Sudbury 2024 Election Profile: Dan Carty, Select Board

SUDBURY, MA — Sudbury's 2024 election is underway now with mail-in voting happening ahead of Election Day on March 25.

To help voters make choices this year, we've asked candidates running in the two contested races — school committee and select board — to respond to candidate questionnaires.

Select Board member Dan Carty is seeking a fourth term in 2024, and is running alongside fellow incumbent Janie Dretler and challenger Eric Poch. Here's how he responded:

Can tell us about yourself?

My name is Dan Carty. I’m 55 years old and I have spent the last 25 of those years raising my family here in Sudbury with my wife Maura. I have 2 kids that have gone through the Sudbury public schools and L-S and are now in college. My youngest child is currently a student at L-S. I am on the tail end of my third term on the Select Board and am seeking a fourth. Previous to the Select Board I was elected to and served on the Planning Board. Professionally I work for Quest Diagnostics as the Director of Process Excellence. In my role I work with internal and external customers to ensure we are meeting their needs in as an efficient manner as possible by continuously improving our processes, eliminating waste and allowing for the creation of more value. I have successfully done this type of work in manufacturing, finance, and for the last 8 years in a healthcare setting. The mindset, skills, and discipline translate broadly, including municipal government.

What’s one thing you would want to accomplish in the coming Sudbury Select Board term?

One thing? Hopefully it’s not just one! But as a Board we have a top priority goal to develop a long-term comprehensive plan to fund and manage the operating and capital budgets so I want to ensure that as a team — the Select Board and Town Manager — we spend serious time working on this. But on a personal note I have been leading various transportation initiatives in town. As the Select Board member on our Transportation Committee we have instituted and managed our Go Sudbury! Taxi and Uber program (see https://sudbury.ma.us/transportation/2022/07/21/low-cost-transportation-options-for-sudbury/) and are working on the MWRTA to bring public transportation to Sudbury. Stay tuned, we plan on launching a new program this summer with the MWRTA that will begin to address a few transportation and livability items on the town’s Master Plan!

What’s one thing town government is doing well right now and one thing it’s not doing well? How would you fix what’s not being done well?

I think they are one and the same, and they relate to the top priority goal item I mentioned above. We do planning very well in pockets — I will point to our Public Works department. Over the last handful of years I think that area has turned around and they now have a rock solid management and methodology to plan for and replace the stuff we know is coming — trucks, equipment, etc. And I look to the Sudbury Public Schools in how they have established and maintained an open and transparent budgeting process. If we can leverage both of these across the entire town we will be better off. The Select Board in the last couple of years has spent a LOT of time developing financial policies but we do not always follow them. For example, our policies call for the creation of 5 and 15 year capital plans with an ordered list sorted by an urgency score along with appropriate justification. That simply didn’t happen this year but it should have.
How to fix it is by applying the same principles I do in my work life — apply common sense with a ton of discipline to continuously improve. It’s one thing to create policies, it’s another thing entirely to follow them. And if the policies aren’t working it’s up to us to refine them. But we need to acknowledge our own flaws and actually have critical discussions. This, like anything else in life, will not just fix itself.

If you could wave a magic wand and do one thing in Sudbury, what would it be? This could be a new law, infrastructure, etc.

The Dan Carty magic wand for Sudbury would really be to wish for the same things I do for my family. That is, that they have their health and are in a safe environment so that they are allowed to work hard to pursue their own version of happiness. But from a governmental perspective it probably would be for the state to end unfunded mandates. We are in the midst of one right now with the MBTA Communities Housing law, aka 3A (see https://www.mass.gov/info-details/section-3a-guidelines). For those watching the news lately this is what Milton voters just pushed back on. A subset of the Select Board, including me, voted this as a top priority goal this year and I’m happy with where this is heading. Due to the hard work of the Planning Board and Planning Office staff there will be a zoning proposal put forward at Town Meeting that will, if passed, take the existing MeadowWalk and Cold Brook Crossing developments that came online in recent years and essentially rezone them so that Sudbury is covered under 3A. But had we not had these developments, and done the work, Sudbury would be faced with creating zoning to allow for another 750 housing units — over a 10% jump in housing stock. And that’s on top of the roughly 10% jump we’ve had in recent years due mainly to 40B, another unfunded state mandate.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated there are three contested races in 2024. There are only two.