Opinion: Vote No For Sudbury's Sewataro Acquisition

The following was submitted as a letter to the editor by resident Jeanne Maloney, if you would like to submit a letter to the editor, email samantha.mercado@patch.com. If you would like to post your own announcement or article to patch follow the instructions online.

I have lived in Sudbury for 51 years. My husband and I raised our family here. I know the town well having been involved in many aspects that the town has undertaken over the years-- especially in the preservation of open space. Over these many years, we attended a good many Town Meetings and studied the issues before voting. This year, I was surprised to hear that that the Taylor property was coming on the market and that we quickly had to make a decision to purchase the property. With an open mind, I read the Warrant, read the newspapers, listened to the Board of Selectmen meeting and then attended Town Meeting. What I heard was that it was going to cost the town $11.2 million, more or less, but no concrete information as to what we would do with the property and how we were going to pay for it.

I did not hear or read about how the purchase was going to be revenue producing or where the money was going to be coming from to make the property useful to the public.
Committee after committee opposed the purchase of the property. I don’t ever recall the town proposing to purchase property that we did not have a transparent process to evaluate such a large commitment.

I do know that we have other priorities that need to be addressed now. Using the Fairbank Community Center, and knowing the condition it is in, I know it needs to be replaced with a Community Center. And, we need a new fire station.

I did not make my decision lightly. I made it based on what I did not hear. For these reasons, I did not support the purchase of the Taylor property at Town Meeting nor will I support it at the ballot box.

Thank you

Jeanne Maloney