Town Government
Boards & Commissions
What Boards & Commissions Are
Beyond the Select Board and the School Committee, most of Longmeadow’s governing happens on volunteer boards and commissions. The town lists more than twenty five of them. They approve new development, hear zoning appeals, protect the town’s wetlands and open space, set the tax classification, weigh in on historic places, and advise Town Meeting on every dollar it is asked to spend. They are the rooms where an ordinary resident can have the most direct hand in a decision.
Who appoints them is a real question here, and the charter answers it in three places. The Select Board appoints Town Counsel, the registrars of voters, and the members of every appointed multiple-member body for which the charter names no other method. The Moderator appoints the five-member standing rules committee that governs how Town Meeting itself is run. And the Finance Committee is appointed by a committee of three: the Moderator, the sitting Finance Committee chair, and the town’s Finance Director. Five bodies are not appointed at all. Charter section 3-1(a) puts the Select Board, the School Committee, the Planning Board, the Moderator and the Housing Authority on the ballot.
Key Boards & Commissions
- Planning Board reviews subdivisions, site plans, and major development. Elected, and Longmeadow’s planning seats run five years, longer than any other elected office in town.
- Zoning Board of Appeals hears variances and special permits.
- Conservation Commission protects Longmeadow’s wetlands, rivers and open space, including the Riverfront Conservation Area and the Wolf Swamp Conservation Area.
- Finance Committee holds the public hearing on the town budget and advises Town Meeting on spending. Seven residents, three-year terms, and the charter bars any other town officer, board member or town or school employee from sitting on it.
- Board of Assessors sets the annual tax classification. Three appointed members with staggered terms.
- Board of Health oversees inspections, clinics, and public health rules.
- Community Preservation Committee recommends how the town spends its Community Preservation Act money on open space, historic preservation, recreation and affordable housing, and Town Meeting votes each project.
- Historical Commission and Historic District Commission work on the town’s historic places, alongside the independent Longmeadow Historical Society.
- Housing Authority runs the town’s public housing. Four members elected to five-year terms, with a fifth appointed by the Commonwealth.
- Middle School Building Committee is running the consolidated middle school the town voted to fund in September 2025, and its roster puts the Town Manager, a Select Board member, two School Committee members, the Superintendent and four community representatives in the same room.
For the full roster, current members, vacancies, and schedules, see the town’s own Boards & Commissions page.
How to Serve
- Find an opening on the town’s Committee Vacancies page.
- Apply online. The town keeps an application form on its boards and committees page, and you do not need to be asked first.
- Interview. The Select Board holds its interviews for annual appointments and reappointments across the summer, and it says so on its own agendas.
- Serve: attend the public meetings and help make decisions for your town.
There is a second door, and it opens earlier. Longmeadow gives a Citizen of the Year award and a Community Citizens of the Year award at Town Meeting, and any town resident can submit a nomination in writing between January and March. The group that picks the winner is made up of the chair, or the chair’s delegate, from each of four elected bodies: the Select Board, the School Committee, the Planning Board and the Housing Authority. Nominating a neighbour is a real act of civic participation that needs no appointment and no ballot.
Serving on a board is one of the most direct ways to shape Longmeadow.