The Town That Kept Its Own Meeting: Holbrook, Massachusetts (2026)

Holbrook, Massachusetts, is a town of about eleven thousand people twenty miles south of Boston, and it still runs its own government the old way: a five-member select board, a town administrator who answers to them, and a representative town meeting of 240 members elected by precinct who approve the budget and the bylaws. 1 2

In January 2013, Holbrook's town meeting took up the town's first charter. The document kept the five selectmen and the town meeting, replaced the town administrator with a town manager who would be the town's only appointing authority, made the town clerk, treasurer-collector, and board of assessors appointed offices instead of elected ones, moved town elections from April to June, and required town meeting members to give up their seats after missing a third of the meetings in a calendar year. 1 Because the charter was drafted as a special act, it needed town meeting approval before it could go to the Legislature and then to a town-wide ballot. 3

The charter article failed at the special town meeting of January 16, 2013, by 89 votes to 36, and a related amendment tied at 69 to 69. 4 Opponents objected to concentrating authority in one official and to the cost of the new positions the charter created. 4

Four years later, a state review of Holbrook's financial management compared the town with thirteen similar communities, found that every one of them had a professional manager or administrator position, described Holbrook's three independent financial offices as a flat structure, and recommended that the town consider creating a strong administrative position — codified in a bylaw or a special act. The review noted that the town's own study committee had recommended a similar position. 5

Holbrook still has the structure its town meeting voted to keep, and still holds its annual town meeting in April or May, at least 21 days after the annual town election. 2 The same question went the other way in Amherst, Massachusetts, where voters ended town meeting government in March 2018 and replaced a 240-member town meeting with a 13-member town council. 6

What to listen for

Why the order of approvals decided this before the debate started: town meeting first, then the Legislature, then the voters. 1 3
What a town administrator does, and what a strong town manager would have done differently. 1
What the state recommended to Holbrook in 2016, and how closely it matches what the town turned down in 2013. 5