Three-year terms for Marblehead Select Board? Proposal headed back to Town Meeting
The proposal pops up periodically — including as recently as the 2020 Town Meeting. But is this the year that voters decide to extend the terms of members of the Select Board from one to three years?
Article sponsor Jim Zisson certainly hopes so.
His research has shown that Marblehead is an outlier among towns with select boards in electing their members annually.
A common misconception is that the Select Board is like a city council, Zisson said. The two bodies may have a similar number of members, but the similarities end there, he explained.
“The Select Board is an executive function,” more like a mayor, Zisson said.
Mayors almost always serve multi-year terms, which makes sense, Zisson argued.
“The reason is there are a lot of long-term strategies and objectives that...
