Officials on Tuesday promoted a worker in Planning & Zoning to assistant town planner, with the town’s former full-time planner overseeing the department on a part-time basis.
The Board of Selectmen during its regular meeting voted 3-0 in favor of promoting Zoning Enforcement Officer Sarah Carey.
“She has been a great team player,” Human Resources Director Cheryl Pickering Jones said during the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “She’s very organized. Works well with staff and residents, and we will also have Steve Kleppin overseeing the department, working closely with Sarah and the Commission as she takes this new role on.”
First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams voted 3-0 in favor of the promotion.
Kleppin had served as New Canaan’s planner for 11 years prior to taking the full-time planner job in Norwalk in 2016. It emerged last month during a divisive discussion regarding the selectmen’s role in hiring part-timers that Kleppin was employed on that basis by the town.
“He works limited hours at night to help and works with Sarah if she has any questions or plans to review with him,” Pickering Jones said.
Prior to coming to New Canaan as the zoning enforcement officer, Carey in 2020 earned a bachelor’s degree in geography from Virginia Tech and had worked as zoning and wetlands enforcement officer for the town of Derby, according to her resume.
It isn’t clear whether the town also will seek to hire its own full-time town planner. Lynn Brooks Avni had served in the position for more than four years, starting in September 2018. She is no longer working for the town, according to the municipal website.
Asked by Corbet what she views as her biggest priorities in the role, Carey said, “Right now I’m just trying to finish getting through the 8-30g’s. All three of them right now are before the Commission, so just trying to get those timelines through and going through that process as cleanly as possible with the Commission and our attorneys. And then the [Plan of Conservation and Development] POCD is next following that. We should be done with all the 830g’s by May. That’s what our timelines are. So then we’ll dive right into the POCD, to get that done hopefully for early- to mid-2024.”
“8-30g” is the statute number for the state’s affordable housing law. Here’s a recent update on where the three applications stand.