Now I have enough context. The March 17, 2026 ZBA analysis names the prior-meeting members: Chair Heather, Mr. Rose, Andy, Mark, and Susan. The April 21 meeting has four voting members present (one female member absent — likely Susan). This transcript has heavy diarization confusion that I’ll flag.

Swampscott Zoning Board of Appeals — April 21, 2026

Section 1: Agenda

Call to Order 04:07 — Welcome to the April 21, 2026 ZBA meeting; past minutes deferred (not available).
Continued Petition 25-18 — Scott Miller 04:21 — Special permit for a hip-to-gable roof conversion / ~754 sq ft addition, plus a dimensional special permit for a covered porch over an existing covered porch. Continued from a prior meeting; only the side-yard setback piece is voted on tonight, with the addition itself remaining before the Planning Board.
Presentation: Proposed Zoning Bylaw Amendments — MS4 Stormwater Compliance 11:41 — Mark Noonan (DPW) introduces Kleinfelder consultants Peter Varga and Elise Thompson, who walk the board through three proposed zoning bylaw amendments targeting impervious-surface reduction and green infrastructure, to be voted on at the December 2026 Town Meeting.
Administrative — Rescheduling May 19 Meeting 26:12 — Conflict with Annual Town Meeting; rescheduled to May 26, 2026.
Adjournment 27:23

Section 2: Speaking Attendees

Diarization note: This transcript exhibits significant speaker-tag conflation — at least three tags carry two distinct voices each. Identifications below distinguish role from tag wherever the substance makes the voice obvious.

[Speaker 1]: Chair “Heather” (ZBA Chair; last name not stated in transcript; identified by continuity with the March 17, 2026 meeting where she chaired as “Heather”). Opens the meeting, walks the petitioner through the limited-relief decision, writes the substance of the motion. The same [Speaker 1] tag is misapplied to consultant Elise Thompson at roughly [20:19–21:13], where the content is plainly a continuation of her stormwater bylaw presentation.
[Speaker 2]: Two voices conflated —
- Scott Miller, petitioner (homeowner / contractor on the addition project) for most of the early exchange (responses about the deck, “What do I do for a special permit?”).
- An unidentified ZBA Board Member at [10:04–10:55] who moves to close the public hearing and then moves the dimensional special permit. The crisp legal phrasing (“relief is limited only to that specific request… make no findings on any of the items that are within the jurisdiction of the Planning Board”) is plainly a board member, not the petitioner.
[Speaker 3]: ZBA Board Member — Agrees the relief should be tightly limited, asks about online participants. Voice may continue under the same tag during the stormwater Q&A but content shifts to consultant Peter Varga answering board questions about other municipalities’ bylaws.
[Speaker 4]: ZBA Board Member — Asks “will we see this again?”, asks about the cupola, seconds the motion. Later takes the lead in thanking the consultants and runs adjournment. Plausibly the Vice Chair, but name not stated.
[Speaker 5]: Likely Kristen McCaw, Senior Town Planner (or another planning staff member providing procedural cueing — “you should open the public hearing and close it”). Tag is also briefly applied to Scott Miller’s closing thanks (“I still have to go through it”). McCaw was identified as the senior planner in the March 17, 2026 ZBA meeting; name not self-stated tonight.
[Speaker 6]: Mark Noonan — Self-introduces as “Assistant Engineer and Field Coordinator for the DPW.”
[Speaker 7]: Peter Varga, Project Manager at Kleinfelder — Self-introduces. (Town-planner-style scheduling content at [26:14–27:22] reads more like staff than the consultant; possibly diarization conflating Varga with the town planner.)
[Speaker 8]: Elise Thompson, Project Engineer at Kleinfelder — Self-introduces (transcript renders the name as “Reese Thompson”; corrected here from context).
[Speaker 9]: ZBA Board Member — Appears only at end (“Twenty six is good with me”; “Motion to adjourn”). Fourth voting member; name not stated.

Per the snapshot roster and continuity from March, the four voting ZBA members present are most likely Heather, Mr. Rose, Andy, and Mark, with Susan absent (the chair referred to the missing member as “she”). I cannot reliably map specific board members to specific [Speaker 3 / 4 / 9] tags without a voice sample.

Section 3: Meeting Minutes

Petition 25-18 — Scott Miller (continued)

04:34 Chair Heather summarized the petition as filed: a special permit to remove an existing hip roof and construct a new gabled roof, resulting in a ~754 sq ft addition, plus a dimensional special permit for a covered porch over an existing covered porch.

04:58 Scott Miller explained the principal change since the prior hearing: the existing deck, although built under a permit, surveyed at less than the seven-and-a-half-foot side-yard requirement. He proposed to shift the new covered deck three inches to land at exactly six feet from the side property line — the minimum allowed with a special permit.

[05:39–07:38] Chair Heather walked Miller through the procedural posture: seven-and-a-half feet is the as-of-right setback; six feet is allowed with a special permit; the deck change is the only thing requiring ZBA relief tonight. Height is under the 50% threshold (the new third-floor element is half the footprint of the second floor and is part of the same dwelling unit, not a new unit), and the addition’s square-footage documentation is being worked out at the Planning Board on continuance. [Speaker 3] agreed: address only the specific relief requested, defer everything else to Planning and the Building Commissioner. [Speaker 4] confirmed the project would not need to return to the ZBA assuming nothing in the Planning Board process triggers further nonconformity.

09:04 A brief tangent on the cupola: Heather noted Swampscott’s bylaw allows additional height for a functioning open-air ventilation cupola.

09:38 [Speaker 5 — likely the town planner] prompted that the public hearing should be formally opened and closed.

10:04 Motion to close the public hearing by a board member ([Speaker 2] tag; voice clearly a board member, not the petitioner), seconded by [Speaker 3]. Passed.

10:28 Motion by a board member ([Speaker 2] tag): “Motion to approve the request for a dimensional special permit for the side yard setback for the soon-to-be-covered deck to permit it to be six feet from the side property line where 7.5 feet is required, as shown on the plans for the deck — the relief is limited only to that specific request, and the relief granted makes no findings on any of the items within the jurisdiction of the Planning Board.”

11:14 Seconded by [Speaker 4]. Voice vote: passed 11:16.

Miller acknowledged he still needed to complete the Planning Board process for the addition itself 11:23.

Stormwater Bylaw Presentation

11:51 Mark Noonan (DPW Assistant Engineer / Field Coordinator) introduced the matter: the town’s MS4 permit allows stormwater discharge to Nahant Bay, and a 2022 deliverable required a street-design and parking-lot analysis that has since produced bylaw amendment recommendations. He introduced Kleinfelder consultants Peter Varga and Elise Thompson, attending virtually.

12:58 Peter Varga (Project Manager, Kleinfelder) framed the broader objective: MS4 compliance through impervious-surface reduction and green infrastructure. He stressed the redlines were modest — “not… very prescriptive and demanding” — and were reviewed by the town’s legal counsel. Most existing bylaw language was retained. Two ordinances had real opportunities for amendment.

17:22 Elise Thompson (Project Engineer, Kleinfelder) walked through three specific zoning-bylaw amendments:

Off-street parking general requirements — Allow a reduced parking requirement, via a ZBA special permit, where a project is proximate to public parking lots/structures, on-street parking, or multimodal transit (bus, bike lanes, community paths).
General landscaping/screening — low impact development in parking lots — Permit the landscaped islands required in parking lots with six or more spaces to be specific green-infrastructure types (dry swales, rain gardens, bioretention areas), provided the soils are hydrologic group A/B suitable for infiltration and the design will not pond or flood.
Smart Growth Zoning Overlay District (§4.6.00) and Glover Multifamily Overlay District (§4.10) — Decrease the standard stall length to 18 ft (9 × 18) to match the dimensions elsewhere in the bylaw; add a definition of “compact car” referencing the U.S. EPA; permit permeable pavers where they do not raise maintenance or accessibility concerns.

21:14 Thompson outlined the schedule: presentation to the full Planning Board on May 11, then to the Select Board for adoption, with the warrant article going to the December 2026 Town Meeting.

22:33 [Speaker 4] thanked the consultants and noted that proposed bylaw changes “don’t usually come through us,” so the heads-up was welcome. Asked whether the board had any concerns about how these would affect practitioners — none raised.

23:28 [Speaker 5] asked whether the proposed amendments are consistent with neighboring towns’ bylaws. The consultant ([Speaker 3] tag, voice consistent with Varga) confirmed: “Part of our analysis was incorporating experience from other municipalities” plus EPA and regional planning commission advisory guidelines.

24:19 Chair confirmed this was an informational presentation only; the warrant article goes to Town Meeting for adoption. A consultant clarified: all zoning bylaw changes this year will go to the December 2026 Town Meeting; no zoning changes are on the May 2026 warrant.

25:05 Consultant explained the MS4 annual report to EPA: documenting these meetings as good-faith steps demonstrates compliance with the 2022 requirement on the town’s own implementation timeline.

Administrative — Rescheduling

[26:14–27:22] The town planner (under [Speaker 7] tag; voice content reads as staff, not the consultant) flagged that the May 19 ZBA meeting needed to be rescheduled because Annual Town Meeting is “potentially going more than one night.” Tuesday May 26 carried (board members polled: Speaker 4, Speaker 5, Speaker 9 all available; quorum confirmed; room reservation TBD, senior center as backup).

27:23 Motion to adjourn by [Speaker 9], seconded, passed unanimously.

Section 4: Executive Summary

Scott Miller deck — narrow ZBA action, deliberately

The ZBA’s only binding action tonight was a single dimensional special permit allowing Scott Miller’s covered deck to sit six feet from the side property line, rather than the seven-and-a-half feet required as of right. The board’s own framing was disciplined: the motion’s text explicitly states the relief is “limited only to that specific request” and makes “no findings on any of the items within the jurisdiction of the Planning Board.” This bracketing matters because the broader Miller addition — including ~754 sq ft of new floor area and a hip-to-gable roof conversion — is still in front of Planning. The ZBA’s narrow vote tonight prevents any procedural argument later that the ZBA implicitly blessed the addition’s height or square footage; that scrutiny lives with Planning and the Building Commissioner.

Stormwater bylaw amendments aimed at December 2026 Town Meeting

The board heard a presentation, not a vote. Three modest zoning bylaw amendments are being teed up by DPW and Kleinfelder under the town’s MS4 permit obligations: (1) discretionary parking-count reductions via ZBA special permit where transit/multimodal access exists, (2) permitting green-infrastructure landscaped islands (dry swales, rain gardens, bioretention) in larger parking lots, and (3) compact-car/permeable-paver allowances within the Smart Growth and Glover Multifamily overlay districts plus a uniform 9×18 stall standard. None of these will be on the May 2026 ATM warrant — they are queued for the December 2026 ATM after the May 11 Planning Board hearing and Select Board adoption.

Why this matters: This is the slow, technical end of MS4 compliance — a state/federal stormwater permit posture that has been in motion since the town’s 2022 deliverable. The amendments are intentionally permissive rather than prescriptive (they unlock options, they don’t mandate green infrastructure), which makes them politically easier to pass but means the actual environmental benefit will depend on whether developers and the ZBA itself use the new tools. The ZBA’s new authority to grant parking-count reductions is the most consequential discretionary lever here — particularly in the Smart Growth and Glover overlay districts, where 40R-class density is already part of the town’s MBTA Communities posture.

May 19 meeting moved to May 26 because of Annual Town Meeting overlap

A small but practical change: the ZBA shifted its May 19 meeting to May 26 to accommodate the Annual Town Meeting potentially running multiple nights. Town clerks and applicants on the May docket should track the new date.

Section 5: Analysis

Discipline on the limits of ZBA jurisdiction

The Miller hearing showcased something the board does well when it chooses to: tight scoping. The procedural posture was awkward — the petitioner had been continued, was still working out floor-area documentation with the Planning Board, and brought a setback question that was straightforward in isolation. Chair Heather’s instinct was to narrow rather than wait, and her formulation — “any decision we make would really not talk about the addition at all” — was sound and was crystallized verbatim into the operative motion (“relief is limited only to that specific request… makes no findings on any of the items within the jurisdiction of the Planning Board”). [Speaker 3]‘s prompt concurrence (“if we’re being asked just for that limited relief… should address that, don’t address anyone else”) closed the deliberation efficiently.

This is a quietly important pattern in the ZBA’s recent record. The board’s March 17, 2026 5 Huron Street decision (KKgnbOi5-9Q) reached a structurally similar Solomon-style outcome: grant the narrow Balalta finding, decline the broader package of relief, push the FEMA-floodplain question back to the Building Commissioner. Tonight is the same approach to a much smaller dispute — the ZBA acts on the slice properly before it and refuses to backdoor an opinion on adjacent matters. Where ZBAs in other towns sometimes overreach (granting bundles of relief that effectively pre-decide Planning Board questions), Swampscott’s is currently disciplined about its lane. This is a good habit and worth noting.

The MS4 stormwater package is technical but its ZBA piece is non-trivial

The Kleinfelder presentation was almost entirely uncontested — no member raised substantive concerns — but the first amendment (allowing parking-count reductions via ZBA special permit) is the kind of provision whose effect will be defined entirely by how the ZBA interprets it in practice. The bylaw language as described tonight provides the option to reduce parking where transit/multimodal access exists, but the discretion sits with this board. Whether that discretion gets used generously or grudgingly is the substantive question. The board didn’t engage on this dimension tonight, partly because the presentation framed it as a stormwater issue (it is) rather than a parking-policy issue (it also is). The Planning Board’s May 11 hearing is the next venue to surface this tension; if the Planning Board treats it as boilerplate, the meaningful policy debate will land at Town Meeting in December.

[Speaker 5]‘s question on regional consistency — “are these changes consistent with other towns’ zoning bylaws?” — was a useful sanity-check and got the right answer from Varga (yes, analysis incorporated EPA, regional planning commission, and peer-town guidance). It’s the kind of question that quietly de-risks adoption at Town Meeting where comparative framing matters.

Inflection point?

This meeting is not an inflection point on any live town issue. It is routine ZBA work — a narrowly granted setback special permit and a heads-up presentation on technical zoning amendments queued for the December ATM. The board operated cleanly, kept its scope tight, and dispatched its business in under half an hour. The most consequential output is the calendar note: the May 19 meeting moved to May 26 because Annual Town Meeting may need more than one night to complete its warrant — itself a small signal about the size of the May 2026 ATM docket.

Speaker-attribution caveats

This transcript’s diarization conflates voices on at least three tags ([Speaker 1], [Speaker 2], [Speaker 3]). The cleanest evidence is for self-identified speakers — Noonan, Varga, Thompson — and for the chair role, which is continuous from prior meetings. The names of the three non-chair board members present tonight are not stated in the transcript; the snapshot-derived hypothesis is Rose, Andy, and Mark (with Susan absent), but I cannot reliably map any of [Speaker 3 / 4 / 9] to a specific name without voice evidence.

2026-04-21: Zoning Board Of Appeals