Updated on 11/3/25 — 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 in the June 2025 complaint to the 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 destructive claim that there were no other suitable sites. The records also document that numerous fabrications and misrepresentations were made to key Town committees and to the public in the lead-up to the vote. All of which makes the 3-vote margin by which the article cleared the statutory two-thirds threshold flimsy.
It gets even flimsier when the boiling point of the controversy was not considered by the Town as grounds for a secret vote — as it chose to do at the Special Town Meeting eight months later on a far less consequential matter that officials were promoting. It has also traditionally been employed for bonding votes. And surely, if the Town were acting impartially, the slim margin would have prompted the Moderator to call for a recount.
But there was nothing impartial about the way the Town orchestrated the matter. 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 evident throughout Sarah Stanton’s aggressive promotion to purchase 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:
- “It saves money – a whole lot of taxpayer money.”
- “And, because we will not lose 2 years due to eminent domain proceedings, we will enjoy savings for construction because we can start sooner.”
- “We have been engaged in [finding a site] for many years and these discussions have taken place in executive session, as is normal and proper for all land acquisition, to avoid negative impacts to the town’s negotiating position.”
Not one of those statements was true at the time it was made. It is reckless not to examine the project now in the light of what has been uncovered. After sending the Select Board a letter on September 28th again asking that they trust Bedford’s citizens with all the information that refutes the official version of events, the matter was not placed on the agenda.
Transparency is not optional. It can’t be important sometimes and not others. The voters of Bedford were deceived and manipulated by Sarah Stanton, but now it is the Select Board that is keeping that knowledge from the people. Why? Bedford’s residents deserve to know the full details of the project for which they are paying so dearly. It is time for the Board members to discuss the facts in a public meeting and get it all out in the open, where it has always belonged. Let informed citizens decide where the project should go from here.
I have been writing to the Select Board since July to point out that they have a 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 an acknowledgment is improper.
It is insane to think that the public has no idea of how substandard and contrived the project’s vetting truly was. Or how damaging to the town’s future standing it could be. Those who spearheaded one of the earliest historic districts in the Commonwealth knew firsthand how overwrought short-term politics can be. The 2022 Town Meeting was clearly an example of what they had in mind.
Bedford lost much more of its architectural character than surrounding towns when one-by-one compromises to authenticity and character were made — instead of holding the line and finding a better way. It is easier to justify demolishing a building here and there than it is to defend spoiling the integrity of an entire district. Or so they thought. But when the town’s officials ignore their duty to protect the town’s Historic District and justify the decision to vandalize it themselves, the scales are tipped in the worst possible way.
Official’s repeated warning that the Historic District Commission should not “pre-judge” the project was a red flag. The HDC role was not to simply to approve or disapprove the design but to determine if the project was lawful. In fact, the size of the footprint and scope of the project disqualified it from the beginning — any “pre-judgment” was in the terms of the enabling Act itself. Which is why it had to be rejected, as it was in January 2024.
The Town Manager’s refusal to abide by the words of the legislative act was a hardball pressure tactic that eventually “worked” — but it screwed the town. That’s the nicest word to describe it. If she can’t be held liable for the millions her scheming cost the people of Bedford and for the wasted years she caused, at least holding her reputation accountable would reinforce how it could all have been avoided by transparently observing the Open Meeting Law.
I doubt that many of those who stood up at Town Meeting to defend the need to cannibalize the historic 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 — instead of using the TD Bank site as a decoy. It is more than likely that most people would have backed the flat, 50% larger property, that was almost identically valued, was unanimously preferred by the Historic District commissioners, and spoken well of by a number of firefighters. But what voters were told was that 139 The Great Road was the only feasible property.
The intent of the Chapter 30B procurement law was certainly violated. And the lawsuit brought by Carol Amick and the other courageous plaintiffs could have saved Bedford all the wasted time and money, if the Superior Court judge had not been deprived of material facts regarding the site selection travesty. Unfortunately, the preliminary injunction hearing was held two years before Historic District Commissioner Canciello, an architect, explained how irregular and substandard the selection process had been and how the Commissioners were left feeling that they had a gun pointed at their heads if they didn’t approve the station.
And that was always the plan — because Sarah Stanton had to have known that the HDC process would take at least as long as the eminent domain time she told the people they would be saving — ignoring the superior 30 North Road alternative.
As for saying that years of discussions had taken place in executive session, “as is normal and proper for all land acquisition,” that was a deliberate effort to conflate the site selection process, which is not a reason to go into executive session under the law, with the negotiations which come after a site has been chosen, which is one of the narrow reasons an executive session is allowed. That was used to cover for the astonishing fact that there were no discussions of a single other “prospective” site by the Select Board — confirmation that the property was chosen by the Town Manager, and rubberstamped by the Board, without any of the transparency that is required by law.
Apologists for claiming 139 The Great Road was uniquely suited for the new station are quick to say that no site would be ideal. But when considering relative strengths and weaknesses, some come much closer — and the acceptable trade-offs should have been made in the open — where residents could have had their customary say. Before the 2022 ATM vote, voters repeatedly asked about the Bedford Motel and the specious reasons given for dismissing that property were far less problematic than the official choice to overpower and undermine one of the town’s few historic blocks.
Someday, allowing officials to vandalize the Bedford Center Historic District’s traditional character will be their sorry claim to shame — unless citizens are finally given the chance to examine all the facts and then choose what is in the short- and long-term best interest of their town.