Brockton councilors take up a call Monday for the city to sue the state over new zoning rules

BROCKTON, Mass. A Brockton City Council committee will consider Monday night whether to ask Mayor Moises Rodrigues to have the city's Law Department sue the state over zoning changes the Legislature wrote into this year's state budget.

The resolve, on the agenda of the council's Finance Committee for 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 16, in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 45 School St., says the changes "will forever change residential neighborhoods, commercial properties and present significant public safety concerns, including fire safety hazards for residents, first responders and others."

The item has been put off twice; the agenda notes it was postponed from the committee's meetings on Sept. 21 and Oct. 19.

What the resolve asks

The resolve concerns Chapter 137 of the Acts of 2026, the state budget for the fiscal year that began July 1, which was signed into law July 9. Besides paying for state government, the law rewrote parts of the state Zoning Act, Chapter 40A of the General Laws, which sets the rules nearly every city and town zoning board in the state works under.

The resolve says the changes were "filed, supported and approved without any input from local public safety and zoning officials." Under it, the council would send the mayor a letter "requesting he file appropriate litigation through the law department to challenge the new zoning requirements as potentially dangerous and contrary to public safety interests, economically unfeasible for a city with limited financial resources, and for any other reasons which may be relevant, as determined by the City Solicitor."

The resolve is a request, and whether to sue would be up to the mayor and the city's lawyers. It also says the council "welcomes any support from the Massachusetts Fire Chiefs Association, other groups and interested communities, especially the Gateway Cities."

The committee invited the mayor, Fire Chief Brian Nardelli, Zoning Board of Appeals Chair Kenneth Galligan and City Solicitor James O'Brien, or people they send in their place.

What changed in the zoning law

Sections 40 to 49 of the budget law amend the Zoning Act. The main changes:

• The test for a variance changed from hardship to practical difficulty. Before the change, a zoning board could grant a variance only when conditions of the land itself, its soil, shape or topography, meant literal enforcement "would involve substantial hardship," and only if relief would not substantially harm the public good. Now a board shall grant one when it finds strict enforcement "would result in a practical difficulty." The board weighs the benefits to the applicant and the public, "including the interest in supporting the production of housing," against "the detriment to the public health, safety and welfare of the neighborhood." Land conditions, financial hardship, other ways to meet the goal, and whether the applicant created the difficulty are factors it may consider.
• A variance can now allow housing where zoning does not. The old law barred variances that allow a use the district does not permit unless a city's own ordinance allowed them. The new text keeps that bar except for residential use, so a board can grant a use variance for housing even if the city's ordinance does not allow use variances. Brockton's own zoning ordinance, in Section 27-48, already has its board decide appeals "including variances for uses not otherwise permitted in the district," so that change reaches further in cities and towns whose rules do not expressly permit use variances.
• A variance now lasts two years before it lapses, up from one, and a board can extend it up to two more years, up from six months.
• A zoning change no longer reaches a project whose building or special permit, or other zoning approval, was applied for before the city first published notice of the hearing on that change. The old law protected only permits already issued by then.
• Work under a building permit is now protected from later zoning changes if it starts within 24 months of the last permit needed, up from 12 months, with the clock paused while the owner seeks other permits.
• A building or residential use that falls short of today's rules only on lot size or shape, frontage, lot coverage or floor area ratio may now be expanded or altered as of right, without a special permit finding, as long as the work meets current height, story and setback limits. A city may now treat a nonconforming use or building as abandoned only after it sits unused for four years, up from two.
• Older lots that are protected when a city later raises its lot size, frontage, width, yard or depth rules no longer have to be lots for single and two-family homes; the law struck those words from both protections.
• The rewritten variance section leaves out the old paragraph that said a board "may impose conditions, safeguards and limitations both of time and of use" on a variance.
• Hearing notices that sections 5 and 11 of the Zoning Act require to be mailed may now be sent electronically.

Also on Monday's agenda

The Finance Committee will also take up two reappointments, to the Beautification Committee and the License Commission; resolves inviting the director of the city's grant-funded Harm Reduction Program and Axel Sandford, whom the council credits with starting voter registration drives at Brockton High School, Champion High School and the Adult Learning Center, to speak to the council; the appointment of William Forte as the city's commissioner of buildings for a three-year term starting Nov. 24; acceptance of a $64,000 state Department of Environmental Protection grant for the Department of Public Works refuse division; a $30,000 transfer into the treasurer's overtime account and a $5,000 transfer into the auditor's; and payments of $24,901.86 from the parking department and $8,207.41 from the police department to outside vendors. The agenda also lists the swearing-in of nine officers.

Earlier that evening, at 5:30 p.m., the council's Ordinance Committee meets in the same chambers on amendments to the city's accessory dwelling unit ordinance and its stormwater management ordinance, a change to the Brockton Smart Growth Overlay District, and a zoning map change that would put three parcels, 111-040, 111-041 and 111-042, into that district.

Both meetings are open to the public under the state Open Meeting Law, and South Shore 360 will report what the committee decides.

Label: Reported by us.