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Ralston To Step Down As NHC Planning Manager

By J. Elias O'Neal, posted Feb 25, 2014
Shawn Ralston, NHC Planning Manager, will vacate her post effective March 14. (Contributed Photo)
During her time in New Hanover County, Shawn Ralston has seen it all.
 
A galloping housing boom, its bust and the slow rise of collective cooperation to make New Hanover County a better place for its residents.
 
But after nearly eight years serving in various capacities within the planning wing of the county’s development services department, Ralston said Tuesday that she’s moving on.
 
Ralston will officially step down as the county’s planning manager on March 14, and move to the Richmond, Va. area with her family.
 
Chris O’Keefe, director of planning and inspections for New Hanover County, said officials are currently creating a position description for Ralston’s vacancy and hope to have the opening posted by the middle of next week.
 
Pending the applicant pool, officials hope to fill the planning manager’s position in four to six weeks, O’Keefe said.
 
“It’s a good move,” Ralston said. “We’ll be closer to my husband’s family, and our kids will get to spend more time with their cousins.”
 
A native North Carolinian, Ralston is a graduate of the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She and her husband, Cary, moved to Rhode Island, where she received her joint master’s and law degree at the University of Rhode Island and Roger Williams University, respectively. 
 
In 2005, the couple returned to the Wilmington area where in early 2006, she landed a job with New Hanover County as a senior environmental planner.
 
Ralston would continue her assent through the New Hanover County planning division, serving as a long-range planner in 2010 before being promoted as the county’s planning manager in 2011.
 
Defined by her passion for environmental planning, Ralston has worked with a number of developers and agencies to advocate for low-impact development standards that minimally impact water and air quality.
 
Ralston has served and helped create many organizations that promote regionalism and environmentally conscious development, including the Lower Cape Fear Stewardship Development Award Program and FOCUS – a consortium group of 12 government and nonprofit organizations awarded $1.13 million to develop a regional roadmap for job growth, development and future economic vitality in the Lower Cape Fear region.
 
Notable ordinances that Ralston drafted include the exceptional design zoning district, which allows for high-density and mixed-use projects that conserve water bodies, wetlands and floodplains. She also championed a number of water quality projects and initiatives, including petitioning the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to designate North Carolina’s first No Discharge Zone in the Intracoastal Waterway in New Hanover County.
 
Ralston has also been instrumental in securing roughly 75 acres of land along Smith Creek to help create a potential Smith Creek Greenway – a corridor of lush greenery and creek land that stretches roughly from North Kerr Avenue to Smith Creek Park in Ogden.
 
“It would be so cool to have that land in the incorporated area made a greenway,” Ralston said, adding that the county could eventually create a pathway via Duke Energy Progress’ transmission lines that could connect the greenway to Ogden Park. “The county commissioners identified the plan as a priority in its Greenway Plan in 2013, and that’s one of the projects I hope will be continued once I leave.”
 
Ralston said one career highlight was meeting with now-EPA administrator Gina McCarthy in 2011 to plead the county’s nonattainment case regarding the federal government’s new sulfur dioxide standard.
 
At the time, New Hanover County was the only county in the state that did not meet the new standards, Ralston said. 
 
“I was so nervous,” she said. “But [county] commissioners Rick Catlin, Johnathan Barfield and I pleaded with her and laid out what we were doing to meet the new federal standard, which had gone up. We secured the deferment and later fell into compliance.”
 
Ralston, who has been described by many as a workaholic mother of two, said handing over the reins to a new driver is bittersweet.
 
“I’m just trying to wrap things up,” Ralston said. “From an environmental perspective, I hope we maintain the quality of life that brings people here.”
 
O’Keefe said Ralston’s work ethic and loyalty to regionalism and environmental planning throughout the region would be greatly missed.
 
“Shawn provided such a broad knowledge base, which is going to be hard to fill,” O’Keefe said. “From land use law to stormwater best management practices, land conservation and zoning enforcement  ... she was a huge benefit to the department that we’re going to have to look far and wide to fill.” 
 
Ralston said upon her arrival to metro Richmond, her priority is to get her two kids, Tatum, 4, and 2-year-old Archer, settled. She added that she might also study for the Virginia Bar Exam to practice environmental law in the state.
 
“I have an idea what direction I want to head,” she said. “Right now, my priority is my family and getting then settled, then I’ll focus on my next step.”  
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