By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — They say what goes around comes around, and it's like that with Jane Talbot, the next city planner.
A native of North Smithfield, Talbot was once the postmaster in the North Kingstown village of Slocum. She's lived in California since 1994, working for the last eight years as the senior planner for the city made famous by country singer Johnny Cash — Folsom.

She'll begin a transitional stint as city planner under the tutelage of her predecessor, Catherine Ady Bell, before she officially takes over Sept 14. City Planner for five years, Bell tendered her resignation recently as she prepares to enroll in doctoral program of environmental studies at Toronto University in Canada.
“It's almost like coming home again,” says Talbot, who still owns a house in North Smithfield. “It's something I've wanted for a long time.”
The Planning Board voted unanimously to hire Talbot about a week ago after some 50 people from as far away as the United Kingdom applied for the job. More than a dozen applicants hailed from west of the Mississippi and a handful of those, like Talbot, flew to Woonsocket to take qualifying exams for the job. Talbot was among five finalists who were interviewed by members of the Planning Board.
Talbot will earn $57,207 a year, pending approval of the Personnel Board, according to Planning Director Joel Mathews. The planning director said Talbot has been available since the Folsom Planning Department downsized from nine to two employees in mid-2008.
Talbot said some of the most vexing land use problems  in Folsom are driven by the region's scarce supplies of water for drinking and agricultural uses.
 It will be far different in Woonsocket, where architectural redevelopment and historic preservation always seem to rise to the top of the agenda. But Talbot says she's ready to shift focus.
“I'm really interested in redevelopment and historic preservation,” she says. “I've had ideas about how I could bring Woonsocket back to what it was, or better, for a long time.”
Talbot worked as a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service from 1982 to 2000, first in Providence and later in Sacramento, Calif. She was the interim postmaster in Slocum for a time in 1992.
Talbot was raising her now 12-year-old daughter and working full-time for the postal service in 1999 when she earned her bachelor's degree in landscape architecture from the University of California-Davis, graduating with honors.
After earning her degree, Talbot worked for a year as a design intern for the California Department of Transportation. She also had a job for a similarly brief spell as a landscape designer with a private firm in Sacramento, where she mapped out streetscape schematics, interchanges and parkways.
She worked for the city of Folsom from December 2000 to June 2008. Her responsibilities included analyzing development proposals for consistency with building codes, environmental regulations and traffic patterns. She identified land use issues, prepared reports, interpreted consulting studies and conveyed her findings to city officials, including the City Council. She was also in charge of responding to citizen inquiries about land use proposals.