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The Sudbury Select Board met on Thursday, September 6 to set their “S.M.A.R.T.” goals for the year. The SMART goal framework means specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. The acronym induces the same type of nausea you experience when your employer announces that a motivational speaker will be giving a talk to your company and your attendance is mandatory.
Here’s where they netted out, in order of priority:
- Make a plan for making plans about things the Town wants to plan
- Make the plans according to the plan
- Plan what plans to plan when those plans are are finalized plans.
Okay, those aren’t really their goals. (But they kind of are…aren’t they?) Here are the real goals:
1 — Develop a long-term comprehensive plan to fund and manage the operating and capital budgets.
2 — Address and support staffing needs and succession planning.
3 — Utilization/optimization of Fairbank Community Center programming.
4 — Seek membership in a vocational education district.
5 — Expand (normalize) and fund a transportation option, especially for vulnerable populations.
Those five were the result of their traditional voting system. But there was a hitch in their giddyup.
They had accidentally split their rail trails goals into two distinct goals on the list and neither made the top five. If they were combined, it would have been one of the top three priority goals based on the combined vote tally.
Chair Jennifer Roberts suggested that they combine the two and expanded the number of goals to six, which means transportation wouldn’t get bumped off the priority list. One of the rail trail goals focused on building the next phase of the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail to make the connection to Framingham. The other had to do with planning for the Mass Central Rail Trail and coordinating with relevant parties like the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR). Member Charlie Russo had voiced a desire to make sure there was as little lag as possible between Eversource completing its transmission line project and DCR finishing the rail trail on top of it.
The board will be refining the list and possibly updating the framing and scope of their goals at an upcoming meeting. Board members emphasized that just because something isn’t a goal, it doesn’t mean they won’t be working on it or talking about it this year. Even if something is a goal, it doesn’t appear to guarantee action either. Economic development was a top-priority goal last year, but virtually no action or discussion occurred. (The board was mired in debate over a firearms business zoning bylaw for much of 2023.) While most of the top goals are carryovers from last year, economic development fell off the priority list.
The Fairbank Community Center goal appears to be the newest goal of the bunch, and a response to complaints about access to, and utilization of, the new community center building. It’s unclear what role the Select Board has with regard to operation of the building or the programs offered by the relevant departments, but the public may learn more at the next meeting of the Select Board.