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What's old is new again
Welcome back!
Apparently it’s just going to be 75 degrees and sunny for the rest of the year. You won’t hear any complaints about that here, but it’s definitely starting to feel strange.
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We’re going to mix things up a bit this week because we published a ton of stories on the website throughout the week. Rather than scrolling through the full text of every story, you can scroll through short summaries of most of them, and then click to read the full stories on the site. Everybody’s thumb gets the week off, and we can all stave off carpel tunnel a little longer…
Here’s what we have for you this week:
Sheehan Keeps Union Contract Hot Streak Rolling
Zoning Board Gets Input on Firearm Zoning Bylaw
Voting Information for the Home Stretch
Lincoln-Sudbury Drops To 36 In Boston Magazine Rankings
Events!
Sudbury Plaza Celebrates Fresh New Facade
Major Softball Fields Project Put On Pause
LS Athletics: Warriors Review and Weekly Events
Let’s get into it!
Sheehan Keeps Union Contract Hot Streak Rolling
By Kevin LaHaise
Sudbury Town Manager Andy Sheehan is building a reputation for speedy completion of contract negotiations with the Town’s union groups. With all union contracts up for negotiation this year, he has already reached agreements with the Supervisory Association and the DPW union.
Today, the Select Board meeting agenda announced an agreement has been reached with the Sudbury Police Sergeants and Sudbury Police Lieutenants.
Zoning Board Gets Input on Firearm Zoning Bylaw
By Kevin LaHaise
Is the third try the charm in Sudbury’s effort to enact zoning rules for firearms businesses?
The Sudbury Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) held a public input session on Monday, October 21 at the Goodnow Library. The session was conducted in a hybrid setup, with public joining in-person and remotely via Zoom.
To kick things off, member Frank Riepe explained the current draft bylaw to the audience. Riepe has been working with a citizens group, referred to as an “ad-hoc committee,” to develop a new approach to a firearms business zoning bylaw after the Select Board’s effort narrowly failed at Sudbury’s Annual Town Meeting in May of 2024.
Voting Information for the Home Stretch
By the League of Women Voters of Sudbury
Tomorrow—Saturday, Oct. 26—is the deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 5 Presidential election. Register online at www.VoteinMa.com before midnight or at the Town Clerk’s office in Town Hall, 322 Concord Road, by 5 p.m.
You have one more week to vote early in person, until noon on Friday, Nov. 1. In-person early voting for all six Sudbury precincts is at Town Hall. Check here for hours.
If you plan to vote by mail, you should mail your ballot by U.S. Postal Service this coming week to be sure it arrives in time. Ballots sent via the postal service must be postmarked on or before Nov. 5 and must be received in the Clerk’s office by 5 p.m. Nov. 8. To be sure your ballot arrives on time, you can put it in the ballot dropbox behind Town Hall, which is available 24/7. Voters can track their mail ballots at www.TrackMyBallotMA.com. Be sure to sign the yellow ballot envelope; envelopes without signatures will not be accepted.
Want to see what the ballot looks like? Check out a specimen ballot. The five ballot questions continue on the back of the ballot, so be sure to turn it over when you are voting.
Take a look at the League’s Candidates’ Forum for the 13th Middlesex District state representative seat. Carmine Gentile, the Democratic incumbent, and Virginia Gardner, the Republican challenger, answered questions for an hour.
The forum will run on SudburyTV cable channels Comcast 22 and Verizon 30 and high-definition channels Comcast 1074 and Verizon 2130 repeatedly until the Nov. 5 election, and is available on demand at sudburytv.org. You do not have to be a cable subscriber to view the on-demand version on your computer. The video-on-demand program is indexed so viewers can click on a specific question.
SudburyTV is also airing a forum on the five ballot questions produced by the League of Women Voters of Concord-Carlisle.
Election information and candidate responses to a League questionnaire are available at the League’s online voters’ guide, www.Vote411.org. For additional voting information, visit the Town Clerk’s website or the League’s website.
Lincoln-Sudbury Drops To 36 In Boston Magazine Rankings
By Kevin LaHaise
The Boston Magazine high school rankings are in, and Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School has dropped from number 9 in 2023 to number 36 in 2024. The precipitous fall is dramatic at first glance, but a review of the underlying data used by Boston Magazine raises more questions than it answers.
Events!
Sudbury Plaza Celebrates Fresh New Facade
By Kevin LaHaise
Sudbury Plaza has a new look thanks to an expansive revitalization effort that introduced new art, signage, landscaping and materials.
Major Softball Fields Project Put On Pause
By Kevin LaHaise
Phase two of the Feeley Field improvement project has been put on pause by the Sudbury Park and Recreation Department. The first phase of the project has largely been completed according to Park and Recreation Director Dennis Mannone, but the larger second phase will be paused until the completion of a town-wide fields needs assessment.
LS Athletics: Warriors Review and Weekly Events
Submitted by the Lincoln-Sudbury Athletics Department
Thank you to everyone who came out to support the Warriors in Unified Basketball Wednesday. The gym was packed and the atmosphere was electric!
Congrats to the LS Golf Team on their 4th Place Finish at D1 Sectionals
Parting Thoughts
It’s difficult to ignore the sense of déjà vu in recent months. Many of the major stories in Sudbury feel like they’ve happened before. But have they?
We know Sudbury is on its second formal iteration of a proposed firearms business zoning bylaw. But maybe that’s just how it goes with these firearms bylaws that are popping up across the state? Westford just failed to pass a similar bylaw. It was not their first attempt.
Following a 2020 review of Sudbury’s capital improvement program by the Division of Local Services (DLS), this week the Select Board authorized Town Manager Andy Sheehan to request a broader, more comprehensive review of the Town’s overall financial management from DLS. Okay - the review is broader this time, but the underlying discussion is similar… it all sounds like the same definition argument for the term “fiscal discipline.”
Sudbury’s proclivity for ye olde “rinse and repeat” seems to stretch into all areas of municipal business, large and small. As previously covered here, the Select Board’s goals for the year are largely the same as last year’s goals.
But some of the repetition traces back decades.
That duplex project everyone has been talking about in the Pine Lakes neighborhood? It isn’t the first time the Sudbury Housing Authority (SHA) has proposed to convert four of their single family units into duplexes. They got Community Preservation Act funds, among other funding sources, for four duplex rebuilds back at Town Meeting in 2008 (page 57), and they completed the project in 2012. In 2009, the SHA issued a fact sheet about the project, and just last week the SHA issued an FAQ document that references the prior project.
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In that same 2008 Town Meeting, the town voted to approve the acquisition of the CSX corridor, which is known today as the next phase of the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail. The acquisition didn’t happen after that article passed. But it came back before Town Meeting a second time, roughly a decade later. It passed and the acquisition eventually closed.
Remember when controversy bubbled up around a plan to diversify the housing inventory in Sudbury? No we’re not talking about a couple weeks ago. We’re talking about 1978, when a Town Meeting voted down a proposal to create an “Open Space Residential District” that might have spurred development of different housing options for a variety of income levels. (PDF reader page 112). The Board of Health raised concerns about large-scale septic systems needed to support denser, mixed housing during the meeting.
Nearly 50 years later, wastewater issues have cropped up following one of the most contentious housing conflicts in the Town’s history. On Thursday, the Board of Health discussed an influx of accessory dwelling unit applications following the passage of a recent State law that tries to address the housing crisis. The big concern for Sudbury’s Health Department? Septic systems once again.
Affordability was a major topic back in 1978. Here’s a quote from a resident at that meeting, which sounds conspicuously like something you might hear at a Town Meeting today:
“Almost exactly ten years ago, there was a feeling expressed by many people at a public meeting in Town that the rising cost of housing in Sudbury was preventing people of moderate and low income from finding housing here and forcing an even greater number of Sudbury citizens to leave the Town because they could no longer afford to remain.”
Some of the repetitiveness is certainly driven by the cyclical nature of municipal government. There’s an Annual Town Meeting, a defined fiscal year, and the work generally falls into a predictable schedule with recurring topics. But you can pick a random year of the Town Proceedings and find a Town Meeting article that is eerily reminiscent of issues the Town is dealing with today.
The oldest Town Proceedings document published on the current website is from 1950. In a Town meeting that year, they discussed a bylaw change that would ban the discharge of firearms on all Town-owned property, and on private property without the consent of the owner. It failed. But a similar article came up again, and failed again, via citizen petition in 2013. (PDF reader page 71)
In that same 1950 meeting, they discussed bylaw updates to regulate the location of accessory buildings on single family properties. Get this: last week the Planning Board discussed bylaw updates to regulate accessory dwelling units (ADU’s). (1:03:00) You’ll likely be seeing a Town Meeting article about this in the near future.
Any guesses what the final warrant article was all about at that 1950 Town Meeting?
Opposition to a high-voltage transmission line proposed by the Boston Edison Company. (Page 22)
1950 Town Proceedings
Sound familiar?
Sudbury, like many surrounding towns, is a community that values its history. It also seems to have a unique way of reliving its history.
Onward!