The Town Administrator’s Office

Chris Vitale

Chris Vitale runs Westport day to day, and the five people who hired him are the Select Board that Westport voters elect. That is the whole arrangement in one sentence, and it explains more about how this town works than any organization chart. The Town Administrator is appointed, not elected. The Select Board is elected, and the Select Board hires him, sets the terms of his contract, and supervises him.

What he actually controls is the machinery. The Town Administrator supervises the town’s department heads, from the Highway Surveyor to the Director of Public Health, so the day a road gets patched or a septic plan gets reviewed is a day one of those departments acted under his direction. He builds the annual budget, department by department, and he is the person who has to say out loud which requests fit inside the money the town expects to have. In the spring of 2026 that plan came to $60.025 million for the year beginning that July, up from $56.98 million, and $27.96 million of it was the school budget.

Then he hands it over, on purpose. A budget in Westport passes through three rooms before it is real. The Town Administrator builds it and proposes it. The Select Board reviews it and puts it on the Town Meeting warrant. Then Town Meeting votes, and Town Meeting can cut a line the other two rooms agreed on. On May 5, 2026, a resident asked from the floor why the town was moving about $455,000 of free cash into stabilization accounts before it had voted the budget at all, and Select Board Chair Shana Teas answered that the board had reordered the warrant deliberately, to fund the savings first. The articles passed. They did not have to.

He also holds the practical door. Department heads, town employees and residents may ask that an item be placed on an upcoming Select Board agenda, with the supporting material attached, and the request is due by 4:00 pm on the Monday one week before the meeting. Filing one does not guarantee a slot: the request may be handled by staff instead. The Town Administrator or the Select Board Chair may accept a late request in genuinely unusual circumstances. That deadline is the seam where an ordinary resident’s problem turns into a numbered item on a public agenda, and it is a form, not a favor.

So the shortest honest description of the office is this. The Town Administrator proposes, the Select Board directs, and Town Meeting decides. If you want something changed in Westport, his office is the fastest first call, because the plan usually starts there.