Duxbury Selectboard May Take Control of Budget Process it is Supposed to Control Through the Town Manager, or it May Not
Used car dealership license, end of year transfers, speeding at the beach, ARPA money, the Powder Point Bridge
July 14, 2025 (Duxbury) — If Selectboard Clerk Fernando Guitart gets his way, the appointed Finance Committee will no longer have control over the budget of the Town of Duxbury.
Instead, the budget process will proceed under the rules spelled out in the Town Manager Act of 1987.
As chief financial officer for Duxbury, Town Manager Rene Read, under the direction of the Selectboard, will prepare the budget, then submit it to the Finance Committee for review.
At the end of the Selectboard meeting on Monday, in response to a question about how to coordinate with the Finance Committee on the budget process in the upcoming year, Guitart spelled out his plan.
The answer is… We’ve got to think about this all right, and at the end of the day, we direct the town manager to present the budget…
“Right,” said Selectboard member Mike McGee.
… So it’s our budget, right? And then the Finance Committee reviews and challenges. That’s their job, right? And I think we need to be… I think we need to demonstrate that it’s our budget and then to have joint meetings and then who’s going to run the joint meeting? Is it a Finance Committee meeting? Is it a Selectboard meeting? I think we need to be careful about thinking about how in the future we basically manage the budget process and own the budget process. So food for thought, all right. It should not be a Finance Committee meeting that it is up to the Selectboard to attend or not. I think that’s what we’ve done in the past. I think it needs to be different moving forward
No one argued with him, although Chair Brian Glennon II appeared defensive.
I don’t think that was the question. I think it was how we can coordinate efforts, which is something that this board has expressed an interest in doing.
Glennon’s question, the one Guitart was responding to, had been about how the Finance Committee might include the Selectboard in the budget process.
I spoke with Friend Weiler today. He was kind enough to reach out to me about the Finance Committee and reconnecting as this board has expressed an interest in being much more involved in the fiscal 27 budget. So, the Finance Committee will be interested in hearing from us forthwith as to the extent to which, how, and when we would like to be involved in that process, so … I would like to firm up how we can include us and the Finance Committee working together.
In other words, the Finance Committee, which is not in charge of the budget, asked the Selectboard, which is in charge of the budget “the extent to which, how, and when” it would “like to be involved” in a process that the Selectboard is in charge of.
For years, and in contravention of the Town Manager Act and without apparent legal authority, the Finance Committee has been acting as though it was in control of the budget and sometimes the town.
The process changed around fiscal year 2014, soon after Betsy Sullivan took over as chair of the Finance Committee. In her contribution to the 2013 annual report sounded normal enough. As the new chair of the Finance Committee, she talked about the committee had reviewed “all 66 budgets that constitute the Town’s annual operating budget” for the following fiscal year.
By the next year, however, her note to the annual report made it sound like she and the Finance Committee were in charge of the whole town. Relegating Read, then a new town manager, to the role of ambassador who was “charged with maintaining our culture and “ambiance” while providing impeccable service”, Sullivan then talked as though she was the actual chief financial officer and chief executive of the town, ordering what would turn out to be a disastrous government study committee and an evaluation of “our structure, technology, and systems TOWN WIDE.”
Remember, as town manager, Read is the chief financial officer of the town, and he reports to the Selectboard.
Soon people were talking about how Sullivan was actually running the town, a concern that former Duxbury Clipper columnist David A. Mittell, Jr. slyly pointed out in a flattering 2017 profile in the Duxbury Clipper.
In a warning wrapped in a compliment sandwich, Mittell noted that the Finance Committee, not the town’s elected Selectboard, was running the town.
Perhaps even more than the school committee and the board of selectmen, the finance committee justifies the tradition of home rule. This committee essentially runs a $77-million corporation, half of which (the school department) is in a blind trust.
Mittell went on to discuss how the Finance Committee was meeting in the fall to go over the budget. The Town Bylaws say that the committee gets the budget 75 days before Annual Town Meeting, which is early January.
Transferring the budget back to the control of the Selectboard would be one step toward more accountable, democratic governance in the town. As elected leaders, the Selectboard members tend to be more responsive to resident concerns.
Whether their involvement will lead to a more rational or responsive budget process is uncertain.
Town officials do not seem to have heard what the town told them last spring when it voted down the Proposition 2.5 override. People do not want a smaller override. They want town officials to make better financial decisions, such as cutting obvious waste like the human resources department.
It remains to be seen whether they will do that.
Voters will have several chances to weigh in, both at Town Meeting and at next year’s polls when they will likely vote on another override proposal and for two members of the Selectboard.
Actually having a working democracy will require a contested election. The prize: $1,500 a year for giving up many of your Monday evenings for often interminably boring meetings when you can make a budget that leaves half the town mad at you.
We’ll have to see how that goes. We are only going to get a reasonable budget if we can get some people onto the Selectboard who know how to manage money efficiently and effectively.
Other News
The board will consider a request from the Powder Point Advisory Committee for $15,000 to hire a consultant to write a report supporting the town’s request for historic status for the Powder Point Bridge. If the federal government does not grant historic status to the bridge, the town will either have to reject state and federal funding or get stuck with a highway bridge replacement.
Fresh from the success in passing the MBTA Communities Act, Fernando Guitart wants to copy the Planning Board’s strategy of advertising information on Facebook. If those plans include posting on heavily-censored sites that are not accessible to all Duxbury residents, those efforts will be met with a legal challenge.
Jared Valanzola and Sandra Wright of the Plymouth County Commission along with Plymouth County Treasurer Thomas J. O’Brien presented Duxbury with a check for $405,858.17 in ARPA funds for various projects. Finance Director Mary MacKinnon worked on December 30 and 31 to get applications in on time. The county government took only a one percent management fee for administering the project. Valanzola is a fiscal conservative who has worked hard to control costs in county government and may be a good resource for advice on next year’s town budget.
The Selectboard granted Shawn Boyd a license to sell used cars at the garage next to Barney’s Gas Station on St. George Street. He will park up to 20 cars there. An abutter who did not identify herself was not happy with the project, but the site is a commercial property.
An ADA-compliant picnic table is going to be installed at Ship Yard Lane beach.
Read implored people to stop speeding at the beach. The speed limit is five miles an hour. People are not supposed to pass either. The birds are still there. People are not following the rules on leashing dogs and keeping them out of the bird areas.
Watch Read’s bird speech here:
The Selectboard approved about half a million in end-of-the-year transfers. At one point, MacKinnon seemed upset that she had not predicted all spending for the year perfectly. More on that after these documents are obtained, which would be so simple if the town manager would post the packet before every meeting.
Thank you for your coverage of the meeting 🇺🇸
Do Not Forget that in the Debate Sweezey vs Becky; The Formula for Schools took $16 million Dollars from Duxbury and gave it mostly to Pembroke. This amount removed from the school budget alone is more than "the override". I forget the exact numbers, however, you can look up the atrocity in the video of the "debate".