April 24, 2024: The Holliston Select Board officially voted to include the Select Board / Town Manager Special Act on the Annual Town Meeting Warrant for May 13, 2024.

What is the goal of the Select Board / Town Manager Special Act? The goal is to improve efficiency in local government by reallocating day-to-day operational responsibilities from elected officials (the Select Board) to professional staff (Town Manager and associated personnel). The Town’s current structure is considered “decentralized” meaning that questions of accountability and efficiency can often lead in multiple directions.

The reallocation of duties will allow the Select Board to focus greater time and effort on the executive functions of the Board (such as policy development) while the Town Manager coordinates administrative, operational, and financial functions for consistency across all departments and boards.

Has this been studied? A full chronology of studies is available here (link), dating back to 1970, but the most significant structural change that has been made to Holliston’s government in the last 50 years was the Acts of 1994, which defined the Town Administrator role as the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) and Chief Procurement Officer (CPO), but left much of the approval of day-to-day operations to the Select Board.

In 2020, the Select Board approved the creation of a Governance Committee, which studied municipal government trends and proposed numerous changes to Town Meeting. The Town also engaged the MassDOR’s Division of Local Services (DLS) for an evaluation. The DLS report (link), issued on Nov. 2, 2021, found that Holliston’s governmental structure remains decentralized, with only incremental changes to the management structure made over the past 4-5 decades.

Why now? The Town of Holliston, as an organization, operates at a cost of over $70 million per year due a highly regulated environment with greater complexities each year coming from local, state, and federal policy decisions. Survey results from Envisioning Future Holliston illustrated the community’s desire for changes to town government – specifically, residents are looking for transparency, accountability, and more centralized municipal government.

What does this Act do? Under the Act (Article 26 of May 2024 Annual Town Meeting) the Town Manager is given clearer authority and responsibility for managing the Town in four areas: administration, finances, personnel, and facilities/property.

• Administration: the Act clarifies the Town Manager’s authority and responsibility to ensure compliance with policies, procedures, and federal, state, and local law; as well as set priorities for projects and staff;
• Finance: the Act clarifies the Town Manager’s responsibility as the Chief Financial Officer, reporting to various stakeholders, including the separately elected Finance Committee, whose role is unchanged;
• Personnel: the Act centralizes authority and responsibility from the Select Board to the Town Manager with regard to negotiations of collective bargaining agreements and personnel agreements, standardizing consistent and compliant hiring practices;
• Facilities/Property: the Act clarifies the Town Manager’s responsibility for construction, repair, and maintenance of all Town buildings, property, and information technology, with the exception of the public schools.

Does the Act make any other changes? No, there is no change to the make-up, appointment process, or authority of existing boards/committees/commissions, with the exception of the Select Board.