This ain't David Letterman, but Top 16 reasons why Drobinski's continued support of Valente is bad for Sudbury & why he needs to be defeated

1. The town manager Maureen Valente has publicly talked about public safety being a top priority, yet she allowed our Police Chief, who was apparently regularly drinking in his taxpayer paid police car, to remain on the job until he was finally caught.  

2.  She subjected the town to a prolonged period of risk, embarrassment, turmoil and shame by hiring a housing director who became intoxicated at an after hours post-town-meeting celebration and then subsequently crashed her car in front of the Catholic Church.  It was her third offense and led to a series of town embarrassments and reactions culminating in the structural change of our board of selectmen from 3 members to 5 members.  Maureen learned nothing from this experience and created more turmoil and anger by re-hiring Beth Rush as soon as she was released from prison.  Beth Rust never apologized, never admitted any wrongdoing, never came clean, never showed any remorse.  But she was rewarded with a job paid for by taxpayers.

3.  The town manager has failed to comply with our 40B obligation leaving our town and neighborhoods to high density developments which crowd our roads, our intersections and our schools while raising the taxes of everyone else to pay for them.  Many neighborhoods in continue to battle their own town and developers, having spent money, time and stress waging lawsuits to protect their neighborhoods because the town manager has failed to.

4.  The town manager has not undertaken any real long-range planning.  The 10 year master plan was last updated in 2001 and is now 13 years old.  Many of the goals and initiatives in the Master Plan have gone un met.  It should be updated every 10 years.   

5.  The town manager has avoided spending the necessary money from our operating budget to effectively maintain our buildings.  Our buildings have been neglected and the lifespan of our buildings has been reduced causing the town manager to ask the taxpayers to pay for an override debt exclusion for complete structural replacements paid for by net new tax increases instead of maintainng the buildings with the operating budget.

6.  It wasn't until the board of selectmen expanded from 3-5 that we began long range capital planning. Maureen Valente was against 3-5, but it took expanding the board from 3-5 to finally begin sorely needed capital planning, something that had been requested many times before the board expansion last year. 

7.  Maureen repeatedly complained that 3-5 would be too much work for the staff as the would have to convert all the 3s to 5s.

8.  Maureen was against Senior Tax Relief.  She and Larry O'Brien actually eliminate it right before the special town meeting where it was approved, yet now, Maureen takes credit for it!

9.  The main people responsible for our AAA rating are the taxpayers who pay the high taxes to afford that bond rating-not Maureen.

10.  The budget has ballooned  from about $32M in 1999 to over $80M today.  The budget has increased precipitously year over year with much more money to spend each year than the previous one but the town manager constantly complained about "cuts."  Adjusting your spending mix to spend more money on one thing instead of the other is not a cut.  It is a spending mix adjustment. 

11.  She is responsible for the town and SPS healthcare which skyrocketed under her watch.  We saved $2.5M by going to the GIC.  If we managed our healthcare costs responsibly for the last ten years we could have invested millions and millions into education and town services. 

12. The terms of her contract and the manner in which it is "negotiated" sets a very poor example of leadership and makes for a poor model for which our collective bargaining units react to.  Her contract alone is a vehicle which creates anger and disbelief resulting in prolonged negotiations and compromised terms.

13.  Maureen and Drobinski ended a 300 year tradition of freedom of speech at Selectmen meetings.  For the last four years the public has been banned from speaking.  Maureen misled the public by saying she was complying with the open meeting law.  No other board in town or across the state agreed with her.  After political pressure created from 3-5, all candidates had to agree to support the restoration of freedom of speech at Selectmen meetings.  In spite of the fact that a majority of the Selectmen actually believe in it, Maureen manipulated the process again and made the conditions so restrictive that no one bothers.  You have to show up at the beginning and put your name on a list.  You cannot talk about anything on the agenda which defeats the purpose of going to the meeting.  I have seen on TV how the Selectmen don’t talk about anything controversial that people may want to comment on until everyone has gone home.

14.  There is no financial transparency. We just found out about $1.3M Melone Gravel Pit Fund that we never knew existed.  The Finance Committee does not even receive financial statements before town meeting despite their statutory responsibility to advise the town legislature on financial matters at town meeting.  There has to be better transparency with OUR money. If I hid my finances from my wife the way the town hides them from us, she would leave me!

15.  There is no accountability in Sudbury.  Drobinski heaps praise on the town manager and we have a strong town manager model of government but when it comes to accountability, Drobinski says those things are not the town manager’s responsibility. 

16.  After passing $15M in education overrides and increasing the budget from $32M to over $80M since 1999, our classrooms are still crowded and our school committee is complaining of budget cuts and one selectmen even suggested we close a school…really!!!