MIDDLEBOROUGH — The town has an opening that pays nothing, meets at seven o’clock on Thursday nights, and helps decide what gets built next to your house.

The Zoning Board of Appeals is looking for residents. The town’s posting asks for two, says the board meets once or twice a month on Thursday evenings at 7 p.m., and lists no deadline. It has been open since April 1, 2024.

The need got more immediate this month. At the board’s Oct. 22 meeting, Liz Elgosin resigned effective immediately after 27 years of service. The board voted to recommend Nancy Kefalis as a regular member. Four residents had come forward for three open seats, and only one of them spoke, a practicing attorney who said he has lived in town nine years and wanted to give back.

One note on the numbers. The town’s posting asks for two residents. The board’s own discussion on Oct. 22 referred to three open seats. The G.O.A.T. News has not reconciled the two, and a resident thinking about applying should assume the board still wants to hear from them either way.

What the board actually does

Under Section 12 of Chapter 40A, a town’s zoning board of appeals has three or five members, appointed by the select board, with terms staggered so that one seat comes up each year. A town may also provide for associate members. The chairman can ask an associate to sit when a regular member is absent, cannot act, has a conflict of interest, or when a seat is empty.

The work itself is the part people underestimate. This is the board that hears appeals from the building commissioner’s decisions. It grants or denies variances when someone’s lot will not fit what the bylaw requires. It takes up special permits for uses the bylaw allows only with conditions attached. And it handles comprehensive permits under Chapter 40B, the affordable housing law that lets a developer ask one board to override local zoning.

That is a short list with long consequences. A variance is permanent and runs with the land. A special permit condition that nobody writes down is a condition that nobody can enforce later.

Why this particular moment matters

The surf park proposed for 177 East Grove St. is in front of this board right now. So is a church conversion on School Street. Both petitions, brought by attorney Michael O’Shaughnessy, were carried to Nov. 12, and the surf park’s extended decision deadline expires Nov. 13.

It was Elgosin, the member who just resigned, who asked in July what happens to the surf park structure if the business fails. That question came from one person at the table who had read the file and thought about the end of the story instead of the beginning. The board is now short the member who asked it.

That is the case for the seat, in one example. Boards do not get better because the right rules are on the books. They get better because somebody in the room asks the question nobody else thought to ask.

Who should think about applying

The statute requires no law degree, no engineering background and no experience in real estate. The one applicant who spoke on Oct. 22 happens to be an attorney, and that is useful, but nothing in Chapter 40A asks for it. What the job asks for is the willingness to read a packet before the meeting, to drive out and look at the property, to sit through a hearing that runs past nine, and to say no to a neighbor when the bylaw says no.

If you have ever sat in the audience at a hearing and thought the board was missing something, this is the answer to that thought.

Twenty-seven years is a long time to serve a town. Most people reading this will not give the Zoning Board of Appeals twenty-seven years. A few of them could give it a Thursday night twice a month, which is all the job has ever actually asked for.

Barrella serves on the Middleborough Finance Committee and the Town Manager Search Committee. Neither body appoints members of the Zoning Board of Appeals. The G.O.A.T. News is reporting on the surf park petition now before this board and sent written questions to the applicant’s attorney on Sept. 4, 2026 that remain unanswered.