James P. Francomano has been hired as the Midoast Regional Planning Commission’s executive director. The commission, based in Rockland, provides Knox and Waldo County municipalities with planning and community development services. It also coordinates services funded by the Maine Department of Transportation and the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry on statewide and regional projects affecting member communities.

Francomano, of Camden, was hired as Rockport’s planner in 2011. He is a graduate of Pepperdine University and Yale University with degrees in law and architecture.

He moved to Maine in 2008 for a job as city planner in Presque Isle before relocating to the Midcoast. His first planning job began in 2006, at the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission, in Western Massachusetts.

Eric Gallant, now a private consultant, had been the commission’s director for 14 years prior to December 2016, when Anne M. Krieg, AICP, was hired. Krieg has left the MCRPC after one year for a similar job at the Hancock County Planning Commission closer to her home in Bar Harbor.

“I’m passionate about helping communities with land use decisions,” Francomano said, in a news release.. “As a regional planning commission, the MCRPC serves both smaller towns with the most limited in-house staff and some larger communities as well, whenever specific tasks seem appropriate for outside consultant services. These include ordinance revisions, work relating to Comprehensive Plans and site specific Master Plans, as well as staff support for Planning Boards and Boards of Appeal.”

The planning commission recently relocated to “Steel House South” a new coworking space at 639 Main Street in Rockland, next door to the Apprentice Shop.

For information, call 207-691-4840; email mcrpc@midcoast.com; or visit midcoastplanning.org.