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Select Board Paras Bhayani’s last act was a motion to adjourn.
It came shortly after 10 p.m. on July 13, at the end of a three-hour meeting that ran through Community Preservation applications, retiree health insurance and a debrief on the override voters rejected in March — the ballot question Bhayani spent a year building.
His resignation took effect July 14, 16 months into a three-year term.
The board has not said whether it will call a special election to fill the seat, or when. The vacancy leaves four members and more than a year and a half on a term set to expire in March 2028.
Chair Anthea Brady opened the meeting by noting it was Bhayani’s last. The question of a successor did not come up.
Bhayani announced in May he would step down, citing personal and family circumstances he declined to detail and saying the decision was not a verdict on the town or the board.
“It’s really a personal and family decision, and it’s no commentary at all on where the town is today,” he said at the time.
Bhayani finished first in a four-way field in March 2025 with 1,945 votes, winning the seat John Fallon vacated, and arrived promising a sharper focus on long-range financial planning.
The board made him chair of the State of the Town Committee, the 25-member fiscal planning body reconstituted that May, and its work produced the $11.5 million Proposition 2½ override that failed 2,558-2,265 on March 21, the town’s first override defeat after seven straight approvals since 2017.
The other defining project of his tenure was the town manager’s office. Beth Rudolph resigned in July 2025 without public explanation, two interims followed, and the board hired Christopher Senior in December.
Bhayani conducted the public reference check.
His final meeting had him in familiar form. During a long argument over whether the board should sign off on Community Preservation applications for town-owned land, Bhayani pushed for a small working group of Select Board, School Committee and committee representatives to build the vetting into the town’s annual budget cycle, arguing the pieces already exist but have never been assembled.
“A lot of this work has been thought through,” he said. “It just needs to like actually find its way into the process.”
On the override debrief, he pointed colleagues toward Arlington’s communication materials, which he said Winchester should study before asking taxpayers for money again.
“It’s very crisp,” Bhayani said. “We are very clear on what our commitments are as a Select Board and School Committee and Finance Committee. We don’t use promotional language. We don’t gloat.”
He also volunteered his time after leaving. When Michelle Prior raised the idea of a board discussion about meeting norms, Bhayani declined to facilitate it, but offered to work with Katie Hammer and Ian Anderson, appointed to the Long Term Financial Plan Committee earlier that night, on the town’s financial model.
Then he moved to adjourn.
"Thank you, Paras," Brady said.
Will Dowd is a Massachusetts journalist who covers municipal government and community life for Winchester News. He is also the founder and editor of The Marblehead Independent, a reader-funded digital newsroom.
