Laurel Labdon Announces Fourth Run For Select Board

BREWSTER – Brewster native Laurel Labdon has officially announced her candidacy for select board. This will be Labdon’s fourth time vying for a seat on the board after unsuccessful runs in 2018, 2023 and 2024. 

 In 2018, Labdon was one of five vying for two open select board seats that ultimately went to Mary Chaffee and Ben DeRuyter. She ran again in 2023, coming up short by five votes to Ned Chatelain. The race ended in a recount. 

 In 2024, Labdon was three short of gaining a seat on the board against Amanda Bebrin. Chaffee was elected with a comfortable lead. A recount left Ladbon again five votes shy. 

 Labdon said she took out papers this year after learning that Chatelain was not seeking reelection. She will face Bruce Semple for the one board seat on the May 19 election ballot.

She said her decision was fairly last-minute. 

 “My first thought was, ‘do I want to put myself through this process again?’” she said. “But if I don’t put my name on the ballot, there is a chance that no one will be on the Brewster select board who actually grew up in Brewster, spent, for all intents and purposes, their entire life here, went to school here, even raised children here.”

 Labdon, who was raised in Brewster and is a graduate of the Nauset School District, set out to attend college in Colorado where she was involved in a car accident that left her paralyzed at age 19. She returned home to Brewster after a year in the hospital. She then earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and government from the University of Colorado at Boulder. 

 Although her plans changed from what she had envisioned at 19, Labdon continued to seek community engagement. She began working at Orleans Elementary School as a teacher’s aide and found a deeper interest in what was happening locally. 

 In 2018 Labdon was appointed to the Brewster Housing Authority, which coincides with one of her many passions throughout town. After learning that many of her Orleans Elementary counterparts were struggling to live and work on Cape Cod, she became a fierce advocate for affordable housing. 

 In that quest, Labdon believes some of the most important work will come from the land evaluation committee. 

 While she is in favor of more affordable housing in town, Labdon believes that the land evaluation committee should have had a chance to finish its audit of all municipal-owned land before moving forward with the feasibility study on the Sea Camps pond property. While the parcels may be smaller, creating multiple sites for affordable housing could produce better results and allow the properties to be built more quickly than on the pond property.

“I’d like a full understanding of all municipal-owned land and buildings and how we might be able to get the same amount of units in a more creative way that integrates affordable and attainable and what I choose to call community housing,” she said. “You can’t have a community if the only people that can live here are people that aren’t opening businesses and aren’t working in the businesses that we have to keep them open.”

 Labdon also said the proposed affordable housing project on the pond property presents a bit of a “Catch 22.” 

 “I have my own personal struggle with it because I’m a huge affordable housing advocate, but at the same time, as much as we can avoid having to go to sewer or any sort of danger of compromising our water supply, [we should],” she said. 

She also serves as the housing authority liaison to the community preservation committee and acts as a one-person committee called the all-citizens access committee, which consults on accessibility issues throughout town. 

 When Labdon attended elementary school in Brewster, the only school in town was Stony Brook Elementary. She said the building needs a lot of work, especially with the findings of the code compliance study. With maintenance updates and building work on the horizon, Labdon said it is the perfect time to look at the town’s elementary schools.

 “I think there is an opportunity to reevaluate what we need in Brewster at the elementary level for a school,” she said. “I want to be very careful that there isn’t an overbuild like there was at the high school, but at the same time I would like to look at the issue of having one school that’s up to code and can fit all the students.” 

 Although consolidation is sometimes perceived as a dirty word, she said there is an opportunity to do it correctly. 

 She also hopes to start the discussions to bring all municipal buildings and schools up to accessibility standards. There is an opportunity for schools to include intergenerational learning, she said, especially given the demographics in Brewster, so she would want the school to be accessible for not only wheelchair users, but elders and people with disabilities. 

 Currently, the select board is working to present town meeting with the logistics of three possible Proposition 2½ overrides. When asked her thoughts, Labdon said, “I think this just reinforces that the town and the board need to prioritize what is needed over what is wanted.” 

 She reiterated that she would always advocate for funding the schools over what could possibly be just “wants” of the town. 

 Anecdotally, Labdon credits much of her success to the Cape Cod community. 

 “I came back home and was embraced by not only Brewster, but the whole Nauset region,” she said. “People came out of the woodwork and really embraced me as a member of the community and I think that’s what we don’t want to lose. You don’t have to be here since you were a small child to be embraced by this community. It’s just really important that we embrace all our residents and support them and be cognizant of their needs and their limitations, how hard they work to stay here, to be part of this community, and to reward that.”