciated the framework of the plan, and indicated that there was much work to be done in the years ahead.

Parting Thoughts

Next week is an interesting week. The State primary is on Tuesday, of course. But the Community Preservation Committee meets on Wednesday, and that might prove to be the week’s main event. That committee has been through a bit of a reshuffling of its membership recently, and their agenda includes a review of their financials, which sets the stage for the application review season ahead.

The Select Board still has a chance to steal the thunder on Thursday night when they meet for their annual goal setting. What kind of goals will they set? And what does the final list tell us about the town we all live in?

Perhaps the better approach is to think about them as aspirations. Aspirations cause less problems than goals when reality sets in. I started 2024 with an aspiration to lose 20 pounds, and I still have an aspiration to lose 20 pounds. Isn’t it just more pleasant to have aspirations? You’re supposed to “meet” your goals, but aspirations merely need to exist and I can feel good about my aspirations while I warm up some pulled pork.

Anyway, the Select Board is going to set some goals next week, and then they’ll spend the ensuing 12 months bludgeoning each other with the goals in increasingly inventive ways. It’s sort of like when people say “well, this is in the Town Master Plan, so we should be doing it!” (Pro tip: it’s really a “Master Aspiration")

Set goals. Weaponize goals. Rinse. Repeat.

Onward!