Table of Contents
Get our free local reporting delivered straight to your inbox. No noise, no spam — just clear, independent coverage of Marblehead. Sign up for our once-a-week newsletter.
William Kuker has lived in town for more than 50 years, long enough to remember when the surveyor of highways had to win an election and the Select Board faced voters every spring. Now the Vietnam veteran and retired carpenter is asking Town Meeting to reverse what he describes as a drift toward concentrated, unaccountable government.
Kuker is the lead sponsor of three of the four citizens’ petitions on the 2026 annual Town Meeting warrant, which voters will take up May 4 at Marblehead High School. His articles — 37, 38 and 39 — would restore one-year Select Board terms, cap municipal employment contracts at one year and abolish the Community Development and Planning Department that Town Meeting created two years ago.
A fourth citizens’ petition, Article 40, is a nonbinding resolution affirming the town’s commitment to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in honor of the nation’s 250th anniversary. It was filed separately by Kate Borten and Lynn Nadeau.
In a sit-down interview in the Independent’s office, Kuker said a single thread runs through his three proposals.
“My goal is to keep power on a shorter leash, but better than that, power should not be concentrated,” he said. “We got to get away from this administrative form of government.”
Returning Select Board to one-year terms
The petition drawing on the longest history is Article 38, which would return the Select Board to one-year terms. Marblehead operated under annual elections for more than 300 years before Town Meeting voted in 2023 to adopt three-year staggered terms through a home-rule petition. Gov. Maura Healey signed the change into law in March 2024. At the 2024 annual Town Meeting, Article 49 sought to undo the switch. It failed 121-236. A similar effort in 2021 also was defeated.
Kuker acknowledged the voting record but said he believes the issue warrants another look. Under the current structure, he said, voters can weigh in on only two of the five board members in most elections, making it harder to hold the board accountable.
“If we have the chance to vote on all five of them every year, they’re going to be more on their toes,” he said. “There will be less complacency. They will be more in tune with the will of the town, not their own agenda.”
Supporters of three-year terms have argued the longer cycle provides continuity and insulation from short-term political pressure. They have noted Marblehead would be an outlier among Massachusetts municipalities if it reversed a change the Legislature already approved. Kuker said that argument misses the point.
“Continuity is not a good thing if you’re going in the wrong direction,” he said. He added that long-term projects approved at Town Meeting continue regardless of who holds the seats.
Targeting employment contracts
Article 37, his second petition, would limit employment contracts for municipal positions to one calendar year, excluding collective bargaining agreements. There is no prior vote on this question.
Kuker said shorter contracts would give the Select Board a practical tool for holding administrators accountable. He said he has seen past instances in which insufficient oversight led to costly outcomes for the town.
“A one-year contract will provide for closer scrutiny, closer review of what’s going on in your department,” he said. “Performance trumps stability every time.”
Critics have warned one-year contracts could make it harder to recruit experienced administrators in a competitive municipal job market. Kuker said he is not persuaded.
“It’s been brought up to me that, oh, we want to recruit the best and the brightest,” he said. “Well, take a look at what you got.”
Repealing Marblehead’s newest department
Article 39 asks Town Meeting to repeal Article 34 from the 2024 warrant, which established the Community Development and Planning Department. In early 2025, the Select Board appointed the town’s first director of planning and community development.
Kuker, who spoke against Article 34 at the time, said he believes the department consolidates too much authority under an unelected office that answers to the town administrator rather than to elected boards. He said the planning board — an elected body — is the proper home for a town planner.
“If there is going to be a town planner, he should be hired by and report to the Planning Board,” he said.
He said the department’s enabling language troubled him most.
“What really caught my eye — ‘including but not limited to’ — this is a roadmap to take over everything,” Kuker said. “If we don’t stop it, this town will be ruled not by bylaws, not by traditions, but by departmental regulations.”
Proponents have noted the department was created through a democratic vote at Town Meeting and was designed to consolidate functions previously fragmented across multiple offices. Kuker said the response to his petitions has been mixed but that most people he has spoken with agree with at least part of what he is proposing.
“It is up to the voters to pay attention to what is going on and to keep informed,” he said.
The 2026 annual Town Meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. May 4 at Marblehead High School.
BEFORE YOU GO … Our reporting remains free and open to all. It is sustained by readers who choose to support it — by contributing so that routine, document-based local reporting continues without paywalls or promotional framing. Right now, 101 readers support The Marblehead Independent with monthly or annual contributions. Click here to become an Independent member.
