Economic Development and Leadership Q&A Series: Janis Gallagher

There are many partners and organizations involved in successful economic development programs and initiatives. In this Q&A Series, the Greenville ENC Alliance is interviewing key stakeholders in the local, regional, and state level that play a role in business attraction, retention, and expansion, workforce development, talent attraction and retention, and community engagement.

Josh Lewis, the Greenville ENC Alliance’s President and CEO, had an opportunity to sit down with Pitt County Manager Janis Gallagher. As the County Manager, Janis is responsible for managing and coordinating the implementation of the Board policies and directives. She serves as Budget Officer and oversees the budget which supports over 21 departments and agencies. The Manager ensures that services are provided in a positive and timely manner. Josh and Janis discussed collaborative economic development, workforce and talent retention, and future plans for growth in Pitt County. On a personal level, Janis shared how she moved from County Attorney to Manager and her journey raising her family in Greenville-Pitt County.

(Portions of this interview, as published here, have been edited and condensed for clarity.)

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Q: To start us off, can you share a little about your professional background and what brought you to Pitt County?

A: I always had a passion for local government and public service. I was a policy and management studies major in college and did an internship during a semester at American University in Washington DC. I worked for my congressman and thought that I would always somehow be involved in government. And then I graduated from college, but that's not where my path took me. It took me into the insurance industry, which I enjoyed. Eventually, I got a position in claims where I worked very closely with our insurance company attorneys and the attorneys for the claimants. I got to know a whole lot of attorneys and I thought, well, maybe that would be an interesting path to follow. So, after a couple years in the insurance industry, I decided to go to law school. After earning my J.D., I clerked for a judge and went back to insurance defense work. So, on that track, I learned that a large law firm was not the most fulfilling for me. A part that was missing was the people, government, and policy aspects. I practiced law there for a while until we relocated to North Carolina in 1997. In 1998, I saw an ad in the Daily Reflector for a local government attorney. I interviewed and while I didn’t have any prior experience with local government law, the County Attorney at the time, JoAnne Burgdorff, took a chance on me and I’ve been with Pitt County Government ever since. I had the perfect balance of law, helping people, and local government policy, all while raising my family at the same time in eastern North Carolina. Coming from South Jersey, the Pitt County area has been heaven on earth.

Q: You were appointed to the County Manager position in January 2022 after serving as the County Attorney. What made you interested in the Manager position after viewing it from a distance and what has the transition been like over the past two years?

A: Being the County Attorney was the perfect career while raising my children.  When my youngest left for college, the empty nest created an opportunity to redefine myself, and think what life was like when my first priority wasn't children. And so, I thought, “Well, maybe it's time to do something a little bit different.” When the position came open, I was not interested at first. The Board of Commissioners went through two cycles of advertising for the position but did not land on a candidate. Around the holidays, a commissioner asked if I would serve as interim. So, I took that role. And I really enjoyed it. It got me totally outside my comfort zone and I think it was a good fit. The board was happy, and I was happy. They asked me to stay in this role permanently, and here I am now, two years later.

Q: When you took the County Manager role full-time, I’m sure you had many goals and plans. But how did you prioritize and what did you start working on first?

A: My first priority was focusing on the people. I attribute the county’s success these last two years truly to the most amazing team that we could have in Pitt County Government. When I became manager, we had some longtime employees who were ready to retire. Our head of the planning department had over 30 years’ experience, our HR director has 44 years of experience, and our IT director has over 30 years of experience. All in Pitt County Government, all retirement ready. So, the Board suggested that I restructure and add new life and excitement into all of these positions. We worked together to create a senior leadership team that didn't exist before. We didn’t lose all of that subject matter expertise. And I think the diverse group of us together, have learned from each other, grown from each other, and serve the county well. I really see one of my most important roles is to make sure we retain the best people and create a succession plan so that when those folks who have put in their time and earn their retirement are ready to go, that we have a successor in place.

Q: From what I've gathered from leadership style, it's really been about making people feel comfortable, and feel like they're part of this new development and system. How do you get them excited about that?

A: At every new employee orientation, I say, to our new hires, “I hope that this is the best place you've ever worked, and that it is the place where you do your best work.” And if we can accomplish that, then we're going to start a pipeline of folks who feel good about what they're doing and create a culture of trust. Trust in the team is critical. Focusing on a culture that every single person in this organization - almost 1,100 employees - feel valued, feel appreciated, and feel like we are connected by a common goal and a common mission. While we all do very different things, we have more in common than we have different in the day. And we're all tied together in our mission to make this community better, to enhance the health, safety, and well-being of our community in a friendly and cost-effective manner. And I walk through the halls when I make my rounds, and I have prizes for anybody who can tell me our mission, because that's the most important thing that connects us.

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Q: What are some of the things you’ve done to help attract employees and retain employees within Pitt County Government?

A: We have made our pay and benefits packages more competitive. We have been more generous in flex schedules. Our pushback on flex has been for those who can't take advantage of it like our 911 Center, public health, and parts of social services, for example. We are fairly lenient, but they can’t really do the work from home for two primary reasons. One is a lot of what they do, there's so many strict regulations with regard to confidentiality and the other is that the computer connections and firewalls for the information that we're dealing with. However, we did offer a pilot program in certain departments where employees have the opportunity to work four 10-hour days in the office instead of five eight-hour days and it went well.

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Q: I believe that both the County and City are making strategic moves that improve the lives of citizens in many ways. One of those ways is through economic development. What do you see on the horizon for Pitt County that would excite our community members?

A: In addition to traditional industry recruitment and retention, I think the next big thing will be a plan for a new county administration building at the government complex. We clearly have a need for a new county administration building, which would help workforce culture, but it would also help spur future development opportunities in Downtown Greenville. The plan would take the people that are in this current administration building near the hospital and all the employees that are in separate small buildings in Downtown Greenville and put us all together at the government complex. The exciting part is what happens to this area that's freed up. The current county office building has been in this old hospital building for years upon years, and it is not best suited for a government building, it's in very poor repair. We are finally at the point, I think, in the evolution of Pitt County's government, to have a nicer county office building, it's critical to attract and retain the best staff. But the super exciting part is that we will vacate this space, which to me is best suited for medical space. We're surrounded by medical office buildings, and I think the highest and best use of this property would be medical. That would be really exciting for the community to have that that type of growth in this space. And then the even more exciting part to that is how it could transform Downtown Greenville. We have several small, tax-exempt buildings that hold tax assessor, tax collector, economic development, sheriff's office, and juvenile justice in that area. If all of those departments could be more appropriately housed with their government partners in the government complex, it would open up a lot of space. We'll never lose the courthouse as the county's focal point of downtown, but we have all of that property in front of the river, all the way back around the courthouse that can transform into something that might be a public-private partnership or private development that can go along with the long-term master plan and vision for the City of Greenville. It’s something that they’ve never had the opportunity to do, because of all the tax-exempt government buildings in our city center. I think it will be transformational for the community. It’s going to have a tremendous impact on quality of life downtown and Pitt County is instrumental in moving its operation to make way for that to happen.

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Q: I agree on all fronts. We’ve talked about the master plan for downtown and where we can drive quality of life. What do you think makes Pitt County a great place to live and work, while standing out from other counties across the country?

A: Pitt County is a special place.  We are perfectly situated between the coast and the capital. A unique fun fact is that we're the home of MrBeast, and that's pretty cool. And I think his balance between YouTube and philanthropy are really cool in this community. I think though, what makes Pitt County really special to me, is the sort of kindness and care and concern that the people in Pitt County have for one another. I think there is a vibe in Pitt County that really makes it unique. And I think that vibe is really marked by our culture of kindness and support for one another.

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Q: When we talk about government entities and the private sector, do you feel like people are more working more collaboratively now? How can the Greenville ENC Alliance help to keep people connected?

A: Without a doubt, I attribute much of the cohesiveness to the Greenville ENC Alliance, because you have regularly and consistently brought together key stakeholders, and provided an opportunity to have some of those conversations that need to happen for people to work together and move forward. One of the best things was the strategic plan and the strategic plan process and the ability to work together, respect each other, and move forward. You, by virtue of that strategic planning process and bringing in a top-notch consulting company, made everyone feel heard during the process. You gave us that common bond in a strategic plan that everybody, regardless of your differences, can get behind. It brought us all to the table over something we could all agree on. So, I absolutely appreciate the existence of this organization, the strategic plan, the leadership, and the team.

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Q: What are some of your goals for the next five to 10 years in development, programming, or administration? What would you consider doing and what do you want to explore doing?

A: In addition to looking at freeing up space in the downtown area, in the next five years I want to focus on county involvement in parks and recreation. We listened to our rural residents and this is what they tell us they want. The City of Greenville and municipalities have always had a really strong recreation and parks departments and programs. Pitt County Government has never had a parks and recreation department. We have always had a unique partnership with Pitt County Schools, but over time society changed and now some our school playgrounds have fences and locks on them because of safety concerns. So, I think we're in a huge transition time, where within the next 12 to 18 months, we will create and staff a county parks and recreation department. We will absorb community schools and recreation, which is the parks and recreation division of Pitt County Schools housed over the Alice Keene District Park. We’ll take some of the great things that Greenville is doing inside its city limits and the other municipalities are doing inside their city limits and take it out into the open space. It's almost kind of silly that we have all this incredible open space, we have hundreds upon hundreds of acres of land that we have bought out for repetitive flood properties that we just mow every year and don't do anything with. They could be wonderful walking trails. You can't build on them because they're flood properties. But they could be amazing passive parks and Pitt County could probably have one of the most robust park systems in the state because we have the land to do it. We’re excited to create a department that we never had before and do a whole lot more in the rural parts of the county.

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Q: That’s super exciting. We’ve also heard that a transit system partnership is in the works with Pitt Community College.

A: We have applied to receive state funding to make our Pitt Area Transit System (PATS) more robust, and I anticipate that we will have a partnership with Pitt Community College. PATS doesn't have a fixed route. It provides door to door service, kind of like an Uber. But it is fully handicap accessible and we do the paratransit service for the City of Greenville, and we have different contracts. So, we will have the funds and the capacity to add on to support picking up students anywhere in the county and bringing them to Pitt Community College on our transit system. We’re hoping to make this happen within the next six to 12 months.

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Q: Will this also help to bring people to work in different parts of the County?

A: Yes, and we start very early. They start at 4:30 in the morning, both for early workers and for dialysis patients who are going for medical treatment. And we go until 6:00pm to bring people home. One of my longer days when I became manager was to ride the PATS van around for a day and we picked up and dropped off people all day. And hats off to those drivers, they do such a good job. You think they're just driving a van, but it is hard to strap in wheelchairs and make sure everybody's situated and get them to their work on time and then get to the next one. And then afternoons are chaos because that's when you get the calls for pickup. Morning services are more coordinated, but afternoon services are more on-demand. We just did raise rates, but those rates are still very highly subsidized with public dollars to make the transportation accessible to everyone who needs it.

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Q: I think we can all agree that partnerships are key, especially when it comes to development and growth. What other programs is Pitt County working on with other community partners?

A: We’re moving forward with a concept called Pitt Stops, which is the vision of Dr. Angela Lamson with ECU and former Health Director John Silvernail. This is the concept where we'll have a facility in different parts of the county. The first one is going to be in Bethel. We are going to renovate the former Bethel police station and turn it into a like a multi-specialty building where various resources are available to residents. For instance, physicians and private providers will come to the Pitt Stop on a rotating basis, so Physicians East, for example, will determine who the two doctors who see most of the people in Bethel are and they'll go to that Pitt Stop on Tuesdays, so their patients don’t have to drive all the way to Physicians East. Other vendors or booths might include social services for low-income energy assistance and Medicaid applications as well as food pantry distributions. We'll also have a health department coordinator on site to set those appointments and look at opportunities to bring in the Smile Safari mobile dental unit. The goal is that people can walk to the clinic, so if they don't have transportation the Pitt Stop is convenient and accessible. With Dr. Lamson helping to bring resources together, we look forward to making it a reality and seeing these Pitt Stops in the next one to five years.

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Q: If money wasn't an issue and you could snap your fingers right now to solve one issue in the county, what would it be?

A: Internally, I would probably increase compensation packages for our entire workforce. Community-wide, I would look at further supporting our K-12 education system. I have tremendous respect and admiration for the work done by our Board of Education, Dr. Lenker, administrators, and teachers and staff. They have done amazing things including educating my own children in their high school years. To me, K-12 education creates the foundation for building our community and as parents, the school system is our closest partner in raising our children. So, infrastructure development is important and it’s consistent with the Governing Board's number one priority in Pitt County, which is education. It's also the biggest piece of the pie in our budget. As a community member, and as manager, the most important thing to focus on would be building upon our strengths and filling in the gaps so that Pitt County's K-12 education gets the respect and resources that it deserves.

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About Pitt County:

Pitt County is a rapidly growing, diversified employment and service center for eastern North Carolina. Pitt County Government strives to enhance the health, safety, and well-being of our community by advocating for and providing quality services in a friendly, efficient, and cost-effective manner. To learn more about Pitt County, visit the Pitt County Government website.