Loud and Clear

In a way, Scott Coulombe did heed his builder father's warning about following in his footsteps. "We were taking a break [from construction work] one hot July afternoon and I remember him telling me, 'You can't do this for a living. You can make more money with your mouth than your hands,'" Coulombe recalls.

The new executive director of the Collier Building Industry Association is one to talk, literally. In just 30 minutes, one learns of Coulombe's Rhode Island upbringing and his stints as a hospital orderly, '70s silk-screen artist and computer graphics account executive. The conversation is peppered with his opinions about the state of home building in America, impact fees and our society's weakness for instant gratification.

Coulombe spent 14 years as the head of the Sarasota" target="_blank">Charlotte County Contractors and Building Association and the past seven in New Orleans doing much the same. Now he is coming home to Florida and taking over the 1,600-member CBIA, one of the most active National Association of Home Builders chapters in the country and the second largest in Florida.

Coulombe had his first taste of the home-building industry 25 years ago, when he followed his dad to Florida and found work running a real estate guide for Charlotte and Desoto counties. "My father retired to Sarasota. I vacationed here and fell in love with it," says Coulombe. "He told me, 'Son, this is the last frontier.'"

The younger Coulombe's initial foray into the politics of Florida building came in 1984, when he was approached by Sarasota" target="_blank">Charlotte County members of what was then a five-county builders association. "[They] came to my house on a Saturday," he recalls. "The builders association was so busy with Lee County, they just didn't have the time or the resources to spread out and address the needs of Sarasota" target="_blank">Charlotte County. They were looking to cut Sarasota" target="_blank">Charlotte County free, and these guys asked me about heading up a Sarasota" target="_blank">Charlotte County organization."

That clandestine gathering led to a general membership meeting the following week and commitments from 28 charter members. "The naysayers didn't think we'd be here a year later," Coulombe says. "We were. And the year before I left, we had 536 members. Then the state lost the workers compensation program and we lost 100 members."

Coulombe left Sarasota" target="_blank">Charlotte County after a failed bid to head the Pensacola chapter turned into a golden opportunity: Word got out that he was available, and it didn't take long for the Home Builders Association of Greater New Orleans to take notice. Although the Collier County job opened just months after he made his move to Louisiana (his wife and three children eventually returned to Sarasota" target="_blank">Charlotte County so the kids could finish high school there), Coulombe respectfully declined. "It wouldn't have been fair to my guys to leave after just six months. This time, when I got the call, the timing was right."

In New Orleans, Coulombe was actively involved in governmental affairs and local legislation affecting the building industry. He was awarded the Louisiana Home Builders Association's John Gentry Executive Officer Award for Excellence as recognition for his accomplishments in Louisiana's 2003 legislative session. During the American Bankers Association's 2000 convention, he coordinated an effort to remodel a rundown shotgun house in New Orleans, making it wheelchair-accessible for a couple whose son had been seriously injured in a hunting accident. "That was one of my proudest moments," says Coulombe.

Under Coulombe's watch, the New Orleans chapter reviewed all pending state bills for the state home builders association, sifting through upwards of 4,000 documents for proposals that could prove detrimental to the building industry. His experience in Sarasota" target="_blank">Charlotte County helped the association defeat a bill that would have introduced mobile homes into many neighborhoods.

"Before I left Sarasota" target="_blank">Charlotte County, the mobile home industry was trying to impede on conventional zoning," Coulombe recalls. "I warned my guys to be careful and told them to red-flag anything mentioning mobile homes. They found something in the Louisiana Affordable Housing Accessibility Act, a nice little bill that everyone should support, right? Well, there was a paragraph that every municipality should open up conventional zoning to manufactured homes. The board said, 'Go kill it.' And I did.

"I have a nice little credo: If you don't have a place at the table, you're probably on the menu."

Coulombe is critical of the increasing number of regulations placed on the building industry, including impact fees, which he calls "taxation without representation on homeowners who aren't even here yet." In the past, he says, the government would reserve funds to address future infrastructure needs. "Florida had a fund in the 1970s, but it got raided," he notes.

Coulombe's no-holds-barred attitude is well suited to the political arena he so often finds himself in. He has defeated impact fees in Sarasota" target="_blank">Charlotte County and New Orleans and is critical of engineers who "sit at a desk and don't get out into the field. What I find ironic is that 10 to 15 years ago, the EPA told us homes had to be more energy efficient. Now homes are so tight they're getting mold. So now we're told to use more fresh-air vents in a house. And instead of trying to work with a builder to correct the problem, people are overacting and seeing black gold. They're filing lawsuits and going to court."

The biggest challenge facing Naples and Collier County, he says, is affordable housing for teachers, firefighters, police and the working class. "We're not talking Section 8 housing, but work-force housing," he says. "Housing is the main engine that's keeping the economy going. But all these rules and regulations make it more expensive to build and buy a home."