Ten people have held a seat on the Chelsea Planning Board at some point in 2026, and four of them took their seats within the last ten months. The newest, Sara Nasah, was one of seventeen appointments the City Council cleared on a single roll call on September 21. She joins the board that recommended the Zoning Board of Appeals deny Walmart a special permit for a delivery depot in the Home Depot plaza on Webster Avenue.
No Chelsea voter has ever cast a ballot for any of them. City Manager Fidel Maltez appoints the board. Section 4-2 of the city charter says his choices take effect thirty days after notice is filed with the council, “unless the city council votes, within that period, by majority of the full city council to reject the appointment.” The council’s formal power over the board is a window to say no.
Who sits there
Board letterhead on its February 24, 2026 minutes lists Regina Taylor as Vice Chair alongside Hamza Abdul, Eric Czernizer, Geneliz Herrera, Jordana Mather, Mimi Rancatore, Sarah Ritch and Nick Valentine. That night the board elected Taylor Chair and Mather Vice Chair, each 5-0-0. Audrey Jones appears in the roll from April 15 forward. Valentine appears in no roll call after February.
How many seats the board has is not stated anywhere in the 2026 council record we have read. The appointment letters show a pattern: a new term runs three years, and someone filling a vacancy serves only the remainder of it. Abdul’s term expires January 30, 2029, Nasah’s on September 30, 2029, Herrera’s on October 21, 2027 and Jones’s on February 24, 2028.
The turnover
Two resignations set it off. Jessica Arbaiza left in November 2025, and the council confirmed Geneliz Herrera to her unexpired term on December 15, 2025, by 9-0-2-0. William (Tuck) Willis resigned in December, and Maltez nominated Audrey Jones for that seat on March 4, 2026; ten councillors are recorded in favor at the March 23 meeting, though the OCR of the tally line is unreadable. Jones is an instructional math teacher and coach at Phoenix Chelsea Charter Academy, teaching pre-algebra and math foundations in English and Spanish.
Abdul came in separately, on a new three-year term, confirmed 10-0-1-0 on January 28, 2026. His resume lists him as Smith Family Teen Program Manager at the Jordan Boys and Girls Club in Chelsea from August 2018 to February 2021. Maltez’s September 9 letter offering Nasah a three-year term gives no reason for the opening.
What the board does with its recommendations
Under G.L. c. 40A every zoning amendment goes to the Planning Board for a hearing and a recommendation before the council can adopt it. On March 24 the board voted 5-1-1 to recommend the council deny District 6 Councillor Giovanni Recupero’s R-1 amendment, which would have cut the minimum lot area per dwelling unit from 3,500 square feet to 3,000 and allowed three-family houses in the district by special permit. Taylor, Mather, Czernizer, Rancatore and Ritch voted yes, Herrera voted no, Abdul abstained.
Planner and Land Use Administrator William Cecio’s letter put the reasoning in two sentences. “Board members concerns centered around the potential to spur unintended consequences by altering a few dimensional regulations without aligning them with other requirements,” he wrote. “Additionally, the proposed changes would change the intent of the zoning district, thus requiring a more community engaged process.”
Cecio recorded that this was the second time: “The Board recommended denial of this same amendment in 2025 and no changes were made to the language for this current submittal.” That 2025 rejection is not reproduced in any 2026 packet and we have not seen the record of it. The council defeated the amendment on April 27, 2026, by 2-6-2-1, with only Recupero and Tanairi Garcia in favor.
Splits are common. The same night it rejected Recupero’s amendment the board backed the Fitzpatrick-Prattville 40R district unanimously, and on May 19 it recommended the inclusionary zoning rewrite 5-3, with Abdul, Herrera and Jones voting no.
The council confirms the board, and writes to it
Three sitting councillors have asked the Zoning Board of Appeals to approve the Walmart depot that the Planning Board recommended against. Kelly Garcia, Manuel Teshe and Norieliz DeJesus submitted letters supporting the applicant, citing convenience for residents without vehicles and economic benefits, according to the Chelsea Record’s account of the mid-September hearing. Councillor-at-Large Leo Robinson is opposed: “I spoke before the planning board, and we can do better…I don’t really see any benefit for the people of Chelsea.” ZBA Chair Janice Tatarka said the board wanted more time with a new traffic study, and continued the hearing to October. The Planning Board’s own site plan review stayed open.
Writing to a permitting board is ordinary and open, and the councillors filed theirs in public. Worth holding onto is the shape of it: the body that decides whether an appointee keeps the seat also writes to the board for a private applicant, and the confirmation half takes about as long as reading the names aloud. Seventeen appointments went through on September 21 in one roll call, eight in favor, none opposed, three absent, after the appointees were asked to stand and say their names. The charter review committee has a proposal that would replace the thirty-day rejection window with appointments made “subject to confirmation by a majority of the city council.”
Still unknown
We could not establish from the council record how many seats the board has, what sets its term lengths, when Nick Valentine left or why, or what seat Sara Nasah fills. The board holds a public hearing on the draft city master plan at 5 p.m. on September 22 in the council chambers and is scheduled to vote on it October 27, after which it goes to the council. If you have Planning Board minutes from 2025, the board’s rules of procedure, or the letters councillors sent to the Zoning Board of Appeals, write to [email protected].