The Acton Town Manager’s Office

What the Town Manager Does

• Hires the department heads. Charter section 4-3(g)(7): “The town manager shall hire all town employees, except school employees and the town accountant, town clerk and town counsel.” Three hires are different and the charter names them one by one: an administrative assistant, a town treasurer, and a town collector or a combined treasurer-collector are hired by the Manager subject to the approval of the Select Board.
• Starts the budget. Under section 6-2 the Manager submits an estimate of the town’s expenditures and revenues for the next fiscal year to both the Select Board and the Finance Committee, and the charter sets a deadline: not less than one hundred days before Town Meeting opens. The Select Board then sends its own recommendations to the Finance Committee at least sixty days out, under section 6-3.
• Signs off on the spending. Section 6-1 puts every warrant for the payment of town funds on the Manager’s desk to recommend for approval or disapproval, item by item, with the Select Board taking the actual vote. Section 4-3(g)(6) makes him responsible for purchasing and for awarding the town’s contracts, again with the school department carved out.
• Can reshape the organization itself. Section 4-3(g)(2) lets the Manager establish, combine, reorganize or discontinue a department, with the approval of at least three members of the Select Board.
• Holds the town’s buildings and land. Section 4-3(g)(5) gives the Manager “full and exclusive jurisdiction of the rental and use of all town real property” outside the School Committee’s, and responsibility for maintaining it.

What the Charter Splits Between Them

Acton has been governed under this charter since the voters accepted it at the annual town election in April 1982. Section 1-3 divides the work in one sentence: “The administration of all fiscal, and municipal affairs, as well as the establishment of town policy, shall be vested in an executive branch headed by a Select Board. The legislative powers shall be exercised by an open town meeting.” Here is what that means in practice, and it is worth knowing before you decide whom to write to.

• Town Meeting holds the legislative power outright, which means the budget and the bylaws. Nothing in the Manager’s authority reaches that.
• The Select Board is the town’s executive board. It hires exactly four people itself under section 4-1(f): the Town Accountant, Town Counsel, the Town Manager, and the Town Clerk. It appoints the members of seventeen boards and commissions under section 4-2. And under section 3-4 the Town Meeting warrant is the board’s, which makes it the body that decides what Town Meeting gets to vote on.
• The Town Manager runs everything the charter hands him: the departments and the people in them, the purchasing, the contracts, the town’s property, and the first draft of the budget.
• The Town Moderator, who is elected and serves a one year term, appoints the nine member Finance Committee under section 3-2. That is the committee that reads the budget on Town Meeting’s behalf, and it answers to neither of the two offices above.

One consequence catches most residents by surprise. The Town Clerk, the official who runs your elections and keeps the town’s records, is not on the ballot in Acton. Section 4-1(f) makes the Clerk a Select Board hire on a three year term, and section 2-1, which lists every office Acton’s voters do elect, does not include it.

Contact & Engage

• Town Hall: 472 Main Street, Acton, MA 01720. Main line 978-929-6600.
• Town Manager’s Office: 978-929-6611, Manager@actonma.gov.
• Report a problem: potholes, snow, street trees and the transfer station go to the Department of Public Works at 978-929-7740.
• Show up: the Select Board meets every other Monday at 6:00 PM in Room 204 at Town Hall, and the Manager is in the room. Every meeting opens with resident concerns on any topic not already on the agenda.