In Swampscott's permitting system, the default answer is yes

← All news · August 13, 2026

Massachusetts land-use law is built so that when a permitting board misses its deadline, the application is granted, not denied. Eleven of those clocks run in Swampscott — six in state law, five in town bylaw. The only thing between a stretched volunteer board and an automatic approval is clerical work filed on time, and nobody is publicly tracking whether it is being done.

Swampscott has eleven land-use deadlines that can turn a missed board action into an approval: six in state law and five in town bylaw. No constructive approval is shown to have happened in town. But the public record also does not show a ledger of deadlines met, extensions signed, or certificates issued.

That matters because Massachusetts law does not always treat silence as denial. In several major permitting tracks, when a board runs out of time, the application is granted. Silence is a yes. The only thing between a stretched volunteer board and that result is the paperwork: tracking the clock, getting extensions in writing, filing decisions on time, and recording what happened.

The town has described that work as a specific job. In May 2023, Town Meeting nearly cut the Land Use Coordinator position. Peter Spellios, then on the Select Board and a Precinct 3 Town Meeting member, urged Town Meeting not to do it.

The chairs of the planning board, the zoning board, the historic district commission, the historical commission, and the conservation commission, he said, “all have regulatory functions, they all have dates that they have to comply by.” He added: “That land use coordinator is the one that makes sure that we file things on time because if we don’t, things are deemed approved.” The job, he said, was “primarily behind-the-scenes,” doing “the work of more than a half-time position” by filing applications, publishing notices, alerting abutters, and checking petitions for completeness. The amendment failed.

In July 2025, the Land Use Coordinator Spellios defended, Marissa, left for the same job in Malden. In August 2025, a town administrator’s report listed the position as vacant. The corpus reviewed for this story does not show whether the job has since been filled. No 2026 town masthead reviewed for this story carries the title.

Eleven deadlines in state law and town bylaw

A ledger compiled from state statutes and Swampscott’s bylaws counts eleven constructive-approval clocks in town.

The six state clocks are a special permit, which gives the Zoning Board 90 days to decide; a variance or appeal, which gives it 100 days; an ANR endorsement before the Planning Board, 21 days; definitive subdivision plans before the Planning Board, 90 or 135 days; the Board of Health’s subdivision report, 45 days; and a 40B comprehensive permit, 40 days after the hearing closes. Miss any of them and the applicant can claim the grant.

The five local clocks were written by Town Meeting. Three housing overlay districts — the Glover 40R Smart Growth district, the Glover Multifamily Overlay, and the B-4 large-building rule — each carry a 120-day deadline after which failure to act “shall be deemed to be an approval.” The other two are preservation bylaws this paper covered this week: the demolition-delay rule, before the Historical Commission, and the Local Historic District rule, before the Historic District Commission. In those cases, silence gives the applicant a permit or a certificate to proceed.

The MBTA Communities overlay is different. The newest district, which the state required Swampscott to adopt, does not print the same deadline and default on its face. Its site-plan review sets only a 20-day deadline after the public meeting ends and lets that meeting be continued indefinitely. That is a reading of the local text, not a court ruling; the state’s own MBTA rules may supply an outer limit the bylaw does not. But among the four housing overlays where Swampscott’s housing fights happen, one lacks the clock the other three carry.

How a missed deadline becomes an approval

Most residents never see the rule because it matters only when a board is late. A missed deadline is not a lost application. It can be an approved one.

The state statutes use similar language. A special permit the board fails to decide in time “shall be deemed to be a grant.” A variance or appeal not acted on in 100 days “shall be deemed to be the grant.” A 40B comprehensive permit left undecided “shall be deemed to have been allowed,” and the permit “shall forthwith issue.”

The rule is not only a trap for volunteer boards. It also protects applicants from boards that could kill a project by sitting on it. And it does not trigger by itself. For zoning permits, an applicant who wants the default has to claim it by notifying the town clerk within 14 days, waiting out a 20-day appeal window, and collecting a certificate. Most of these clocks can be extended, but only by an agreement the applicant signs.

That means the applicant has a reason to watch the calendar. The public has no comparable tracking system.

Elm Place showed the risk

On May 9, 2022, the chair of Swampscott’s Zoning Board of Appeals polled his members before there was any motion to vote on. A 40B rental proposal at Elm Place, from the developer Winn, was before the board. The chair wanted to know where the members stood because the calendar was about to force the issue.

“If we don’t decide this case by June 12,” he told the room, “the petitioner could get a constructive approval without conditions.” That meant a permit stripped of every condition the board might have attached. To know how much time he had, the chair relied on a letter from the applicant’s own attorney confirming the June 12 date — the town board asking the developer to tell it when its clock ran out.

The same pressure has appeared in other records. The Zoning Board has spent 2025 and 2026 racing a 40B clock on Veterans Crossing, a 41-unit senior and veteran-preference project at New Ocean and Pine streets; by the board’s own account the statutory clock does not wait. In December 2024, Town Meeting member Charlie Patsios worried aloud that a short-handed Conservation Commission “can’t respond in a time period” and asked whether that “means a constructive approval.” A Select Board member has described routinely asking the Attorney General’s office for more time on the town’s own bylaws so they are not deemed approved for lack of a timely response.

Public records do not show the clock

The boards facing these clocks have also grown harder to watch.

The Historical Commission has posted seven agendas in 2026 and two sets of minutes, and has never appeared on the town’s video record. The Planning Board and Zoning Board have moved their summer hearings to the Senior Center, where, as this paper reported Aug. 7, no meeting has produced a town video. A nine-month decision on a century-old house, or a vote on a 41-unit development, can leave little more than an agenda line.

The public record reviewed for this story shows the legal default, the town officials’ concern, the 2025 vacancy in the job officials said protects against deemed approvals, and the lack of a public ledger. It does not show an actual constructive approval in Swampscott. The point is narrower and more unsettling: the law makes yes the default, the town’s own officials have said on the record that they know the danger, the one job that holds it off may be unfilled, and no public ledger of deadlines met or certificates issued lets a resident check.

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