Moderator Cathy Cordes Resigns, Effective March 31

Town Moderator Cathy Cordes will not be presiding at the May 15 annual town meeting after all.

Cordes has resigned, effective March 31, following the sale of her home. She and her husband Ronald, who recently announced his retirement at the end of his term on the Board of Assessors, will be relocating to suburban Philadelphia, close to their son Eric and his family.

The move originally was planned for the fall, but there were complications with the transaction and the house was off the market for awhile. When they put it back on, it sold immediately.

There is a deputy moderator – Cordes’s predecessor, Betsey Anderson. That position, however, has to be appointed at the start of each town meeting. Still, town officials are assuming that Anderson will preside. She stepped up once before, in 1999 following the death of Robert Folweiler,

“I have said I am willing to do it and will help with the planning of town meeting,” said Anderson, who served as moderator between 2000 and 2016. She is also a former Selectman and Finance Committee member.

“Fortunately, they have time, from now until the middle of May,” Cordes said. Normally town meeting would begin on the fourth Monday in March, but for the second year it has been rescheduled to allow for an outdoor event, safer during the pandemic. May 15 is a Saturday, and town meeting will be called for the morning and will likely continue into the afternoon.

Anderson said she will be reviewing the warrant with Cordes and is in the loop for all preparations. She noted that this year’s warrant will include proposals that in a normal year would have been completed at a fall town meeting, which didn’t happen in 2020.

Cordes acknowledged that “it’s not going to be easy to leave Bedford, but we will be landing on our feet in a good place.”

Mike Rosenberg can be reached at [email protected], or 781-983-1763