The three Select Board members who cleared the way last week for a controversial housing development on untouched land in Cedarville rejected a proposal on Tuesday to reconsider their vote.
They made their position clear during the tail end of Tuesday’s marathon meeting after fellow board member Bill Keohan called for another look at the decision following an Independent report detailing developer Matt Sheridan’s involvement in a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority bribery corruption scheme a decade ago.
Sheridan was indicted in 2017 by a Suffolk County grand jury on felony fraud charges, and in 2020 he agreed to plead guilty to two counts of “government purchasing.” The case involved Sheridan bid rigging with a friend, Tim Dockery, who worked at the MBTA, so he could win contracts from the agency. In return for his cooperation with prosecutors, Sheridan’s case was continued without a finding for a year and then dismissed.
“It was 10 years ago. I want to put it all behind me,” he told the Independent last week.
The news of Sheridan’s past – which came two days after the Landers vote – surprised Keohan, as well as chair Deb Iaquinto. She, along with Kevin Canty and David Golden, voted last week to waive the town’s right of first refusal to purchase the property after weeks of closed-door discussions on the subject. Canty and Golden knew of Sheridan’s legal troubles but apparently did not share that information with fellow board members.
“Due to what we read in the paper last week,” Keohan said Tuesday evening, “I think that we should have an opportunity to revisit the vote of this board to relinquish its Chapter 61 assignment.”
Chapter 61 is a state law that provides a tax break on land set aside for agricultural use. The property in question – 138 acres split into two parcels known as the Landers Farm Road site – has been put up for sale by its owner, P.A. Landers Inc. Under that law, the town had the right to match a buyer’s offer, which in this case was $5 million, to keep it from being developed.
Keohan urged the board to hold a public discussion on the June 9 decision, which was also clouded by Canty and Golden’s close relationship with Sheridan. Although the two men are at odds with each other, they share a mutual friendship with the developer. In addition, he ran Canty’s re-election campaign this spring and is helming Golden’s bid to be elected as a state representative in November.
Both board members filed “disclosure of appearance of conflict of interest” forms with the state ethics commission but participated in secret meetings on the land deal and did not recuse themselves from voting on it.
In response to Keohan’s request, Iaquinto suggested the matter be discussed “offline.”
“But I’m not interested in entertaining revisiting that vote,” she added.
Keohan persisted, saying any discussion should be conducted in public.
“There’s been too much talked about this process offline,” he said.
Canty said a motion to reconsider the Landers vote would have to come from “someone that voted on the prevailing side.” By the silence in the room, it was clear that was not going to happen.
“I stand by the vote that I took,” he said. “I think it was in the best interest of the community. It balanced conservation with the need for affordable and attainable housing for a demographic in this community, and nothing in that story had anything to do with the arrangements that were made, the deal that was worked out, the integrity of any of the individuals, and has no impact on my decision whatsoever.”
Golden, too, defended his vote to allow Sherian to buy the land and build homes on about 60% of it.
“I’m just not sure what additional information in that story is relevant, and if Mr. Keohan has a compelling argument as to why that’s relevant, I’m open to listening to it,” he said.
In a phone interview Wednesday, Keohan said he wanted to give Canty, Golden, and Iaquinto an “opportunity” to rethink their position, “but I knew I didn’t have the votes.”
“If they wanted to stand behind their vote, they could,” he said. “But I do believe that based on the story in the Plymouth Independent, based on the reaction in our community on a serious subject matter, that we should revisit this and have that discussion. I was looking to respond to residents’ concerns about what had transpired. Because I was one of those residents who was unaware” of Sheridan’s past.
“I was startled by the lack of interest in pursuing it this way,” Keohan continued. “In the end, we’re voted in by the people and the people want to hear this discussion…When we don’t take up these issues at our meetings, they’ll be taken up on social media, and that’s a reality of the technology.”
Quintal sided with Keohan last week but did not speak on the issue during Tuesday’s board meeting. He did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Mark Pothier can be reached at mark@plymouthindependent.org.