Join the Live Blog from Annual Town Meeting on Sudbury Patch

Annual Town Meeting begins tonight at 7:30 at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School and Sudbury Patch will once again live blog from the auditorium.

This year there are 43 articles on the warrant, althought a couple were withdrawn recently.

Among the most talked about articles of late is No. 16, construction of a new police station on Hudson Road.

The Board of Selectmen agree the town needs one, as do many residents who have attended meetings the past couple of months.

But there have been residents who have questioned whether the Board broke its own by-laws in decided to put the article on the warrant.

"Does the project come under purview of (Capital Improvement Planning Committee)?" resident Andrew MacEntee asked during the April 23 meeting.

The CIPC studies proposed capital projects and improvements involving major tangible assets and projects which have a useful life of at least five years and have a single year cost of $10,000 or a multi-year cost of $100,000 or more.

All offices, boards and committees, including the Selectmen, shall by Oct. 1 of each year, give to the Committee, on forms prepared by it, information concerning all anticipated projects requiring Town Meeting action for the next six years.

Vice Chair Bob Haarde took responsibility for the possible gaff.

"I’m largly to blame for this," he said. "This came out of the Fairbanks roof discussion. What we were doing was capital planning. If we do a new center, where does that come in pecking order? We've got the police station, town hall ... what’s the highest priority? I had no idea were in violation of any capital planning bylaw. Having read bylaw, I'm not sure we’re in compliance with it."