Putnam pg 1 7-12-12
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- Category: Past Issues
By Linda Lemmon
Town Crier Editor
PUTNAM --- Donald T. Johnson of Cranston, R.I., will be joining the town's staff as town planner July 16.
The current budget contains a salary of up to $65,540 for a planner and according to Town Administrator Douglas M. Cutler, Johnson accepted the job for a $60,000 salary.
He was most recently a town planner, from 2006 to 2011, in Walpole, Mass. Prior to that, from 1986 to 2006, he was the town p lanner of the town of North Attleborough, Mass. From 1984 to 1986 he was a planning director and land use planner for the Narragansett Indian Tribe in Charlestown, R.I.
Johnson has a master's degree in community and regional planning from Iowa State University and a bachelor's degree in geography/social science, cum laude, from Plymouth State University, Plymouth, N.H.
In his most recent job, as Walpole's town planner, Johnson coordinated activities for the planning board, drafted and gave recommendations on updates to the planning board rules and regulations and on zoning bylaw amendments. He said he also managed and organized actions of the Master Plan Implementation Committee and developed successful grant proposals awarded by the Massachusetts Historical Commission, the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development and the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, that "directly fulfilled Master Plan objectives." He also administered the town's MHC and DHCD grant programs.
In addition, he said he collaborated with others on historical inventory and survey planning grant projects, zoning bylaw rewrites, establishment of the Walpole Housing Partnership (and grants), streamlined permitting and Priority Development Area Grant Projects, Open Space and Recreation Plan updates and Green Communities and Economic Development grant projects.