Dermody Sworn in, Frail Continues as Chair
April 16, 2026
• After Tuesday’s election, the Select Board reorganized its leadership positions, though Chair Heidi Frail will serve as chair for another year.
Newly elected to her second term, Cathy Dowd rejected the nomination for chair, instead supporting Heidi Frail to continue in the role during the board’s meeting Wednesday.
As is tradition post-election, the Select Board nominates new members to assume the roles of chair, vice chair and clerk. The relatively young five-person board — all of its members are either in their first or second term — typically follows a pattern based on seniority, wherein chairs are cycled off and vice chairs become chairs. Board members nominate each other for different roles, and those nominations come to a vote.
Dowd, who served as vice chair prior to last night, declined to accept Frail’s nomination.
“I have recently accepted a new job, and I don’t think I’ll be able to get the chairmanship,” Dowd said.
The move came shortly after member Kevin Keane presented Frail with a gift recognizing her work as chair: a gavel on a plaque. “It’s been a long year, and you’ve done a great job leading the ship,” Keane said.
Dowd nominated Frail for chair “for continuity purposes,” along with Josh Levy for vice chair and Keane for clerk. Those nominations received unanimous support.
In Tuesday’s election, Bill Dermody earned the second open seat on the board, left by Marianne Cooley, who opted out of reelection. Dermody, a Realtor by trade and member of the Needham Exchange Club and Memorial Park Trustees, was sworn in alongside Dowd by Town Clerk Louise Miller at the beginning of the meeting.
Dermody expressed excitement for the new post the night prior, after the election results came in. He had previously acknowledged the extensive length of the agenda packet, which sat at a sizable 454 pages, and the meeting ran more than four hours.
On the topic of appointments, the board discussed the selection process for the newest member of the Needham Housing Authority Board of Commissioners. Tenant organizations with the NHA, which oversees several housing properties, put forward four nominations, and Dowd, in her capacity as vice chair, interviewed each candidate and recommended Janice Bennett for the position.
Levy, however, pointed to “irregularities” in the process. Guidelines state that local tenants organizations, in making their nominations, should put forward two to five names, but the Cook’s Bridge Tenant Association only submitted one, Levy said. He also expressed concern over whether tenants had been consulted on the nominations and over the official existence of the Cook’s Bridge organization, following an email exchange he believed called that into question.
Dowd said the law dictates tenants organizations merely put forward names, but it does not mandate how many. The law also doesn’t require residents need to be consulted, she said.
“The law is what has to be followed,” Dowd said, “so the law really only imagines that there would be one tenant organization, whereas we have several.”
On the tenants organization itself, she argued that many “are fairly informal,” meaning they can somewhat operate on a volunteer basis, where “basically anybody can raise their hand to offer to do it.”
NHA commissioners serve for five-year terms. With several projects in the pipeline seeking state funding, including a renovation of the Linden-Chambers housing, Dowd said the positions are significant ones.
The board ended its discussion by approving Bennett’s appointment.
Bill Dermody is vice chair of the Needham Community Television Development Corporation, which oversees Needham Local and the Needham Channel. He was not part of the writing or editing of this story.
