Turning the Ship

Turning the Ship

government watch by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

When John Barnott first took his customer-first, private-business principles to county government, most

of the employees on his watch quit. Now he's got his hands on a Gulf Coast county building department.

John Barnott, the interim director of the Manatee County building department, talks tough about how Gulf Coast county governments need to do a better job treating their customers - the builders, developers and construction people who pay the ever-rising fees and taxes.

It's a line many of those customers have heard before, only to be disappointed at the actual results, from suffering through confusing delays on permit applications to swallowing unforeseen costs to simple inconsiderate employees.

To be sure, stories of building department woes abound on the Gulf Coast, but in Manatee County in particular, several issues have been exposed over the last year, including the embarrassing tale of one $15 million business that decided not to relocate to the county from Toledo, Ohio due to building department issues - even after it built a $2 million building here. (See Review, 4/18/08)

But several builders and construction executives in Greater Bradenton are starting to believe in Barnott. He took on the position about five months ago, when County Administrator Ed Hunzeker, looking for someone to overhaul the entire building department, transferred him there.

Barnott had been a supervisor in the county's utilities customer service department for about seven years and he worked in private business before that. Barnott also unsuccessfully ran for Manatee County Commissioner in 2003.

It's not only Barnott's tough talk that's making a difference, developers say, but also his actions. Craig Campbell, president of Palmetto-based Zirkelbach Construction, met Barnott at a recent builder's networking event and by the next day Barnott and Campbell were having a 90-minute chat at Zirkelbach's office - a first for Campbell when it comes to meeting with county honchos.

"He appears to be changing some attitudes in the county building department," Campbell says. "The staff is becoming much more reactive to our needs."

Adds Pat Neal, whose Lakewood Ranch-based Neal Communities is one of the largest homebuilders and landowners in the county: "He has completely changed the culture at the building department."

Bill Jarvis, head of commercial construction for Lakewood Ranch Commercial Realty and a Gulf Coast Builders Exchange board member, says a change at the top of the building department was long overdue. The department's former director, Jim Lee, took a similar job in Palatka last year.

"John is the best thing Manatee County has done in the last 10 years," says Jarvis. "He's a man of his word and action."

Of course, it's hard not to be taken by Barnott's disposition and presence, too. It screams everything but government bureaucrat: He's a bulky 6-foot 4, 225-plus pound former college football player who also once coached high school football in Ohio. He wears a tiny silver earring that glistens under his shoulder-length wavy salt and pepper-colored hair. He rode a motorcycle until a violent crash on the Skyway Bridge last summer. And he keeps a copy of the book the Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun on his desk, a few feet from a paperweight made out of a hand grenade.

"We're rebuilding this thing from the ground up," says Barnott. "We will not lose another business in Manatee County because of the building department. I guarantee it."

Doesn't seem like someone straight out of the government employee handbook. "He believes in the philosophy that the customer is King," Hunzeker says. "I wish we had more like him. If I could clone him, I would."

A new attitude

Barnott seems almost surprised by the backslaps and attaboys he's been getting and hearing from the upper echelon of the Bradenton development community. He says his approach is simply one that any business owner should take, especially one that relies almost entirely on customer service.

"I think a lot of people that work in the county forget that we are a service agency," Barnott says. "The only thing that we sell that's tangible is water."

But after the past few years of headaches and heartaches in dealing with the building department, builders and developers were parched for significant change. They got it in Barnott, starting with an emphasis on speed and accuracy.

For example, Campbell says his firm received build-out permits on a 125,000 square foot FedEx facility it's building near Port Manatee in about five weeks. "Prior to John," says Campbell, "I would never have believed that could have happened so fast." Indeed, that permit process could have taken several months under previous building department regimes, and not only because of real estate boom-induced backlogs.

The construction and permitting crew at Neal Communities has seen similar turnarounds. What once took two to three months and three or four Neal employees now takes a few weeks and one staffer. "Their attitude has been 'what can we do to help you?'" says Julie Blood, Neal Communities' permitting director. "Not 'what can we do to hold things up?'"

Jarvis, at Lakewood Ranch, has also seen dramatic increases in permit times. Some of his latest projects, developed by Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, have even started earlier than expected, because his internal timelines were completed on previous experiences of how long permits would take. "John's aggressive nature in even six months has started to turn this whole thing around," says Jarvis. "He's a no B.S. person."

And there's also a never-before-seen sense of urgency to the building department. Barnott has begun cross-training employees, so a zoning person can do floodplain work, for instance, or an intake employee can work on zoning applications. He instituted a seven-minute rule at the county's downtown Bradenton office, too: No customer will wait more than seven minutes to speak with someone.

Gone are the days when an employee goes on a two-week vacation and takes all of the answers to a problem along for the trip. "When things would get hung up in the past, it would not be resolved for a very long time," says Mark Sochar, vice president of construction at Neal Communities. "Now we have a very rapid response."

Quick change

While many developers and builders praise Barnott, his take-no-prisoners, full-throttle approach to changing the culture at county government hasn't impressed everyone. For example, less than a year after he started running a customer service division in the county's billing department in 2001, about 10 of his department's 15 employees quit or transferred out.

The anti-bureaucrat approach and quick change was just too much for some to handle. "I wish you really well," Barnott remembers thinking to himself during the mass exodus. "Somewhere else."

Barnott was still working in that job this past February when Hunzeker called. Hunzeker asked Barnott what he would do if he took over the building department, which was gaining a reputation as one of the county's most bloated and difficult departments to deal with.

Barnott handed Hunzeker his 10-point plan, a roadmap of a building department overhaul. It included steps such as performance standards, empowering employees to make decisions without fear of losing their jobs and the key to it all: Treating customers right.

The plan also didn't include hiring more employees, instead focusing on an entrepreneurial do-more-with-less approach. The building department currently has 49 employees, down from a high of 83 in 2006 and Barnott and Hunzeker say the employee base should stay under 50, even when the market makes a comeback.

These were philosophies Barnott learned and mastered in a 30-year career with Columbus, Ohio-based Columbia Gas. A native of Lexington, Ky., Barnott worked his way up in the company, from digging ditches to running a multi-state customer service department.

Barnott retired to Clearwater in 2000 and by 2001, bored in retirement, he was back at work, this time with Manatee County.

Barnott eagerly took the job at the building department. While Hunzeker is one of his biggest fans, he says the interim tag will remain until Barnott receives a full annual evaluation for the position, which comes with an annual salary of about $96,000.

Until then, Barnott fills up his days meeting and chatting with Manatee County builders and developers.

"We've created a lot of success stories with the customers," he says. "Now they come through the door and they aren't mad."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Government. Manatee County Building Department.

Who. John Barnott, Interim Director

Key. Barnott takes over a department that has been criticized for its slow response to builders' and developers' issues.