When the Voters Decide

Community decisions matter. At Town Meeting, residents hear the arguments, debate the issues, and vote. They are not asking someone else to make the decision. They are making it themselves. The majority prevails.

Or does it?

In spring 2025, Town Meeting voted to appropriate $825,000 “for designer services for the Medeiros Farm project.” The vote was decisive: 216 in favor, 99 opposed, with seven abstentions.

Yet on June 24, 2026, the Select Board voted 3–2 to reject the architectural contract recommended by the committee. Gary Sagar, Robert Archambault, and Elizabeth Elmasian voted to reject the contract. Christopher Zorra and Michael Healy voted against doing so.

Their decision was not based on flaws in the contract or the qualifications of the selected vendor.

Instead, the committee was instructed to suspend its work until the Select Board completes a separate traffic study based on a conceptual Master Plan that the Board revised at the same meeting. However, the design study appropriated by Town Meeting already includes traffic analysis based on the final design.

That raises the central question:

Is this the process Town Meeting approved?

The warrant authorizes expenditures under the direction of the Select Board. The question is whether that authority includes delaying the design work approved by Town Meeting and substituting a different sequence of studies.

Residents can disagree about what should be built at Medeiros Farm. Some support active recreation and sports fields. Others are concerned about traffic, cost, or preserving open space. Those are legitimate policy debates. They should be resolved through the process approved by Town Meeting—not by replacing that process after the vote.

This letter is not about soccer fields. It is about whether Town Meeting decisions have meaning.

If the design study ultimately shows the project is too expensive, creates unacceptable traffic problems, or no longer reflects what residents want, Town Meeting can vote not to proceed. That’s how the process is supposed to work.

Whether you support the project or oppose it, every resident should ask the same question:

Once Town Meeting approves funding for the next phase of a project, can an elected board change that process? Or, as Mr. Healy said in his dissent, “I follow the will of the people.”

The answer should matter to every resident because the issue extends beyond this project. It goes to the heart of whether Town Meeting votes are advisory—or whether they direct the actions of town government.

Anne B. Miller