part 5:
Behrens' building department story weirder by the day
City takes a dive in the Vellucci tavern case, homeowner gets fined out the wazoo, and the city turns its back on building codes when air conditioners are involved
-- John Patten, 04/08/08
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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RELATED:
Part 1: Look Hans, no permits
Part 2: Gay bar owner Mike Vellucci reportedly threatens city officials, city scrambles over itself not to give him a hard time
Part 3: Venice Florida! dot com to Marty Black: Suspend Behrens now, fuller investigation needed
Part 4: Tavern on the Island finally cited for code violations, bar owner to appear before city's Code Enforcement Board

A lucky man in a mondo bizarro tale
Mike Vellucci walked out of last Thursday's code enforcement board meeting as a lucky man. Vellucci had alternately denied and admitted to various charges of construction without a permit during the meeting. Five charges were levied against the tavern that he technically doesn't own, as his wife Tammy is listed as one of the owners. The charges included modifying a balcony, electrical work, installing an exterior door, putting up signs, and installation of a window.

The window allegation was withdrawn by code enforcement officers, and Vellucci was found guilty of the other four violations. No sanctions were placed against Vellucci himself or his construction contracting business, however the property owners were "put on notice" as Vellucci was in the process of applying for post-facto permits for the work he had been caught doing.

There was some confusion as to what relationship Vellucci has with the tavern. He's not listed as an owner of The Venice Trust, the company that owns the strip mall that the tavern is located in -- in fact, nobody, myself included, can figure out who exactly owns The Venice Trust.

Vellucci's wife Tammy is one of seven people listed with the state as the owners of the tavern, and even that gets weirdly murky -- Vellucci contacted Venice Florida! dot com the weekend prior to the hearing and insisted repeatedly that Tammy was really his sister. After mistakenly printing Vellucci's assertion as fact, readers of this web site pointed me to the Clark County, Nevada Public Records web site where online records indicate that Mike and Tammy Vellucci were married in October of 2004.

I dunno. You got me on that one. This whole tale is mondo bizarro from the word go, but that was a particularly odd point.

The work was cosmetical
Vellucci didn't come off as wholly believable to the code enforcement board. At one point, he claimed that a sign advertising karaoke night had been placed without his knowledge by the company that provided the karaoke entertainment. A photo was shown to board members of a huge vinyl banner that was strung up in the parking lot. The banner read "KAROKE TONIGHT," which makes one wonder: What company exists that can't spell the name of their lead product?

At another point, Vellucci stated that some of the work he had done was valued at under $100 and thus did not need a permit. Building department head Hans Behrens was called in to the meeting to confirm.  Behrens agreed and stated that he did not enforce permit rules on work valued at under $100. Behrens was vague on how the value determination was made and he made no reference to any ordinance or state building code that allowed such an exception based on value. Behrens then scooted back out of the meeting, leaving board members to ponder how much construction work could be actually performed for under $100. Nobody asked if that rule was even legal.

OK, so the $100 ruse wasn't going to work.

Vellucci shifted gears and stated that building officials Hans Behrens and Karen Butterworth had met with him the day before. According to Vellucci, all had agreed that much of the work he had done at the tavern was "cosmetical" [sic], and thus did not need a permit.

This 'cosmetical' work included new beam supports and safety barriers on balconies and the removal of a garage door which was replaced by a standard exterior hinged door. Vellucci insisted that these were not structural changes that required getting a permit. To support the low cost argument that wasn't being believed anyway, Vellucci claimed he had the building materials already sitting around at the site.

Ring of truth
As to the agreement that the building department had conceded that Vellucci's work was cosmetic, the code enforcement board wasn't buying that story, either. Nevertheless, it did have a curious ring of truth with me. It's the same story that Behrens had told me back in January when I first started asking about construction work done at the tavern. It's also the same story that Behrens had stated to his staff in the face of their complaints about construction at the tavern. It also jibes with Behrens' written statement to City Manager Marty Black.

I left the meeting and went looking for Behrens. I found him hiding in the city's engineering department, glued to a computer that was giving out a live audio feed of the ongoing meeting. I asked Behrens if what Vellucci stated was true, that he had just recently agreed to label the work as cosmetic. Behrens stammered and tried to answer a question that I hadn't asked. I had no idea what he was trying to tell me and I have been long out of patience for his circular airy answers, so I rephrased the question twice before I finally got an answer to my actual question: "No, I did not agree that it was cosmetic."

Which is not what Behrens told me in January. In fact, it's a total about face from Behrens' earlier statements. I don't know who is telling the truth about the meeting that Vellucci described, but the events as played out tend to make it look to me like Vellucci was telling the truth.

Vellucci the villain? Wait a minute...
So the bar that Vellucci owns/co-owns/doesn't own/whatever is up and running and is now street legal and open. It's been open since December 31 of last year. He just has to watch out for code enforcement, as the next time he or anyone else gets caught violating the building codes at the location, the fines can start with the first day.

The fear factor apparently helps quite a bit. After threatening to "get even" with city officials if they got in his way, city officials hurriedly got out of his way. Post-construction permits, for work that Behrens has repeatedly stated was never done, are currently in the process of being issued to Vellucci at no greater expense than if Vellucci had applied for them prior to the construction. The city's code enforcement board had what one board member described as a "very entertaining" hearing, then issued the decree that Vellucci was to be given a harsh lecture and a dirty look for numerous code and building violations.

Vellucci left the meeting and headed straight for the Venice bureau of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. There he had a conversation with bureau editor Victor Hull. When contacted, Hull stated that Vellucci had expressed that he was "unhappy" about the paper's coverage and declined any further comment about the discussion. Reports from reliable sources indicate that Vellucci asked Hull where he lived and if he had any children. Hull would neither confirm or deny that Vellucci asked those questions. Phone calls made to Tavern on the Island in an attempt to get Vellucci's side of the story have not been returned.

So admittedly, Vellucci is not a likable guy. His past dealings with the city and the courts show that he has a quick and sometimes violent temper. He tries hard to give the impression that he is not a guy to be messed with. People have been and do get hurt as a result of being within an arm's reach of him. He is a scary villain, the kind of guy that Tony Soprano would have had whacked after two or three episodes for being too public, unpredictable, and uncontrollable.

But to paint Vellucci out as the main bad guy in this tale would be unfair and deceptive. He is, after all, a guy out to turn a buck. Vellucci is a private citizen, not a public official entrusted with the public's welfare. Faced with an incomprehensibly bizarre city government and arbitrary enforcement of ever-changing rules, Vellucci did what I would argue is a noble thing: he told the city to FOAD. Granted, he appears to have that attitude towards everyone, but at least when he does it to city hall, I have to cheer him on a bit. If you can ignore that his anger management skills are somewhat lacking, he could come off as a bit of a hero.

TOTI: Business of the year
Say whatever you want about Vellucci, but in a town where the building and code rules are enforced so capriciously that they end up actually preventing new businesses from ever opening, Vellucci has managed to do one thing that many new business owners in Venice struggle with. Vellucci managed to get Tavern on the Island open for business in fairly short order. He's managed to get customers in and get the cash register ringing, almost in record time, while keeping the city's idiotic and bumbling bureaucracy at an arm's length.

It may not be the best way to get a new business open while keeping preliminary business expenses to a minimum, but it would appear that it may be the only way that works in Venice. Vellucci has established the new business model for the wild west that Venice's economy has become after the collapse of the land development boom: The hell with the system, the hell with city hall, the hell with permits, the hell with anything that gets in the way, just get the doors open and deal with the clowns in the building department later. Don't cooperate, get belligerent. Show your rage against the machine -- the city will back down.

For that, you have to admire the guy. I hope Tavern on the Island joins the Chamber of Commerce. I hope they get the New Business of the Year Award. More importantly, I hope city hall actually pays attention this time and realizes that practically every policy they have made with regards to permitting and architectural review have done nothing but prevent the growth of the business sector at a time when new businesses are not knocking down our doors to get in to the city.

In the one conversation that I had with Vellucci, the one thing that Vellucci kept hammering at was city hall's contemptuous attitude towards fledgling businesses. I agree with Vellucci. In spite of his faults, he is absolutely right.

As such, only an idiot would actually apply for permits in the city, and you're supposed to get them for everything, at home and at work. Need a new water heater? $250, straight to the city so that a guy can come out to your house for three minutes to verify that you have indeed installed a water heater and not a camel enclosure. Think I'm kidding? A homeowner I spoke with in the past few weeks described the city's post-installation inspection process as just that -- a man came out to the house, looked at the water heater for less than five seconds, stated "Yep, that's a water heater," and left. Didn't look at the circuit breakers, didn't examine the plumbing to make sure the pipes were sealed properly, nothing. A quick glance, a signature, and then gone. The inspector was in the house for less than two minutes. For $250, that's a heck of a job, and the city ends up making the biggest profit off of a small job like that. The plumber and the distributor are on a much smaller profit margin.

So what to do? If you're a homeowner, buy the parts and find someone to install them that isn't too picky about permits. In this town, that will not be difficult at all -- word of mouth will find you a contractor based in Sarasota that also thinks that the city is insane and laughable.

Better yet, open your business just outside of Venice -- Starbuck's did
If you are thinking of opening up a new business in Venice, maybe a better option at this time would be -- don't. They'll nickel and dime you to death while making you wait forever for approval to open your doors. You have better odds of financial success at a craps table in Vegas than in dealings with Behrens' retarded operation.

If you do absolutely insist on opening up a business within city limits and you don't want to go broke, find Mike Vellucci. Talk to him. Pick his brain. Then follow his advice to the letter. This isn't about doing the right thing, Venice has already made that option impossible. This is about economic survival.

There are plenty of horror stories over the past few years of business owners struggling with the city's building department to open their doors for business, most notably a pizza parlor that was in a long battle over the city's garish so-called Italian Renaissance beautification rules that require a lot of tile and tan stucco, all designed to make sure that your business doesn't stand out.

Another restaurant owner had to go through six months of nonsensical utter crap just to get approval for a food warmer.

Smart business owners avoid the city entirely as a result. Starbuck's, for example, who scouted several locations on the island before coming to the conclusion that city hall was insane and should not be dealt with on any level. Starbuck's opened just south of the city limits near the circus bridge on U.S. 41 Bypass. Sure, their parking situation sucks, but they didn't have to deal with the city's nonsense.

No one here gets out alive
The most appropriately macabre rules are about signs. Forget traditional signs or anything even remotely innovative, the city has the perfect symbol for its attitude towards new businesses: so-called monument signs that look more like tombstones rather than advertisements. Discretely painted in bland, unattractive colors and placed in anti-eye catching ways, these have the bonus effect of acting as pre-installed grave markers for businesses that will die as a result of passersby never giving the signs a second glance.

Even the city's "Welcome to Venice" signs placed at the outskirts of town are in the shape of these eerie tombstones. The only thing missing are the dates of birth and death. Welcome to Venice. No one here gets out alive.

If you're in, you're in
Yet for all the hard times given, there is the flip side to that same coin. Councilman Ernie Zavodnyik was carrying around blow-up pics of properties owned by Venice financial bigwig Jean Trammell while bopping around on last year's campaign trail. Zavodnyik complained that the properties were not maintained up to code, had not been for quite some time, and that they posed health and safety risks for which the city could possibly be liable for due to lack of enforcement. Zavodnyik claimed that Behrens' department was blind to Venice's favored sons and daughters, an argument that was nearly impossible to refute once you looked at the photos that he was toting around.

Vellucci points to the land across the street from the tavern, land owned by local developer Mike Miller as the future home of the controversial Tra Ponti project. When code enforcement started sniffing around the tavern, Vellucci started making noise about lack of proper fencing around the construction zone and piles of debris and garbage, all in violation of the city's codes. Shortly after Vellucci's complaint, silt fencing went up around parts of the property, however much of the garbage and construction debris still remains at the site.

Last Thursday, the code enforcement board cited Terry and Debra Smallwood, homeowners on Elaine Street, for the mess around their house. The Smallwoods were fined $2,800. The bulk of the problem stems from the fact that the residence is used by the owner as the operations center for his landscaping business. Less than four blocks away, Venice Wrecker Service daily dispatches its huge semi-sized trucks from the front yard of a house on Lillian Street. Despite a lack of permits and no business license on file with the city, Behrens' department has ruled the towing company as an acceptable use of residential property. "It's been grandfathered," was Behrens' determination, this according to one city official who asked to remain anonymous.

Air conditioning inspection process: Welcome to Terry Gilliam's Brazil
After investigating the city's permitting process and department head Hans Behrens for the past four months, I have come to one inescapable conclusion: that Behrens has modeled his department after Terry Gilliam's film, Brazil. In the surrealist movie about bureaucracy gone mad, Robert DeNiro played an outlaw air conditioning repairman who illegally repairs cooling and heating systems while thumbing his nose at the bumbling powers that be.

Here in Venice, the city's code inspection process for air conditioners appears to be straight out of the movie.

Take the small condo association of Bristol North, located on the island, for example. Within the past year, new air conditioner units were installed on their roofs by Venice Cooling and Heating, Inc. The company pulled a permit for the job on May 18, 2007, then installed replacement air flow handlers on the roof.

A month or so ago, Florida Southern Roofing inspected the roof as part of their annual warranty inspection process. According to a letter from Florida Southern Roofing to the condo board, the air handler was installed illegally. The handler was bolted to two 4x4 boards which were just placed on the roof with no bolt downs or anything holding the 4x4 boards down (pic and pic, both pics taken of  the AC units on Bristol North). That used to be legal, but Florida's building codes changed in 2004. Now you have to either have an elevated plateau with curbing or the handler has to be placed up and over the roof on metal struts (example, not from Bristol North).

Florida Southern Roofing's letter indicated that the roofing company believed there were no permits for the AC job as it would have failed inspection. There was no mention in the letter if such an un-permitted installation could negate the warranty on the roof.

I checked with Dan Weigner, second in command to Behrens in the city's building department, and sure enough, Florida Southern Roofing was right -- the air conditioner handler was installed illegally. Despite this, the permit on file with the city shows that the installation passed the city's inspection, as a "T.S." signed off on the inspection on May 29, 2007.

According to Carl Adams at Venice Cooling & Heating, the city hasn't been enforcing the code in Venice. For the four years since the codes were changed, he's been installing the handlers the same way as he was before the code changed. Adams claimed he didn't even know about the code change and that nobody at city hall has ever hinted that he was doing things out of code. "I'm not the only one by a long shot, you talk to every other air conditioning company in Venice and they'll tell you that they are doing it the same way. This is the way the city allows us to install the equipment."

We're all bozos on this bus?
Back I went to Dan Weigner. According to Weigner, it is up to the contractor to know the codes that regulate the contractor's business.

As to the passed inspection on an illegal installation, the city has been farming that work out to Southwest Florida Building Inspectors out of Bradenton. According to Weigner, Behrens has never established a spot-check procedure to see if the company's inspectors are actually doing what they are paid to do, which they obviously are not. Until I showed the documentation from Bristol North's condo board to Weigner, he had no idea that local air conditioner companies were not following the building codes and that the inspectors have been giving the nod to illegal jobs.

If Carl Adams is correct, these inspectors have been giving the nod to illegal work for four years.

That's just one example of many that have come my way since I started taking a good, long look at Han Behrens and his lack-of-management style.

There are many more, a seemingly exhaustive list of people who have contacted me and asked to tell their horror stories. There's a lot of people who don't like Behrens.

So as long as Behrens is still at city hall, I'll have plenty to write about.

As for Vellucci -- well, as wacky and scary as he appears to be, you have to have a certain amount of admiration for the guy given the procedural landscape that he was working in. With Behrens ignoring complaints from neighboring businesses and residents, he was able to get away with quite a bit of un-permitted construction. Vellucci used the existing municipal incompetence fully to his own advantage. At least he wore his motives openly on his sleeve -- stay in business, make a profit.

That's in sharp contrast to Behrens' current wardrobe picks: huge inflatable shoes, a big red squeak-toy plastic bulb for a nose, and a lapel flower that shoots water.

No Hans, I don't think we're all bozos on this bus, but you sure do run an entertaining circus.

One final set of questions. While it's obvious that Behrens has gone rogue, who was over Behrens all this time and how was such incompetence allowed to fester and grow? After all, it's not like the questions raised in this article are the first questions like this to come along.

Who is managing the managers? Or rather, who is not managing the managers and why is there such a high tolerance for incompetence?

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.