Less than a month after ending her 11-year run on the Board of Selectmen, Di Masters returned to a former political perch —  the Planning and Zoning Commission, where she’d previously served for 12 years, including five as chairwoman.

Masters and another former Planning and Zoning Commission member, Jim Coyle, interviewed for the two-year term left vacant by Timothy Dunphy, who in November’s election had run for and won two positions on the commission — one a two-year seat, one a four-year seat — and opted to resign from the two-year position and serve out the four-year term.

Commission members chose Masters to fill the vacancy with a unanimous vote at their meeting Tuesday evening, Dec. 1, at the Town Hall Annex.

“Thank you,” Masters told the commission. Coyle shook her hand and congratulated her.

“I don’t believe it, there’s another woman on the commission,” said Chairwoman Rebecca Mucchetti, long the lone female voice on an otherwise male-dominated board.

Masters served on the Planning and Zoning Commission from 1993 to 2004, when she resigned after being appointed to the Board of Selectmen. She was the commission’s vice chairman from 1994 to 1998, and then its chairman from 1999 to 2004. When she moved over to the Board of Selectmen it was to fill a vacancy left by the resignation of Steve Zemo, who was just elected to the Board of Selectmen to fill the seat that Masters had chosen not to run for again.

In reaching their decision, commissioners spoke glowingly of Masters’ experienced outlook and record of public service. With her 23 years in town politics, they felt, she had a good grasp of the role the Planning and Zoning Commission plays in the community.

“I like her answers about how we are a review board but not an advocacy group,” said Commissioner Dunphy.

“When she was chairman, she handled a lot of controversial situations with grace,” said Mucchetti, who could speak of the needed delicacy from her own experience in the chairman’s seat.

Masters could not join the meeting Tuesday evening because she must first be sworn in. That is expected to take place soon, and her first meeting as a commission member could be as early as next week.

Masters had spent the last 11 years on the Board of Selectmen, and at the Democratic caucus in July she’d been unanimously nominated for another term on Board of Selectmen.

But in mid-August she announced that she’d decided to withdraw from the campaign for re-election, while serving out a term that ran to mid-November.

Over her years as a selectmen, Masters had served with First Selectman Rudy Marconi and Selectwoman Barbara Manners as a three-vote Democratic majority on the five-member board. In announcing her decision to withdraw from the campaign, however, she’d highlighted her independence and the role she felt she’d cut out as a voice of skepticism and fiscal restraint.

“It was always easy to say ‘yes.’ It was always hard to say ‘no’ — and be unpopular,” she said. “I was the one who took those hits.”

She expressed gratitude for the chance to continue to serve the public on the P&Z.

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