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Marblehead voters heading to the May 4 annual Town Meeting at the high school field house on Humphrey Street will face a quiet but consequential structural question buried near the end of a 40-article warrant: should the town’s Public Works Committee be dissolved, or modernized?
Articles 34 and 35 sit in the shadow of a $7.2 million budget deficit and a tiered property tax override, but both carry real stakes for how Marblehead coordinates its infrastructure work — and for who, ultimately, holds authority over that coordination.
Article 34, sponsored by the Select Board at the request of Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer, asks voters to repeal the bylaw establishing the Public Works Committee, which was adopted at the 1970 annual town meeting. Article 35, sponsored by the committee itself, proposes a revised version of the same bylaw — one that modernizes membership, reduces meeting frequency from monthly to quarterly and narrows the committee’s focus to projects affecting public ways and public buildings.
Kezer, in interview with the Marblehead Independent, framed his position in blunt organizational terms.
“You either have a town administrator form of government or you have a committee of department heads form of government,” he said. “You can’t have both. As the town administrator, I would be one vote of many of my subordinates, and that makes no sense to me.”
He has argued the bylaw, created before the town administrator position existed in the early 1990s, fills a coordination void that no longer exists. At the Finance Committee’s warrant hearing, he put the broader challenge plainly.
“Do you want the efficiencies of that centrally coordination of municipal government?” Kezer said. “Or do you want to be 11 different municipalities — something like 28 different departments, all operating independently in the same four square miles?”
A question from resident Sarah Fox prompted the back-and-forth over both articles came into sharp relief Thursday morning at a public department heads forum held at the Judy and Gene Jacobi Community Center, where Select Board Member Erin Noonan convened the panel. Nearly every department head in attendance declined to support dissolution — and several offered pointed defenses of the committee’s value.
Recreation and Parks Superintendent Jamie Bloch offered the most concrete argument, pointing to the Reynolds Field project.
“By having that committee, there’s been $818,000 in efficiencies identified,” Bloch said. “Without that meeting, those identifications wouldn’t have happened.”
She added that the committee surfaces intersections between departments before projects begin rather than after surprises emerge.
“We don’t realize where there’s intersection between departments,” Bloch said. “So we think it’s really important to say no to 34.”
The $818,000 figure breaks down across several departments, according to an email from Recreation and Parks Commissioner Shelly Bedrossian told the Independent.
— The Marblehead Municipal Light Department is contributing new lighting and electrical service work, saving an estimated $125,000.
— Town Engineer Maggie Wheeler’s decision to extend the existing canopy rather than build an additional support structure saved $325,000.
— The Department of Public Works contributed materials, transportation and a paving contract strategy that reduced costs on walkways, rink surface and parking.
— The tree warden will plant trees in-house, saving close to $30,000, and contingency costs dropped by more than $100,000 as a result of the combined reductions.
Bedrossian said the collaboration changed the trajectory of the project entirely.
“I have been on the island by myself doing this until we presented this project at the first Public Works Committee meeting,” she wrote.
Public Health Director Andrew Petty argued the committee’s value extends beyond internal coordination — pointing to its role as a public-facing forum that residents can access directly.
“What the Public Works Committee does allow is this type of forum,” Petty said. “It will allow public interaction. We’ve had great projects come before us, and we as a team can give feedback to the public, so it is a great opportunity for the public to interact with us.”
Harbormaster Mark Souza echoed the collaboration argument.
“Sometimes you don’t know what another department can help you with,” Souza said. “There may be a missed cost where another department says, ‘Do this, or we can help you with that.’ Save the town some money. The communication is vital.”
Director of Community Development and Planning Brendan Callahan, whose department was created at the 2024 town meeting, said he sees a meaningful difference between the Public Works Committee and the standard department heads meeting.
“You can really dig into the details of these municipal projects that impact different departments,” Callahan said. “I’ve seen it really a benefit — you can get their feedback working on these projects.”
Department of Public Works Superintendent Amy McHugh, who also read a formal statement from committee members at the Finance Committee’s warrant hearing, emphasized that the panel functions in an advisory capacity and operates as a public forum.
“We are not making a decision,” McHugh said. “We are only giving guidance, and from our years of experience of working daily in those areas, our review is technical, not political and not directed. We provide the decisions to the voters.”
She also argued the committee fills a structural gap.
“Not all departments fall under the Select Board,” McHugh said, noting the committee gives those departments a formal venue to convene on shared projects. “The Select Board and the administrator don’t have to chase down four or more different departments for different opinions.”
Police Chief Dennis King said finds them valuable, even without formal membership.
“Whatever makes a job more effective, more transparent — to me, that’s kind of the goal,” King said, though he acknowledged the organizational tension the committee creates.
Not all department heads opposed dissolution outright. Finance Director Aleesha Benjamin said she worries the committee structure works around the town administrator’s authority.
“I feel like it is going around the governance, which is our town administrator,” she said. “Our town administrator should be making the overall decisions and coming back to the Select Board.”
She added, however, that she values the collaborative spirit behind the committee.
“If we can somehow make it so that committee has the town administrator governing, that’s all we ask for,” Benjamin said.
Finance Committee Chair Alec Goolsby, who presided recently over the warrant hearing, noted the debate falls outside clearly measurable financial implications for his panel. Both articles will be left to town meeting to decide.
If Article 34 passes, the committee dissolves. If Article 35 passes, it continues in narrower form. If neither passes, the current structure remains intact by default — an outcome that would likely satisfy no one on either side of the aisle.
