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[Editorial Note: This article ran in three parts during the month of June 2023. We’re publishing it as one complete piece here.]
It has been a decade since Sudbury officially seated a five-member Select Board, back when it was called the Board of Selectmen. The successful campaign to expand from a three-member board to five is sometimes referred to as the “3-5 initiative.” That campaign’s roots trace back beyond the triggering controversy.
The initiative has framed most political debates in Sudbury for the last decade, and its impact went far beyond just changing the composition of the Select Board.
The surface controversy is pretty simple: after the 2012 Town Meeting some Town officials and staff went out for drinks at Lavender restaurant near Shaw’s supermarket. The restaurant stayed open later than it was supposed to and that wasn’t a good look for Selectmen in attendance, because the Select Board is the alcoholic beverage licensing authority for the Town. Patch has the play-by-play here. This incident quickly became known as “LavenderGate.”
In hindsight, it’s hard to discern any sort of substantive link between the events of that evening and the effort to expand the Select Board. It’s an objective stretch to go from a single incident (that was only tangentially related to official municipal business) to a fundamental change to Town government. Nonetheless, the incident was a trigger for an already-organized political faction that had formed strong opinions about everything from tax rates to school budgets, home values, and the commercial tax base. Scroll down to the bottom of this article to see the video pitching support for the expansion initiative.
While the link to the incident at Lavender was coincidental, concerns that the leadership in Sudbury was entrenched had a stronger foundation. At the time John Drobinski and Larry O’Brien had held two of the three seats for more than a decade. Drobinski had served for more than two decades.
Some believe the murder at Lincoln-Sudbury in 2007, the onset of the “Great Recession,” and the rise of the Tea Party movement may have been contributing factors as well. Whatever happened pre-LavenderGate, this organized group of residents was able to leverage the incident to reshape Sudbury politics. That’s not to say their beliefs about what needed to change in Town government weren’t sincerely held. But political change requires organization, and organization requires motivation.
Soon after the events at Lavender, the group focused their outrage on a perceived lack of transparency, accountability and representation, as well as other concerns about the Selectmen. Their center of gravity was established as a Facebook group called “LavenderGate,” which instantly brought social media dynamics into play. Today that may seem quaint, but it was a fairly sophisticated tactic at the time.
The shift to five members succeeded in 2012, and made its way through the State Legislature after that, as is required. By June 2013, Sudbury was holding an election to fill two freshly-minted seats on the Board of Selectmen.
Social Media, Meet Sudbury
It took less than a year after the expansion of the Board for civility in Sudbury to deteriorate to the point of needing top-level intervention. The Boston Globe was actively covering the infighting in town, in part because the comment sections of the local papers were filled with vitriolic anonymous comments in the years preceding the expansion. The anonymous comments were identified as a major problem, because they often went far beyond expression of opinions and came across as character assassination. Eventually anonymous comments were turned off, but the damage was done and a trajectory had been set.
The Sudbury Clergy Association, concerned about the tone of discourse in town, recruited consultants from Harvard to conduct a listening project. The Harvard group issued a report that sized up the political scene in Sudbury and made recommendations on how to improve discourse and civility. That report can be accessed here.
The report dedicated a lot of space to communication channels. Notably, a Facebook group called “One Sudbury,” which still exists today, was cited as problematic. Here’s what the Harvard group had to say:
One Sudbury is really the second name of a single Facebook group. Its first name was “LavenderGate.” That forum was shut down by its creator, Mike Troiano, after the 3-5 initiative succeeded, and members were directed to a new group called “One Sudbury.” But the LavenderGate group had already set the tone and trajectory. The original group was founded on something Americans are far more familiar with today: grievance politics. As the national political climate deteriorated, the origins of One Sudbury became inescapable, even with the name change.
By 2015, the Harvard researchers found that One Sudbury just couldn’t be trusted by a broad enough audience to make it a positive force for civil discourse. The report stated the need for an alternative:
One Sudbury is up and running to this day. Resident opinions on the utility of the forum remain stratified. During the Covid-19 pandemic the forum was overrun with posts and arguments about the virus, vaccines and masking, much like the rest of Facebook. One member of the group was removed by the moderators and went on to grow another Facebook group with a similar purpose, called Sudbury Unmoderated. That forum was described as an effort to give residents a place to speak more freely. Part of the design of the new group was to eliminate the moderators and rules, since it was perceived by some that the moderators of One Sudbury were biased towards one faction’s point of view. That remains a subjective evaluation for any member of the group to make for themselves, but there’s no doubt that in the early days of One Sudbury, members associated with the 3-5 initiative treated it as an organizing venue for their political beliefs, even suggesting before Annual Town Meeting (ATM) the group had a “platform”:
Mike Troiano, the creator of LavenderGate and One Sudbury, linked the Facebook page to support for the initiative, which was covered in Patch:
“I’m incredibly pleased the people of Sudbury chose to make this important change, that they again expressed their desire for more representation, and again called for more transparency and accountability in the decisions made on their behalf,” resident Mike Troiano, who spearheaded the movement last year, said after the election. “Too many citizens to name were involved in the effort to bring about this change, but I’d specifically like to recognize Pat Brown, Joel and Carrie Malo, Chris and Shanti Skiffington, Dan DePompei, John Kohler, Sarah Troiano, Bryan Semple, Bob Haarde, Bob Abrams, Larry Jobson, Scott Nassa, Molly and Steve Logan, Doreen Neale, Siobhan Hullinger, Art and Mara Huston, Joanne and Mark Minassian, Markian Pawluk, Marianne Reardon, Bob Stein, Pepper and Krista Riley, Renata Pomponi and our 900 or so neighbors on the One Sudbury Facebook Group for standing behind this effort from the beginning.”
It’s difficult to parse what’s unique about Sudbury’s social media forums for political discourse compared to any other social media based forum across the web. They all seem to suffer from the same failed dynamics because algorithms incentivize bad behavior in the name of driving “user engagement.”
One thing is for sure: if civility was a local challenge in 2015, the events of 2016 and accelerated polarization since the 2016 Presidential election haven’t helped. Today, Town Managers are grappling with the fallout from social media forums, and struggling mightily to implement communication strategies that preempt grievance politics and misinformation.
Meanwhile On the Select Board
The special election to fill the two new seats, one for two years and one for three, on the Board of Selectman happened on June 25, 2013. Chuck Woodard and Len Simon won, ultimately defeating the candidates supported by the architects of the 3-5 initiative. Notably, Eric Poch withdrew from the race, but not in time to get his name off the ballot. He garnered 356 votes, despite having withdrawn. Some believed that contributed to Todj Gozdeck’s loss to Woodard, who had only prevailed by 27 votes. However, there were 530 “blanks” in that race as well, which could easily have made the difference. Len Simon more handily dispensed with Dan DePompei, winning by 307 votes. The election was widely understood to be a battle between two tickets, with Woodard and Simon aligned with the faction already in power.
Earlier, in the March 2013 regular town election, Selectman Bob Haarde ran unopposed and won reelection. He was broadly understood at the time to be a big supporter of the 3-5 initiative.
The results of the special election might have been perceived as a setback for the faction behind the 3-5 initiative, but soon enough things would change. In 2014 Pat Brown toppled John Drobinski, who had been a Selectman for nearly three decades. Brown, like Haarde, was closely linked to the 3-5 initiative and was, in fact, endorsed by Mike Troiano.
The endorsement noted:
“She and I met during the summer of 2012, gathering signatures for the citizen petition to enlarge the Sudbury Board of Selectmen from three members to five. Pat Brown did the work to figure out how to do that, and to write the petition that did.”
Her campaign also benefited from the swirling fears and controversy regarding a 40B housing development proposed for Johnson Farm on Landham Road. Though the entire Board of Selectmen, including Drobinski, was already working to stop the project and acquire the land (page 14), a prior effort to acquire it had failed and it ultimately was more expensive for the Town to buy. In a campaign, that’s more than a sufficient opening to politicize an issue.
Another issue was the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail. Pat Brown and Len Simon battled for years over the approach to construction and surface of the trail. The big issue was whether or not it should be paved and built wide enough to meet Department of Transportation standards, or constructed locally as a stone dust trail. Some of this history dates all the way back to almost a decade prior to Brown’s run for Select Board. (Minutes)
After Brown won and was sworn in as a Selectman, one of the most prominent controversies for the expanded board happened during a May 2014 meeting to select a new chair. The Boston Globe described the incident in stark terms:
“What should have been a routine meeting last spring to choose the next chairman of the Sudbury Board of Selectmen devolved into a heated debate of personal attacks that left many residents shaking their heads in disgust.” (Minutes here.)
Woodard was elected chair by a 3-2 vote. Brown and Haarde voted for Haarde. Brown argued, according to the minutes and confirmed via recording: “Selectman Brown stated that, with the exception of Selectman O’Brien, Selectman Haarde has the most experience on the Board, and she believes he represents a group in Town who feels they have not been heard. She emphasized he has served on the Board for four years, but never as Chairman. Selectman Brown urged the Board to let Selectman Haarde serve the people who elected him.”
A bit more than a week later Selectman Len Simon found three toilets placed on his front lawn, and it was perceived by some, including Simon, as an act of retaliation for the Board’s decision not to vote Bob Haarde as Chair of the Selectmen, though the Town never learned who did it, or why.
The expansion proponents were gaining ground on the Select Board, but tensions were flaring in equal measure. The town watched anxiously to see if the political drama would come to an end. But it had only just begun.
2015 marked an escalation in political tensions in Sudbury. Some believe the organized efforts of the 3-5 group pressured incumbent Larry O’Brien not to run for reelection in that 2015 race, creating an opening that Bryan Semple was nearly able to use to get elected. However, O’Brien denied any outside influence when he announced his decision.
The race for Select Board in 2015 is best described as electoral mayhem. Five candidates ran for two seats. In the end Chuck Woodard and Susan Iuliano prevailed over Bob Stein, Bryan Semple, and Michael Ensley. In the hotly contested race, Iuliano turned in the strongest performance by far. Woodard only edged out Semple by a single vote, and Sudbury went to a rare recount after a successful petition by Semple.
The original count was confirmed upon recount, but the razor-thin margin of victory stood as proof of polarization in Sudbury.
The next two years proved to be rather consequential, and fruitful for incumbents. Haarde and Simon won reelection in 2016, though Semple sort of ran again, this time as a last-minute write-in candidate. Dan Carty, who had support from Semple during Carty’s Planning Board run, called on residents to write-in Semple to send a message to Selectman Len Simon that they wanted him to take a stronger stance in opposition to the Eversource transmission lines that were proposed. One of Simon’s public statements at the time stated strong opposition to overhead power lines, but opponents of the project wanted to hear opposition to any transmission lines whatsoever. Here’s what Carty had to say in a Facebook post:
“They – and we – are simply not best served by Len’s public comment, taken from his March 21 “Letter from Selectman Simon” posted on One Sudbury – “First, I am unalterably and unequivocally opposed to an above ground transmission line from Sudbury to Hudson.” I want an elected official to clearly state No Power Lines.
So what should I do? I could just vote for Haarde and Simon because they are running unopposed and will likely both win anyways. I could vote Haarde and vote for a blank box out of protest. But I’m going one step further – out of protest I am going to vote for Bob Haarde and write in Bryan Semple and am sharing my intentions here.”
Haarde and Simon won handily, but something new was born. Carty and Semple had turned opposition to the transmission lines, which had seemingly complete community consensus, into a highly-charged wedge issue that would stir controversy for years to come.
By 2017 Pat Brown was running for reelection uncontested; another winning bid for an incumbent that kept the streak alive. But then Chuck Woodard announced his resignation shortly after the 2017 election. At that point, a special election was called and featured two candidates who get us into the “current era” of the Select Board: Dan Carty and Janie Dretler. Carty narrowly defeated Dretler by 52 votes.
Carty ran as a bit of a newcomer to the scene and didn’t openly claim any association with a faction, but the ties to the 3-5 initiative’s most ardent supporters were evident from prior years, and membership in One Sudbury was thought of as synonymous with supporting the initiative.
Carty’s 2017 strategy signaled a new approach for those associated with the bloc: run on independence, not as a candidate put forth by the bloc. Carty’s announcement stated:
“I envision a Board of Selectmen that treats the responsibility not as a vehicle to push through a pet project or a personal agenda but rather respectfully and as an opportunity to strategize for the future.”
It also emphasized his opposition to the Eversource transmission line project, which was a bit of a rallying cry for many residents at the time, but it was a curious issue for this particular candidate to run on. Carty disclosed that, if elected, he would have to recuse on the matter because he was an abutter. Some residents questioned if the Eversource controversy was being leveraged to advance a separate political agenda.
With the victory in 2017, Haarde, Brown and Carty had won the group behind the 3-5 initiative its first majority on the Select Board, four years after the initiative expanded the Board. That majority hung around for three years, until Charlie Russo beat out incumbent Pat Brown in 2020.
But two years before Russo arrived on the scene, in 2018, Janie Dretler defeated Bill Schineller while Carty was elected to another full term. Jennifer Roberts and Bill Schineller were elected the following year. Both Dretler and Roberts had the endorsement of Len Simon. Schineller was endorsed by two Select Board members with close ties to the 3-5 initiative, Pat Brown and Bob Haarde:
Dretler’s initial election was driven, in part, by her large role in the Oppose Sudbury Station Steering Committee. The Town successfully fended off the Sudbury Station Town Center development, resulting in the creation of Cold Brook Crossing on Route 117, but it was certainly one of the major issues the Select Board faced during that era. Dretler would eventually go on to sign the closing documents as Select Board Chair years later.
Dretler and Roberts were productive as minority voices on the Select Board in 2019 and the first half of 2020. They got the new Fairbank Community Center through to approval on the 2020 Presidential election ballot despite facing organized opposition every step of the way, including a 3-2 Select Board vote not to support its own warrant article at Town Meeting, as well as the baggage of a decade of failed attempts to get the project done. Dretler was a member of the Working Group since it was formed by the Town Manager in 2019, and she co-authored a comprehensive newsletter article about the project with Roberts ahead of Town Meeting in 2020.
That same ballot saw the town vote overwhelmingly to acquire the CSX land that is now going to be home to the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail down to Framingham, an initiative that Roberts had been advocating for forcefully.
Russo, who ran with support from Len Simon and advocates of the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail, and vocally supported the Fairbank Community Center during his campaign, may have been the beneficiary of the momentum Dretler and Roberts had created, though his victory over Brown was still considered a surprise upset. With that momentum, the political tides were turning once again in Sudbury, but it wasn’t certain that a new “majority” had been formed.
The Second Act of “One” Sudbury
When resident Mike Troiano announced the shutdown of the LavenderGate Facebook page and the creation of “One Sudbury” he stated:
“Add to that the lingering baggage and negativity associated with our founding catalyst, and the need for me to step aside as the lone ringleader of this rough-and-tumble circus, and the right thing to do becomes clear. I have decided to shut down the “Lavendergate” group, effective one week from today.”
At the end of his letter, he noted that One Sudbury was really just an evolution of LavenderGate:
“I look forward to evolving this campaign at OneSudbury.org with those of you who are interested in more change, and to running into all of you in this one-of-a-kind town.”
Of course, the veneer of optimism couldn’t fully rewrite the history of the group. The discourse on One Sudbury was regularly criticized by some as overly heated, riddled with personal attacks and regularly containing factually dubious statements.
By 2017, the faction behind this group had achieved a much greater goal than expansion of the Select Board; they achieved majority control of that board.
But they faced another roadblock, in part because One Sudbury had grown beyond a small Facebook group with a shared mission. The acrimony didn’t go away when the 3-5 candidates got control of the Select Board. Some felt it got worse, and the community argued it out on One Sudbury, because that’s where you were supposed to argue it out. But the debates started to look a lot like cyber mobbing; where an organized group would pile on after someone offered a dissenting opinion.
There were contentious battles over the future of the Fairbank Community Center, controversies stemming from the Eversource transmission line project, and more. But then came the big one: the nearly $12M acquisition of the Liberty Ledge property, commonly known as Sewataro, which quickly became the third rail of Sudbury politics.
Sewataro passed at the ballot in 2019 by a thin margin of 365 votes in a special election that saw nearly 5,000 residents turn out to vote. The acquisition and the use of the property has continued to be a source of controversy, including a contentious battle over a land use study for the property at the 2022 Town Meeting. All of it was fiercely debated on One Sudbury.
Back in the analog world, the acquisition of Sewataro was, in many ways, the final act of Town Manager Melissa Rodriguez. The 3-2 majority hung on to control long enough to hire her replacement, Henry Hayes. Hayes was a base command chief master sergeant at Hanscom Air Force Base, but had no municipal experience. He was selected over one other finalist, Zack Blake, a Sudbury resident who worked in the Division of Local Services for the State of Massachusetts. Hayes resigned before completing his first contract. Blake is now the Chief of the Financial Management Resources Bureau at the Division of Local Services. He also serves on Sudbury’s Design Review Board.
Struggles With Civility
Just as Henry Hayes began his time as Town Manager in 2020, Covid hit. The election and Annual Town Meeting were postponed, and Russo, who beat Pat Brown in June of 2020, ultimately was not sworn in until an outdoor Annual Town Meeting in the fall of that year. New members are typically sworn in at the conclusion of the Annual Town Meeting in the beginning of May.
At the time, the apparent majority on the board included Carty, Brown and Bill Schineller. Schineller remained publicly neutral in 2017 when Carty faced off with Janie Dretler. But over time, perhaps due to his ties to Protect Sudbury and vocal support for the Sewataro acquisition, he became more closely aligned with Carty and Brown.
As Brown’s service came to an end, she lamented the lack of progress on civility in a final newsletter article:
“And, sadly, we have yet to achieve the goal of the 2014 Listening Project, which is to improve civility.”
But the candidates she endorsed along the way became known for acts of incivility.
Schineller rolled off the board after one term, which was punctuated by repeated acts of incivility, particularly in his third year. That included filibustering a discussion that the Chair was trying to moderate (4:17:30) and telling another member of the board to “shut the [inaudible] up” in another open meeting. (4:53:50)
More recently, history seems to have repeated itself during a Board reorganization.
Fast forward to May 16, 2023 and Select Board Member Dan Carty was leveling a personal attack on Member Lisa Kouchakdjian who was nominated as Vice Chair. (3:21:20) The incident was short lived, and the rest of the Board Members demonstrated no interest in going back to the days of personal attacks in public meetings. But it stood as a stark reminder of the lingering effects of incivility in years past, which included a 2020 incident when Carty, then Chair, muted Dretler and Roberts on Zoom to prevent them from commenting on an item in a Select Board meeting. There was also a 2021 incident where Carty accused other members of the Board of “anti-police sentiment” for questioning if plans for security fencing at the Sudbury Police station might have a negative impact on the relationship between residents and the Sudbury Police Department. (Page 7).
After the political tides started to turn in 2020, it appeared as though the elected officials associated with the 3-5 bloc were agitated. Power was shifting, and their Select Board majority was short-lived. Was it the end of an era or a temporary setback?
Things seemed to hold steady for a bit, as Dretler and Carty were reelected in 2021, with Lisa Kouchakdjian losing out in her first bid for Select Board. But the 2022 Town Election signaled a continuation of the trend. Kouchakdjian won election to the Select Board on her second attempt, Roberts was reelected overwhelmingly, and Eric Poch was defeated on his second run, this time with the backing of Pat Brown. Kouchakdjian and Roberts both had the endorsement of Len Simon.
In 2022 Sudbury saw construction begin on the new Fairbank Community Center, as well as the Eversource transmission lines (eventually to become the Mass Central Rail Trail). Those were soon followed by construction of the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail.
A decade had passed since the Select Board was expanded to five members, and it had been half a decade since a new majority had initially won control of the Board. As a new era appeared to have arrived, how would the town contextualize the contentious decade it had just lived through? And what exactly was the real-world impact of the Select Board expansion?
Let’s Talk Legacy
The most visible artifacts of the LavenderGate controversy and the ensuing 3-5 initiative are easily spotted. Today the One Sudbury Facebook group has over 4,000 members, and the Select Board has five members.
Still, it’s unclear if the broader goals of the effort were ever achieved. The stated goal was to increase transparency, accountability and representation. Adding seats and creating an active Facebook group are a means to achieve something. But did they achieve those goals?
When Troiano shut down the LavenderGate page his letter to Patch said:
“When 5 Selectmen are seated after the June 25 election, we believe Sudbury will have taken a giant step forward in terms of improving the transparency and accountability of our town government, and that over the months and years that follow, more representatives will mean more representation of our sometimes different points of view about how – exactly – to keep Sudbury the best place to live in Massachusetts.”
But the candidates supported by the 3-5 initiative organizers didn’t win, and the rhetoric on One Sudbury was increasingly regarded as toxic to the community. In fact, Troiano attempted to host a candidates’ debate on One Sudbury that ultimately had to be canceled after two candidates refused to participate and SudburyTV could not legally carry an “empty chair” debate. Candidate Len Simon, who also developed a reputation as somewhat of a lightning rod, called the debate a “charade” on Patch, while a candidate supported by Troiano, Todj Gozdeck, also went to Patch to present the opening statement he would have given in a debate.
Gozdeck perhaps did the best job of plainly stating what the 3-5 movement was really all about:
“What’s become even more clear in the last few days is that this election is really a choice between insiders intent on keeping power concentrated in the hands of a few, and outsiders – including myself and Dan DePompei.”
Power Is As Power Does
As with any story about political organizing, this is a story about power. “LavenderGate” was a launching pad to shift the balance of political power in Sudbury from one faction to another. It didn’t happen right away, but it eventually washed over Sudbury when the self-described “outsider” faction took majority control of the Select Board away from what they described as the “old guard” or the “insiders,” Select Board members who had been serving for years.
To what end did they use that power?
It’s hard not to look at the Sewataro acquisition as the biggest, most expensive initiative advanced by this new majority. But the Sewataro acquisition may have left some residents with buyer’s remorse if more “representation” is what they really wanted.
The “outsiders” were in control of the Select Board, but the complaints about pet projects and not listening to dissenting voices not only remained, they got louder during the Sewataro acquisition. That’s in part because the letter of intent was signed in an executive session during a vacation week when two dissenting members of the Board (Simon and Dretler) could not attend, and were denied their request to have it scheduled for a time they could attend. Minutes and memos here.
The optics of just three board members making the Sewataro purchase decision in executive session, whether appropriate or not, raised the same complaints about transparency, accountability and representation that animated the 3-5 initiative in the first place. After all, when three Select Board members with close ties to the 3-5 initiative entered that closed-door executive session, the Select Board, even if just briefly, became a three-member body once more. And once again, the divisions among Sudbury residents became the headline instead of the issue at hand.
Ballot voters were ultimately in favor of the acquisition itself, and the Town proceeded accordingly. However, nearly as many people turned out to vote “no” as voted “yes.” The town was divided on the issue, there were complaints about a lack of information even among members of the Select Board, and the Select Board and Town Manager were on the hook to come up with a plan for the property that could bring the two sides together.
The Town Manager had developed three options to put before voters. Those options were to 1) maintain it as open space and recreational space; 2) continue to run Camp Sewataro; and 3) lease it to a camp operator. You can review that presentation here.
The same presentation included a slide outlining an arrangement for Camp Everwood in Sharon, where the town leased property to a camp operator. The terms of that deal proved to be a model for what was ultimately done for Sewataro. But beyond the terms of the arrangement, the same camp operator from Everwood Day Camp, Scott Brody, ended up being selected for Sewataro.
After the acquisition passed at Town Meeting and at the ballot, the Select Board then decided to survey the Town on how to use the property. The catch? The Town Manager had already started down the path to begin drafting an RFP for a camp operator. The Select Board discussed an RFP as early as their May 14, 2019 meeting, over a month before the survey went out. In those same minutes, you’ll see they were hoping to issue the FlashVote the week of May 20, 2019, before the special election for the ballot question. But that didn’t happen.
In fact, momentum towards the camp operator arrangement was building in all directions. The owner of Sewataro, Mark Taylor, spoke at the May 14, 2019 meeting to note that he had met with Scott Brody and found Brody would be interested in leasing the property, before Town Meeting, let alone a special election, even occurred:
“Mr. Taylor stated that misinformation has been circulating. He detailed that he has meet with Scott Brody, owner/director of the Everwood Camp and Mr. Brody has interest in a Sewataro leasing arrangement.” [Typo of “meet” is as it appeared in the minutes.
So what did we learn from the FlashVote?
For starters, using Sewataro for a summer camp didn’t come close to achieving majority support, garnering just 31% of responses on the property use question.
But the survey was flawed. In the next question about operations, there was majority support for contracting with a private camp operator. It’s unclear if respondents interpreted that question as a choice between a private camp operator or the Town operating the camp, or if they were voicing support for a camp more generally. Nonetheless, the top response was for residents having access to the property when a camp is not in session. And far less than a majority, 36.1%, prioritized generating revenue.
So a clear majority stated they wanted a public park, trails and swimming, and they weren’t interested in prioritizing revenue from the property. Yet the Town had already started down the RFP path weeks before the survey went out, and the input of residents calling for a different use of the property didn’t change a thing.
The deal that was ultimately struck with the camp operator (first contract here) prioritized revenue generation. Public access in the summer was after-hours only and limited to the very front portion of the property. For the first three years of the contract, swimming was entirely off limits.
Sewataro is often referred to as a “crown jewel” of a property, but it could also be seen as the crown jewel of the 3-5 initiative. Once the controversy around its acquisition and ongoing use is put into Sudbury’s broader political context, the property is suddenly linked to that unusual night at a local restaurant, over a decade ago.
What’s Old Is New
There’s a long history of political controversy in Sudbury. Wayland and much of Maynard used to be part of Sudbury, but they opted to break off on their own. That wasn’t unusual at the time, but the east siders (soon to be Wayland) in Sudbury allegedly were eager to break off from Sudbury due to high taxes stemming from the Revolutionary War.
Controversy may be part of Sudbury’s history, but Sudbury also has an odd way of repeating history.
Battles with utility companies like Eversource over power lines? That happened before. Infighting over school budgets? That happened many times before. Going back to Town Meeting for more money after getting bids on a building project? That happened already.
Fighting unwanted development from outside groups? How about fending off the proposed permanent headquarters of the United Nations, or nixing Henry Ford’s factory town concept?
The 3-5 initiative wasn’t the first fight about old guard/new guard factions or entrenched leadership. That exact fight happened as far back as the 1950’s and 1960’s.
In that sense, the 3-5 initiative is not so much an outlier as it is a continuation of business as usual in Sudbury, with opposing factions taking stands. It gave rise to a bitter new flavor of acrimony and incivility that was supercharged by social media, and that’s perhaps what distinguishes the 3-5 initiative, and the last 10 years of Sudbury’s politics, more than anything else.
With the benefit of hindsight, the number of seats on the Select Board seems arbitrary compared to the impact of any given faction trying to organize and elect a majority.
At the end of a decade, it seems safe to call it as it is. The 3-5 initiative was ultimately an effective political campaign for one of Sudbury’s two competing political factions to gain power. But did it bring more transparency, more representation and more accountability?
The answer is probably the same as it was at any point in Sudbury’s history… It would very likely depend on who you ask and who’s in power.
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