MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
FEBRUARY 22, 2006
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Approval of Minutes............................................................................................................... 1
Strategic Plan......................................................................................................................... 1
Budget Process...................................................................................................................... 2
Reclassification – Grievance Issues......................................................................................... 2
Bulk Paper Purchase.............................................................................................................. 3
Election of Chair..................................................................................................................... 4
Legislative Issues................................................................................................................... 5
Deputies vs. Assistants........................................................................................................... 5
Reports from Elected Officials................................................................................................ 6
Set Date and Time for Next Meeting....................................................................................... 6
County Supervisor Terrence Neuzil called the Johnson County Elected Officials Meeting to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 9:04 a.m.
Elected officials present were: County Recorder Kim Painter; County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek; County Supervisors Pat Harney, Mike Lehman, Terrence Neuzil, Sally Stutsman, and Rod Sullivan; and County Treasurer Tom Kriz. Staff present were: Board of Supervisors Executive Assistant Mike Sullivan, Board of Supervisors Budget Coordinator Rich Claiborne, Facilities Director David Kempf, Sheriff’s Major Steve Dolezal, and Auditor’s Office Recording Secretary Casie Kadlec.
Motion by Kriz, second by Stutsman to approve the Elected Officials minutes of August 17, 2005 and November 1, 2005. The motion passed unanimously.
Neuzil said that at past meetings the elected officials had talked about having strategic planning with elected officials and the Board in the spring. He asked if they wanted to hire someone to help with this, or do it internally. Lehman said that in the past the Board had hired someone from the University and also used Executive Assistant Mike Sullivan and former Budget Coordinator Jeff Horne. Harney said that they have decided to hire someone from the outside. Stutsman suggested thinking of outside agencies who would do it. Neuzil suggested they try to do it at the least expense possible. Stutsman said that they could have M. Sullivan do an RFP.
Stutsman said that if they want to do a County strategic plan they should have department heads and elected officials but if they are talking about the Board of Supervisors strategic plan it should just include the Board. Neuzil suggested having a session where the Board meets with department heads in the morning and the elected officials, including the Board, in the afternoon. Neuzil said he would really like an update from all the department heads. He said that the elected officials would be invited, but this wouldn’t necessarily be of interest to them. R. Sullivan listed several issues that cross departments such as GIS, document management, roads, and trails. Neuzil said that there are even issues of hiring, such as whether or not a Clerk I or Clerk II should be hired. R. Sullivan added that a temporary employee who could work with different departments would be great. Stutsman said that the Board needs input from elected officials, since they are developing the budget which is the road map of the County.
R. Sullivan suggested doing strategic planning at Montgomery Hall rather than a hotel in order to save money. Stutsman said that at hotels the room is free if lunch is ordered. The Board agreed that they could have the details worked out by M. Sullivan.
Neuzil said that now that the budget is ready to be published the Board would like to know how the budget process went. The Board announced that the budget public hearing will be in Meeting Room A of the Iowa City Public Library at 5:00 p.m. on March 13, 2006. Harney said that M. Sullivan and Budget Coordinator Rich Claiborne would like to begin the process earlier next year. Neuzil said that they also need to get the numbers from the Auditor’s Office earlier. County Treasurer Tom Kriz said that it was a huge learning curve from when Horne left and Claiborne came on. Neuzil said that the Board is also having problems with the General Fund cap and had to bond this year, and they need to figure out how to deal with that. Lehman said that the Board probably won’t bond next year, especially if interest rates increase. Neuzil said that if they don’t bond next year, they will have to cut over a million dollars from the budget, and maybe that message needs to be sent to the department heads as soon as possible. The Board agreed that they might have to bond for the new Health and Human Services Building. County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek said that Claiborne did really well, especially with the length of time that he has worked at Johnson County.
County Recorder Kim Painter said that there are a number of difficulties with grievance issues. She said that she was lucky because her situation turned out well. Painter said that as an elected official the public has certain expectations of her running her department and there are sometimes when those expectations can’t be met. She said that she would like at some point to give elected officials the opportunity to have a different conversation with the Board about reclassification. She said that when an elected official is sent to talk to an appointee of the Board in Human Resources, when there is a difference of opinion, it is hard to get a fair hearing. She said that it is hard to come into a Board meeting and have the information that she needs in terms of her goals and her strategic planning, and to feel that she had that recommendation shut down by an appointee of the Board. She said the grievance situation can come later, and that is also a difficult situation. However, she said, the internal dynamics of how the elected officials have to get things done is something that she would like to look at.
Kriz said that there is a lot of merit to Painter’s comments. He explained that they know how their offices need to be structured and how they need to be run. He said that he eliminated a position and the County didn’t know how to deal with that. He said that there is a tendency now to just have an employee work outside of their classification, which seems wrong. He said that there are cases where Human Resources and elected officials will have a different view on how things need to be done. Lehman said that it is difficult to look at the position and not the person in the position. Neuzil asked if this is something that Human Resources Administrator Lora Shramek should talk about at a department head meeting. Stutsman said that she hears Painter saying that the elected officials should not have to go through Human Resources when they have a reclassification, since the elected official is hired to run the office.
Pulkrabek said that it is important to use Human Resources as a tool, but if they disagree, deference should go to the elected officials, which is different than the case with a department head. Pulkrabek said that they were the ones elected and if there is going to be some fallout they should be the ones to take the heat. Lehman said that as liaisons when they talk to Shramek her mantra is that she is there for advice, but the Board has the final call. Painter said that she doesn’t mean to stab Shramek in the back because they have a good relationship, but this is a conversation that needs to happen. Stutsman said that maybe a point-counterpoint conversation should have happened. She said that it goes back to the argument of elected officials vs. department heads.
Neuzil said that the move that the union made wasn’t necessarily helpful to the union in regard to this issue. R. Sullivan added that it would have helped to have both Painter and Shramek in the room, and that never happened. Painter said that in this particular case there was a philosophy at stake. She said there was terminology in the contract that allows for reclassification without posting. She said that reclassification is a specific term, which doesn’t decouple the person and the classification. Neuzil said that the unions helped write the contract. Kriz said that the Board needs to hear from both sides for proper communication. Harney said that he puts a lot of weight in what an elected official wants to do within their own department, but he does understand that there are union agreements that must be respected.
Lehman explained that the issue of bulk paper purchasing came out of the Communications Committee. Facilities Director David Kempf was asked to do an inventory of the departments to find out what type of paper they use and what they are paying for it. He distributed a chart which described how many cases per year each department uses, and how much they pay per case. Lehman said that there is quite a variance in the amount used and the price per case. He said that the County spends almost $22,000 per year in paper. He said that Kempf reassured him that they could order paper from one distributor for all the departments, and the distributor would store it. He pointed out that the lowest price quoted was $22.99 from Iowa Book and Supply.
Pulkrabek asked why Human Resources and Information Services were getting such a good deal, whereas other departments were paying so much more. R. Sullivan replied that they have a package deal. Harney said that Kempf learned that the same distributor was charging different prices to different departments, even though it was the same paper. Lehman asked if there were departments who had long-term contracts which had to continue. R. Sullivan said no. Neuzil said the decisions they have to make are whether to buy local, whether to buy recycled paper, and whether there is space to store paper somewhere. Lehman clarified that the paper would be delivered upon demand. Stutsman said that they definitely need to pursue this.
Neuzil asked why Pulkrabek’s department uses so much paper. Pulkrabek replied that their usage has increased from previous years, because their new software will be printing on regular computer paper. Neuzil asked why they have to print so much. Pulkrabek said that they are working on reducing their paper trail, but every call for service has to be printed out so that patrol deputies can look at them. He said that what they are going to do is have the information available on the computer instead. He explained that their criminal files are also on paper, although they are hoping to make them more electronic. Lehman said that often organizations will send electronic documents, but once received they have to be printed anyway. R. Sullivan said the Attorney General’s Office is concerned about documents being kept electronically because they could be altered. Stutsman commented that hard copies can be altered too.
Lehman asked if departments could attempt to reduce their paper consumption. Kriz said that right now he is working with the Department of Transportation because 80% of the copies that his department makes are required by the DOT. He said that he thinks the Department of Transportation should furnish that paper, and if they did so his department would reduce their paper consumption by 40 cases.
Neuzil said the other question is whether departments already have paper on hand. Pulkrabek said his department does. He added that the Clerk of Court used to have things that were in triple duplicate, but they moved away from this. However, the courts need more copies so the County ends up paying for it. Stutsman said they need to decide if the elected officials are willing to go with this. R. Sullivan said that Kempf also pointed out that most departments have at least one person who is shopping around for paper deals, and if they go with this type of contract some staff time is also saved. The Board decided to go with Iowa Book and Supply, and to have Kempf start working on the details.
The elected officials agreed that Pulkrabek had not yet been Chair of the Elected Officials meeting, and suggested that he be nominated as chair. Pulkrabek said he wanted to have one more year experience before taking on another project. Neuzil said he would continue to chair the committee until the next meeting and table the discussion until then.
Neuzil said they got a piece of information from a lobbyist about county attorney’s salaries. He said that the judges are getting to a point where their salaries are at one level, and the county attorney’s salaries may be more than the judges. The judges are lobbying the legislators to make sure that does not happen. Stutsman pointed out that this is a home rule decision that should be made by counties, not by the State.
Neuzil asked if Pulkrabek had been in Des Moines lately. Pulkrabek discussed his presentation before the Iowa legislature which included a suggestion to change the penalty for possession of small amounts of marijuana from a serious to a simple misdemeanor. Neuzil said that it ended up being a world story covered by Reuters. Stutsman said that she talked to State Representative Vicki Lensing who said that it was unfortunate that Pulkrabek’s comments were taken out of context. Pulkrabek said that he has exchanged emails from several people who were in the committee meeting who thought he had a lot of good ideas and thought it was unfortunate that the focus was on two particular issues. Neuzil said that no one should ever be criticized for thinking outside of the box. R. Sullivan said that the reaction that happened in this instance is why people are afraid to throw out original ideas.
Pulkrabek said that a former state trooper is introducing legislation that has to do with weapons permits, and wants Iowa to become a “shall issue” state, rather than a “may issue” state. ISAC is opposed to it, as are county attorneys, and others. Pulkrabek clarified that this proposal would shift all weapons permits to acquire and carry to the Department of Public Safety. Pulkrabek explained that this would eliminate all the revenue that the County receives. It also eliminates local control over weapons permits. Stutsman asked why this would even be proposed as legislation. Pulkrabek replied that they believe that there are inconsistencies across the state with the different Sheriff’s Offices on how they issue permits. They pointed out Johnson County, in particular, because they had denied an Iraq war veteran a weapons permit. Pulkrabek said that even if the applicant is a veteran they still need to do a background check. R. Sullivan said it is a big NRA issue. Neuzil asked if the other elected officials had been lobbied by the NRA. Neuzil and Harney both said that they have been.
Neuzil suggested that they put the issue of deputies vs. assistants on a future Elected Officials meeting agenda when there will be more elected officials present. R. Sullivan said that when he was at ISAC one of the sessions he went to was about a bill to increase the compensation of administrative deputies from 80%-85% of the elected officials salary. He said that every year there is a debate when the Compensation Board meets about not giving too big of a raise but not punishing the deputies. He said that a lot of people in the session had complaints where a Treasurer, Auditor, or Recorder had abused the position by being newly elected and firing long-term deputies to hire friends. He said that the legislators were asking why these positions exist anyway, and ISAC had a difficult time answering this. Linn County said that they were hiring assistants rather than deputies. This prompted ISAC to decide to talk about this next time around. R. Sullivan said that the elected official would always have the choice to do what they want, but he suggested that they should have this discussion.
Pulkrabek reported that the jail is housing 17 inmates outside of the county. He added that he and Kempf spent some time going around and looking at potential sites for the jail. He said that the Facilities Committee is currently in limbo. If the GSA property doesn’t happen, his first choice would be for a continuation of a campus concept and to look at the recycling place as a possible site although he doesn’t know what leverage the County would have on trying to convince them to move. He mentioned that he asked Drew Ives to come up with an estimate about what the current jail property and the storage facility would be worth and what the University would pay the County for those properties. Pulkrabek said that one of the things they should consider is building a building with empty floors that can be expanded into.
Stutsman said that at the next meeting she would like to discuss document management and departmental credit cards. Harney said that credit card companies are only giving a two week turnaround to pay bills. R. Sullivan asked whether they could negotiate a deal with Hills or Iowa Bank. Stutsman said that they couldn’t. R. Sullivan asked if they could do debit cards instead of credit cards. Stutsman reiterated that they need to discuss this. Neuzil said he would put it on the agenda for the next meeting.
Neuzil said that he would try to set a meeting date sometime in April by email.
Adjourned at 10:22 a.m.
______________________________________________________________________
Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor
By:
On the _______ day of _____________________, 2006
By: Casie Kadlec, Recording Secretary
Sent to the Board of Supervisors on DATE, 2006 at TIME.