The Town Manager’s Office

What the Town Manager Does

• Appoints much of the town’s staff, and not all of it. Charter section 4-2(b) gives the Town Manager the Chief Assessor, the Town Accountant and the Treasurer/Collector with the Select Board’s concurrence, and the Building Commissioner, the Zoning Enforcement Officer, the building, wiring, plumbing and gas inspectors, the Information Technology Director and the Sealer of Weights and Measures on her own. Section 5-2(b) adds the department head of any board or commission that has one. Each of those appointments takes effect 15 days after she files notice with the Select Board, unless the board votes to reject it first.
• Builds the budget. Section 4-2(c) puts the annual budget and the capital improvement program on her desk to prepare and submit under Article 6, along with the town’s financial records, the payroll and accounts payable warrants, and the negotiation of town contracts that the Select Board then approves and signs.
• Runs the departments day to day. Section 5-3(c) makes her the leader of the Town-Wide Management Team and says that every department head except the Library Director and the Town Planner reports directly to the Town Manager, whoever appointed them. She conducts the performance review of every one of them.
• Answers to you, at Town Meeting. Section 4-2(c)(v) requires the Town Manager to attend every session of the open Town Meeting and to answer the questions voters direct to her office. If you are registered, you can be the one asking.

What the Charter Splits Between Them

Westborough is governed under its own home rule charter, most recently amended in 2022. It divides the work three ways, and the division is worth knowing before you decide whom to write to. It is also not the same split every Town Manager town uses, because each of these charters was drafted for one town.

• Town Meeting holds the legislative power outright, which means the budget and the bylaws. Section 5-1(b) also lets it reorganize, consolidate, abolish or create any town agency by bylaw. Nothing in the manager’s authority reaches that.
• The Select Board holds the executive power under section 3-2(c), and section 3-2(d) makes it the appointing authority for what the charter calls key personnel: the Town Manager, the Town Counsel, the Chief of Police, the Fire Chief and the Director of Public Works. It also appoints fifteen named boards and commissions, from the Zoning Board of Appeals to the Cultural Council, and it signs the warrant that decides what Town Meeting gets to vote on.
• The Town Manager runs what the charter gives her: the budget, the capital plan, the purchasing, the appointments in section 4-2(b), and the day to day supervision of nearly every department in town.

One clause shows how deliberately this was drawn. Under section 5-2(c) the Chief of Police appoints every officer in the Police Department, the Fire Chief appoints every firefighter, and the Director of Public Works appoints every DPW employee. The board hires those three chiefs, the manager supervises them, and they staff their own departments.

Contact & Engage

• Town Hall: 34 West Main Street, Westborough, MA 01581. Open Monday, Wednesday and Thursday 8am to 4:30pm, Tuesday 8am to 8pm, and Friday 7:30am to noon.
• Town Manager’s Office: 508-366-3030. Kimberly Foster is the Assistant Town Manager.
• Report a problem: potholes, broken lights, water and snow go to the Department of Public Works at 508-366-3070.
• Show up: the Select Board meets at 6pm on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month at Town Hall, and the public is welcome.