Swampscott’s hearing-notice system can miss a new homeowner without violating the law.
That is what the Zoning Board of Appeals heard on July 21, when Thomas Bogacz and his household said they never received usable notice of a January hearing on a large addition next door at 24-28 Ingalls Terrace. The town mailed the required notice to Bogacz’s address at 25 Ingalls Terrace, but addressed it to the person who had sold him the house months earlier. Bogacz bought the house in August 2025. He first understood what had been approved next door when the wall started going up in late spring. By then, every deadline to challenge it had passed.
This paper has already covered why the ZBA could not help him: the board hears only a narrow set of questions, and the 30-day clock to appeal a permit runs from a letter, not from the day a neighbor sees construction. The July hearing showed the earlier failure point: how the town decides who gets told a hearing is happening.
Notice follows the tax list
When a board holds a hearing on a project, it must notify abutters, the neighbors within a set distance of the property. The list is not built from who lives there now. Under the state Zoning Act, Chapter 40A, the “parties in interest” are the owners as they appear on the assessors’ most recent tax list, and the town’s assessing office certifies that list. Once certified, it is treated as conclusive. A notice mailed to the names and addresses on it is legally valid, even if no current resident opens it.
The key date was January 1, 2025. As the owners’ attorney told the ZBA on July 21, statutory notice “goes to the named owner as assessed as of January the 1st of that year.” For a hearing noticed in the last days of 2025, that meant the governing name was the prior owner of 25 Ingalls Terrace. The letter went to the right house under the wrong name, and the attorney said that did not make the notice defective.
“There are no procedural defects,” he said.
Bogacz’s household gave the board a second explanation. They testified that the town’s assessor had updated the ownership record for their address on December 18, 2025, before the January 12 hearing, so the current owner was already on file. The problem, one household member said, is that “the GIS data does not follow the assessor database like it’s required to, and that’s how the notice went to the previous owner and then the post office.”
That GIS claim is the household’s account, not an audited town finding. No official confirmed on tape that the mapping layer drives the abutters list or that it failed to sync. The owners’ attorney argued the opposite: that proper notice went out on time. The two accounts can both leave the same result. The statute’s January 1 rule made the old name legally correct, and the household’s GIS theory would explain why even a December correction did not change the mailing. Either way, the letter bore the name of someone who no longer lived there.
The deadlines had run
Nothing in that process flags the problem. The notice was mailed. It reached the address. It named an owner who was, by the statute’s clock, the right owner. A board member summarized it this way: “The notice was mailed to your address. It just didn’t come to your name.”
The legal clocks kept running. The Planning Board granted the site-plan permit on January 12. The appeal window closed March 9. The decision was recorded March 10. The building permit issued March 17. The window to appeal that permit closed April 17. Bogacz’s household reached the building department about the construction on May 27, five weeks after the last deadline had passed.
By the time the grievance reached the ZBA, the board could not reopen the Planning Board’s January decision. Chair Heather Roman apologized “that you didn’t get the notification that was required,” and said she was “not sure … how that gets rectified.” The appeal before the ZBA asked whether the addition was being built to its approved plans. On July 21, the board unanimously denied the petition, on a motion by member Marc Kornitsky, Esq.
The scenic-view issue Bogacz wanted to raise belonged before the Planning Board in January, when the permit was granted and, as this paper reported, the view fight was already lost. The ZBA treated the notice grievance as real, but outside its reach.
Two fixes surfaced
One possible fix is a mailing line.
A member of Bogacz’s household asked whether the town could address abutter notices to “or current” resident, the standard “or current resident/occupant” language meant to survive a change in ownership. A board member said the board has been considering that change: “We’ve been discussing that … that would help.” The tape does not show who would put it in place, whether it has been formally proposed, or when it could start.
The broader fix would be a process that keeps any GIS mapping layer current with the assessor’s ownership roll, on a set schedule, with a named office responsible for it. The household’s testimony pointed there. No official at the hearing claimed that sync, named a schedule, or accepted responsibility for it.
For homeowners who buy between assessment dates, that gap matters. A hearing notice can go out on time, to the right address, under the name the statute requires, and still fail to alert the person who now owns the property.
Sources: ZBA public hearing, July 21, 2026, Petition 26-07 (Bogacz), Swampscott TV Cablecast show 3771 (https://tv.swampscottma.gov/internetchannel/show/3771?site=2, VOD since July 22): transcript data/professional_transcripts/sctv-3771-zba-2026-07-21.txt, analysis data/analysis_markdown_prof/sctv-3771-zba-2026-07-21.md. Notice/statute exchange at 53:56–55:44 (owners’ ZBA attorney — a different lawyer than the January Planning Board counsel; he states on tape he “wasn’t the applicant’s attorney at the time of the hearing before the planning board,” so he is left unnamed here); the “checked with [staff]” line renders a name phonetically and is not resolved. GIS/assessor testimony and the “or current resident” exchange at 58:45–1:00:22; Chair Roman’s apology at 48:37–48:45; “just didn’t come to your name” at 59:06–59:15. Timeline (application December 2025; Planning Board grant January 12; appeal window closed March 9; recorded March 10; building permit March 17; permit-appeal window closed April 17; construction inquiry May 27; enforcement denial RZE-26-1 June 8) from owners’ counsel at 52:26–53:16, uncontested. Underlying project: Planning Board Decision 26-02, data/analysis_markdown_prof/HJCUboW_HLM.md, data/committees/planning-board/minutes-2026-01-12.md (by-right two-family in A-4; permit triggered by the >800 sq ft addition; owners Doug Dubin and Emmett McNulty; January counsel Matthew Wolverton, Esq.). Agenda: data/committees/zoning-board-of-appeals/agenda-2026-07-21.md (24-28 Ingalls Terrace, Map 2 Lots 120-121). Roster: data/committees/zoning-board-of-appeals/_committee.md. Chapter 40A §11 (parties-in-interest keyed to the most recent tax list; assessors’ certified list conclusive) stated as general Massachusetts zoning law; exact statutory text not verified in-corpus. Individual votes not assigned: the recovered roll call is unreliable and board minutes remain unposted. Prior coverage this piece sits inside: data/news/2026-07-25_zba-narrow-door.md (ZBA’s narrow jurisdiction, the 30-day clock, the January view fight) and data/news/2026-08-07_land-use-boards-off-camera.md (the venue/video-record thread).