Kathy Moniz. (photo by Lauren Thomas)
Kathy Moniz, a longtime Village of New Paltz employee and the current building inspector, has resigned. Village Board members voted last week to accept the building inspector’s resignation.
Mayor Jason West, who helped promote Moniz to inspector during his first administration, said that he was voting “with regrets” on the resignation, but noted that she was “moving on to greener pastures.”
Moniz acknowledged that leaving New Paltz, where she has worked for the town and village for more than 20 years, “is hard.” “I was offered a job in another municipality where I would be head of the Building Department, and the experience and salary was not something I could pass up,” she said, noting that she is going to work for the Town of Ulster.
Moniz, an integral part of the New Paltz community, said that she would greatly “miss the community. This is my community, and when I came to the village, we were able to turn around that sense of fear or hesitation. Ninety percent of the people that walk in this door I know. And now they come to me, to our department, asking for permission rather than going about it and then running into trouble. I’m proud of the way we were able to turn things around in the village,” she said.
“I’m going to miss my excellent staff and all of the people that I’ve served. My friendships in this department and in the community, I value so much. It hurts. It cuts close to home, but I’m not going far. My heart lies here.”
Village officials noted at a recent meeting that they’re looking for a replacement. “We’re getting a list [of candidates] already,” the mayor said.
New Paltz’s village building inspector gig is a Civil Service job, and West noted that they were automatically going to reach out to the top three names on the county Civil Service list. However, it is possible — if no suitable candidates can be found — that the Village Board could hire off the list. “If enough of those top people are employed elsewhere, we can hire whomever we want,” he said.
The Village of New Paltz isn’t advertising for the position until it is sure that those three top candidates are out of the running.