Share This Article
The Select Board spent much of it’s June 25 meeting discussing policy. From possible new policies pertaining to town-wide sustainability to existing policies relating to project tracking and reporting; the Town’s chief policy-setting board explored ways that new and updated policies could move the Town forward in any number of ways.
There’s just one problem. The Select Board doesn’t know what policies it approved over the last 25 years.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Select Board’s Policy and Procedures Subcommittee discussed, at length, how there is no definitive record of policies approved by the Select Board. Members Lisa Kouchakdjian and Dan Carty agreed that it was embarrassing for the Select Board that nobody has been keeping track of their policies.
The subcommittee tasked itself with fixing the problem, but the fix isn’t going to be fun. They agreed to review 25 years of Select Board agendas and meeting minutes to identify every policy that has been voted by the board during that time.
The subcommittee asked Town Manager Andy Sheehan to work with staff to determine the best way to present the compiled policies on the website for the public. It won’t take much effort to find ideas or inspiration. Nearby towns make Select Board policies available in a variety of convenient ways. Wellesley lists them as links in a clear set of categories here. Shrewsbury offers a numbered list here. Weston links directly to Select Board policies on their Select Board page here, but also offers a dedicated page for bylaws and regulations here.
The closest thing to a definitive list of Sudbury’s Select Board policies is a PDF document that was uploaded to the Town website in 2016 and has a watermark indicating that it is “CURRENTLY BEING UPDATED.” However, that document doesn’t include a number of policies that have been formulated, updated or approved since 2016. Some examples of those can be found on the “Information & Services” section at the bottom of the main Select Board page here.
Since 2016, Sudbury has had three different Town Managers, but fairly modest levels of turnover on the Select Board. With the exception of Pat Brown in 2020, all candidates for re-election have been reelected. With that much continuity and institutional knowledge on the board, it may be difficult to understand how policies can just go missing. However, in addition to policy-setting, the Select Board is responsible for hiring town managers and for overseeing litigation.
Since 2016 the board has overseen significant litigation regarding the Eversource transmission line project, two town manager searches, and several land acquisitions. Today, the litigation has been put to bed, Town Manager Sheehan’s contract has been extended, and there’s no indication of an imminent land acquisition.
In that context, the renewed focus on policy-setting responsibilities seems logical, if not inevitable. But one big question looms large: what antiquated policies will the subcommittee turn up in their research, and could the discovery of those policies impact any of the business before the Select Board today?