Amazon has asked Westborough’s Planning Board to push the hearing on its Prime Air drone launch pad from October 6 to November 10, according to the board’s revised agenda on the town website. The request, filed under the name of Amazon economic development policy manager Tareq Wafaie, covers site-plan application 26-02275, the only local vote Amazon needs before its MK30 drones can fly from the parking lot at 64 Otis Street.
Wafaie told a packed Westborough hotel ballroom on September 23 that Amazon hoped to launch by the end of October. A November 10 hearing puts the earliest possible local approval ten days past the end of October, and five weeks past the date the board was set to vote.
On Thursday night, Westborough’s Select Board met in the Mill Pond School auditorium in front of a capacity crowd, none of whom spoke for the drones, and agreed to take the fight to the State House. Amazon did not send anyone.
Amazon Wants Five More Weeks on the Only Vote Westborough Controls
The October 6 Planning Board agenda lists 64 Otis Street, applicant Tareq Wafaie, Amazon, as a site-plan review hearing with “Continuation requested to November 10, 2026 meeting,” permit 26-02275. Two unrelated applicants on the same agenda, an earth-moving permit and a warehouse site plan, asked for the same date.
The board votes on continuances at the meeting itself, so Tuesday’s 6:30 p.m. session in the Forbes Building’s Great Hall decides whether Amazon gets the delay. The agenda shows the board’s next scheduled dates as November 10, November 17 and December 1.
When Amazon filed the request is not clear from the record. The PDF the town serves at the agenda’s web address carries a “Revised agenda posted on 9-11-26” stamp, but when DroneXL checked that same agenda on September 28 for the survey story, it listed no Amazon item. Either the town replaced the file without a new stamp, or the request was added after September 28, which would put it within days of the lawmakers’ letter. The Planning Department’s filing record would settle which.
Amazon has given no public reason for the request. It moves the local vote past the launch window Wafaie floated on September 23, and past the pause three state lawmakers asked for on September 29 in Amazon Drone Hub Faces Pause Call From Lawmakers as State Sues FAA. Sen. Michael Moore, Rep. Kate Donaghue and Rep. Hannah Kane asked for answers on operating hours, flight paths, service range and daily flight counts first. None of Thursday’s reports carried an Amazon response to the letter, the Select Board meeting or the continuance.
Even with the pad approved, Amazon would still need the FAA’s site-specific environmental sign-off, which a member of its airspace team said on September 23 was under review, and a MassDOT Aeronautics inspection and registration of the landing area. The Drone Delivery Tracker lists the hub as in review. The FAA’s drone environmental review index listed no Massachusetts document when DroneXL checked it on September 28.
Westborough’s Select Board Voted to Take the Drones to the State House
The Select Board’s special meeting opened at 6 p.m. Thursday with public comment, followed by a 7 p.m. item on additional comments to the Planning Board about Prime Air and a 7:45 p.m. item on next steps with the town’s legislative delegation on unmanned aircraft. Westborough TV recorded it.
Board members were unanimous in opposing the proposal, WHDH reported, and said they would draft a letter to state lawmakers and look at towns with more restrictive drone bylaws, naming North Reading. WCVB’s account has the board reviewing the town’s own drone rules and noise ordinances as well.
Residents rallied outside before the doors opened, WCVB reported, and more than 100 filled the auditorium, per WHDH. Resident Faina Kofman, speaking a year to the day after two MK30s struck a crane in Tolleson, Arizona, told the board a person with malicious intent could use a drone to “interfere with emergency operations or conduct unauthorized surveillance.” Resident James Bedar: “The simple answer to all these questions is no, we don’t want this.” A mother quoted by WHDH asked what it means for a family if devices overhead record the backyard where she breastfeeds and her children play.
The room matched the numbers. The independent Westborough Area Drone Delivery Survey at dronefeedback.com, run by a resident with no tie to Amazon or the town, stood at 1,211 responses on Friday morning, up from 853 when DroneXL first reported it on September 28, with opposition unchanged at 92%, 3% in support, 3% supporting with safeguards, and 94% saying they are unlikely to use drone delivery. Hopkinton residents were among those outside, the Hopkinton Independent reported, and Hopkinton’s own Select Board takes up the hub on Tuesday, October 6, the same night as Westborough’s Planning Board. Chair Shahidul Mannan invited Amazon, which had not confirmed. Amazon is Westborough’s largest taxpayer, WHDH noted, and held its own community meeting on September 23, the one DroneXL reported from in Amazon Tells Packed Westborough Room Its Drones Are Coming Anyway.
North Reading’s Bylaw Regulates Hobbyists, Not a Part 135 Carrier
North Reading’s drone bylaw, adopted at Town Meeting on June 5, 2017, bans interfering with emergency responders, recording people where they expect privacy, and flying within 25 feet of bystanders. Operators must keep the aircraft in sight. The Attorney General approved it that November. Fines run to $300 per violation.
The bylaw sits as Chapter 9 of the town’s general bylaws, the North Reading Transcript reported when it passed, and the police chief who proposed it said he wanted something on the books in the absence of state law.
Those are rules written for a Phantom in a park. Amazon flies the MK30 under a Part 135 air carrier certificate, beyond the operator’s line of sight by design, and a Massachusetts town has already lost in federal court over that kind of rule. In Singer v. City of Newton (2017), a federal judge struck Newton’s ban on flights beyond the operator’s line of sight, along with its registration rule and its altitude limit over private property, as preempted by federal aviation law. My read is that a Westborough copy of North Reading’s bylaw would bind the hobbyist next door and not a single Amazon flight.
The Planning Board’s own hand is weak too, as its vice chair John Gelcich told the September 15 hearing: “we are almost required to approve it,” the Boston Globe quoted him. Town counsel treats the pad as accessory to the warehouse, which puts it in site-plan review rather than a special permit, and under Prudential Insurance Co. v. Board of Appeals of Westwood (1986) a Massachusetts board cannot deny site-plan approval for a use allowed by right once the bylaw’s criteria are met. It can impose conditions. DroneXL walked through what those conditions can and cannot cover in its guide for residents. Residents with questions for the company can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 and say it is about drone delivery, or open the customer-service chat and pick “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.”
DroneXL’s Take
Amazon asked for the delay the lawmakers wanted and told nobody, and I count that as the week’s real news. A continuance request is not a pause, and Amazon has not called it one, but the effect is the same: no pad vote before November 10, no October launch, and five more weeks to answer the four questions Moore, Donaghue and Kane asked. If Amazon walks into the Great Hall on November 10 with those answers, the delay was worth it. If it walks in with the same slide deck it showed on September 23, it will have spent the time teaching Westborough, Shrewsbury and Hopkinton to write bylaws that do not work and to ask Beacon Hill for one that might.
The Select Board did the one thing Thursday that can matter. A town cannot regulate the airspace, and North Reading’s bylaw shows how little a town can do alone. A state already licenses commercial landing areas through MassDOT Aeronautics, and the delegation that signed the September 29 letter now has a unanimous Select Board asking it to act. Watch November 10 for the pad, and watch for a bill filed in Donaghue’s or Moore’s name before then. The one that shows up first tells you who is setting the schedule in Westborough, and as of this week it is not Amazon.
Source: Town of Westborough Planning Board agenda, October 6, 2026, Town of Westborough Select Board agenda, October 1, 2026, WHDH, WCVB, Hopkinton Independent, Boston Globe, Westborough Area Drone Delivery Survey, North Reading Transcript, Town of North Reading AG approval notice, Holland & Knight on Singer v. Newton
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
