The town has reorganized the municipal department that handles land use regulation and economic development, with the goal of increased productivity, according to First Selectman Pat Llodra.

Formerly known as the town's Land Use Agency, the unit is now identified as the Planning Department in a new organizational chart that depicts the relationships and duties of its nine members.

In 2014, the town combined its planning, land use, and economic development functions into one department. The current reorganization revises that earlier combination.

The Planning Department covers town planning and zoning matters, borough planning and zoning, the town's and the borough's separate Zoning Boards of Appeals, wetlands matters, conservation issues, the Fairfield Hills Authority, and the Economic Development Commission.

Mrs Llodra said February 7 that there is a "natural tension" between economic development and land use regulation, which are two governmental functions of the Planning Department. While those two functions need to exist independently of each other, they can be synergistic or cooperative in nature, she said.

In the new organizational chart, George Benson, the town's director of planning, supervises Rob Sibley, who is a deputy director of planning. Mr Sibley supervises five staffers who handle: town planning and zoning matters; borough planning and zoning; the enforcement of the planning, zoning, and wetlands regulations; conservation matters; and the two separate Zoning Boards of Appeals, among other items.

Mr Benson also supervises Christal Preszler, who also is a deputy director of planning. Ms Preszler's sphere includes economic and community development promotion; the town's economic/community development office; serving as an aide to the Economic Development Commission and to the Fairfield Hills Authority; as well as seeking and administering planning grants. Ms Preszler will supervise a person to be hired who will be known as the economic/community development coordinator.

Mrs Llodra said that Mr Benson as the department head will oversee the land use regulation and the economic development, but will allow those two municipal functions to operate independently of each other.

The overall goal of the departmental reorganization is maximizing productivity through excellent performance, Mrs Llodra said. The first selectman added that the reorganization will be reviewed in six months to determine its effectiveness.

Mr Benson said the biggest change in the reorganization is elevating Ms Preszler, who is the person in charge of economic development, to the level of a deputy planning director.

"It's bringing up economic development to a higher level," he said.

"I look at it as getting 'smart growth,'" Mr Benson said of the town having its governmental arms for land use regulation and for economic development within the same department.

The separate functions of land use regulation and economic development promotion within one town department are not in conflict, Mr Benson said.

Mr Benson listed the future use of "brownfields" as a municipal issue in which there can be a mutually beneficial relationship between land use regulation and economic development. Brownfields are vacant, contaminated industrial sites that require some degree of environmental cleanup work before they can be put to new uses. Local examples of brownfields are the Batchelder property on Swamp Road and the Noranda site on Prospect Drive.

Mr Benson noted that the town is best served when it cooperates with applicants for development projects and when it works to reach the best compromise on a given site's use.

The town's practice of holding a preapplication meeting with a land developer in seeking to work out the specifics of a given development application before it is submitted for formal regulatory review fosters a spirit of cooperation, rather than allowing an adversarial relationship to exist between the town and the developer, Mr Benson said. Such cooperation benefits both land use regulation and economic development, he said.