A “gone fishin’” sign won’t be hanging on the door of the town planning department next summer, but that’s where Town Planner Betty Brosius says she’ll be.
“I’d like to go fishing more often. I learned to fly fish four years ago, and I find it very relaxing,” Brosius said. “You stand in the middle of the stream. We go to the Farmington River and it’s a wild river. You can be standing there and bald eagles will fly over there. There’s osprey. And the beavers will be swimming around you. It’s just really relaxing to be standing in the running water.”
Brosius has announced her retirement, effective June 30, after 13 years as Ridgefield’s director of planning. In that role she has run the office that supports the Planning and Zoning Commission and Inland Wetlands Board, serving the needs of the commission and its sometimes cantankerous members, the development community they regulate, and the public.
“I’m going to be enjoying not going to meetings at night,” Brosius said.
“I’ve got three grandchildren I want to visit more often. I’ve got a genealogy project I’ve been boxing up … this genealogical history I want to delve into while I still live in Connecticut.”
The town planning office — with developers pushing to build more houses, condos, stores, and offices, and neighbors skeptical and sometimes angry — can be a demanding arena in which to function.
“Frankly, this job has been extremely stressful for the last half-dozen years, particularly because we’ve been understaffed and overstressed with applications,” Brosius said.
Much of the stress derives from an onslaught of the difficult, complex — and, often, vehemently opposed — applications under the state’s affordable housing regulation 8-30g, which allows developers to ignore most zoning restrictions when proposing projects in which 30% of units will meet state affordability guidelines.
Planning and Zoning Commission Chairwoman Rebecca Mucchetti remembered Brosius’s instinctive fairness and tact in dealing with affordable projects, and the people who felt their neighborhoods and home values were threatened by them.
“Back when we were dealing with all those 8-30g applications, she was inundated with people who were equal parts upset and uninformed,” Mucchetti said.
“No one ever walked away not feeling that they’d been listened to and given an opportunity to express their frustrations. Her diplomatic skills are extraordinary.”
The moratorium
The town planning office handled a dozen 8-30g projects from 2003 to 2014, when the state approved the town for a four-year moratorium on the affordable applications. Most came in the six years following the 2008 market collapse, which reduced demand for the more expensive houses that were long Ridgefield builders’ stock-in-trade.
The town’s moratorium application — a documentation of all the varied affordable housing in town, with points awarded for different types of units — won swift approval from the state officials with a reputation for being skeptical of suburban towns’ efforts to limit affordable projects.
Mucchetti cites it as an example of the success of Brosius’s patient, meticulous approach. “She spent a year working on it, and then we had to table it, because we didn’t have enough points, so she had to go back and revise it the next year,” Mucchetti said.
“And it was approved after just a brief review. We’d watched what Darien went through and we sort of steeled ourselves for a back-and-forth of six months — they’d say what about this, and we’d have to defend that, and we’d need more documentation on that — which is what happened with Darien.
“But Betty is so exacting in her details that they didn’t ask for any additional information — she’d included it all with the original submission,” Mucchetti said.
“They were highly complimentary. And Betty’s format, the way she formatted the application, has been recommended now as the model to follow by the people who review the applications in Hartford.”
The resulting moratorium started in October 2014 and will run through October 2018.
At that point, Brosius’s replacement will have been on the job more than two years.
Hiring process
Mucchetti said she and Brosius are working with First Selectman Rudy Marconi and town Human Resources Director Laurie Fernandez on finding a replacement. They’ve started with a revision of the job description, which will now require not just a bachelor’s but a graduate degree in planning.
“The town has gotten to that size,” Mucchetti said.
They hope to have someone hired and on the job in time to work with Brosius for a while before she retires at the end of June.
“Betty is quite responsible for raising the professionalism of the department, and we think the new planner has to reflect that,” Mucchetti said.
“She’s done such a great job in making us a stronger, more informed commission that she’s really set a pretty high bar, and that’s going to be our new standard.”
There’s been some re-organization of the department staff in the last year, starting with the retirement of the assistant to the planner, Gayle Baldelli, in late July.
“Gayle was here for 25 years and she was really highly skilled in terms of attention to detail and keeping track of agendas and legal notices,” Brosius said.
“She was extremely valuable.”
Since then, a position of assistant town planner was added, and Adam Schnell was hired to fill it on Oct. 4.
Aarti Paranjape has been hired as office administrator, a job that had gone unfilled since 2006.
Also, in recent years, the position of town Wetlands Agent Beth Peyser has become full-time.
“We’ve been understaffed for years, but now we’ve restored,” Brosius said.
Mucchetti credits Brosius’s hard work and patience with building the trust needed to get the staff increased.
“The town is always mindful of adding staff positions. We knew that they understood the need, but you also have to find a way to pay for it,” she said.
The first selectman backed Mucchetti’s assessment of Brosius.
“Betty will be missed, unquestionably,” Marconi said. “Her professionalism and dedication to planning for the town of Ridgefield gets an A+ and it will be difficult, I’m sure, to replace her.”
Mucchetti enumerated Brosius’s accomplishments since starting as planner in 2003.
“Since Betty’s been here we have completed a revision of our regulations, which hadn’t been done in perhaps 30 years. We’ve updated the Plan of Conservation and Development,” she said.
“We also did a downtown study, the Branchville study, a parking study, and an increase to the upland review,” Mucchetti said, referring to the area bordering a wetland that falls under town regulation in order to protect swamps, streams and ponds.
“All the while, she’s supporting the commission’s work on one side, and the day-to-day work of running the department on the other side,” Mucchetti said.
“The day-to-day stuff isn’t that romantic, but it’s the day-to-day stuff, the quality of outreach, how approachable she is,” Mucchetti said.
Reports from Brosius accompany every zoning or wetland application the elected commission and board members must deal with.
“She gives us the history of the property — sometimes there have been previous actions on a property. If there were any variances, she’ll include that. If the property’s been subdivided in the past and there’s a ‘first cut’ — all of those things that are helpful to know when we’re reviewing an application. How it conforms to the Plan of Conservation and Development, how it conforms to our regulations,” Mucchetti said
“Those are professional aspects of the job that Betty has brought to the position that were not there before, and we’ve come to rely heavily on them — they’re so well done. They’re incorporated to the file, and distributed to the applicant, and available to the public, as well. So everybody benefits.”
John Katz, who has served on the Planning and Zoning Commission for 38 years, praised Brosius’s work with the commission and with the public.
“She’s a remarkable presence in the office, with an interest that’s really uncommon in the work she’s doing for the town and the individuals who come before her seeking advice and input,” Katz said.
“You rarely get that combination of dedication, backed up by knowledge and interest in the subject matter she’s dealing with. And it comes out in everything she does.
“I think it’s difficult in that particular discipline for any one person to have the universal acceptance and approval that she has. I have not heard any criticism of Betty Brosius vis-à-vis the work product she produces and attitude with which she produces it. And that, I think, is rare.”
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