Conversation with Jonathan Lewis

In his short time as county administrator, Jonathan Lewis has already grappled with some weighty topics.

He led the Sarasota County Commission through the process of reducing its budget by more than $5 million just weeks after he took over the role officially Jan. 17.

But his time as assistant and then interim county administrator, under former administrator Tom Harmer, prepared him well. So did his six years as city manager of North Port, and seven years as deputy city manager of Palm Bay, on Florida’s east coast.

Lewis is the father of two children, 13 and 9, and the husband of a middle school band director. In his free time, he goes to his daughter’s gymnastics meets and coaches his son’s youth baseball team.

Although he realizes it’s another big task, he thinks he should meet all of the county’s 2,200 employees, and is spending time trying to do that.

The Sarasota Observer caught up with Lewis to talk about his focus and approach as administrator, and some of the biggest topics he and the county will be tackling this year.

What should the county’s focus be?

I think that the county’s focus and the board’s focus on making sure that we’re solution-oriented would be true ... I think what we’re focused on is trying to create an environment where the employees know it’s OK to try and make things better, and there’s no pride and authorship on these things. We’re all here to do the right thing which is to make services better for our community, within the parameters that the board sets for us. And that’s what we’re focused on.

What’s been your biggest challenge so far?

I would definitely say considering I think [Jan. 31] in our budget discussions … I think that was day 14 as the county administrator, so needless to say the majority of my time since the board put me in as interim has really been focused on how to make these adjustments to the budget. That’s been the No. 1 time-consuming thing anyway.

What’s happening with the budget moving forward?

Done isn’t done until done. So until we have all those budget amendments passed and we get into the [fiscal year 2019] budget, and we’re actually able to show those reductions while still keeping services up, I won’t consider that done. So it’s still going to be a big push. And we’re now, we made those decisions and put us in a very good shape, but we’re right in the thick of the [fiscal year 2019] budget process already.

How has it been to work with the commissioners so far?

Think about what they had to undertake [Jan. 31] and how they moved through it and the professionalism of the conversation, and ultimately making a decision. That’s been good. 

And obviously I’ve known most of them just by working, being a city manager in the county I knew most of them before coming here. I think the other probably the biggest piece is you’re in a city in a county, you know city-county relationships are what they are. The quality of the folks working here that you get to interact with from a different perspective has been pretty impressive.

What needs to happen on the affordable housing issue?

I think the problem is outside of the County Commission. I think a lot of people think a lot of different things need to happen. If it were easy and it was one solution, it would have been done a long time ago. It’s a complicated issue, it’s complicated to figure out what role any government should play, let alone the local government. And there’s a lot of different people who have to be involved in getting us there, it’s not just the county. There are lots of little things that will go into making [change] possible, and setting the platform for those people who build such projects to come in and do that work.

Aside from the budget and affordable housing, what are your other priorities this year?

An effort over the next year is to get out and have the opportunity to meet some folks. And really the idea of caring for the board’s 2018 priorities, which they adopted in January. They want to see action on the affordable housing issue and I think we’ve taken some good steps in that direction, but they expect us to have more and we’ll deliver on that. I think trying to resolve some historical relationship issues will be a priority for staff. And I think we’ve made some good progress on those fronts. But the board priorities obviously are No. 1.

What’s the best part of working in local government?

I think it’s the same [in cities or counties], from the perspective what you like about it is you get to try to make a difference every day. It’s never boring. You go and you have things that you want to accomplish in that day, and in some jobs you get to do that. But in these jobs that’s just not the case. So it keeps it from being boring. And you get to hopefully move things along and make things a little bit better for the community incrementally, every day. But that was true whether it was the city or the county.