Select Board
The Board of Selectmen, renamed the Select Board in 2021, is the chief executive board of Billerica. The first town officers on record were chosen in March 1659-60, when John Parker, Lt. William French, Ralph Hill Sr., Thomas Foster and Jonathan Danforth were named selectmen, often called "Townsmen" in the early records. On November 19, 1660 the town voted a set of written instructions for the Townsmen; these were renewed from year to year until the town laid them aside in 1694.
Selectmen were chosen annually at the March town meeting. According to Hazen's History of Billerica (1883), five were chosen each year until 1824 (three in 1720 and 1815-16, four in 1766), and three from 1824 on. By 1891 one selectman was elected each year for a three-year term, but by 1896 the town had returned to electing all three for one year. In the 1890s the selectmen also sat on the Board of Health with the town's physicians.
On February 6, 1932 the town accepted Chapter 221 of the Acts of 1930, making the selectmen also the Board of Public Works, taking over the duties of the road surveyor, water and sewer commissioners, park commissioners, board of survey and tree warden, with an appointed Superintendent of Public Works. The first five-member board, elected in March 1933 for staggered terms of one, two and three years, organized as the Board of Public Works; thereafter members were elected for three-year terms. A 1947 town meeting article to rescind the act and return to a three-member board was dismissed, 495 to 196.
In 1967 the selectmen appointed Francis X. Corliss as Selectmen's Executive Secretary. The Home Rule Charter, approved by voters on March 3, 1979 (2,478 to 2,150), kept the five-member elected board and expanded the executive secretary's post into a Town Administrator, later retitled Town Manager. The annual election moved from March to April in the 1980s. In 2020 Town Meeting voted to petition the General Court to change the name of the Board of Selectmen to Select Board "to exhibit gender neutrality", and town reports use the new name from 2021.