Town Leadership
The Town Manager’s Office
The Town Manager
Janey Beardsley Snyder
When a road goes unplowed or a permit stalls, the person with the most operational control over the response is appointed, not elected. Janey Beardsley Snyder is Sandisfield’s Town Manager, hired by the three elected members of the Select Board, and she serves at their direction. She is the town’s chief administrative officer, and the town lists her in three roles at once: Town Manager, Chief Procurement Officer, and Emergency Management Director, which is what running a town of fewer than a thousand people looks like from the inside. She oversees the departments, prepares the budget that goes to the Select Board and then to Town Meeting, purchases on the town’s behalf, and staffs the day-to-day work that keeps a hill town of 52 square miles moving. The plan to fix a problem usually starts at her desk, then goes to the board, and then to the room where every registered voter can vote it up or down.
| Role | Town Manager (chief administrative officer) |
|---|---|
| Also holds | Chief Procurement Officer and Emergency Management Director |
| Selection | Appointed by the Select Board and serving at its direction, not elected |
| Office | Town Hall, 66 Sandisfield Road, Suite 1, Sandisfield, MA 01255 |
| Phone | 413-258-4711, extension 1 |
| Website | sandisfieldma.gov |
What the Town Manager Does
- Runs the departments. The Town Manager oversees the town’s departments and their staff day to day, from public works to the building department, and is the person the Select Board holds responsible for how they run.
- Builds the budget. Each year the Town Manager prepares the operating budget and the capital plan, keeps the town’s financial calendar, and brings the numbers to the Select Board and then to Town Meeting, which holds the actual vote.
- Purchases for the town. As Chief Procurement Officer she manages the town’s contracts and purchasing under state procurement law.
- Answers to the board. The Town Manager is the agent of the Select Board, works under its policy direction, and serves at its direction. The board hires the manager and the manager runs the town, which is the trade a town makes when it hires a professional administrator instead of dividing the job among elected officers.
Who Decides What
Sandisfield does not yet have a written town charter. The town’s own Town Charter Committee has been circulating a draft, and until one is adopted the town runs on Massachusetts town-meeting law and its own bylaws and votes. Under that arrangement the work divides three ways, and the division 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 sets town policy. It hires and directs the Town Manager, appoints residents to many town boards and committees, and signs the warrant that decides what Town Meeting gets to vote on.
- The Town Manager runs the operation the board sets policy for: the departments, the budget, the purchasing, and the daily business of the town.
If the town adopts the draft charter, some of this would be written down for the first time, and a charter is amended the same way it is adopted, at Town Meeting. That makes the shape of Sandisfield’s government one of the live questions a resident can actually weigh in on.
Contact & Engage
- Town Hall: 66 Sandisfield Road, Suite 1, Sandisfield, MA 01255.
- Town Manager’s Office: 413-258-4711, extension 1.
- Report a problem: road and drainage problems go to the Public Works and Highway Department; contact the town through the main line, 413-258-4711.
- Show up: the Select Board meets most Monday evenings at Town Hall, and the public is welcome.
Want to weigh in on a town decision? Learn how to contact your officials so they actually hear you.