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Chairman Dan Fox moved Jacinta Williams to the top of the Marblehead Select Board's agenda on July 22 and called her to the front of the room.
"So this is our new town planner," Fox said. "Welcome."
Williams said she studied planning at the University of California, Los Angeles as a Luskin scholar.
"I've been practicing planning in Western Mass since 2021," she said. "So really excited to be here, and thank you for having me."
Select Board member Moses Grader made the motion, and the board acted unanimously. Williams' term runs to June 2027.
She fills a job that had sat empty for more than seven months, in a department created only two years ago. Williams takes over the town's day-to-day planning work, including permitting and development review, along with longer-range questions involving land use, housing, transportation and coastal resilience. Marblehead's comprehensive plan, the long-range document that guides those decisions, remains unfinished.
Williams succeeds Alex Eitler, who joined Marblehead in September 2024 as the first planner hired under the newly created Community Development and Planning Department. His hiring followed the retirement of Rebecca Curran Cutting, who had handled the town's planning work for years. Eitler's assignments ranged from routine permitting matters to early preparation for the comprehensive plan, coastal resilience, sustainable development and zoning tied to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Communities law.
Eitler resigned and left the position Dec. 12, 2025. Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer described the departure as "a life decision," saying Eitler wanted to be with his partner in England.
That left the department without a planner through the winter and spring, a stretch in which the Planning Board continued to meet and applicants continued to file.
Williams' professional background is rooted in the western part of the state. She worked as a planner at the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission in Springfield, where her assignments included Green Communities technical assistance and municipal land-use work, and later served as city planner in Pittsfield, where she shepherded a zoning framework governing battery energy storage systems through rounds of board feedback. In spring 2024 she joined Amherst's planning staff, supporting that town's Planning Board, Design Review Board and Zoning Board of Appeals on development proposals and permit reviews. She holds a master's degree in urban and regional planning from UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs.
The exchange at Abbot Hall lasted only a few minutes. Fox told Williams the board had already heard good things about her.
