Six weeks after zoning board administrator Maria Branco resigned her job following an issue with the town administrator, members of Westport’s Zoning Board of Appeals find themselves in a predicament — though members are able to meet, there is nobody to write final decisions and as a result, every request to come before the board since has been continued with no discussion or action.

Board members are concerned that if a solution is not found soon, appeals will continue to go undecided and the board, town and residents could be put into jeopardy.

On the agenda for the most recent zoning board meeting Wednesday were four appeals including a zoning variance sought by Gnome Surf, a request to sign off on a firearms customization enterprise on American Legion Highway, and two other matters. All went unanswered.

“We have four petitions tonight,” chairman Roger Menard said at the start of the meeting. “We do not have a zoning administrator so all four of these are going to be continued to a later date without discussion.”

After the meeting, Westport attorney MacKenzie Long, who was an applicant on one matter and attorney for two other applicants on the agenda that night, called it “unfortunate that we find ourselves in this situation. I think it’s entirely avoidable. The zoning board is a well-run board but I think it’s unfair to the applicants, and this is really not on the zoning board.”

What happened?

Branco’s departure had been brewing for months before she left at the end of August. In July, after town officials learned that she planned to leave, select board members approved town administrator Chris Vitale’s request to post Branco’s part time position and to amend one of the requirements to which applicants must adhere — previously requiring a bachelor’s degree, Vitale requested that the position only require an associate’s degree.

“I don’t want to limit the applications we receive from prospective candidates,” Vitale said. “My hope is to (post) this position expeditiously — I do not want the put the town in a position where we cannot process applications.”

Zoning board chairman Roger Menard talked at length that night as his fellow board members sat listening in the audience.

“The zoning administrator is the most important job” associated with the board, he said. Maria has “done an outstanding job” and he said it was unfortunate that she decided to resign due to what he called “working conditions with the town administrator.”

“I actually called Chris (Vitale) and said, ‘You know, Maria is very important to us. I think it would be important for you to sit down with her and see if you could come to some resolution on this.’ That didn’t happen, or wasn’t able to happen. All of this could have been avoided but here we are.”

Apart from public outreach, research, working with applicants and other administrative matters, the position also includes the drafting of the board’s final decisions. Though some other towns do it differently, Westport puts that power in the zoning administrator’s hands and Menard said Branco excelled in that role during her time here.

If the town is not able to expeditiously find someone to succeed her, or come up with an interim solution, he said, the absence “is going to hinder the board’s capability to perform its functions.”

He said he hoped a replacement could found soon, but said he was realistic — with odd hours based on the number of applications that come in, the need for a deep technical understanding of zoning and planning bylaws, and no guarantee of a paycheck if there are no appeals to process in a given week or month, finding a good person isn’t easy, he said.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Menard reported that though there have been a few applicants and he and Vitale met with one, “we ended up thinking he was not a good fit.”

Ramifications

Other towns handle the writing of final appeals board decisions differently. Somerset, for example, puts that duty in the hands of the town planner.

Though Menard noted that Vitale suggested town planner Michael Burris could handle the duties on at least an interim basis, “I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Menard said.

“The whole reason for an appeals board is (applicants are) appealing things that either the planning board or the building inspector, or the conservation commission or health department has done. So sending it back to the planning department, I have a hard problem with that.”

But other members said there could be other options, including relegating that power to the planning office “as long as we have the ultimate override,” member Cynthia Kozakiewicz said. Several suggested assistant town planner Nadine Castro as an option worth looking into.

“I’m getting a consensus that we could allow an interim,” Menard said, telling board members that he would talk with Vitale about that possibility.

Regardless of what happens, “I think it’s still important to continue making decisions when they need to be made,” board member Kevin McGoff said. “I feel very poorly for town residents that are going to have things gummed up because of something out of their control.”

“At the end of the day we’re here to serve the people of the town as best we can.”