Ellen D. Rawlings

Ellen Day Rawlings was the first woman to chair Billerica's Select Board, on which she served for twelve years, from 1995 to 2007. She has also been one of the town's longest-serving Town Meeting members, first elected in Precinct 8 in 1992, when she received 306 votes, and still a member more than thirty years later.

In July 1993 she was appointed an alternate member of the Finance Committee, and she sat on the committee as a full member in 1994. In that period she was secretary of the Town Meeting Warrant Action Committee, which tracked what had become of the articles voted at town meetings, and chairman of the In-House Legal Counsel Study Committee, which reported to the 1994 town meeting. Its recommendations, accepted unanimously at the spring town meeting of 1995 on her own motion as a selectman, were to keep the existing form of town counsel and the firm of Kopelman and Paige, but to set up evaluation and contract renewal procedures, regular office hours and a central file of counsel's opinions, and a weekly procedure for reviewing warrant articles. She also served for many years on the town's Scholarship Foundation Committee.

She resigned from the Finance Committee on April 24, 1995, after the town election of April 1, 1995, at which she led the field for the two Select Board seats with 1,764 votes, ahead of the incumbent Arthur L. Doyle with 1,734. The board's report for the year called her election, as a "relative newcomer to the political scene in Billerica," a significant change for the board. As the board's secretary in 1995 she moved most of the town meeting articles, including the designation of Economic Opportunity Areas along Billerica Avenue, Middlesex Turnpike and Concord Road. In 1996 the board elected her its chairman, the "first woman in our history," and she headed its economic development subcommittee with Town Administrator Robert A. Mercier and Principal Assessor Richard Scanlon, which worked to bring businesses such as Cabot Corporation's new headquarters building to town under the state's certified project program.

She was re-elected in 1998 with 2,497 votes, at the top of the ticket, together with Michael S. Rosa. That year she, Rosa and the Vision 2020 Committee joined the Conservation Commission in sponsoring the article to borrow $2,000,000 to buy about 160 acres of open land on both sides of Rangeway Road, and she, Rosa and Edward J. Hurd spoke for the purchase at town meeting. In 1999, after the election of Peter M. Coppinger and Robert M. Correnti, the board again chose her as chairman. She worked with the Recreation Department and the Conservation Commission to find public canoe launching places along the Concord River, and in 2000 she reported a $10,000 matching grant from the Department of Environmental Management to restore the Talbot Oval in North Billerica. She represented the selectmen on the Northern Middlesex Council of Governments from the late 1990s to 2008 and sat for the town on the Lowell Regional Transportation Authority in 1997.

Re-elected in 2001 and again in 2004, she served as the board's secretary under the chairmen Correnti, James F. O'Donnell Jr. and Francis M. Fraine, and in her last year, 2006 to 2007, she was chairman once more; at the 2006 town meeting she and State Representative William Greene presented citations to Mary A. Pasho and, posthumously, to Gilbert W. Griggs, Town Meeting members since 1956. Her term ended in 2007. She then served on the committee that revised the town charter in 2007.

In the years after she left the board she took up a series of appointed posts. She chaired the Open Space and Recreation committee from about 2010 to 2016, sat on the Personnel Board from 2010 to 2012, and became a Library Trustee in 2010; she also led the Billerica Library Foundation, which the library's 2015 report credited with raising its profile through its new Author Series. From 2014 she was the moderator's appointee to the Yankee Doodle Bike Path Committee and gave its reports to town meeting, and in February 2015 she was appointed a director of BATV, the town's community access television. At the 2017 town meeting she received a plaque for twenty-five years as a Town Meeting member.

References

1. Billerica Town Report 1992, Town Meeting member election, Precinct 8: Ellen Day Rawlings 306
2. Billerica Town Report 1993, appointed officers: Finance Committee alternates, Ellen Day Rawlings, appointed 7/93
3. Billerica Town Report 1994, warrant: report of the In-house Legal Counsel Study Committee, Ellen Day Rawlings, Chairman
4. Billerica Town Report 1994, Town Meeting Warrant Action Committee report: Ellen Rawlings, Secretary; resigned from the Finance Committee
5. Billerica Town Report 1995, town election April 1, 1995: Selectman, Ellen Day Rawlings 1,764, Arthur L. Doyle 1,734
6. Billerica Town Report 1995, Board of Selectmen report: election of relative newcomer Ellen Day Rawlings
7. Billerica Town Report 1996, Board of Selectmen report: Ellen Rawlings elected Chairman, first woman in the towns history
8. Billerica Town Report 1996, Board of Selectmen report: economic development subcommittee headed by Selectman Rawlings
9. Billerica Town Report 1998, town election: Selectman, Ellen Day Rawlings 2,497, Michael Rosa 2,477
10. Billerica Town Report 1998, town meeting Article 25: purchase of Rangeway Road land; Selectmen Rawlings, Rosa and Hurd spoke in favor
11. Billerica Town Report 1999, Board of Selectmen report: board reorganized electing Ellen Rawlings Chair
12. Billerica Town Report 2000, town meeting Article 5: Selectman Rawlings reports a $10,000 matching grant to restore the Talbot Oval
13. Billerica Town Report 2001, Board of Selectmen report: Rawlings and Rosa re-elected; Rawlings Secretary
14. Billerica Town Report 2004, Board of Selectmen report: Rawlings and Rosa re-elected; Rawlings Secretary
15. Billerica Town Report 2006, town meeting: Selectmen Chairperson Ellen Rawlings presents citations to Mary A. Pasho and Gilbert W. Griggs
16. Billerica Town Report 2008, Charter Review Committee members including Ellen Day Rawlings
17. Billerica Town Report 2008, Northern Middlesex Council of Governments report signed by Ellen Rawlings, Councillor for the Board of Selectmen
18. Billerica Town Report 2010, appointed officers: Open Space and Recreation, Ellen Day Rawlings, Chairman
19. Billerica Town Report 2014, town meeting: Rep. Rawlings of the Bike Path Committee gives an update
20. Billerica Town Report 2015, appointed officers: BATV Director, Ellen Day Rawlings, appointed 2/17/15
21. Billerica Town Report 2015, Library report: Billerica Library Foundation under the leadership of Ellen Rawlings and others
22. Billerica Town Report 2017, town meeting: plaque to Ellen Day Rawlings for 25 years as a Town Meeting member