Continued from homepage… 

For the past three years I have pursued the facts behind the New Fire Station project and tracked its detailed and controversial chronology on this website. The murky history is explicitly described below in the June 2025 Complaint to the White Collar and Public Integrity Division of the Attorney General’s Office against Bedford’s former Town Manager, Sarah Stanton, based on dozens of Public Records (FOIA) requests. 

The responses to those requests established that the public was deprived of the oversight guaranteed by the Open Meeting Law, which was flagrantly violated, casting overwhelming doubt on the claim that there were no other suitable sites. The records also document that numerous fabrications and misrepresentations were made to Town officials and to the public leading up to the vote. All of which makes it doubtful that the 3-vote margin by which the article cleared the statutory two-thirds threshold would have held, and undermines claims of legitimacy.  

In addition, the process was tainted by the Town Manager’s bristling bias. According to the Massachusetts Municipal Association, “Bias exists when someone is so predisposed to accept or reject a matter that he or she cannot reasonably be expected to fairly and impartially adjudicate the matter.” 

That was clearly in evidence throughout Sarah Stanton’s aggressive promotion of the purchase of the property at 139 The Great Road. The property, which if acquired by the Town could have been a municipal showplace, was so obviously unsuited for a fire station that it is no surprise the project is years behind schedule at more than double the cost quoted to the 2022 Town Meeting voters.  So what were voters told and what did they vote for? Bogus information and bogus projections, including:

• 139 The Great Road is the best and most viable option to fulfill our obligations as a community to protect the life, health, and safety of our residents and property.
• It saves money – a whole lot of taxpayer money. It saves construction time, because we will not lose 2 years due to eminent domain…
• An expected completion date of late 2024/early 2025

None of those statements were factually based at the time. It is reckless not to examine the history of the project now in the light of what has been uncovered. After sending the Select Board the letter on the 28th — linked to above on the homepage — which again asked that they trust Bedford’s citizens with all the information that refutes the official version of events, the matter was again not placed on the agenda. 

Transparency is not an option. It can’t be important sometimes and not others. Why don’t they just discuss the facts in a regular Board meeting and get it all out in the open, where it has always belonged? Because, the voters of Bedford were deceived and manipulated by Sarah Stanton, but it is the Select Board that is now preventing that knowledge from reaching the people. Regardless of where it goes from here, Bedford’s residents deserve to know the full details of the project for which they are paying so dearly. That is not naive.

I have been writing to the Select Board since July to point out that they have an actual sworn duty to discuss in public the documented facts that were brought directly to their attention.  Matt Hanson is too fine a Town Manager to approve of keeping things from residents that they have a right to know and discuss.  If the Town disputes the information, that should be on the record. But to let solid evidence of malfeasance go without a response is improper.

It well may be that the Town Manager and/or Select Board Members asked Town Counsel how to handle the clear-cut proof of wrongdoing and were told to ignore it — by the woman Sarah Stanton chose early in her tenure to take over as Town Counsel — and who later misrepresented the site selection process to a Superior Court judge — as explained in the June 5th complaint.  Going on that assumption, I will have to think about where to go from here.

It is insane to think that the public has no idea of how substandard and contrived the project’s basis truly was. Or how damaging to the town’s future standing it could be. Those who spearheaded one of the first historic districts in the Commonwealth knew first-hand how destructive short-term politics can be. And re-watching the 2022 Town Meeting, I could understand why.

Bedford lost much more of its architectural character than the surrounding towns before putting a stop to it — because it is easier to justify demolishing a building than it is to defend a district. So one-by-one compromises to authenticity and character were made — instead of finding a better way.

It is doubtful that many, if any, of those who stood up at Town Meeting to defend the need to cannibalize the signature block, would have chosen to do so if there had been a public process exploring the relative benefits of 139 TGR and 30 North Road. There was nothing about such an inquiry that would have qualified for executive sessions under the law — and which did not take place — but more than once the Town has made statements suggesting that is where these decisions were made.

Apologists for the 

Someday, allowing officials to vandalize the Bedford Center Historic District’s traditional character may be their sorry claim to shame.