Keeton

“Success is when most of the public feels we’re making an effort and doing it right — and it’s not a black hole anymore,” he says.

Keeton, less than six months on the job as the DCD director, has his work cut out for him. The department has gone through many bumps in the road before he came on board, with high turnover of previous directors, low staff morale and public criticism. In a consultant report commissioned by the county, the DCD was described as a an organization “without strong leadership, a strategic vision, clear mission or values, clear policies and procedures or systems for managing performance or resources.”

None of that deterred Keeton, who read the report during the hiring process, from accepting the challenge and becoming the fourth DCD director in the last five years. A retired Army colonel who has seen political turmoil in his previous job, Keeton describes his mission in simple terms. “I was hired to lead the efforts to transfer the business practices of the DCD,” he says.

Keeton has a bit of a different approach from what may be expected from a planner or engineer — and that’s not surprising, considering he had no planning background prior to this job. The move was deliberate on the part of the county commissioners, who said the DCD had plenty of good planners already but what they needed was someone experienced in business and organizational aspects.

About a month into the job, Keeton was already making a presentation to staff showing what delayed permits mean to the department: Permits generate fees, which generates buildings, construction and jobs (thus sales taxes), which, once completed, generate a permanent revenue stream — in other words, delayed permits costs the department money. He sees permits and code as the department’s main products, and the customers as clients. There is a distinction between a client and a customer, he says, because the customer is always right; not so with a client.

“If you’re my client, I need to get you to ‘yes’ within the limits of the law — but sometimes it’s a ‘no’ and we have to tell you that,” he says. “Are we there yet? No. That’s a cultural mindset, inside and outside the department.”

Keeton says several changes that have already been implemented, and many others on the way, will help change that mindset. For example, the department no longer accepts incomplete applications, which contribute to the backlog of permits because they can’t be processed until the applicant submits all the paperwork, and in the meantime those applications are “on the county’s clock.”

The other change is a “two strikes and you’re out” rule of sorts: Where in the past planners practically designed sites after receiving multiple versions of plans that didn’t work, now if the project doesn’t get fixed when it’s submitted after the comment letter, it will be either rejected or the applicant will be asked to come in and discuss it.

“If it’s not fixed, it has to stop,” Keeton says. “Those (developers and property owners) who do it right get penalized because staff spends hours trying to fix (projects).”

As Keeton sees it, changes have to come not only from the DCD but also from the development community. That includes not only the way they submit applications, but also the habit on some people’s part to work the system so their project gets priority review. Keeton found that the most frustrating part of his job so far. “If I had to say I had a challenge, it would be the fact that everyone wants to get their projects done first,” he says.

He knows well the criticism that government should work faster, but remarks that he’s seen some fast governments in his military career, and they were not those that had a democracy. The government cannot be compared with the business sector either. “In a business, you can just hire people if you have resources, and in government you have to go through a public process,” he says. “You also have to work with many stakeholders.”

Recently, the DCD implemented a new customer service process in order to handle nearly 200 backlogged applications. One of the biggest complaints from staff has been the inability to focus on a project due to multiple interruptions during the day. From the public, one of the complaints was that staff didn’t answer the phones. The change takes care of both: Each day, designated staff answers the phones and a “planner of the day” is available for questions. The last work hour of the day is dedicated to returning phone calls. The staff’s office hours are sequestered — during certain times, they are not to make any calls or work on other permits, so they could focus on backlog projects. And reviewers now only meet with applicants by appointment. The goal of the department is to eliminate the backlog by the end of the year entirely. The interim goal was to clear 125 backlog applications by June 1; as of mid-May, 86 of those have been completed.

Keeton has a three-year contract with the county, and has a list of goals for the DCD: creating an efficient department while delivering consistent service, increasing staff retention and training, improving the morale, and in the long-term making sure the code is workable and understandable. He also wants to see the department pay for itself. Currently, it takes $8 million to run it, and it generates $6 million in revenue. He points out the reviewing fees haven’t been increased in a couple of years, and on top of that the county is not collecting the entire valuation fee.

“If we’ve not increased the fees, we’re costing more money to the taxpayers because we’re taking from the general fund,” he says.

Keeton acknowledges that fixing problems that have accumulated over many years is not a fast road, and no matter how many improvements are made, there will always be issues. “You can only fix what you think you can fix. My goal is to take the department one or two steps up the ladder,” he says.

How would he measure the success? Regaining the public trust is one indicator. The second indicator would be “when the development community says, ‘Go see how it’s done in Kitsap County.”

“And we’ll get there,” he says.