The Town Manager’s Office

What the Town Manager Does

• Appoints most of the department heads, but not all of them. Charter section 19(B) gives the Town Manager the appointment of every Superintendent or Chief of a department and every subordinate officer and employee, upon merit and fitness alone, and the power to set their pay. The words that matter are the ones right before it: except as otherwise provided herein. Middleborough’s charter provides otherwise in several places, and the next card lists them.
• Builds the budget, and hands it on. Section 19(K) puts the annual operating budget on the manager’s desk. It goes to the Select Board, which changes what it wants to and sends its recommended budget to the Finance Committee by the twentieth of January, and the Finance Committee reports to Town Meeting. Section 19(L) adds a five year financial forecast, which the board must make public.
• Negotiates the labor contracts. Section 19(M) makes the manager responsible for negotiating, administering and enforcing the town’s collective bargaining agreements, apart from the School Committee’s and the Municipal Light Board’s, and the same section reserves to the Select Board the sole authority to approve and execute them.
• Can open any department’s books. Section 20 lets the Town Manager examine the affairs of any division or department under the manager’s control, or the conduct of any officer in one, without notice, with access to all town books and papers.
• Answers to the board, and can be removed by it. Section 21 lets the Select Board remove the manager by majority vote, by filing a written statement of the specific reasons with the Town Clerk. The manager can demand a public hearing within five days, and the board’s written decision after it is final.

What the Charter Splits Between Them

Here is the part that surprises people who know how a Town Manager works in the next town over. In many Massachusetts manager towns the manager hires the police and fire chiefs. In Middleborough the Select Board does. The charter is a special act written for this town alone, and it hands the board a list of appointments by name.

• 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 appoints the Town Manager under section 18, and it also appoints, by its own charter sections, the Chief of Police (section 14), the chief of the fire department (section 16), the Town Clerk (section 10), the Town Treasurer and Collector of Taxes (section 9), the nine Library Trustees (section 12), Town Counsel (section 17) and the constables (section 15). Sections 2 and 3 also seat the board itself as the Board of Health, the Water Commissioners, the sewer commissioners, the surveyors of highways and the rent board, which is why one board turns up in so many places in this town.
• The Town Manager runs everything the charter does not reserve: the other departments and their heads, the pay of subordinate staff, purchasing for every department except school books, the repair of town buildings, and the health regulations, which section 19(I) lets the manager administer directly or through a Health Officer under the board’s supervision.

Here is that relationship in one visible act. At the reorganization meeting on April 6, 2026, two days after the annual town election, it was the Interim Town Manager who conducted the reorganization and called for nominations for Select Board Chair, and who stepped back the moment a chair was seated. The manager runs that piece of the meeting until the board can run itself, and then the manager works for the board.

Contact & Engage

• Town Hall: 10 Nickerson Avenue, Middleborough, MA 02346. The Town Manager’s office is open Monday 8AM to 6PM, Tuesday through Thursday 8AM to 5PM, and Friday 8AM to noon.
• Town Manager’s Office: 508-947-0928.
• Report a problem: potholes, broken lights, water and snow go to the Department of Public Works at 508-946-2480.
• Show up: the Select Board meets on Monday nights at Town Hall, and the public is welcome.