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Winchester’s Select Board dropped to four members July 14, when Paras Bhayani’s resignation took effect, and neither the town charter nor its bylaws set a deadline for filling a seat whose term runs to March 2028.
Bhayani served 16 months of the three-year term he won in March 2025.
Select Board Chair Anthea Brady said the board has not yet taken the question up at a meeting.
“It requires calling a special election, and then it fills the seat for the remainder of the term,” Brady told Winchester News. “As you are aware, we have not discussed this yet in a meeting.”
Brady is correct that the four remaining members cannot appoint a successor. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 41, Section 11 routes most town vacancies to written appointment, and vacancies on multi-member boards to a joint roll-call vote of the Select Board and that board’s remaining members.
It expressly exempts the office of select board. The seat goes to voters.
Under Chapter 41, Section 10, when a vacancy occurs in the Select Board, the remaining members “may call a special election to fill the vacancy.”
The same sentence makes one mandatory in a single circumstance: the board “shall call such election” after receiving a written request from 200 registered voters or 20% of the town’s registered voters, whichever number is smaller, filed at least 100 days before the next annual election.
With more than 4,800 ballots cast in the March override vote, 200 is the smaller figure.
A charter, bylaw or special act can impose a duty the general law does not. Winchester’s do not.
The charter establishes a five-member Select Board elected to three-year terms and contains no provision governing a vacancy in that office. The phrase “special election” appears once in the combined charter and bylaws, in a referendum procedure unrelated to filling seats.
The charter’s vacancy rule at Section 7-12 sets posting and waiting periods for appointments and would not reach an elected seat.
Brady did not cite a charter provision, a bylaw or advice from town counsel, and her use of “requires” may refer to the bar on appointment rather than to timing.
Winchester last carried a Select Board vacancy in 2021, and that board did not call a separate election. Amy Shapiro resigned effective Aug. 20, 2021, leaving four members for roughly seven months.
Voters filled the seat at the regular annual election on March 19, 2022, when two seats were on the ballot and no incumbent sought re-election. John Fallon was among the candidates; he held a seat until 2025, when Bhayani won it.
The precedent is narrower than it looks. Shapiro’s term was already set to expire at that election. On the other hand, Bhayani’s has roughly 20 months left.
Town bylaws set the annual election for the second-to-last Saturday of March — March 20, 2027 — unless the board votes by Dec. 1 to move it to the last Tuesday, March 30. Either date leaves the seat open about eight months and puts the petition deadline near Dec. 10.
Candidates for any Winchester office need nomination papers signed by at least 50 voters under the charter. What a standalone election would cost, what order or warrant the board would adopt and the earliest available date have not been addressed publicly.
Section 10 bars any election unless the board files notice with the town clerk at least 15 days before the last day for candidates to submit nomination papers for certification.
Section 10 is also silent on how long a person elected at a special election serves, saying only that proceedings and qualifications “shall be the same as in an original election.” The remainder-of-term language Brady described appears in Section 11, which does not cover selectmen.
The four members keep full authority. The charter sets quorum at a majority of the body, so four can meet and act. But a 2-2 split carries no motion, and the board faces a fiscal 2027 budget Bhayani argued is structurally unsustainable, a town manager six months into his contract and an override defeat it has not replaced.
The next signal will come on a posted agenda. Absent a vote to schedule a separate election, the seat stays empty until March 20, 2027.
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.
