Session Laws

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

SECTION 1. There shall be established in the town of Marblehead a department of public works, hereinafter called the department, which shall be under the jurisdiction of the board of selectmen.

The department shall have all the powers and duties vested in or exercised by any of the following departments or offices, which are hereby renamed divisions and included within the department of public works: highway, engineering and drain construction. The town may, by by-law, add, abolish, rename or combine divisions, and their functions within the department. No contracts, obligations or liabilities in force on the effective date of this act, or on the date on which a present department or commission is included within the department, shall be affected thereby, but the department shall in all respects be the successor of the agencies included as divisions within said department.

SECTION 2. The board of selectmen shall annually appoint a director of public works whose qualifications, powers and duties shall be determined by said board, and who shall be responsible to said board. The director of public works shall have full authority over the operations of the department and in the implementation of the policies established by said board. Said director shall be qualified by education, training and experience to perform the duties of said position and shall supervise all employees of the department as determined from time to time by said board of selectmen. Said director shall appoint and remove such staff assistants and employees as he deems necessary, subject to available appropriations and subject to the approval of said board. Such staff may include a supervisor for each division. Said director shall hold office subject to the will of said board and shall not be subject to the provisions of chapter thirty-one of the General Laws.

All present employees of any of the departments listed in section one shall be transferred to the department, continue to serve and retain all rights and benefits to which they are entitled as of the effective date of this act.

SECTION 3. This act shall be submitted to the voters of the town of Marblehead at the annual town meeting to be held in the year nineteen hundred and ninety-one, or at a special town meeting in the form of the following question which shall be placed on the warrant of such town meeting in the following manner:- "Shall an act passed by the general court in the year nineteen hundred and ninety, entitled 'An Act authorizing the town of Marblehead to establish a department of public works', be accepted " If a majority of the votes in answer to such question is in the affirmative, this act shall thereupon take full effect, but not otherwise.