About halfway through his hour-plus interview with the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, Adam Turner recounted how as planning director in a small Connecticut town he managed to get the 90-year-old owner of a junkyard to remove some 1,500 abandoned cars from a wetlands area.

Instead of turning the matter over to the state, which would have cleaned up the mess but charged the owner for the work, he and unspecified colleagues worked directly with the man and his family on an equitable solution.

“It was hard. And we were patient. It took us a year. But we finally did clean it all up, “ said Mr. Turner, one of four finalists to be interviewed last week in public session as the commission wrapped up its search for a new executive director.

“The key thing that I took out of it is that he trusted us. He and his family knew we weren’t looking to pat ourselves on the back, we were simply looking to get the cars out of there.”

By that point in the interview, Mr. Turner — whose wide-ranging career in planning has taken him as far as the Florida Keys and the Mariana Islands — was well on his way to winning over commissioners with his ebullience, plainspoken style, can-do attitude and liberal use of the pronoun “we” to describe his accomplishments.

Assuming he accepts the commission’s terms of employment, he will become the MVC’s seventh executive director in 41 years, replacing the retiring Mark London in August.

Whether Mr. Turner’s evident charm will translate into a better, more trusting relationship between the Martha’s Vineyard Commission and its varied constituents and more support for its mission remains to be seen. But those objectives were clearly foremost in the minds of commissioners as they spent more than six hours over two days questioning and discussing candidates. With the possible exception of one finalist whose experience was more urban than rural, each of the candidates made an excellent case for how they would make the agency more responsive and effective.

Created in 1974 by a special act of the state legislature, the commission occupies an unusual position in the Island’s political hierarchy as a regional planning agency vested with extra regulatory powers to protect and preserve the Island.

Its dual role of helping the six towns in accomplishing their planning objectives while occasionally overruling their decisions has strained relations over the years, even though its extraordinary authority has been repeatedly upheld by the state’s highest courts.

Often controversial, the commission has a proud history of standing up to development pressures, and its victories over the years have helped shape an Island that has set aside a full third of its land for conservation.

Now, as the commission naturally turns its attention to subtler, more systemic but equally critical issues including dealing with climate change, wastewater management and affordable housing for the Island’s workforce, its biggest enemy may be apathy.

Only a handful of citizens attended the public interviews and subsequent session at which commissioners candidly sized up the candidates and offered insight in to their own views of the commission’s goals and challenges. (Gavel-to-gavel video coverage is available online at MVTV.org, and is well worth watching.)

It will take more than a charismatic director for the MVC to find solid new footing at the center of Island planning, but commissioners correctly sized up the need for a leader who can generate enthusiasm, trust and a spirit of collaboration as the MVC enters a new chapter. The search committee should be commended for identifying several excellent candidates. The commission’s choice is a bold one, and we look forward to seeing Mr. Turner take on this landscape .