Sudbury's Financial Challenges

Preserving our way of life in Sudbury requires an ongoing investment in our assets: buildings, vehicles, roadways, technology, open space, and so on.  Some of the more visible needs include the much discussed Police Station and an upgrade of the nine year old technology infrastructure at the high school.  We have an ongoing need to protect to the extent that we can the remaining open space in Sudbury that is integral to the beauty of this community.  To stop investing is to eventually fall behind.  Crudely- like never replacing your car.  Our capital needs are extensive and complex.  The right way to address them is to survey our assets and detail likely replacement needs over the next 10-15 years, as was recently done by Town staff.  The objective is to space out the spending on capital replacement so that we don’t have big spikes in any one year.    Because these are long term assets, the fair way to fund their purchase is with long term debt so that the cost is borne by both current and future taxpayers since both will have the use of the asset.  A good funding plan will pay for the assets as they are needed and layer in the new debt as old debt is being paid off so that there is no upward pressure on taxes.  This is the essence of a good capital plan. 

We also need sustainable operating budgets.  Excellent schools and town services are important to Sudbury and need to be preserved, which means first and foremost our employees.  Compensation costs are 75-80% of the operating budget. We need to compensate our employees fairly but do so within the limits of an acceptable operating budget.  If compensation grows too fast, as was the case prior to the great recession, there are two possible outcomes and neither is attractive: faster growth in taxes or layoffs.  Compensation growth has abated over the past five years but the pressure returns every three years with the renewal of labor contracts.  As FinCom Chairman, I helped change Town government’s mindset around labor contracts, pushing the view that publicly discussed reasonable future budget levels should be the basis for contract negotiations rather than allowing labor contract outcomes to tell us where the budget will go. 

If elected to the Board of Selectmen I will push for the implementation of a solid capital plan and a very public leadership role in shaping the growth of our operating budget.

Chuck Woodard

32 Old Framingham Road

ChuckWoodardforSudbury.org