Sudbury, MA

Editor’s Note: Background on the property – the purchase, the money, and the full timeline – lives on the Monitor’s standing Sewataro File, updated as the story develops.

The short version:

• The June 24 public input session produced 195 distinct prioritized ideas for the Sewataro property. “Camp Sewataro operations” finished first by a landslide: 36 of the ideas, and a weighted priority score of 156 against 23 for second place.
• A town-wide resident survey is the next step. Draft questions come to the committee’s July 16 meeting, and the committee’s report to the Select Board is due by the end of October.
• Public comment previewed the argument over the property’s next chapter: a pitch for age-restricted housing on part of the property, a demand for an RFP on the camp operator agreement, and a rebuttal to both.

The Liberty Ledge/Sewataro Advisory Committee met July 2 for about two hours, its first meeting since the June 24 public input session. The committee approved its May 21 minutes as amended and set expectations for its own product: recommendations, not decisions. “We have no decision-making,” the chair said of the committee’s report, due to the Select Board by the end of October. “It’s really up to them” (0:13:12).

The camp, inspected. The town’s director of health and community services walked the committee through how the property actually runs. Camp Sewataro hosts roughly 650 campers in any given week, the largest of 14 permitted camps in town (0:15:19). On the day of the meeting, with temperatures near 99 degrees, the camp had dismissed early at 1:30 on the health department’s recommendation; the campus has one air-conditioned building for those 650 campers (0:17:34). Her verdict on the operator was unambiguous: “it’s been excellent working with this operator,” she said – the camp had contacted her about the heat a week in advance, an example, she said, of how “they’re always thinking about camper safety” (0:17:48). Two of the four small pools initially failed pre-season bacteria testing and passed after treatment, which she described as routine; the swim pond got new biofilters and an aeration system this year to fight the algae blooms that have shortened past seasons (0:19:48). Her two recommendations for any future use: automated pool chlorination and a hardwired public-address system for the waterfront (0:24:38). One constraint drew the sharpest committee reaction: the buildings likely sit on cesspools, and “if we did a Title 5 on them, I don’t know that they would pass.” A member called septic “the bottleneck to every kind of development” (0:28:25).

Sports fields are off the table. A committee member who also serves on the Park and Recreation Commission said the commission sees no field development at the property: “it was something that could be kind of struck from the list,” with long-term field planning pointed at Broad Acres and Davis Field instead (0:35:16). Camp operator Scott Brody, from the floor, offered to host town programming on any terms: “please, just like, put us in, coach” (0:46:39).

What 60 residents said. The centerpiece was staff member James Goudie-Murray’s presentation of the June 24 results: roughly 40 participants in the room and 20 online generated “195 distinct prioritized use recommendations” (1:00:09). Camp operations came first by every measure: 36 of the ideas, 25 first-priority votes, and a weighted score of 156 against 23 for second place. “The one clearest takeaway from last Wednesday was that the community supports Camp Sewataro and is interested in greater recreation use of the property” (1:02:02). Committee member Granger Atkeson added a caveat he called important for honest reading: grouped together, the various added-programming ideas draw roughly the same support as camp operations. Brody asked whether participants had treated other uses as competing with the camp; the answer from the room was “just the opposite,” an “and” rather than an either/or (1:11:30).

Housing landed at the periphery: affordable and senior housing each drew only one or two priority votes. A member noted the Sudbury Housing Authority had walked the property’s buildings the prior week and said the authority “didn’t appear to have any interest”; the chair pushed back that “we should not make any assumptions,” with the Housing Trust still scheduled to present (1:13:12). Another member said some residents had told him they see the process “as performative and not actually a serious effort,” and answered them directly: “this is absolutely not performative” (1:16:13).

The survey comes next. The committee spent its second hour on how to put the same question to the whole town. The consensus that emerged: no leading questions. Atkeson admitted his instinct, a first branch asking “Sewataro plus, or not,” would “lead people in a direction,” and the committee settled on open-ended questions modeled on the forum’s format (1:26:45). The working structure: respondent demographics, open questions, the input-session ideas condensed into a rankable list with write-in space, and room to elaborate. Members also asked that themes from emails to the committee be captured, singling out one as “a pretty strong one”: a dedicated period when town residents get priority for camp signup (1:21:57). Atkeson and Goudie-Murray will bring draft survey questions to the July 16 meeting; how the survey is administered is still to be decided.

Public comment previewed the lease question. Jeff Levine, a Sudbury Housing Trust member, challenged the input session’s weight – about 50 residents out of 18,000, many “very partisan in favor of the camp” – and pitched market-rate age-restricted housing on a portion of the property, estimating that selling 15 to 25 of the 44 acres could yield $6 million to $10 million by his own math (1:41:10). The certified record offers larger samples: Town Meeting authorized the purchase by a two-thirds vote in 2019, voters passed the debt-exclusion ballot question that June, and this May’s Article 19, the $20,000 visioning study, failed 200-75. A resident followed with the money case: he said the property carries “a built-in structural deficit to Sudbury of about $450,000 a year,” argued 75 percent of camp profits go to the operator, and demanded competition: “there must be an RFP to make sure that Sudbury is getting a fair return for the land that it owns” (1:52:38). The town’s own June 4 accounting puts the fiscal 2026 numbers at about $731,000 in debt service against $331,000 in camp revenue, a gap of roughly $400,000; the figures are on the Monitor’s Sewataro File. A third resident, participating remotely, answered both: she pointed to Fairbank as a $40 million town project nobody expects to generate revenue, urged the committee to consult the surveys done before the 2019 purchase, and closed, “I don’t want to hear any more about RFPs or pushing out the current operator” (2:02:34).

The committee’s next meeting is July 16, with survey drafts on the agenda and the Housing Trust expected; the Commission on Disability visits July 30.