The public records cited in this section, in the order they appear: the minutes, packets and recordings of Andover's own meetings.
Section 501 of the current Andover Charter provides that the First Selectman, or a designee who must be a Selectman, "shall be an ex officio member of all other town commissions, boards and agencies." This is the charter provision under which the First Selectman may sit with the Board of Finance and the Board of Education. The section grants the seat to the First Selectman or to a selectman designee.
A census of the attendance blocks of every Board of Finance minutes document in the town's archive. The First Selectman is not listed present at a single Board of Finance meeting from 2015 through 2024, across fifty-two readable meetings in the 2020-2024 stretch alone. He first appears on May 7, 2025, and from October 2025 forward he is present at most meetings, in consecutive months: October 22, November 19 and December 17, 2025, and January 28, February 25, March 24, April 1, May 6 and May 27, 2026. These minutes routinely name non-members in attendance, including the town administrator, the treasurer, the board clerk, Board of Education representatives, and, where applicable, "Public Present: none," which is what makes the earlier absence meaningful. Jeff Maguire has held the office of First Selectman throughout this period; the Board of Selectmen minutes of June 8, 2020 record him calling that meeting to order.
At the February 11, 2026 Board of Education meeting the superintendent said on the record that for six years the First Selectman, sitting ex officio, has publicly questioned her, the board, the teachers and the principal "every single time" (~2:00:39). The First Selectman replied that he "just started to attend board of education meetings in October," pointing to the recordings for the earlier years (~2:01:23). Asked as the ex officio member where he would cut the school's budget, he restated his standing request for detailed line-item information and named salaries as the main increase (~2:19:13).
At the May 16, 2022 Board of Selectmen meeting, during a presentation by the Economic Development Commission, a former selectman of nine years described from her own service how the coordinating work between the board and the town's committees used to be done: selectmen assigned themselves as liaisons to committees, attended the meetings, and reported back to the board once a month with liaison reports. She added, "I find that missing in the Board of Selectmen now" (~19:21). She and others proposed quarterly meetings of committee chairs to restore the information flow. Her account concerns liaisons to town commissions generally.
Nominated from the floor for a vacant Region 8 (RHAM) Board of Education seat, a candidate described his prior town service: four budget cycles on the Board of Finance, during part of which "I was liaison to the RHAM Board of Education," sitting in on teacher contract negotiations, plus three years on the capital improvement committee (~1:20:07, ~1:22:07). The liaison he describes is to the regional board, not to the Andover Board of Education.
Two things of record at the October 27, 2021 Board of Finance meeting. Reaching the standing item for liaison reports, the presiding member said "I think typically the only liaison committees we have are the community center and also CIP" (~2:27:13): the finance board had no liaison to the Andover Board of Education. Separately, in open discussion, the presiding member reported that the Board of Selectmen had asked the finance board to have a representative available for discussions of theirs that might go into executive session, and the board agreed.