MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
JULY 9, 2008
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Key Issues Work Session........................................................................................................ 1
Emergency Closure of County Buildings....................................................................... 1
Flood Response Update.............................................................................................. 4
Project Updates.......................................................................................................... 5
Acquisition of Flooded Properties on Dubuque Street.................................................... 8
Purchasing Services from Larry Murphy.................................................................... 10
Federal Issues – Scheduling Meetings and Agendas.................................................... 11
Local TIF Discussions and Follow-Up on Scheduling TIF Experts................................ 13
Meeting Agenda Items.............................................................................................. 14
Internal Processes, Expectations, and Other Operational Issues of the Board of Supervisors Office 15
Sinkhole on East Side of Building............................................................................... 18
Internal Processes, Expectations, and Other Operational Issues of the Board of Supervisors 19
Chairperson Sullivan called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 8:31 a.m. Members present were: Pat Harney, Larry Meyers, and Rod Sullivan; absent: Terrence Neuzil and Sally Stutsman.
R. Sullivan said every winter there seems to be an ice storm that causes employers to decide whether to send employees home early. He said people are looking for a more clear policy, a single united voice saying they are open or not. R. Sullivan said there are departments like Secondary Roads and the Sheriff's Office that never close. He said that during the June 8, 2008 meeting, Medical Examiner Administrator Mike Hensch, who used to do emergency plans for Mercy Iowa City, volunteered to chair a committee and to help the County initiate some of the same kind of plans. He said that Mercy Iowa City has emergency plans for bomb threats, anthrax in the mail, bad weather, and other situations. R. Sullivan said the Board was hoping to have a committee including Emergency Management Coordinator Dave Wilson, Facilities Manager David Kempf, Human Resources Administrator Lora Shramek, and Information Services Director Jean Schultz. County Attorney Janet Lyness said she will be on the committee also.
Lyness said she thought there was a lot of variety in how the different communities responded to personnel. She said that when Linn County closed its buildings due to flooding, they didn't pay any of the employees. She said different State agencies did different things with employee payrolls and she thought the University paid everyone. Lyness said there isn't one thing the Board has to do as a public entity. She it is a great idea to have Hensch work on a plan because he has experience with this.
County Recorder Kim Painter said it's a good thing to review County practices and come to an agreement on how they might proceed in the future. Painter said it can be easy to misjudge incoming weather, and she knows that is why some people are reluctant to do anything. She said the County frequently waits until they are in a position where it is either incredibly dangerous for anyone to leave that wants to leave or if the administration says go home and take vacation time, then they are putting employees in a very difficult position where they have pressure on them if they don't have much vacation time, they might take a risk they might not otherwise take. She said she doesn't envy the committee trying to balance all of the issues. Painter said there are people in her position that say they always want to be perceived as willing and ready to serve the public. She said it is really hard to decide when to close the building. Painter said she is glad they are working on it and would like to see a united voice if possible. Harney said he is one who believes County government should remain open and close as a last resort. He said there will always be some services that people want and need. Harney said if they are going to close they need a contingency plan, but closing should be a last resort.
Kempf asked what the severe weather policy is in regards to employees coming to work. Shramek said if they want, they can make up the time during the workweek, but it is up to them if they want to take vacation or time off without pay. R. Sullivan asked if employees are automatically entitled to vacation time if they feel the roads are too dangerous even if their department administrator is not willing to approve the time off. Shramek said that employees are entitled to use vacation time in this situation. Painter said another issue where the County has inconsistencies is with storm readiness. She said there have been numerous tornado sirens sounded and people did not go to a safe place nor did they take the customers to a safe place. Painter said it is great to serve the public by giving birth, death, and marriage certificates, but if the roof of the building is torn off in a tornado, then everyone would have death certificates.
County Treasurer Tom Kriz said the issue needs to be addressed. He said that when a tornado siren sounds, it is confusing to the public if one department is closed and another still open in the Administration Building. R. Sullivan said the County decided to sound the sirens if there was a tornado anywhere in Johnson County. Lyness said the last time the sirens sounded, the tornado was in the northern part of the County and was not supposed to hit for another 20 minutes so they ignored it because they were on the internet and could see the tornado was nowhere near Iowa City. Kempf said that he is as guilty as anyone about this. He said that if he is in the Administration Building when the sirens go off, the first thing he does is go online to see what area is affected. Kempf said the last time he was at Farmer's Market the sirens sounded and the City came out to tell vendors they couldn't sell. Kempf said that even though the public was there to shop and vendors to sell, the vendors have an agreement with the City which says that if there is a tornado siren sounded, they can not conduct business. Harney said they have always had a policy that identifies the safe area to go to and the problem is getting people to respond. He said it won't hurt to reinforce this through the plans. Kempf said the issue with this is consistency.
R. Sullivan said that for years Kempf has had a goal of getting people to respond to fire and tornado drills. He explained that Kempf would repeatedly tell the Board that he couldn't get people to cooperate by taking shelter or leaving the building. Kempf said they do have policies for tornados, bomb threats and death threats, but not a flood policy. He said his department doesn't review them regularly with employees, but he thinks new hires receive the information in employee orientation. Kempf said that having Hensch head up the committee will help them, and he thought a uniform front would be important. Painter said the individual authority that elected officials have over their staff is the one area they have issues with. She thinks it would be good for elected officials to come together and participate as needed. Painter agreed it needs to be as rare as possible.
Harney said he has taken two or three calls about the building being closed because contractors were unable to obtain building permits. Harney said they had work to do even though there were flood waters in other areas. R. Sullivan said the head of the Home Builders Association called all the Supervisors to complain that the building was closed. Then Senior Building Inspector Rueben Arsate came into the Administration Building to get the permits needed. R. Sullivan said they issued two permits. Painter said part of the planning process is to make themselves available in every possible way at every point of information contact. She said she was running marriage licenses to people waiting at Panera on the east side to keep people on track. She also she met people at the Courthouse, and the post office. Painter said during the flood she handed out a lot of marriage licenses to people who were worried.
R. Sullivan said Kempf's point about Information Systems (IS) being on the committee is a good one. He said IS was a key to the Board being able to operate. Kempf said in thinking about going to a secondary location to set up the offices, like Linn County and the City of Cedar Rapids is doing now, it is critical to have that connectivity to the County servers from an unsecured location. Kempf said he had been talking with Schultz about web based access to any of the hard lined files, or the drives. He said he thought IS will be an extremely important part of the disaster relocation plans.
Painter said the public had been out of the Administration Building for five days and she had no complaints. She said she didn't think it could ever be possible, but since information was out and people could make the contacts they needed to make, it worked pretty well. Kriz said they did get a few complaints because it did antagonize a few people that some offices were open while others weren't. He said they were good about it, but that it was upsetting to some that they were able to complete some County business but not all. R. Sullivan said consistency would have been good.
Kriz said another thing that worked well for his department was that they had a contingency plan. He said that when their first alternative site, the fairgrounds, became unavailable, they had to go to option two, which happened to be working out of the Clerk of Court's Office and some open courtrooms. Kriz said if they had to scramble to coordinate at the last minute it would have been difficult and the Courthouse doesn't have wireless internet so it is not really conducive to having that available. Lyness said the Courthouse will have wireless access beginning next year. Kempf said that even though the new Health and Human Services Building would not have a backup generator, it will have a location on the outside of the building for access to a trailer generator for the building.
Painter said it sounds antique now, but after the Y2K scare in the County, they all sat down and did contingency planning, and IS was a big part of that. She said in their office they had a list of essentials to set up shop somewhere else. Painter said that helped them quite a bit said it showed how well they handled the unusual situation.
Kriz said for some offices such as the Recorder's and Treasurer's, the use of technology can really advance what happens. He said any department that isn't using technology to their fullest should be. He explained that a lot of work can be done on the internet which eliminates the need to travel through flood waters. Kriz said that while they couldn't get into their DOT things for a couple days, Polk County took over for Johnson County so everyone that came through the County website was processed by Polk County and business still was completed. He said that while the building was closed down and nothing was happening here, people were still able to conduct business. He said the use of technology is phenomenal in this situation. R. Sullivan said if they come up with any thoughts along the way, there are a number of people that are on the committee that can get their thoughts to them.
Kempf said it was frustrating that even though people were not supposed to be in the Administration Building, they were climbing over the sandbags to get in. R. Sullivan asked if people reported or been asked to report the number of hours of employees who did work. Kempf said his understanding was that they would only get reimbursement if those hours were performed in excess of the regularly scheduled work hours. He said County employees can't seek reimbursement for flood related work performed during regularly scheduled work hours.
M. Sullivan said he will be filling out all the project worksheets under the County Supervisor's envelope. M. Sullivan explained Secondary Roads has their own setup, and FEMA has their own setup. Harney asked if per work project means sandbagging at the Administrative Building, the Fisher Building, and the Sheriff's Office, and if those were separate projects. Kempf said they are separate projects, but he will keep track of overtime hours his employees incurred, equipment they had to rent, and separate whether work was done in preparation for the flood or in response to the flood. R. Sullivan asked if there is a difference between Facilities Management and the Treasurer's Office staff working on flood issues. He said he could understand if Facilities Management employees are sandbagging it could be seen as part of their job but not the job of staff from the Treasurer's Office. M. Sullivan said there is no difference and it is all related to the response itself. He said when he puts the project worksheet together to audit, anything at all that they feel is part of the response process will be included in the worksheet. M. Sullivan said FEMA will decide what is acceptable. He said he hasn't found anything yet that might be considered unacceptable. Lyness asked if they still wanted hours of people sandbagging other places off County property. M. Sullivan said yes, if they have that available, because they can also submit reimbursements requests for volunteer time outside the scope of their work. R. Sullivan said there is at least one good buy-out size request. Harney said the dumpsters are all full on Stewart Road.
Kempf said they are moving ahead as well as can be expected. In some cases they are making more progress than expected based on the brutal winter and now the flood. He said they are unguardedly optimistic that they are on track for scheduled completion dates, and they are getting close with both projects. Kempf said they are within a week or two of their completion dates. He said there are two cubes of steel scheduled to be set at the Health and Human Services Building the week of July 13, 2008. Kempf said that will complete the steel erection. He said they have concrete poured on two thirds of the second floor, two-thirds of the third floor, and are pouring on the first floor currently.
Kempf said there are mechanical contractors on site who are doing return air ductwork and starting to work on some of the supply returns. He said they can hang that once the floor above them has been poured. Some of the beams have an arch to them, and then what happens when they pour the floor it takes the arch out and helps lock the building in. He said two-thirds or the second floor rough frame in is done, with electrical rough-ins done on the second floor. They are working on the exterior shell of the building, with the initial hardboard going up over the studs with a three inch layer of foam block. He said the bricking is scheduled to start at the end of July 2008. Kempf said they are going to see more and more people coming on site. He said they have started excavating pile caps and grade beams for the parking ramp beginning on the SW corner of that project and are then going to work from west to east.
Kempf said they got the final approval on the pre-cast components for the parking ramp to make it look like Indiana limestone, some of it acid wash and some of it not. He said samples would be available on site next week. Kempf said as they start to deliver the pre-cast components, they will compare them to that sample piece to make sure it is the right color and they do have the ability to reject pieces if the coloring is off or the quartz mix isn't right.
Stutsman arrived at 9:05 a.m.
Kempf said Secondary Roads is moving right along, setting the pre-cast stone at the bottom of the building on July 8, 2008, so they will probably start on bricking yet this week. They are starting to frame the interior walls of the building and are working hard on getting the building watertight, getting the roof done, the window openings framed in and get watertight on the inside of the building. Kempf said there are two rooms that are tornado resistant rooms. He said they messed up pouring the cement caps on those rooms, as they were supposed to be able to resist 500 pounds per square foot, and on one of the rooms they poured it in two pieces and put a seam down the center of the room. This cut the resistance to 100 pounds per square foot. Kempf said he is giving them some options to fix that, including removing the slab and re-pouring it. Kempf said the other mistake involved pouring an inch and a half slab instead of a four inch slab. He said those are a couple engineering things that are being corrected. He said they are still optimistic that they are on schedule and that the schedule is moving along quite well.
R. Sullivan said that employees are starting to wonder about the parking. Kempf said he would like to be kept informed if construction workers are parking in the Car Quest area so he can get those vehicles moved. Stutsman asked where they are supposed to park. Kempf said on the job site, or some other off site location and car pool in. Kempf said the County is not required to provide parking for the workers. He said soon, more space will be available for workers to park and this should not be a problem.
Stutsman asked if Kempf is anticipating any overruns on any of the projects. Kempf said they have had some code based issues on the Health and Human Services Building, but nothing that he would consider huge or out of place. He said they had some over excavation done early on because of unsuitable soils. Kempf said they have made some room changes to accommodate department heads. He said he made some minor accommodations for them to be done before any of the construction areas were done. Kempf said the impact change has been minimal. Kempf said he had a couple minor issues at SEATS and Secondary Roads. They had built in the contingency fund for the project out there, and he thought they had $170,000 contingency on the two buildings. He said to date he thinks they have used $12,000 due to excavation.
Kempf said they are on budget as far as the project goes. Meyers asked what the City of Iowa City's involvement is in terms of inspection and any design changes. Kempf said any design changes have to go through the City. He said if there are any structural changes they have to be run through the City. He said right now their involvement at Secondary Roads is minimal. Kempf said the City will come on board when it is time to do the electrical and plumbing inspections. He said they have to pay for the special inspections required by the City.
Kempf said the City wants as much work done as possible before bringing in the inspectors. He said before they start pouring sheetrock, etc, they will have to do the electrical as well. Meyers asked if everything is done by the City. Kempf said electrical and plumbing is all done by the City. Meyers asked if there is any involvement by Arsate in the project yet. Kempf replied there wasn't early on. Kempf said having the City come in and inspect the plumbing and the electrical isn't an additional cost to the County since they have to do those things. Harney said the Board had agreed that when they first started, they would allow Iowa City to do the inspections. This is an agreement the County has with any project within the City. Meyers said even on a private project, the City is not paid for conducting the inspection because it is covered by the permit. Kempf said none of the fees were waived because permits are with Tricon and S&G Construction and were issued to the contractor, not the County. Meyers said someone asked him why the County inspectors aren't conducting the inspections. He said the City has some background with the projects, whereas the County doesn't. Kempf said it isn't a matter that they couldn't do that, but that it is cleaner, the permit is issued by the City to the general contractor, and they need to follow the process. Kempf said he is perfectly fine with the way it is set up and that it makes sense.
Harney said the policy committee is put together for the Joint Communications Center and the design is almost complete. Harney said they are waiting for the contract from the County Attorney's Office for the property so they can move forward. He said the actual bid letting is scheduled for September 26, 2008. Kempf asked if that is the bid opening or the bid letting. Harney responded it is the bid letting. He said the bid opening is a week or two before that. Stutsman said at one time they talked about representatives from the Communications Center giving the Board on a monthly basis. Harney said he believed he could arrange for updates. R. Sullivan said he knew they talked about getting the minutes and he saw one set of those. Harney said the minutes will be forwarded to Board members. Stutsman said she thought they would ask them to come in. Harney asked M. Sullivan to contact Planning and Community Development Director Jeff Davidson to come in on a monthly basis for an update. Kempf said he has been going to all the subcommittee meetings that fall within facility design and set up. He said they are going for gold LEED certification for the Joint Communications Center Building. Harney said even though they are instituting the Green Initiatives to save on energy, but with energy costs rising, they won't see a big drop in cost.
Stutsman asked Kempf if he had any contact with the Conservation Building at all. Kempf said he talked to Conservation Director Harry Graves one time and was told that they were still at the point where they were trying to get some clarification from the bonding company on how close or far apart the two building should be. R. Sullivan said an architect came in and explained to the Board why there was a delay. He said the architect told him they were trying to figure out what separate buildings mean. Harney said he did not hear from the architect. R. Sullivan said he thought it might have been when Harney was gone. Stutsman said she talked to him. Meyers said he had not hear from the architect either and asked who it is. R. Sullivan said Fusion Architect John Shaw. Stutsman added that Graves was with Shaw for the visit.
Lyness said there was a meeting in her office and she called Bonding Attorney Bob Josten to find out if the two buildings could be built right next to each other with a firewall. R. Sullivan said Shaw has pointed out that in downtown Iowa City there are buildings that share walls but are technically separate buildings. He said shared walls allow for more efficiency but if they have to separate them, they need to know what the State regulations are. Stutsman said it was kind of a Catch-22; Josten has never really dealt with this before so he couldn’t give an answer. Kempf said other than that he hasn’t had any other involvement.
Harney said the only concern he has is that the Board gave Kempf direction to be part of the project oversight and Kempf agreed. Harney said either the Board is going to have to step in or something else is going to have to happen. R. Sullivan said he doesn’t think they have a role for Kempf yet because they are still trying to get things figured out. Stutsman said she thinks at one time Kempf said he had some suggestions to make. Kempf said he doesn’t think he will be able to have any involvement unless the Board works with the Conservation Board to say they would like Kempf working together on this.
Stutsman said she thought the Board had asked for a joint Conservation Board-Board of Supervisors meeting and Meyers said he thought so too. R. Sullivan said the Board had talked about it and M. Sullivan agreed too. M. Sullivan said the Conservation Board has not set up any meeting yet. He said he reminds Graves about it every time he sees him. Stutsman said maybe the Chair needs to talk to Graves about it. R. Sullivan said M. Sullivan can help him select some dates that work for the Board of Supervisors to give to Graves and the Conservation Board. Lyness said the Board might also look at holding the joint meeting at the regular Conservation Board meeting on the third Wednesday every month at 5:30 p.m. Stutsman said that makes the most sense and R. Sullivan agreed.
R. Sullivan said he got a call the other day from Attorney Chuck Meardon who is representing both the Davins and the Kennedy Law Firm. He said Meardon said his clients are interested in talking with Johnson County about the County purchasing their properties. R. Sullivan said Meardon said if the County is ever considering buying them, they might as well buy them now before the value goes up. R. Sullivan said one of the five potential jail sites would probably require purchasing all or some of the properties, but obviously the Board doesn’t know if that one site is the one they are going to choose. He said there was some talk seven or eight years ago about such a possibility. R. Sullivan said he told Meardon the Board would have to have some discussion but he was welcome to meet with the Board and present a pitch.
Harney said he thinks the County could utilize the space with two of the sites the Board is considering; one probably wouldn’t materialize but the one north of the County Administration Building would certainly be advantageous to have. He said he thinks it is worth talking to them to at least see what they are asking for. Stutsman said before the Board goes any further she wants to know how viable that piece of property is as far as building something. She said she wants to know what size building could be built on it and what the status is of the Davin Building as far as historical significance. She said she'd like answers to these questions before seriously talking about it. Harney said he wouldn’t consider putting a building there and he was thinking long term parking. Stutsman asked what the County is going to do with the National Guard Armory and Harney said the Board is going to have to make a decision on a site for the Jail. He said if the Jail is put north of the Administration Building then the space would be utilized for parking; if not, the space isn't needed. Kempf one thing that Stutsman mentioned that he is concerned with is the historical significance of the one building and what type of damage was sustained by that building. Harney said he talked people who told him the basement is filled with water but the water did not reach the higher floors. Kempf said he thinks it had significant damage. R. Sullivan said he thinks that is exactly why Meardon called and said the property owner wants to know what they are going to do and if the Board is interested, now is the time.
Kempf said if the Jail was moved down to that location it could be used as parking or green space, and could be brought into the County Campus Plan relatively easily. He said he has concerns about the historical significances of that one building. He asked if it has always been there and Harney said yes, it used to be an old hotel and is designated as a historical building but isn't sure if it is on the Historical Society register. Stutsman said she needs more information before pursuing this further. Harney said if this is a property that may be considered for a buyout then it can only be used for parking or something of that nature. R. Sullivan said if they are talking about a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) buyout then only gravel parking is allowed which would make it less attractive as parking space. Kempf said he is not sure the City of Iowa City would even allow a gravel parking lot. Stutsman asked if the property identified as a historical designation can be moved or if it always has to stay in the same location. Kempf said he would like to know if the building is a historical designation or if it is on the Historical Registry. R. Sullivan said there are people interested in pursuing more regarding historical significance of the building but haven’t gotten the resources together to do it. Stutsman said that is interesting because she is serving on another committee that is with the community foundation looking at opportunities for long-term flood recovery. She said maybe that building is something that could be funded with a grant but first the preliminary questions need to be answered.
County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek said the people are going to get some insurance money. R. Sullivan said the last time the Board did this Meardon had a single person to work with, former Johnson County Attorney Pat White, and Meardon did not come before the whole Board. Stutsman said if Board enters into this again it should be with someone outside the County so that they can give it their undivided attention. She said that Lyness has a lot of other things going on just like White did when he was elected. Stutsman said when the University of Iowa wants to acquire a piece of property they really focus on acquiring it. She said she thinks the Board has lost momentum by having it drag on for so long. Harney said he suggests having M. Sullivan handle it since he was deeply involved with White years ago. M. Sullivan said he thinks making the inquiry, starting the conversation, and checking the historical significance are things he can do.
Stutsman suggested the Board give M. Sullivan some specific direction on questions they want answered. R. Sullivan said an obvious question is cost. Harney said he wants to know the historical significance of the facility. Stutsman said she wants to know how big the site is and whether the County could build a building there. Harney said he was surprised to hear that concrete surfaces are not allowed because at a recent meeting he said he heard it could be used for parking lots or baseball diamonds if it’s a buy out.
R. Sullivan said the flood record over there is not good and wondered why more concrete would be poured there. Pulkrabek asked how high the foundation would have to be for a justice center facility. Kempf said 650 feet. R. Sullivan said Durrant Group Representative Mike Lewis was present yesterday and said the issue with building up is that the water has to go somewhere else. R. Sullivan said there is a reason building isn't permitted on flood plains and it’s because by building there the problem is pushed on somebody else. He said if the Board pursues it there will be a long and arduous permitting process ahead of them.
Stutsman repeated that the Board still has a lot of unanswered questions. She said it’s ironic to her that the Iowa City Animal Shelter is relocating and here the Board is trying to locate basically into that same area. Harney and Kempf said they wouldn’t build on that location. Harney said the only thing he'd use it for is green space or parking. R. Sullivan asked if there is anything else the Board needs to tell M. Sullivan before contacting Meardon. He said Meardon’s clients wanted to get moving as quickly as possible. Harney said if M. Sullivan wants someone else to sit in on the meeting he is willing.
R. Sullivan said Linn County contracts with former member of the Iowa House and the Iowa Senate Larry Murphy. He said his brother is the Speaker of the Iowa House. R. Sullivan said Murphy is a lobbyist who takes on many clients every year. He said that Linn County has had him working for them at least five years and they have been happy with the results they have gotten. Linn County feels he has a lot of connections and is effective for them at the State level. Stutsman asked if Murphy does any Federal lobbying for Linn County. R. Sullivan said he is not sure.
R. Sullivan said the Board discussed this very informally in the past. His understanding is that it costs approximately $10,000 per legislative session. Murphy would give the Board 30 days before the session and 30 days after the session. R. Sullivan said if the Board wanted to purchase Murphy's services they would have to get on his list by the fall. He said if Murphy is working with Linn County it would be safe to say that Johnson County's issues would be fairly similar if not exactly the same, and because of this Johnson County might be able to strike some kind of a deal. R. Sullivan said this opens the floor for discussion of pros and cons.
Harney said he is concerned about competing with Linn County through the same guy for the same monies or project. He said he would prefer to have someone separate who would concentrate on and have an interest in Johnson County. Stutsman said she can understand what Harney is saying but there are so many times when the two counties' issues are the same and she thinks it would be very efficient to have one person represent two similar counties in the corridor with many of the same issues. R. Sullivan said Linn County has been incredibly gracious with Murphy. Stutsman asked if the Board wants to run the idea by Murphy to see what he thinks and how much he would charge, because that might be helpful in making the decision. Meyers asked if she meant finding out if Murphy would cut a deal and Stutsman said yes, to find out if Murphy would consider a deal. She said the Board could also contact some of the Linn County people to see if they feel there has been a benefit for Linn County for the investment.
Stutsman asked if Murphy acts for the Linn County Board of Supervisors or if he acts for all of Linn County. R. Sullivan said Murphy does it for all of Linn County but he takes his marching orders from the Linn County Board of Supervisors. He said if there is a Treasurer or Auditor issue and Linn County wants Murphy to work on it, Murphy does. Stutsman said OK because things could get overwhelming if every department was calling Murphy and asking him to work on things. R. Sullivan said Murphy has one boss and that is essentially the Linn County Board of Supervisors. Stutsman asked R. Sullivan if he has spoken to Murphy to find out if there is any interest in serving Johnson County. R. Sullivan said he thinks it was Linn County Supervisor Linda Langston who suggested last year, with Murphy in the room, that Johnson County ought to recruit Murphy's services and Murphy seemed very receptive. M. Sullivan said if the Johnson County Board of Supervisors would give him Murphy's contact information he would be happy to call him. R. Sullivan said the Board has been giving M. Sullivan a lot of stuff to do this evening and if he finds he is too busy R. Sullivan would be happy to contact Murphy himself. He said it sounds like Stutsman will have a nice opportunity to talk to at least one of the Linn County Supervisors and Stutsman confirmed. R. Sullivan said maybe the Johnson County Board of Supervisors can make a point of talking to some of the other Linn County Supervisors while they are in Kansas City.
Harney said he would like to know more about Murphy. R. Sullivan said the main reason he mentioned Murphy is because he has worked with Linn County but there are obviously other folks who do this kind of work. Stutsman said maybe the thing to do is to have Murphy come down and talk to the Board and tell them what his expertise is. R. Sullivan said there are lots of other people the Board could go with but specifically the reason for using Murphy would be twofold: one is his connections are long and deep, and two is Murphy's own experience having served in both the Iowa House and Iowa Senate. R. Sullivan said Murphy's costs are in the same ballpark as others so there is not a huge range there. Stutsman said she wonders if there are other Iowa counties who have lobbyists. Harney and R. Sullivan said Polk County does, and Harney said he is sure Scott County has a lobbyist. Stutsman said maybe they can ask Iowa State Association of Counties (ISAC) Executive Director Bill Peterson when they are at the NACo conference. R. Sullivan said a lot of cities have lobbyists including Coralville, Cedar Rapids, Sioux City, and possibly Dubuque. R. Sullivan said he and M. Sullivan will talk about getting in contact with Murphy and maybe having him come down.
R. Sullivan said obviously the Board thought they would have some of this done by now but the flood knocked everyone back. He said the Board talked about the fact that it might be nice doing their own small meetings with the staff of Senators Harkin and Grassley and Congressman Dave Loebsack. R. Sullivan said the Board needs to determine what it wants to talk to them about and then try to set up a meeting. He said at the Department Head Meeting the previous day the Board reminded people to come up with some of the federal issues they deal with so the Board will have a little bit more ammunition. R. Sullivan said in the meantime the Board should be thinking about those issues as well and start scheduling those meetings.
Harney said the Board really needs to concentrate on getting together with County Engineer Greg Parker to find out if they can request specific dollars for specific road or bridge projects resulting from flood or storm damage. He said to be honest most presidential candidates said they would put more money into the infrastructure of the Midwest and maybe now is a good time to start pushing for it. Stutsman said maybe it would be a better use of time to sit down with County staff and ask things like what is available, how is it accessed, and what is the process. R. Sullivan said that is definitely part of it; last time Stutsman made that point and he made big notes about asking the staff what grants other people apply for. Meyers said they may actually have a better sense of what is available than the actual Iowa Congressman and Iowa Senator. Harney said he wants to know what bridges are out there, which ones need a lot of attention, and whether they have the money available for those things. He said he wants specifics; for example the County is pouring a lot of money into Mehaffey Bridge and maybe there is more money out there that is available. He said it is a big project.
R. Sullivan said one part of the process is definitely earmarks. He said people sure seem to get them but not Johnson County. Stutsman agreed. Harney said maybe some research needs to be done on raising some roads. R. Sullivan said he thinks both of the last couple things are sad realities; it is safe to say that the way the game is played has changed a little bit. He said a county used to be able to go about their business and serve the people the way they felt they needed to be served. R. Sullivan said now it has become a competitive process for Federal and State largess and so the Board needs to discuss whether they are going to get more heavily involved in that game. Stutsman said the County needs to at least be at the table.
R. Sullivan said sometime in August, 2008 the Board should start setting something up after hearing from department heads. Harney said before it's too late the Board should set up meetings with the staff in Washington D.C. because their schedules can get pretty full ahead of time. R. Sullivan said the federal issues trip makes the Board wonder if they are using their local resources to the best of their ability. He said he thinks the Board knows that the answer is no. Stutsman said she has always supported Johnson County having a presence on the federal issues trip. She asked if it is really worth the Board's time and effort to go if they do not have a specific thing to lobby for. R. Sullivan said some of that depends upon how the projects are ranked and he asked if their project is not in the top seven if it even worth making the trip. Harney said he isn't sure the County would have representation and R. Sullivan and Stutsman said that is another discussion.
Stutsman said she thinks they need to sit down as a community and talk about Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) and what governments are going to do with them. She asked if Coralville is going to TIF all the flooded area and call it a blighted area. She asked if any of the Board members have heard anything and Meyers said that is a good question. Stutsman said the Board needs to be aware of that and plan accordingly. Harney said he thinks it is already in the TIF area and Stutsman said she doesn't think it is. R. Sullivan asked Stutsman if she means Edgewater Drive and Stutsman said no, she is talking about the Coralville Strip. R. Sullivan said he does not know the answer to that but clearly the folks who are the experts always say that there needs to be local discussions. Harney said the legislators say they don't even want to talk about it. Stutsman said the Board continues to try to deal with a budget that gets diminished again and again off the commercial tax base. She said she is speculating what the Board will do if Coralville starts TIFing from Sonic's all the way around the corner of Walgreens to Iowa River Power. Stutsman said Coralville could do that and that would be a lot of commercial businesses that the County will no longer get any tax revenue from. She said it has an impact on every taxpayer in Johnson County because they will have to pay additional taxes to make up for the lost tax revenue from those businesses.
R. Sullivan said he thinks it would be somewhat powerful to have someone who has been on the Board a long time, like Stutsman, say that to a room that included the council members of the towns. R. Sullivan said he thinks the discussions would be healthy. Stutsman said the discussion the Board heard at ISAC included empirical evidence that showed that what the legislature was trying to accomplish was questionable. She said what was questionable was whether the tax base has increased that much to warrant all the TIFs, and it hasn't. She said everyone feels good about getting TIFs from commercial properties because it will help the tax base but it will not. Stutsman said Coralville is a perfect example; they have benefited from all the additional tax dollars but the counties and the schools have not. R. Sullivan agreed and said it sounds like people are still interested in doing it. Meyers said yes and R. Sullivan asked if the Board wants to try to have the discussion while the experts are in the room. Stutsman said her whole hesitation is that they will be talking to the choir again. She said she bets Coralville will see this on the agenda and their representatives won't show up. Stutsman said they have been pretty selective about what they will tolerate as far as discussion on TIFs. Meyers said they can't be blamed because they are at the front of the line eating out of the trough and Stutsman agreed. Stutsman said Tiffin more so than Coralville and R. Sullivan said Tiffin and Shueyville are at a kind of precipice.
Stutsman asked how the Board can present the topic without finger-pointing and putting the towns on the defensive. R. Sullivan said he isn't sure that everyone fully appreciates the services that Johnson County provides to people living in incorporated areas. He said town representatives think if the County doesn't get its fair share it isn't a big deal. R. Sullivan said the Board needs to make cases for Mental Health/Disability Services (MH/DS), Ambulance Services, Public Health, and Human Services. Stutsman said if the town representatives are going to say providing those services is the County's responsibility then the Board needs to ask for the money to provide services adequately.
Stutsman said if the Board is going to proceed with this they need to have a very well-thought out good presentation and R. Sullivan asked if they are talking about doing a joint meeting or a meeting with experts. Stutsman said it seems like the experts need to be directed to the community. R. Sullivan said he is still in favor of bringing the experts in and Stutsman agreed. She said something that came out of the presentation was how important it is for governmental entities to sit down and talk. R. Sullivan said there are things that the Board doesn't do but could. For example he said, it would be nice if someone would come into the Board room and tell the Board if the County is not going to receive increments on a property for a while. Stutsman agreed. Harney said the problem is that right up front the town representatives are going to say that they are going to follow Iowa State Law. He said the Board has already been told that and the town representatives aren't going to agree to anything else. Meyers agreed and said the town representatives aren't likely to change their habits until they are forced to by the Iowa Code. Meyers asked Harney if he said the legislature said they don't even want to discuss it and Harney said he doesn't even want to go there.
Stutsman said the Board isn't asking them to throw out the whole law but just to make some changes. For example she said, to put some time limits on it and put some accountability into it. Meyers said it could go as far as requiring the County and the school district to sign off on it too. R. Sullivan said it will at least make the legislature think about it. He said Iowa City has a tendency to give the TIF increment back to the developer whereas Coralville uses the increment to run City projects. He pointed out that these are two totally different approaches. Stutsman said to Iowa City's credit, they take theirs off, they do not indefinitely maximize the full legal amount of time. R. Sullivan said some of that is because some communities use it for operations and the other communities give it back to the developer.
Stutsman said maybe the Board is talking to the wrong people, maybe the legislature needs to be a part of the presentation. R. Sullivan said the Board should definitely invite them and Stutsman agreed. R. Sullivan said he and M. Sullivan talked about getting together with Iowa State University Professor and Economist Dave Swenson, University of Iowa Urban and Regional Planning Professor Peter Fisher, and Bonding Attorney Bob Josten and maybe they need to establish a time to meet with at least two of them. Stutsman said she thinks Josten may be too expensive, but Harney said if Josten is the authority on it, he could have some good input for a serious discussion. M. Sullivan said he will contact these people to gather information about fees and availability.
Harney said he thinks it is time the Board takes a stand with the State of Iowa particularly the Department of Transportation (DOT) on the new program being put into place where the County has to pay for all the approaches, particularly with Highway 1 where the County will have to pay for the hard surface from the highway to the property line of Morse Road, Newport Road, and Rapid Creek Road. He said it isn't going to stop there and they are just going to nickel and dime the counties to death. R. Sullivan asked if the DOT is going to charge individual property owners for driveways. Harney said no, and repeated that the DOT is going to start charging the counties for the hard surface from the highway to the property line. Stutsman said she wonders if that is something that should be channeled through the ISAC legislative process.
Harney said he thinks the Board needs to go to ISAC and make a stand on it to see if they are interested. He said it just seems like costs just keep going to the counties. Stutsman said all this cost shifting is crazy. Harney said he knows the DOT is doing that on Highway 1 and he thinks it is time the Board questions this. Stutsman said it is an unplanned expense the Board didn't have in their budget. Meyers agreed and R. Sullivan said it is one of those things where the Board will have to use the contractor that's out there. He said these projects should probably be bid but it is almost like a scam if the contractor out there is going to be able to have a better bid right there. Harney said yes, they are present at the time and it is cheaper for them to do it at the time, but asked why the counties should be the ones paying for it. Stutsman said she bets that the DOT will have the contractor do it and bill the counties for all of them. Harney said it is their right-of-way. Stutsman said she thinks the County could almost take that to court. Harney agreed.
R. Sullivan said the Board should get in touch with ISAC and Stutsman said maybe the Board should ask ISAC Legal Counsel David Vestal for his legal opinion. She said maybe this is one of those class-action lawsuits where all the counties chip in. Harney said he doesn't mind calling Vestal to see what he says. R. Sullivan said Harney can report back at the next Board meeting. R. Sullivan said he doesn't want to go too far without involving County Attorney Janet Lyness and Harney suggested Parker also be involved.
Stutsman asked the Board if they felt uneasy at the July 8, 2008 Department Head Meeting when SEATS Director Tom Brase said he was making arrangements for everybody to wash their cars at the SEATS Bay. Harney said the Board hadn't approved that. Stutsman asked if that is Brase's decision. She said they were talking about the new building out at Secondary Roads and Brase mentioned that he had a wash bay. Stutsman said she wasn’t sure if it was County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek asking if he could bring his vehicles there for washing. She said that pretty soon every department that has a vehicle was saying they wanted to bring their vehicles in. She said Brase was then saying yes to everyone. Harney said it was the first he had ever heard about it. R. Sullivan said car washing should come out of departmental budgets. Harney asked who made the decision to put a carwash out there in the first place. He said he didn’t know it was included and Stutsman asked if the carwash is for Secondary Roads or SEATS. R. Sullivan said he remembered them saying wash bay but didn't think it was a drive-thru and added the Board needs to follow up. Stutsman said that Brase said East Central Iowa Council of Governments (ECICOG) had bought the machine and they may have some limitations on who can use it. Meyers said he’s sure they didn't think they were buying something to service every County vehicle.
Stutsman said she knows that the Board pays for a lot of carwashes but those businesses pay a lot in property taxes and she is concerned about taking business away from local businesses. R. Sullivan said that is a Catch-22; the taxpayers want the Board to do stuff cheaply but they also want local businesses involved too. He said he had assumptions that the wash bay would serve Secondary Roads and SEATS vehicles that were too big to run through Westport Carwash.
Harney said he thinks it is time for the Board to change the job description for the Secretary II of the Board office. He said there is a lot more work that can be done out there and he doesn’t think it is a good use of time to be sitting on the phone talking to family and doing whatever else and not doing the Board's business, especially since so much work has been given to M. Sullivan. R. Sullivan said the job description is a union job description. M. Sullivan confirmed and added that changing a job description has to be agreed upon by the union, and if one is changed, everyone in that classification will have to be changed as well. R. Sullivan said the job description is pretty broad. M. Sullivan said Human Resources Administrator Lora Shramek is always cautioning everybody about sweeping a broad brush over union job descriptions. The County has to be very careful about giving union employees in a specific job classification responsibilities that are not specifically in their job description. Harney said then maybe the Board needs to reorganize and assign a totally different job to that position. M. Sullivan said that is one thing Harney has talked about before. R. Sullivan said maybe the place to start is to ask M. Sullivan if he is being asked to do things that would fit under the Secretary II job description and could he try to transfer those responsibilities to that position. If that approach doesn’t work, he thinks maybe reorganization is the answer.
Stutsman said there are a lot of issues with the agendas and the Board needs somebody who can go through the agendas making administrative decisions, and that it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. She said she thinks M. Sullivan could get a lot of help with that from the Secretary II who could make sure the Board has the background information on agenda items. Stutsman said she thinks it is real important that the dollar amounts for contracts are on the agenda, and that is something that the person could always make sure is there. She said that is not so much administrative work as it is detail work. R. Sullivan said if a department head sends something to the Board, his advice would be to put the exact language on the agenda and let the Chair and the Executive Assistant make the edits. He said the fact that if takes 15 conversations to get an individual item on the agenda is wasteful. Harney said it isn’t just the wording; it’s the details that go with it. He said M. Sullivan does a good job of contacting people to let them know they are on the agenda and at what time. Harney said it upset him recently when the Sheriff's contract was on the agenda but there was never a representative from the Sheriff’s Department at the Board meeting. He said there have been two different meetings when no one from the Sheriff's Department showed up. R. Sullivan said in fairness to the Sheriff, Pulkrabek was gone and R. Sullivan told Sheriff’s Captain Steve Dolezal that since he was the only one in the office, Dolezal did not have to come to the Board meeting.
Harney said it is important that everyone on the Board knows what they are agreeing to. R. Sullivan said he agrees that the Board should have had an executive summary that showed the hours per town and the cost. Harney said he just thinks there is a lot of work in that office that can be done by the Secretary II that isn’t getting done. Stutsman said he should be able to delegate a lot more work. Harney said M. Sullivan should tell Harney now if Harney is wrong, and if everything is working fine, to say so. M. Sullivan said it’s not that it hasn’t been working fine since he started but rather the way it’s set up in the Board office. He said he can’t see hiring another full-time employee to do something that can be done with the existing staff.
M. Sullivan said in delegating work to the Secretary II he spends more time explaining how to do it then getting it done. He said when he is really busy and he knows that completing a task requires a phone call, he will just make the phone call himself because it inevitably doesn’t get done correctly, or he gets six different questions before the call is made. M. Sullivan said in the time it takes to answer all those questions he could have had the call made and a decision made. He said there are things that are done here that are confidential and the Secretary II does not qualify as confidential, so there are some things he cannot delegate. Stutsman asked M. Sullivan if he thinks the Board needs to redo the job description because hiring another full-time employee is not the answer. M. Sullivan and Harney agreed. M. Sullivan said if he is going to use someone he would rather use an intern from the College of Business graduate program. R. Sullivan said the Board needs to hear from M. Sullivan in terms of what he feels the Board can do. R. Sullivan said the Board is frustrated and so is M. Sullivan. M. Sullivan said agreed. Harney said it is nothing against who is out there now, she does an excellent job but Harney just doesn’t think the job description is at the level the Board needs.
M. Sullivan said the Board used to have a Deputy Administrative Assistant and a Secretary Administrative Assistant so they used to have full-time employees from the beginning. He said former Administrative Assistant Carol Peters used to do the agendas and Board Secretary Jo Hogarty would type things and store them but never prepare things. M. Sullivan said before he was hired the Board didn’t have a Deputy Administrative Assistant, they had former Budget Coordinator Jeff Horne and Hogarty. M. Sullivan said for about eight months, the Board didn’t have an administrative assistant or an executive assistant and things morphed from there. M. Sullivan said he still talks to Shramek about that and he would like to know why some job descriptions can be changed but others not. He said he would not want the Board to be viewed as causing problems with regards to changing the duties of the Secretary II job description. R. Sullivan said it is probably the most common job description in the County.
Stutsman said the Board needs to decide after getting input from everybody including M. Sullivan, whether to change the position classification. She asked if the Board needs to do away with the Secretary II position and come up with an Administrative Secretary or something like that. Harney said he thinks they hit it right on the head, times have changed and the job description has not changed. He said County government has grown so much and the Board needs to adjust and accommodate their needs. M. Sullivan agreed. He said many things can be done by administrative assistants in the County and that’s where he is heading with this. Stutsman said in most departments the Board has set up so that if a department head isn’t there this second person steps in and make the decisions. She said the Board doesn’t have that here at all and that could not be expected in the current set up. M. Sullivan said if he is out of the office, his responsibilities fall to the Board members. He said that Budget Coordinator Richard Claiborne takes care of payroll and budget and that is never an issue because he knows exactly what to do. M. Sullivan said that when he isn’t here the work just grinds to a halt. Harney said he thinks that position needs to be a confidential one because there is no reason that position can’t be handling the evaluation process. Stutsman agreed. M. Sullivan said he agrees and thinks his input is important for the Board however he doesn’t think it’s important for him to sit inside the Board room and type it for the Board. Stutsman said she is talking about the legwork ahead of time; the basic clerical stuff.
Facilities Manager David Kempf said he is going to close the east drive into the Administration Building because there is an ever-growing sinkhole that is now three times the size it once was. M. Sullivan asked if this is what they talked about the previous day and Kempf confirmed. Kempf said he painted the sinkhole so the Board could see exactly where it was then and where it is now. He said he left messages with the City Engineer and talked to someone from that office a little while ago. Kempf said they told him they will make sure the Iowa City Engineer gets back to him. Stutsman asked if it is the County’s responsibility and Kempf said he thinks it is Iowa City’s responsibility. Meyers said Iowa City just closed Iowa Avenue last night. Kempf said he thinks there will probably be more and more sinkholes showing up because there is another one starting to form about halfway down to the corner going south along another storm sewer.
R. Sullivan asked Kempf if he has everything he needs to close the area. Kempf said yes; he just wanted to let the Board know and he will send an e-mail out to all the department heads and elected officials in the building to let them know. R. Sullivan said Iowa City is going to need to close the sidewalk too. Kempf said his department is going to go ahead and close the sidewalk and the drive. He said Iowa City will probably have to come and dig it all up because the storm sewer has dropped down. Kempf repeated he wanted to let the Board know that his department is going to have to close off the sidewalk and drive.
M. Sullivan asked the Board to let him go ahead and talk to Shramek about the Secretary II job description. He said he has some ideas about how to open up this discussion without Hogarty getting upset and he will return to the Board with his ideas before they talk about any changes. No matter what happens in the Board office, Hogarty is still in the position and it will need to be handled in a specific way.
Meyers said he was looking at an action plan summary from a couple months ago and it was nice to refer back to it. M. Sullivan said this is something an administrative assistant can do. An administrative assistant would be someone with the skill sets to do the work. He said he wants somebody who knows how to do the work and can come to him and ask him questions. Meyers said sometimes it might require them sitting in on the meeting and listening to what is going on. M. Sullivan said that is acceptable, particularly if he is on vacation or there is another disaster. R. Sullivan said there is a fear that things won’t be done right but the Executive Assistant and the Chair always go over stuff before it goes out. M. Sullivan said he wants to make sure that everything that has been talked about that needs to be in front of the Board is on the agenda. He said he will work on that with Human Resources.
R. Sullivan said three people are going to be gone, and Neuzil won’t be back until the following week. Stutsman said she is going to leave Saturday and come back Tuesday evening and R. Sullivan said he is on the exact same schedule. He said if something comes up during that time he will have his cell phone with him, and Stutsman said she will have hers with her too. R. Sullivan said he is assuming everyone will be available. M. Sullivan said he has every Board member’s cell phone number programmed into his. Stutsman said the Board runs into each other a lot of the time. Stutsman said she doesn’t hear her cell phone a lot of the time so she wants to apologize if she doesn’t answer it. M. Sullivan said he will just leave a message and R. Sullivan repeated cell phone calls would be the way to go if he and Stutsman are needed during that time.
Adjourned at 10:37 a.m.
Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor
By John Deeth, Recording Secretary