The Town Meeting form of government “speaks for the belief that a society is safer and freer when the bulk of its citizens understand the programs and goals that their government has chosen and when they have achieved this understanding because these programs and goals have been honestly discussed in public.” — The Town of Bedford Website
Updated on 11/4/25 —
Those words on the Town website are in answer to the question: “Why Do Voters Need to Attend Town Meeting?” And this website asks a related question: “Why Do Voters Need to Defend Town Meeting?” This site was started after watching the live-stream presentation and comments at the 2022 Annual Town Meeting vote to purchase 139 The Great Road for the new fire station, because I was so shaken by what I saw. After reading the documents presented on the Town’s website, I decided that the official narrative was dishonestly selective and needed to be balanced by the rest of the story.
Three and a half years later, I am still shaken because I am more convinced than ever that I watched the people of Bedford being tricked into a Town Meeting vote. If that is true, it is well worth all the time and effort it has taken to research the record. The salient facts were outlined in the June 5, 2025, “Complaint to the Attorney General” against former Town Manager Sarah Stanton. A comprehensive narrative needed to be reported. But this analysis is more focused and therefore more important.
The byzantine account is a tangled web but I will focus here on just one aspect of the controversy and challenge even the most devoted partisans to make a series of judgment calls on how honestly the program and goal fit the concept at the top of the page.
The facts are now documented and cannot be denied: 139 The Great Road was not “the sole suitable site” for the new station. Therefore: The townspeople were defrauded; the Historic District was vandalized; Town Meeting was subverted; the state procurement law was twisted; a Superior Court judge was manipulated; the town’s first responders were cheated; the community was poisoned. And none of that happened by accident.
What matters most is not that Sarah Stanton pay for what she did to Bedford but that the people don’t pay for what she did to Bedford. Since it can be shown that residents were, in fact, tricked by her devious and reckless promotion of the property, and that there was a frontal assault on the town’s self-government, they have an absolute right to know that. The Select Board is duty-bound to air the findings that have been brought to their attention and to let the people decide what they want to do about it.
The town’s firefighters were very happy with the plan in 2020 to build the new station on the TD Bank site. When the pandemic put the matter on hold indefinitely, the Town decided to reevaluate other options. That was the last the public heard about it until a statement from the Town Manager on January 27, 2022, announced: “Moving forward with the acquisition of 139 The Great Road would lead to a time savings of 1-2 years in avoiding a lengthy eminent domain process.” Not could save — would save.
- That was the first time the Town referred to the proposed purchase as the only feasible option to the TD property.
- After not once mentioning the site selection process in a single regular or executive session Select Board meeting for well over a year, the Town started negotiations in November, 2021 to purchase the Utah State property.
- On February 14, 2022, the Select Board voted to declare 139 The Great Road “the sole suitable site” for the new facility.
- The report in the Bedford Citizen explained that “a ‘determination of uniqueness’ is required in order to comply with Massachusetts procurement law to advertise for possible unknown interest.
- Town Counsel George Hall explained that Massachusetts Chapter 30B allows towns to opt-out of requests for proposals ‘if [such requests] don’t benefit the town, in that this is the only property suitable for the intended purpose.'”
- But that did not explain why a Request for Proposals or Interest had never been advertised throughout 2021 — to see if there were any unknown possibilities that needed to be considered — when it certainly could have benefited the town.
- Two days after announcing the claim of uniqueness, according to the Citizen, the Historic District Commission (HDC) “convened on Zoom… in a hastily-arranged session… Commission members were unhappy that they hadn’t been advised about the Select Board’s plan to designate 139 The Great Road as uniquely situated for a fire headquarters and include it on the annual town meeting warrant.”
- Once the Select Board decided to propose demolishing part of the Historic District, advertising for any possible options would have shown due diligence and goodwill. After all, Utah State was not planning to put the property on the market until the Spring.
- To avoid the HDC’s input before announcing the intent to put it on the ATM warrant and to then bring it to the Finance and CapEx Committees without ever consulting the controlling authority, telegraphed a very clear signal that its role in approving the demolition of a highly visible property at the gateway to the Historic District would be taken for granted.
- Considering that the words of the legislative Act enabling the district were binding on the commissioners, that move was either very ignorant or very aggressive.
When the Town finally made its presentation to the HDC on March 2, 2022, the Bedford Citizen noted that “all of the participating members spoke favorably about town officials’ pivoting to the Bedford Motel at 30 North Road, which is also in the Historic District but is not a historic structure. That address was not on the list of potential locations because it is beyond the boundaries of balanced response time to the town’s extremities, along The Great Road from Loomis Street to Willson Park. However, it is only a few hundred yards north of the park.”
Virtually everyone who stood up to comment in favor of the Town Meeting vote on 3/29/22 believed that 139 The Great Road was the only available option that offered the ability to act quickly. That was a major reason why they voted for it. That is what they had been promised in the original announcement that it “would lead to a time savings of 1-2 years in avoiding a lengthy eminent domain process” and in many official statements since then. But there was never any chance of that being true at the “only property suitable for the intended purpose.”
In fact, the only way the forecast of a 2024-early 2025 opening could have been true is if the Town had given voters a choice between the uniquely problem-riddled property at 139 The Great Road and the one that all the HDC commissioners were ready to support at 30 North Road. The 30-second difference between the current station and the Bedford Motel was an absurd rationale for preferring the far less promising site and the only reason the Town gave on its Map of Site Candidates for excluding the far more promising site from voters’ consideration.
The Historic District process was never going to take less time than eminent domain and likely more — unless the Commission nullified the law due to the pressure brought to bear on them. As Sal Canciello said at the March 2, 2022, meeting: The HDC “should make everyone aware that there is a process here that has to be done and permission has to be made for the building to be torn down. We have to make sure the community understands that process and that role so they are not surprised,” he continued. “We don’t want to look like the bad guys stopping the fire station. We all want to be reasonable, but the Historic District Commission is there for a reason.”
In the end, Sarah Stanton’s bet paid off. After the Historic District Commission voted to deny the demolition, the Town asked the HDC to reconsider and Commissioner Canciello changed his vote — after having explained earlier in the month that the non-compliant, sub-standard, virtually non-existent site selection process left the commissioners feeling that they “had a gun to their head.”
Can anyone who reads to this point possibly claim there is no proof that this was one ambitious official’s very reckless, very damaging scam? One definition of that word is “a fraudulent scheme designed to deceive individuals into giving up their money or personal information by gaining their trust” — Or, their money and their vote. “Scammers often exploit victims’ emotions, such as greed or compassion, to achieve their goals.” Indeed.
Some may not care at this point how it came about — but should they speak for everyone? Shouldn’t all Bedford residents be asked if they want to accept the corner the town was painted into? Given how long the new station will serve the people, isn’t it only right to find out if residents want to take another look? Isn’t that what an honest Town Meeting is all about?
The weekend before the 2022 ATM vote, the management of the Bedford Motel said they would be interested in talking to the Town but had never been approached. There was no reason to assume it would require eminent domain or a lengthy HDC process. It is very likely that Sarah Stanton went out of her way to steer the Select Board away from advertising for unknown interest or to bring the motel to a vote because it would have been so much more buildable and generated more support.
That site may no longer be affordable or available now, but until the advertising that was side-stepped has been done, who can say what other possibilities may exist? If there are more effective options now that would better serve Bedford’s short and long-term interests, then the people have to be told.
To refuse to explore something that could better serve the town’s needs than 139 The Great Road, because of the money that was inadvertently misappropriated, would exponentially compound the waste. If not for the pandemic, voters very likely would have approved acquiring the TD Bank property that was recommended by the Select Board and the two finance committees and spent $6 million more. Would the Town opt to bypass a superior alternative — when the sale of 139 TGR might make the money that has already been spent on the wrong project a wash — that would still cost far less than the TD option and so throw good money after bad?
The Bedford Citizen reported that at the March 2024 ATM, resident Anne Bickford “also urged the Select Board before the vote to fund the new firehouse, ‘We should know what the full picture is for emergency response capital needs. Will this be the only fire station we need or will we be asked to approve funding for a substation?'” That is still a responsible question that keeps getting sidestepped — at an incalculable price to the well-being of the perhaps 50% of the town that would benefit from the improved EMS response times.
In the same Bedford Citizen report, “Fire Department Lt. Mark Daly asserted, ‘This town needs a substation,’ as well as an expanded central station for recruitment, and we need it for retention. I don’t love the property but it might be the only location.’” But if it is not, then the chance to have an imposing headquarters and a substation at the end of two years is something only the town’s people should decide. Getting to work on improving the current conditions at the fire station could begin without delay.
There will be no future opportunity like the current one to look to the other end of Great Road for the answer and refurbish the current station as a substation/EMS hub. For instance, if the owners of the two properties west of the American Legion were approached, it may be that they would be amenable to being bought out for the new headquarters with no question of eminent domain. The structures would be easily removed and the businesses easy to relocate. And the site would be a clean slate.
If the Empire State Building could be built in fourteen months during the Great Depression, Bedford can cut through every obstacle to making this a reality instead of settling for a disappointing and destructive compromise at 139 TGR.
The Bickford and Daly comments are the kind of citizen feedback that kept me determined to document the facts, expose the fiction, and present the truth to the people of my much-beloved hometown. No sane person would spend years on this battle, if it weren’t crucially important. Many citizens, maybe most, live very busy lives and have to take a lot at face value. Trusting in their elected and appointed officials makes sense. But it also makes them vulnerable to schemers.
The job done by Bedford’s Town officials — particularly Matt Hanson — is very impressive. It is a blessing to have him at the helm. But when it comes to the sort of malfeasance that took place, officials were not equipped to challenge it. Their role was to act on what Sarah Stanton cynically put in motion and Town Meeting approved. That was a default setting they saw no choice but to follow. But once the facts were documented and the abuse of the Town Meeting process was presented to them over the summer, they were faced with a legal and ethical dilemma.
The Open Meeting Law requires that any discussion and deliberation of the damning information would have to take place in a Select Board Meeting. But the risk of airing the extent of the deception could destabilize the fire station project. Nevertheless, given the scope of the manipulation and apparent fraud against the people, the Select Board must have asked Town Counsel for legal advice on how to proceed. And they seem to have been told to ignore the information. If that is so, on what basis were the people excluded from full knowledge of the facts?
When the Town was sued by fourteen courageous residents in May of 2022 for violating state procurement law, the Superior Court judge was told by Town Counsel Nina Pickering-Cook that the grounds for the “determination of uniqueness” were accurate. But what is the likelihood that the judge would have denied the preliminary injunction if she had known that there was a property of similar value and 50% more land that the Historic District commissioners unanimously preferred — that was not brought to voters’ attention because it was a few hundred feet beyond an arbitrary line? Or that the Historic District commissioners thought their legitimate role and sworn duty was being usurped and that they were being set up to look like “the bad guys?” Or that it was only the second time in more than sixty years that a Massachusetts Select Board had violated a historic district they had a duty to protect?
The fire station project was schemed and lied into existence. It was not the only option or even the better option. That is no longer a contention. It is a fact. Whether or not it changes the plan going forward can only be decided by fully informed citizens. Otherwise, deprived of that knowledge, one of the proudest relics of the American Revolution is on display in the town where democracy got mugged while the people were too busy and misinformed to notice.
For Town Meeting to fulfill its promise as the most direct form of self-government, it has to be steadfastly defended from those with ulterior motives. And the best way to prevent corruption is to expose it if or when it occurs. Massachusetts’ own Justice Louis Brandeis taught that the most important political office is that of private citizen. He is also the wise man who pointed out that sunlight is the best disinfectant.