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Since its acquisition in 2019, Camp Sewataro was a unique preservation story. The Town spent millions in 2019 to buy the property at Liberty Ledge, and many residents who fought for that purchase believed they were saving it from ever being carved up and developed. That belief is written plainly on the Friends of Sewataro website today, which describes a group that “came together in 2018” with a vision “to protect the entire property from development” and adds: “We believed this was accomplished in 2019, with the majority vote to purchase the property.”
Executive session minutes from March 21, 2019, which were released on September 1 by the Select Board, complicate that story. They show that inside the negotiating discussion, Vice Chair Dan Carty called for preserving the Town’s freedom to sell pieces of the land later.
The March 21, 2019 session was convened, in part, to discuss the Town’s negotiating position ahead of an April 1 bid deadline set by the sellers. Then-Town Manager Melissa Murphy‑Rodrigues laid out revenue projections and expense data. Vice‑Chair Dan Carty recommended the board offer roughly $11.3 million and warned that a lower offer would likely draw an abatement request.
“Vice-Chairman Carty mentioned the merit in the Town selling some of the land, if it desired.”
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The pivotal exchange came when member Pat Brown asked whether the seller had any specific restrictions in mind. Attorney Lee Smith of KP Law said any such restrictions would be itemized in a purchase‑and‑sale agreement, and Town Counsel Jonathan Silverstein noted the owner might even accept a lower price in exchange for deed restrictions on the land.
At that point, Carty pushed for flexibility, not restrictions or a lower price. He told the Board that the Town “would not want many restrictions in consideration of the ability to sell tracks [tracts] of that land in the future.” A short time later, he “mentioned the merit in the Town selling some of the land, if it desired.”
One of the acquisition’s leading advocates specifically resisted restrictions, because those restrictions could foreclose the option to sell parts of the land down the road. The land is zoned residential, so any sale would almost certainly lead to the construction of housing.
Context for Today
A few other threads from the 2019 minutes provide context for more recent conversations about the property.
The Select Board understood from the outset that Park and Recreation did not want to run the property, and chose to support acquisition anyway. That decision has consequences that persist. Liberty Ledge remains controlled by the Select Board itself, not by Park and Recreation or the Conservation Commission. This fall, over half a decade after the acquisition, is the first time the Park and Recreation department is offering programs on the property.
The minutes also document Town Manager Rodrigues stating that the houses on the site “must be sold empty and without tenants.” There are multiple housing units on the Sewataro property, which have, in part, helped to make the land a candidate for ongoing affordable housing conversations.
Several years after the acquisition, in October of 2024, Liberty Ledge/Sewataro appeared on a list of “study” parcels in the Town’s Housing Production Plan. During the Select Board discussion about the plan on October 8, 2024, Carty argued against “continuing to try to build housing on parcels that were bought so that housing wasn’t built.” (1:05:36) However, the option of using some of the property for housing is made possible by the flexibility Carty advocated for in executive session back in 2019.
Carty was not alone in pursuing flexibility in the use of the property. Then-Chair Bob Haarde called out in January of 2019 that not using Community Preservation Act funding for the acquisition actually provided greater flexibility to the Town. “Vice-Chairman Carty inquired about public procurement. Chairman Haarde noted that there would be greater flexibility if the Town did not use CPC funding.” (Page 8)
Why It Matters Now
In February 2026 the Select Board voted 3‑2 to create the Liberty Ledge / Sewataro Advisory Committee to study “possible uses” of the property. The committee is due to report by the end of October, their survey closes September 7, and the camp operator’s agreement expires in September 2027.
Some residents who believe the acquisition was intended to preserve the property as-is have assumed the 2019 purchase settled the question of whether Sewataro would stay whole. The newly released minutes suggest the officials who led that purchase never intended to settle it. They intended to keep their options open.
The flexibility now being used to consider various uses of the land wasn’t smuggled in by the acquisition’s opponents. It was built in by its Select Board proponents. That doesn’t change the discussion about future uses of the property, but it certainly changes the discussion about what the 2019 votes to acquire the property meant.
