Herb Durfee is a busy man. The new director of planning, building and resilience for Barrington has been balancing his own work with the additional chores that had been handled by the department’s administrator, Isabelle Gillibrand, before she left for a state job.

“I’m completely overwhelmed, losing the battle,” Durfee said with a smile during an interview late last week. “Since the middle of November I’ve been doing Isabelle’s entire job, trying to do my job. I can’t do my job because there’s too much administrative stuff.”

But help was on the way, Durfee said. He recently hired someone to fill Gillibrand’s post. That should free him up to handle some exciting projects planned for the town, including the conclusion of the Walker Farm improvements. 

• Green Mountain roots: “I come from Vermont — a Burlington, Vt. native. I worked basically my whole career for municipalities up there, serving as planner, community development director. I worked for a local developer and I also served as a town manager up there for a couple different stints.”

• Moving south: “At the very tail-end of Covid, my wife and I decided to downsize and we wanted to be closer to the coast because she’s originally from Connecticut. So we found a place in Rhode Island and so I’ve been, in the last three and a half years, in a couple different communities. I just came from Warren. Again, staying in the planning field.”

• Projects on his plate: “The big things we’re working on right now are, of course, we’re working on the update to the comprehensive plan. We’re doing some housekeeping updates on the zoning ordinance, based on the last couple years… the house speaker affecting the planning world. And there are a couple consultants in regards to the comprehensive plan. We have someone doing the housing element. We have a particular consultant, Michael Baker International, helping us with the overall plan. We just finished up with KLA, because we adopted the Climate Action Plan, right after I got here. The next move there is working with Karlo (Berger) on moving things toward implementation.”

• More implementation: “From my perspective, I don’t want to do planning for climate action. I want to do implementation for climate action, based on that plan and the strategies.”

• Walker Farm work: “Walker Farm is near the finish line. The one big thing we have left is the dock that’s coming in. As you walked in the door, there’s some bits and pieces of the dock. The balance of the thing will be sent up from Florida early this year, with the idea that we’re going to get it installed for this coming season. So that will take a little bit of a task. We’re actually getting some of the local residents, the rowing club’s going to help out. It’s going to be a combination of a rigging crew, some of the crew people, the rowers, and we may have to initially rely on (DPW) to help us on stuff. Total team effort.”

• Bowden Avenue: “We’re going to finally do Bowden, the stormwater project there. We keep saying that and people are like, ‘Yeah, sure you are.’ We are serious. We just had a pre-site visit out there. So that’s going to get under way and be done this construction season coming up.”

• Settling in: “We’ve been here about three and a half years. We’re still renting so the commute’s a little bit from Jamestown…We love Rhode Island because the choices are many. As much as we miss Vermont, it really was time to downsize and make a change. Our kids were off to college or graduated. Coming down here was great. It was a good move. It was part of our plan originally, and we love Rhode Island.”