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The Sudbury Select Board’s Liberty Ledge/Sewataro Subcommittee was dissolved during a February 3 meeting of the board.
Member Radha Gargeya waded into a tense discussion with a motion to accept the report of the subcommittee in its current form, and dissolve the committee immediately. Gargeya voiced his appreciation for the work of the committee and reiterated that if he had sought to gather the information himself, he wouldn’t have found anything close to the amount of information that subcommittee members Janie Dretler and Dan Carty had already amassed in the draft report.
The members of the subcommittee have the most history with the Sewataro property, as they are the only two members of the current board who were serving at the time of the land acquisition and license agreement with a camp operator in 2019.
The vote to dissolve the subcommittee was three in favor and two opposed. Members Dan Carty and Charlie Russo, who initially opposed the creation of the subcommittee last month, voted against dissolving the subcommittee. Carty expressed that he didn’t think the report was anywhere close to finished, and Russo questioned the utility of the report in its current form, which resembles a table of contents with links to other public documents.
The subcommittee only met twice, but subcommittee chair Janie Dretler showed up to the first meeting with a robust first draft. In the ensuing meeting Carty objected to the process by which documents were shared, and brought those concerns to the full board on Tuesday night. The majority of the board was ultimately not interested in a long debate about process, as Chair Lisa Kouchakdjian guided the board to focus discussion on the contents of the report itself. (Page 88 below)
While the subcommittee is now dissolved, work on the report will continue with the full Select Board. The majority agreed to take it up at their next meeting, and provide an opportunity for all members to submit edits and additions to the document.
The board also discussed a recommendation from Town Manager Andy Sheehan to reduce or eliminate the resident swim program. His memo to the board stated “The program has seen unspectacular use.” It went on to break down the 2025 numbers tracked by the camp operator at the request of the board. “Over the season there were 98 unique swimmers, an average of 5.4 swimmers per day. However, of the 98 swimmers, fifty-eight of them (59% of the season total) swam on a single weekend, the three-day July 4th weekend. On 7 days there were zero swimmers. The remaining 8 days hosted 40 swimmers, or an average of 5 per day.” (Page 115)
Members of the board had mixed opinions about a reduction, elimination or reimagining of the swim offering, but ultimately opted to send Sheehan into negotiations with the camp operator and to return to the board with a recommended amendment to the contract.