Burlington May Revisit Appointment Process After Planning Board Vacancy

BURLINGTON, MA — Burlington has a new Planning Board member following a vote in a joint meeting of the Select Board and the Planning Board last week.

That vote only moved forward, however, after some debate and larger questions about how the town handles vacancies on elected boards.

“Quite frankly, the process sucks,” Burlington Select Board Chair Nick Priest said during the meeting last Monday.

He similarly called the process “a whole lot of bupkis” and “a whole lot of malarkey,” describing a lack of clarity in relevent town bylaws before saying he and other town leaders would like to initiate a process to change and clarify the steps for filling vacancies.

Weeks before this latest discussion, longtime Planning Board member Paul Raymond opened a vacancy on the board when he announced his decision to retire last month. Raymond had served for more than 50 years in town government, dating back to 1971 when he was first elected as a member of Burlington’s representative Town Meeting.

The Planning Board announced the opening and invited applicants to apply. From there, Priest said last week, he and Planning Board Chair Brenda Rappaport appointed members to sit on a joint subcommittee to interview Planning Board candidates.

The subcommittee made its recommendation to the Planning Board, which then voted on its own recommendation to advance to the joint meeting with the Select Board.

Though former Select Board member Chris Hartling earned the nod from the subcommittee, Jessica Sutherland received the Planning Board’s recommendation over Hartling and fellow candidate Jack Kelly.

Sutherland is currently the Director of Marketing Strategy for Care.com. She’s spent time in a number of previous roles, including more than six years in marketing positions for CVS Health.

Discussion continued for several minutes after a motion to appoint Sutherland last week, with Select Board Member Mike Runyan leading a push to appoint Hartling instead.

The final vote ended 8-3 in favor of Sutherland, with Runyan, and Select Board members James Tigges and Joseph Morandi voting “no.”

Sutherland is now a member of the Burlington Planning Board. She is set to serve until next year’s town election, where she will need to run for an elected seat on the board if she would like to continue serving.

In the meantime, multiple members of the Planning Board and Select Board agreed last week that the town should work on clearing up ambiguities in its appointment process that led to some of this recent confusion.

Changes may come before Town Meeting in the future.