Snowfall

Welcome back!

2025 is careening towards us, or us towards it. It’s hard to tell these days.

As Rust Cohle infamously said “Time is a flat circle.” If eternal recurrence is a real thing, budget season in Sudbury certainly stands as proof of it.

Here’s what we have for you this week:

1. SPS Gets Assistant Principal Funding, Approves FY26 Budget, Backpedals On Combined Facilities Termination

2. Five Major Positions on Town Election Ballot

3. Select Board Lightning Round

4. SudburyWeekly.com News Roundup

5. Housing Authority Makes Case for Duplexes

Let’s get into it!

SPS Gets Assistant Principal Funding, Approves FY26 Budget, Backpedals On Combined Facilities Termination

By Kevin LaHaise

On December 19 the Sudbury Public Schools (SPS) School Committee was informed by Superintendent Brad Crozier that Town Manager Andy Sheehan was able to provide $120,000 in additional funding for FY26. The additional funding meant SPS could add an assistant principal position that was the top-ranked need that they previously could not fit into their operating budget. Crozier told the committee:

Member Karyn Jones, who had previously advocated for the addition of an assistant principal position, asked if that meant that the assistant principal position would move into the operating budget. Crozier confirmed that it would, and the motion to approve the recommended budget was amended accordingly. Several members expressed their gratitude to the Town Manager and the Superintendent for finding a way to get the revised guidance.

Member Mary Stephens asked a few more questions about the professional development budget line item and questioned if there was a way to adjust it to free up budget to address the large class sizes in the district. The other four members were not interested in entertaining the idea, and eventually the committee voted unanimously to approve the superintendent’s recommended budget as amended with the revised guidance.

Next, Superintendent Crozier offered what appeared to be another unexpected announcement. He recommended continuing with the existing Combined Facilities Department Memorandum of Agreement for another year, with negotiations to continue with the Town in the months ahead:

Members asked a variety of questions about the recommendation, which appeared to be a 180-degree reversal from prior statements made by the Superintendent about the current arrangement for facilities management. That included prior claims that SPS needed a dedicated facility director to handle the facilities workload ahead of it, and other statements about the annual electrical service needs of the district.

The meeting wrapped in under an hour, and was the last meeting of the school committee for this calendar year.

Five Major Positions on Town Election Ballot

By the League of Women Voters of Sudbury

Voters will fill 13 town and school committee seats, including five major positions, in the annual town election Monday, March 31.

According to the Town Clerk's website, on the ballot will be two seats on the Select Board, one seat on the Sudbury School Committee (grades PreK-8), and two seats on the Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School Committee, all for 3-year terms.

The other open positions for the town election are:  Board of Assessors, one 3-year term; Goodnow Library Trustees, two 3-year terms; Board of Health, one 3-year term; Park and Recreation Commission, two 3-year terms; and Planning Board, two 3-year terms.

Nominating papers and packets for the town offices and Sudbury School Committee will be available starting Monday, Jan. 6, at the Town Clerk’s office.  Nominating papers for the Lincoln-Sudbury school committee are available at the high school from the district clerk.  

The deadline to file intentions/take out nomination papers for the town election is Thursday, Feb. 6.  The deadline to return completed nomination papers is Monday, Feb. 10, at the Town Clerk’s Office. Additional information is on the Town Clerk’s website and the League website.

Any registered voter in Sudbury has the right to run. Boards and committees do not choose who may run to join them. You can learn more about your right to run and how to run here on the LWV website.  

A 2024 state League program on campaign finance demystifies the campaign finance filing requirements and process. In the recording, Jason Tait from the Office of Campaign and Political Finance offers tips, tricks, and tools to make campaign finance filings easy. You can find it here.

The 2023 Town Forum on voting and volunteerism in Sudbury offers insights into our local government and opportunities to participate in it. You can watch the recording on SudburyTV here.

Select Board Lightning Round

By Kevin LaHaise

The Select Board met on Tuesday, December 17. It was, mercifully, their last meeting of the calendar year, and they’re not meeting again until mid-January.

Virtually nothing on their agenda was of significant consequence, and no major decisions were made.

Yet somehow the meeting lasted almost four hours. It felt a bit like watching people at those candy shops in Cape Cod making salt water taffy for an eternity, then realizing the flavor they were making for your free sample was “beach plum.” What even is that?

But even if it wasn’t the most consequential meeting, the Select Board had work to do, and they carried out the business of the Town. Here are the key notes from the meeting:

• They will consider a non-binding article/resolution for Annual Town Meeting that would be designed to accelerate the process of getting Sudbury back in-district with a vocational school by signaling Town Meeting’s willingness to support such an effort. Member Kouchakdjian put forward the idea, and while members of the board had hesitations based on cost and the matter being outside of Sudbury’s control, they were willing to entertain the idea at a future meeting. 2:35:40

• They are going to have their Policy Subcommittee work on a remote/hybrid meeting policy. It was described as a largely “aspirational” policy since they can’t require many other boards and committees to meet in a particular format.

• They’re going to tinker with the timeline for the Town Manager’s annual review. No final decisions, but it sounds like they’ll push it out from around April to June each year, after Annual Town Meeting.

• They had another conversation about eliminating the Capital Improvement Advisory Committee (CIAC). This is the second or third preliminary conversation about eliminating that committee. To do so would require a vote at Town Meeting. 1:41:00

• They continue to discuss potential changes to the scheduling of Annual Town Meeting, such as the start time or possibly even the day.

• In a new wrinkle, there was discussion about limiting committee memberships to one committee seat per person, so that an individual couldn’t serve on more than one board or committee. 2:27:55

Housing Authority Makes Case For Duplexes

By Kevin LaHaise

The Sudbury Housing Authority (SHA) was before the Community Preservation Committee (CPC) on Wednesday, December 18. They were looking for the committee to support funding for a portion of a project that would convert four of the SHA’s existing single-family homes into duplexes. As is standard process for the CPC, the meeting was a public hearing for the applicant to present, for committee members to ask questions, and for the public to provide comment.

The presentation from the SHA recapped a lot of information that was already made public by the SHA. The ensuing discussion with the committee focused primarily on the financials and alternatives to the project. There was much discussion about other options the SHA might have for creating affordable units - including building duplexes at other locations around Sudbury. Yet other questions dug into why the SHA wouldn’t just renovate the existing single-family homes for less money.

The response to that line of thinking was three-fold. First, the quote they had received to renovate one of the units so that it could be rented was really for the bare-minimum to make it habitable. In addition, by demolishing the single-family units and building duplexes, the SHA would qualify for state funding and ongoing vouchers that they couldn’t get if they just fixed up the single-family homes. They also added that there has been increasing demand for smaller units. Much of discussion covered ground that was already covered in an FAQ published by the SHA in October.

While the SHA has explored other development opportunities in recent years, including on Nobscot Road and at Frost Farm, some members of the committee and the public appeared to feel that the SHA had not explored all possibilities.

To that point - a significant number of residents from the Pine Lakes neighborhood had joined the meeting to provide public comment. Comments consistently voiced support for the mission of the Sudbury Housing Authority, but strong opposition to this specific project. Commenters questioned the appropriateness of the project for the neighborhood, raised their governance concerns with the SHA, and raised their concerns about fiscal responsibility.

Some drama unfolded late in the meeting when the committee learned that a member of the public had been removed from the Zoom meeting by Town staff. However, the public commenters had also voiced dissatisfaction with the format of the public hearing. The Community Preservation Committee decided the format for the hearing during a prior open meeting. That included a three-minute limit on each public comment and a target of spending 30-minutes in total on each application.

That practice has precedent on other boards and committees in Sudbury, including most recently at the November 25 meeting of the Sudbury Public Schools School Committee. Chair Nicole Burnard announced that public comment would be limited to approximately 15 minutes total, and three minutes per speaker. Burnard concluded public comment before everyone who had signed in to comment got an opportunity to speak, because time had elapsed. (42:40)

The Community Preservation Committee opted to extend the public comment period for the SHA hearing, but only one more member of the public appeared to take the opportunity to comment by raising a virtual hand on Zoom. At the end of that comment, Vice Chair Kirsten Roopenian took a moment and asked for any other hands raised on Zoom, but apparently none were showing as raised, and that concluded the extended public comment period. The committee went back to the SHA for further comment, and continued questions and deliberation with the committee.

While the CPC isn’t showing its cards on any application before them, it is particularly hard to gauge how most members are feeling about the SHA application. Given the vocal opposition from some residents in the Pine Lakes neighborhood, the committee appears to be focused on balancing the desire for public participation and their own previously-stated desire to use a consistent format for all applications.

One twist that emerged on Wednesday was the notion of building more duplexes on other SHA properties in Sudbury that have more land than the Pine Lakes parcels. While there may be many alternatives to the current project proposal, that framing may set up a Sudbury-wide game of “duplex hot potato” between neighborhoods. In addition to recent controversy around the Housing Production Plan, there’s no shortage of housing acrimony for the CPC and the SHA to navigate.

Adjacent to all of this is a recent piece of State legislation that allows accessory dwelling units (ADU) by-right in single-family zoning districts. The Planning Board is working on a bylaw that would try to assert some local control over ADU’s, but in their latest meeting they learned that municipalities may ultimately have very limited control over them. (25:40)

While Sudbury is dominated by single-family homes, it would appear that some increase in density and housing stock diversity is becoming inevitable as the State advances legislation designed to deal with the housing crisis.

As for the CPC, they primarily focus on evaluating if an application is eligible for Community Preservation Act funding. While some residents may not like a project, that doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t qualify for funding. If the CPC recommends a project, Town Meeting still gets to vote the article up or down. The CPC will have to sort through all of that when they deliberate and take their votes next month.

Parting Thoughts

It’s snowing in Sudbury as we polish up this edition — the pretty kind of snow that makes it hard to even notice the cold temperatures. During some storms, Sudbury almost seems like it was designed to be the most beautiful version of itself when it snows. And yet winter gets such a bad rap!

So we’ll wrap up the week with a little Shakespeare:

Onward!