The Swampscott Zoning Board of Appeals denied Thomas Bogacz’s July 21 appeal over the nearly complete two-family addition at 24-28 Ingalls Terrace, and five weeks earlier turned away most of Charles Wilkinson’s appeal over structures at 29 Littles Point Road.
The cases came from opposite sides of the zoning system. Bogacz wanted the town to enforce zoning against a permitted project. Wilkinson wanted the town to reverse determinations against his own property. Both cases showed the same civic fact: when a resident challenges the Building Commissioner’s zoning call, the ZBA is the only town-level route, and it decides only a narrow set of questions.
The first limit is time. Under M.G.L. c. 40A, the 30-day appeal clock runs from the determination letter, not from the fine or the finished building. Miss it, and the board loses jurisdiction over that decision.
The second limit is scope. The board is not a second Planning Board and not a court. It decides whether the Building Commissioner exceeded his authority or made an error, and, for an already-permitted project, whether the work matches the approved plans. It does not reopen a permitted project’s merits, settle a neighbor dispute, or protect a view.
24-28 Ingalls Terrace appeal
On July 21, the ZBA unanimously denied Bogacz’s appeal, Petition 26-07, according to Itemlive. No board minutes or video of the meeting have been posted, so individual votes, member quotes, and the night’s testimony are known only through that reporting.
Bogacz had asked Building Commissioner Richard Baldacci to enforce zoning against the 24-28 Ingalls Terrace addition, near the harbor. Baldacci denied that request, Request for Zoning Enforcement RZE-26-1, on June 8. Bogacz appealed the denial to the ZBA under c. 40A §§7, 8 and 15 and the zoning bylaw.
As Itemlive reported it, Bogacz argued that the addition obstructs harbor views from the public “40 Steps Path,” contrary to a site-plan standard that projects “minimize obstruction of scenic views from publicly accessible locations.” Several residents spoke in his support.
The board held that its role was limited to whether the project is being built according to its approved plans, not whether the finished building is good for the harbor or whether the view is worth protecting. On that question, the board found that the project conforms, and the appeal failed.
Planning Board approval set the issue
That view argument had nowhere to land at the ZBA because of what the Planning Board had already approved in January.
On January 12, the Planning Board granted a Site Plan Special Permit, Decision 26-02, for 24-28 Ingalls Terrace. Doug Dubin and Emmett McNulty brought the application and were represented by Matthew Wolverton, Esq. The property is two merged non-conforming lots, in common ownership since 1947, in the A-4 district. The plan adds roughly 2,000 square feet to an existing single-family house to create a two-family, townhouse-style structure.
A two-family townhouse-style building is allowed by right in A-4. The owners did not need permission for the use. They needed a site-plan special permit only because the addition exceeds 800 square feet of gross floor area, a size threshold, not a use question. Once the Planning Board approved that permit, the decision about whether the project belongs there was made.
Views came up at the January hearing. Former resident Ivan Sever raised concern about a Norwegian maple and ocean-view obstruction; the board resolved it with conditions, requiring an arborist to prune and a nearby pine to be removed. The permit passed unanimously, with two conditions covering trash screening and mechanical screening.
When a related view objection returned in July, it returned to a board that could no longer weigh it. The place to contest whether a permitted project should be built is the permit hearing. By July, that hearing was six months closed.
29 Littles Point Road appeal
On June 16, the same board turned away a different appellant for the opposite reason.
Wilkinson, of 29 Littles Point Road, appealed the Building Commissioner’s determinations about two structures on his property. The town classified them as prohibited storage containers; Wilkinson called them permanent accessory sheds. He also appealed an unregistered vehicle and the fines that followed. He argued the structures were misclassified and that three separately taxed parcels, together approaching seven acres, had been wrongly treated as one.
The board never reached the classification arguments. Its lead legal voice, whom the meeting’s automated transcript does not reliably identify, explained that the operative determination was the town’s September 3, 2025 letter classifying the structures, and that an appeal had to be filed within 30 days of it. Wilkinson filed on May 11, 2026. That was months too late, so the classification was time-barred.
“This is not a de novo hearing,” the member said. The board’s job was only to decide whether the inspector “exceeded his authority or made some error.”
Only the April 13, 2026 fine letter was appealed in time. On that piece the board took jurisdiction, and it remanded the fines to the inspector to decide whether to keep, compromise, waive, or continue them. The board noted that the point of the bylaw’s fines is compliance, not punishment, and that the choice was “totally within the Building Inspector’s discretion.” The board overturned nothing. As one member put it, the remand was the inspector’s determination, “not ours.”
The ZBA limits its own role
The board states that limit even in uncontested cases.
At a routine hearing on April 21, on a covered-porch setback at 80 Puritan Road, Chair Heather Roman said the board’s review was “limited to the dimensional relief” for the side-yard setback. Building height, square footage, and other code questions stayed with the Planning Board and Building Department. The board approved the setback with relief expressly limited to that one request, and made no findings on Planning Board matters.
Other routes for zoning fights
Owners and opponents bring grievances to the ZBA because, once the Building Commissioner acts or declines to act, it is the only local forum left. But the legal question before the board is often narrower than the grievance.
The routes that can reach the merits lie elsewhere. To change what a district allows, residents go to Town Meeting, where a zoning package is already headed for December 7, with a Humphrey Street ground-floor-commercial overlay, a cleanup of accessory-dwelling-unit rules, and an MS4 stormwater bylaw. A separate 40R overlay remains in discussion, not yet a filed article. To contest an individual decision beyond the ZBA, the route is court, under c. 40A §17.
The Ingalls Terrace appeal also reflects the tension this paper covered when the Planning Board adopted the Swampscott 2035 master plan in June: the town wants more housing and wants to protect its waterfront character, and by-right infill can put those goals in conflict. The ZBA enforcement-appeal process does not decide that policy conflict — and, as both the June and July appeals showed, it often cannot reach the grievance that brings people to it.
Sources: ZBA June 16, 2026 hearing on Petition 26-05 (Wilkinson), meeting record data/analysis_markdown_prof/SD_0lm-eUOQ.md (video ID SD_0lm-eUOQ; automated speaker tags scrambled — the meeting’s lead legal voice is left unnamed here; the motion’s spoken statute “Chapter 48 §15” is read as M.G.L. c. 40A §15). ZBA July 21, 2026 agenda, data/committees/zoning-board-of-appeals/agenda-2026-07-21.md (Petition 26-07; Bogacz; Baldacci’s June 8 denial of RZE-26-1; Planning Board Decision 26-02; 24-28 Ingalls Terrace, Map 2, Lots 120-121, A-4). The July 21 outcome — unanimous denial, the board’s plan-conformance holding, the “40 Steps Path” scenic-view argument, and resident support — is press-only (Itemlive, July 21; direct fetch Cloudflare-blocked, substance via search index), logged in data/political_context/2026-05.md. Building Commissioner Richard Baldacci’s name is corpus-attested (the July 21 agenda names only the office). Underlying project: Planning Board minutes data/committees/planning-board/minutes-2026-01-12.md (Decision 26-02; by-right two-family in A-4; permit triggered by the >800 sq ft addition; January view discussion and conditions; former resident Ivan Sever). Doctrine paper trail: ZBA minutes data/committees/zoning-board-of-appeals/minutes-2026-04-21.md (Petition 25-18, 80 Puritan Road; Chair Roman). Roster: data/committees/zoning-board-of-appeals/_committee.md. Prior coverage this piece sits inside: data/news/2026-06-28_master-plan-2035-adopted.md.