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Welcome back!

We have a tidy little edition for you this week:

1. Election Day Is Monday

2. Sudbury Announces Massive Earth Day Event

3. Opposition Mounts Against Parkinson Field Driveway Project

4. SudburyWeekly.com News Roundup

Let’s get into it!

Election Day is Monday

By the League of Women Voters of Sudbury

Sudbury’s annual town election is Monday, March 25. There are two contested races in the election, for Select Board and Sudbury School Committee (SPS grades preK-8). There are no ballot questions this election.

Polls are open Monday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Precincts 1, 2, 3 and 5 vote at Fairbank Community Center; precincts 4 and 6 vote at Town Hall. To find your precinct, visit www.VoteInMA.com and click on“Find My Polling Place.”Here is a specimen ballot.

If you are voting by mail ballot, be sure to sign the yellow envelope containing your ballot. Ballots without a signature will not be counted.

It is too late to return your ballot by the U.S. Postal Service and guarantee it will arrive on time. Instead, deposit your ballot in the ballot dropbox behind Town Hall, 322 Concord Rd. The dropbox is available 24/7 until 8 p.m. on Election Day, March 25. You cannot return a mail ballot to a polling place on Election Day; use the ballot dropbox behind Town Hall.

If you have already mailed your ballot, visit www.VoteInMA.com and click “Track My Mail-In Ballot” to track your ballot.

For additional information on voting, check the League’s FAQs.

The Voters’ Guide, available on www.lwvsudbury.org, includes links to the candidate forums, as well as basic information about each candidate including their website, social media links, and a brief statement to the community. 

The League’s Candidates’ Forum for the contested race for Sudbury School Committee is available on SudburyTV’s video-on-demand service, along with a Candidates’ Forum featuring candidates in uncontested races.

Sudbury Announces Massive Earth Day Event

By Kevin LaHaise

The Town of Sudbury announced a sprawling Earth Day event that is slated for April 20. The event will be held throughout Sudbury’s historic town center with participation from an exhaustive list of community organizations, nonprofits, local businesses and Town departments. Here’s the flyer that was published by the Town:

There will be demonstrations, activities, a farmers market, live alpacas and more. The event stretches from Noyes Elementary school to Town Hall, the Sudbury History Center and Museum, Grange Hall, the Hosmer House and First Parish Church. While the Town website already lists an enormous number of participants, it indicated that more will be announced soon, and there’s a vendor/exhibitor sign up form still taking applications.

According to the Town website, the town is inviting exhibitors who share a mission to promote sustainability. As previously reported, Sudbury has been prioritizing sustainability initiatives in recent years. That work includes the successful pursuit of grant funding for sustainability projects, multiple community outreach initiatives, and greater focus on sustainable approaches for Town construction, renovation and maintenance projects. The Earth Day event appears to be one of the largest sustainability-focused community outreach initiatives from the Town to-date.

Coinciding with the Earth Day event, Sudbury is also holding its annual Roadside Cleanup Day on April 20. Residents can sign up for a road or area to clean up on the town website here. Residents just need to sign up, clean up, and follow the instructions for DPW to pick up the bagged litter they collected.

Fair warning: this is the week of the year when you see bags of trash piled neatly on the side of the road as DPW works to go around and pick them up. Rest assured, a band of rampant litterers have not descended upon the shire to disrupt your sense of bucolic bliss.

Opposition Mounts Against Parkinson Field Driveway Project

By Kevin LaHaise

The Community Preservation Committee (CPC) recently voted to support a project that would study and design an improved, wider driveway for Parkinson Field, as it is currently one lane in and out. Once it had their support, they submitted an article for the warrant for Annual Town Meeting.

Projects that apply to the CPC go through a fairly rigorous vetting process and, if approved, draw on a specific funding source (Community Preservation Act revenues and reserves) that can only be used for specific types of projects. However, they still need to make it through Town Meeting. The original CPC application is here, but please note the project details evolved over the course of the CPC meetings, and resulted in the final article you can review on page 60 here.

While the project got support from the Community Preservation Committee, more recently the Capital Improvement Advisory Committee (CIAC) and the Finance Committee voted not to recommend approval of the article to Town Meeting. The CIAC voted against the article, 2-4. The Finance Committee voted against it 2-5.

Some residents may be unfamiliar with Parkinson Field, as it is tucked behind Ti Sales on Hudson Road, near the intersection with Peakham Road. It is used regularly for ultimate frisbee, but other sports are played there according to comments in various committee meetings. Notably, the field is also an access point for the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail.

Here’s the parcel, with the itty bitty driveway at the south side of the parcel, outlined in yellow:

And here is the satellite view:

The proposed project, according to the warrant article, would primarily seek to evaluate and design a wider driveway at a cost of no more than $100,000:

Deliberation among the Capital Improvement Advisory Committee and the Finance Committee was not contentious, but the votes were not unanimous either, and a range of perspectives have been voiced by various committee members. Support for the article seemed to center on the inadequacy of the current driveway and the imminent opening of the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail, while opposition pointed to the need for a broader, long-term plan for fields across Sudbury. More specifically, the Town is expected to begin an Open Space and Recreation Plan and a Field Needs Assessment, both of which were part of a CPC article that passed at a prior town meeting. Again, perspectives varied rather dramatically across committees and members.

While the Firearms Safety Business Use Bylaw and MBTA Communities compliance are expected to be the hot button issues at Annual Town Meeting, it appears the Parkinson Field driveway could be in the running stir up some debate as well.

Capital Improvement Advisory Committee deliberation at 10:00.

Finance Committee deliberation at 1:21:00.

SudburyWeekly.com News Roundup

Here’s what’s on the site this week:

Parting Thoughts

Come on. Admit it. You were expecting a bombshell report about the Town Election, weren’t you?

In truth, we just don’t package news like that. When there’s an important story that pops up, we cover it as thoroughly as we can, as fairly as we can, and as soon as we can. Keep an eye on the new website for any late-breaking developments over the weekend, and coverage of the results of the election early next week.

Whatever stories are making their way around Sudbury right now, the Town election season is drawing to a close. Pretty soon, the only story that will matter is the story residents write about Sudbury’s future by casting their votes.

What story will you tell?

Onward!