The Town Manager’s Office

What the Town Manager Does

• Appoints the department heads. Section 7(a) of the 2022 act gives the Town Manager the appointment of every department head on the basis of merit and fitness alone, in consultation with the board or committee that department serves. The school department and the library are carved out.
• Appoints four offices with the board’s ratification. Section 7(e) names them exactly: the police chief, the fire chief, the finance director and the town clerk. Each is appointed by the Town Manager and confirmed by a vote of not less than 3 members of the Select Board.
• Builds the budget, and hands it to the Finance Committee. Section 6 makes the Town Manager the town’s chief financial officer, responsible for drafting the annual operating and capital budgets for submission to the Finance Committee, and for keeping a five year capital improvement plan. Every department, including the schools, has to send in its numbers.
• Buys what the town buys. The Town Manager is the town’s chief procurement officer and awards and executes contracts binding the town up to a limit the Select Board sets by policy.
• Does not set policy. Section 5(c) says so outright, and section 5(g) adds that nothing in the act moves any elected or appointed board’s permitting or policy-making authority to the manager. Your Conservation Commission still decides conservation questions.

What the Act Splits Between Them

Wayland has been governed under a Select Board and Town Manager form since March 16, 2022. The act divides the work 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, and section 7(j) makes the point plainly: the Town Manager negotiates the town’s union contracts, but Town Meeting still has to fund them.
• The Select Board is named the chief executive officer of the town and its chief policymaking body. It appoints the Town Manager, Town Counsel and the independent auditor, it can remove the Town Manager on a vote of not less than 4 members, and it signs the warrant that decides what Town Meeting gets to vote on.
• The Town Manager runs what the act assigns: the departments and their heads, the budget, the purchasing, the personnel system, the labor contracts, the town’s buildings and property, and, with the board’s approval, the power to reorganize a department outright.

The board’s own mission statement puts the split in the reader’s terms. It says the Select Board, through the Town Manager, is responsible for the operation of building, facilities, police, fire, finance, the treasurer, legal matters, real property, human resources and collective bargaining, and that it does not direct the elected boards with their own statutory duties, such as the schools, the assessors and the library.

Contact & Engage

• Town Building: 41 Cochituate Road, Wayland, MA 01778. Summer hours run June 22 to August 28: Monday 8:00 am to 7:00 pm, Tuesday to Thursday 8:00 am to 5:30 pm, and closed Friday.
• Town Manager’s Office: 508-358-3620. The Assistant Town Manager is Kelsi Power-Spirlet at 508-358-6821.
• Report a problem: potholes, water, trees and snow go to the Department of Public Works at 508-358-3672, and after hours to 508-358-4721.
• Show up: the Select Board meets Monday evenings at 6:30 pm in the Wayland Commons Room, and public comment comes first on the agenda.