The Swampscott Planning Board unanimously adopted the town’s first new master plan in roughly a decade on June 17, approving a roughly 230-page document that is meant to guide the next ten years of decisions about housing, land use, transportation, climate resilience, open space, public facilities, and historic preservation.
The plan, called “Swampscott 2035,” does not change zoning, buy land, fund projects, or bind future boards. It is advisory. But it now gives town officials a formal document to cite when they argue over zoning, Hawthorne, stormwater, public facilities, coastal resilience, business districts, and capital planning.
The vote came during a crowded joint Select Board and Planning Board meeting at Swampscott High School. The same agenda included the Amrize quarry permit, Johnny Ray’s entertainment license at the Hawthorne building, the long-term Hawthorne RFP, the Republic Services trash contract, and the town administrator’s six-month review. The master plan was item E-2, after the quarry and before the entertainment license.
Planning Board adopted; Select Board endorsed
The Planning Board adopted the plan. The Select Board endorsed it “as a framework for future policy discussions, capital planning, budgeting, grant applications, and town decision-making,” according to the Item.
Those are not two versions of the same act. Under Massachusetts law (M.G.L. c. 41, §81D), the Planning Board adopts a municipal master plan. The Select Board has no statutory role in adoption. Its endorsement makes the plan a policy reference, not a rule.
MAPC’s lead planner told the Planning Board in January that the plan “is not legally binding.” At the June meeting, according to the Item, he said the town is “not obligated to do it all.”
That means every zoning change and overlay still has to pass Town Meeting on its own. Every land acquisition still needs a willing seller, a Select Board vote, and an appropriation. The plan can name priorities, but it cannot enact them.
The only June 17 vote detail that can be sourced is that the Planning Board’s adoption was unanimous. No transcript or minutes from the joint session have been released, so the Select Board endorsement has no public tally, and no board member’s debate that night can be quoted. Everything attributed to that meeting here comes from press coverage, chiefly the Item.
The plan has 42 goals and 247 actions
“Swampscott 2035” was prepared by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, the region’s planning agency, over roughly two years with town staff and a volunteer advisory committee of 26 or 27 members. Sources differ on the count. The committee met six times.
The public process included three forums with about 160 people and 385 survey responses that generated about 1,800 individual comments.
As reported for the adopted plan, it contains 42 goals, 96 strategies, and 247 recommended actions across eight topic areas: economic and community development, land use and zoning, housing, transportation, open space and recreation, public facilities and services, historic and cultural resources, and climate and sustainability. The actions are tiered across a ten-year horizon.
The 42-goal figure matches what MAPC presented in January. The 96-strategy and 247-action counts come from press accounts of the final plan and are larger than the draft staff were working from a few months earlier. No public source explains the difference.
The plan’s vision statement says: “By 2035, Swampscott will be a thriving, resilient, and inclusive coastal community, offering diverse, affordable, and climate-ready housing with vibrant walkable hubs, guided by transparent and collaborative governance.”
The plan puts several “fix-it-first” priorities in its early years: completing the Rail Trail, pedestrian and bicycle safety improvements, expanding affordable and diverse housing, stormwater and coastal-resilience investment, King’s Beach water quality, and support for the town’s business districts. The other 240-odd actions fill out the longer work plan.
Hawthorne and December zoning articles
On open space, the plan’s priorities align with the position a five-committee coalition has pressed for months: that the town-owned Hawthorne parcel at 153 Humphrey Street should become parkland, not redevelopment. This paper covered that coalition’s fourteen-page letter on May 27 and the open RFP the board chose instead on June 17. The town’s separate Open Space and Recreation Plan already names Hawthorne, under its Goal 43, as a potential acquisition target.
None of that decides Hawthorne’s future. It gives each side a document to cite.
The same applies to the zoning package headed to the December 7 Town Meeting: a Humphrey Street ground-floor-commercial overlay meant to preserve retail at street level, a cleanup of the accessory-dwelling-unit rules, and an MS4 stormwater bylaw. The master plan did not create those articles. The Planning Board has been drafting them since the spring. But it now sits over them as the stated framework they advance.
Implementation committee not yet created
The plan’s top recommendation is to create a Master Plan Implementation Committee, a joint volunteer-and-municipal body to track progress, coordinate town departments, seek grants, and report back to the boards. In January, MAPC’s planner pointed to the Open Space committee’s shared goal-tracking database as a model.
The same recommendation led the previous master plan, the 2016–2025 plan, and the town never created that committee.
That is the open question after June 17. Swampscott, a town that already runs more than thirty mostly volunteer committees, still has to decide whether to seat another standing body to mind this one: appoint members, give it a charge, set a work plan, and require public reporting. Planners floated standing it up by the end of 2026. Adoption did not create the committee. A separate Select Board appointment process would.
Sources: June 17, 2026 joint Select Board / Planning Board session, agenda item E-2, “Master Plan Adoption,” at Swampscott High School Room B129 (data/committees/select-board/agenda-2026-06-17.md; agenda order and the five competing items). The June 17 outcomes, including Planning Board unanimous adoption, the Select Board endorsement language, planner Carlos Montañez’s “not obligated to do it all,” the 42-goal / 96-strategy / 247-action count, the 232-page figure, and the end-of-2026 implementation-committee target, are press-only: Itemlive, “Swampscott has plans for 2035” (June 19, 2026) and “Swampscott sifts through 42 goals in its Master Plan” (March 18, 2026); Swampscott Tides Master Plan coverage. No June 17 transcript or minutes had been released as of writing; no Select Board endorsement tally is on the public record. What the plan is, including MAPC authorship, ~two years of engagement, the 27-member advisory group that met six times, three forums (~160 attendees), 385 surveys / ~1,800 comments, the vision statement, the eight topic areas, the fix-it-first priorities, and the Implementation Committee as priority-one recommendation echoing the prior 2016–2025 plan, is from the Jan. 12, 2026 Planning Board presentation of Draft 1 (data/analysis_markdown_prof/HJCUboW_HLM.md), where the same planner appears under the transcript’s rendering “Carlos Martinez.” The §81D adoption-authority framing is statutory. Live-beat connections: the Humphrey Street overlay, ADU cleanup, MS4 stormwater bylaw, and December 7 Town Meeting target from the May 11 Planning Board record (data/analysis_markdown_prof/oCzHlDFipaI.md); OSRP Goal 43 naming Hawthorne and Goal 8’s partnership mechanism from data/committees/open-space-recreation-plan/agenda-2026-06-09.md and minutes-2026-03-17.md. Prior coverage this piece sits inside: 2026-05-27_five-committee-parkland-letter.md, 2026-06-23_hawthorne-rfp-nine-questions.md, 2026-05-30_hawthorne-property.md. Names and roles verified against data/people/ and committee rosters in data/committees/. The planner’s surname spelling “Montañez” is press-derived (consistent across two Itemlive pieces) and appears in no town personnel record.