Jim Lysen likes to watch his daughter play lacrosse on Franklin Pasture.

The game is a large part of it, he admits. He’s just as competitive as his daughter Genevieve, a star of the Lewiston High School team.

“But I like to watch her play on that field, a field I had a hand in creating,” Lysen said. “There are a lot of parts of the city that are like that for me.”

Now Lysen has a chance to continue to work on his legacy for the community, as head of St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center’s Health Center program. He starts that job Monday, weeks after he resigned as Lewiston’s director of planning.

“It’s definitely a career shift,” Lysen said Wednesday. “I think it requires some of the same skills as the Planning Department did. I will still be doing a lot of strategic planning, but it will be in a different direction.”

He was first approached by officials from St. Mary’s after City Manager Jim Bennett unveiled his staff reorganization plan. Lysen’s position is to be cut under that plan.

“They called the first day, not to offer me the job, but to make me aware that it was an open position,” Lysen said. “I didn’t know then just where it would go.”

Lysen’s biggest concern during the reorganization was the city’s Planning Department. The city’s two planning jobs will be merged into one intermediate planning position under the reorganization plan, and he was concerned that strategic planning would be sacrificed. It’s important that planning still gets plenty of staff time, Lysen said.

“Planning is always one of the first things cut when budgets are tight,” Lysen said. “It doesn’t give you instant results, so it’s easier to cut. But I think good community planning yields other benefits. It makes communities more livable, and that has economic benefits, too.”

Public service

Lysen came to Lewiston in 1988 after working for the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the city of Scarborough.

He helped develop Lewiston’s Downtown Master Plan and walking and bicycle path programs. He’s staffed the city’s Planning Board and Historical Review Board, and has an intimate knowledge of the city’s zoning codes.

That knowledge is valuable, he said. Lysen had offers from local developers to join their staffs. He might take them up on their offers down the road, but for now he prefers to work for the public.

“Before, as a city employee, I considered my job as a form of public service,” Lysen said. “One of the good things about this job is that I still feel like I’m serving the community, like I’m giving back.”

St. Mary’s Health Center program uses federal funds to help provide health care to people who can’t get it easily for a variety of reasons, including income levels, disability and language barriers.

“Look at all of the concerns about health care,” Lysen said. “There are matters of age, of poverty, of access. Costs are on the rise and many states are deciding what to do about it. I want to go to work on it, and I get to work in this community.”

He will answer to a 12-member committee made up of doctors, hospital officials and hospital clients. That’s not much different from his old job, he said.

“There are quite a few similarities,” he said. “I’m still working with a board, still dealing with a lot of regulations and trying to keep up with the available resources.”

staylor@sunjournal.com

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