MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
AUGUST 13, 2008
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Key Issues Work Session........................................................................................................ 1
Soil and Water Conservationist Adam Galluzzo: Progress Report/Update to the Board of Supervisors 1
Human Resources Director Lora Shramek and Human Resources Coordinator Dana Winkowitsch: Departmental Exceptions to Employee Handbook Policies............................................................ 3
Assistant Planner Josh Busard: Cool Counties Plan....................................................... 7
Assistant Planner Josh Busard and Facilities Manager David Kempf: Joint Cool Cities/County Advisory Committee........................................................................................................................... 7
Assistant Planner Josh Busard: Hosting a Regional ICLEI Conference......................... 12
County Engineer Greg Parker: Ag Driveways and Subdivision Process........................ 13
Naming Conference Room in the New Health and Human Services Building................ 15
Deputy Auditor Dana Aschenbrenner: GASB 45........................................................ 17
Adding an Additional Key Issues Meeting.................................................................. 19
Discussion from the Public: Nez Perce County, Idaho Commissioner Doug Zetter......... 20
Adding an Additional Key Issues Meeting.................................................................. 21
Facilities Director David Kempf: Project Updates....................................................... 22
Ag Driveways and Subdivision Processes................................................................... 25
Reports from NACo Conference............................................................................... 29
Internal Processes, Expectations, and Other Operational Issues of the Board of Supervisors Office 31
Chairperson Sullivan called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 9:00 a.m. Members present were: Pat Harney, Larry Meyers, Terrence Neuzil, Sally Stutsman, and Rod Sullivan.
Soil and Water Conservationist Adam Galluzzo said he wanted to give a quick update on some of the work at the district and some of the big projects they have been working on. Galluzzo said Area Engineer Wendall Jones was in asking for the Board’s support as sponsor for the Emergency Watershed Protection Department (EWPD.) Galluzzo said he toured with Secondary Roads to see what the County has been surveying for road damage from rains and the wet winter, spring, and summer. He said he has done a number of tours and wants to provide photos for the Board so they can see what Soil and Water Conservation is seeing throughout the county and what they are looking for to help repair and restore damage.
Galluzzo showed the first photo with wet debris and said it is pretty typical from a wet year. He said they can help remove the debris with the EWP program. Neuzil asked if the fence was there because of animals. He asked what would happen if they continued to do nothing. Neuzil wanted to know if that would back up and cause a problem. Galluzzo said yes. He said people come into their office to say they have a log jam in their creek. He said a log jam backs up the water and dams it up like a beaver dam. Galluzzo said water will flow around into a field and will start cutting into the bank and even change the channel. Neuzil asked if residents should call Galluzzo to deal with that or if that is the residents’ responsibility. Galluzzo said if they are taking out other trees in their field, they’ll need to do a wetland determination to see if that will impact any wetland area. He said they will make sure that what they are doing won't impact their status with the farm program.
Galluzzo showed the next photo of a bank eroding, adding that the photo doesn’t do it justice, but there is about ten to 15 feet that’s been eroded plus there is quite a bit of water flowing. He said they can see how the debris is altering the flow a little bit and it is moving the water into the bank. He said it is doing the same thing on the other side of the bank. R. Sullivan asked if the muddy area was actually 15 feet long. Galluzzo said it was 15 feet high and is pretty severe bank erosion. He said the bridge is about 15 feet away. He said he is taking GPS points of all these areas to send to their engineers and they are working with the County Engineers. Galluzzo added this is now identified as an area that needs stabilization.
Galluzzo then showed a third photo of a culvert with erosion around it, but he noted a dark spot that was about two feet from the road which is cutting back towards the road. This is another area where stabilization is needed. He said this might not be something they can cost share, as they can't actually fix the structures or the roads. Galluzzo said the program they are working with is for preventative measures, the stabilization of banks upstream and downstream, and the removal of debris.
R. Sullivan said that the second photo of a bank eroding seems to be a good candidate for the program that Jones was talking about last week. R. Sullivan added that though the County doesn't own the land, the erosion would impact the bridge if they don't do something about it. He said this is where they could use that money. Galluzzo said they could apply for funding for this project. R. Sullivan said they need to get the cooperation of the landowner first. Galluzzo agreed and said Secondary Roads is familiar with the process in getting permission to go on the property for as long as is necessary to stabilize it.
Neuzil asked what caused the conditions in Galluzzo's third picture. Galluzzo said the wet conditions, the saturated ground, and a concentrated flow of water. There is a big hill there and the water is just building up on the road with no where to go and it spills over. Another reason is that the culvert could have been plugged up during a heavy rain and the water shed could have sent enough water down that it built up and even got up to that height.
Galluzzo said they’ve been busy identifying areas needing repair and getting funds to help Secondary Roads get the work done. Galluzzo said that in addition to the EWP projects, he has been working with Assistant Planner Josh Busard and other Planning and Zoning staff. He said they had more Sensitive Areas Ordinance applications and they are coming along great. Galluzzo said the ordinance is serving its purpose and doing a great job of making people step back and look at the conditions of the ground. He said there are some difficulties with the new ordinance and people coming along with a new set of regulations. Nonetheless, it is successful and people are learning how to work together to assemble the reports they need to make sure everything is checked out.
Galluzzo said it was his final week as a Soil and Water Conservationist, and that he is moving on as a GIS analyst. He thanked the Board for their support. Neuzil asked if the process of finding a replacement for him had started yet. Galluzzo replied a Board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, August 19, 2008. Neuzil asked if there will be a lapse between transitions. Galluzzo said a little but that they also have Amy Bouska, who is an urban conservationist through the State. He said she will be able to help in Planning and Zoning. Galluzzo added Soil and Water Conservationist James Martin is still in a day a week, so he will also be available to help.
Stutsman arrived at 8:37 a.m.
Human Resources Director Lora Shramek said that department exceptions to the Employee Handbook policies is not a new topic, the Board has discussed this before at a few Department Head Meetings and also when the new handbook was implemented. She said a specific question arose recently which was addressed by new employees both in the department and in Human Resources. Shramek said they checked the Employee Handbook first and found there wasn't anything in reference to the particular situation. She said there wasn't anything in writing, yet it is a long-standing practice. Shramek said this creates administration problems. She said the new Employee Handbook approved by the Board last year, recognizes that department heads have varied responsibilities and duties. Shramek added that not all policies and regulations can be covered in the book and it also says department heads may not unilaterally make changes to the handbook policies without written authorization from the Board. She said when this particular situation came up, she discussed it with Harney to make sure she was handling it appropriately, and Harney suggested the Board discuss it at the Key Issues Meeting. Shramek said other than the concern with administrative issues, there are consistency and fairness issues as well. She said she thought it would be good to document the exceptions and have them on file.
Stutsman asked who makes the exceptions. Shramek said the department heads. Stutsman asked if they can make the exceptions without Board approval. Shramek replied that would be for the Board to decide. Neuzil asked what has been the past practice. Shramek replied that some of the department heads have made exceptions without Board approval. R. Sullivan said the tough thing for the Board in this situation is oversight. R. Sullivan said the Board is unable to monitor departments closely enough to know if one department head is giving extra time off. He said the only way the Board would find out is if someone complains. He said he wasn’t sure what to do other than remind department heads that if they are going to vary from handbook policies, it is their responsibility to tell the Board.
Stutsman said she thought the Board would definitely need to know and it could be chaos if every department head wanted to make exceptions to everything in the handbook. Shramek added there could be costs involved. Harney said one of his concerns is that it becomes past practice if it goes on for a while. Stutsman asked Shramek if she is going to talk about a specific incident. She said she has four different departments and some of them have a couple of items. Stutsman said it is more of a policy decision. Neuzil said it would be helpful to have Human Resources document the incidents and forward them to the Board. He said the process should work like this: Shramek identifies which department heads were noncompliant, Shramek communicates with the department head’s liaison, and then the liaisons communicate with the department head. He asked if Shramek would be comfortable talking to department heads about Board procedures. Stutsman said she is going to be stronger about this. She said as a Board, they give department heads a lot of autonomy and flexibility in running their departments. She said they need to draw the line somewhere. Stutsman added that when the Board adopted the handbook she assumed it applied to all the department heads in the County. She said there may be extenuating circumstances and special exceptions and she wants to hear about those cases and make case-by-case decisions whether to allow exceptions. She said they are a small enough County that word of mouth gets around, and there can be financial implications if there are not already. Stutsman said she believes in being fair and consistent. She said there is inconsistency between the departments and that’s just not right. Shramek pointed out that the Board may want to implement some of the exceptions for the entire County. R. Sullivan said at some point he would like to see the list because the Board needs to know what is happening.
Harney responded he doesn't think it will hurt to talk about examples without naming departments or individuals, but just to figure out what is going on. Meyers said he would like an idea of whether the issues are minor or really significant. Facilities Manager David Kempf asked if they were talking about exceptions to the handbook or departmental rules that are in addition to the handbook. Shramek responded the discussion is not about departmental rules. She explained every department has rules and procedures. Kempf said he doesn't know if she is talking about a department excluding things from the handbook. Shramek responded these are compensation and benefit related items. R. Sullivan said he is getting a sense that people want to get some examples without identifying the individual departments.
Stutsman said again, this is a policy statement. She said the question to address is if they are going to allow exceptions in the departments or not, or do they have to be reviewed by the Board. Stutsman said she does not feel she needs to hear every example, unless the Board decides they need to consider the examples. Shramek said she doesn't think this is the venue to bring it to the Board if it is incorporated in the handbook, as she would like it to go through the Employee Handbook Committee first. She said some examples are paying out a certain amount of vacation every year, granting allowances for clothing and shoes, the way holiday pay is calculated, and longevity payments. Stutsman asked if this is for people outside the union contracts. Shramek said yes. R. Sullivan said based on those examples he doesn't see any reason to deviate from the current policy. Harney said one issue which comes up includes employees getting certain payouts that are not passed on to administration. Shramek said that what Harney is talking about is that some of these may be incorporated in the union contract, and so management mirrored that for management employees. R. Sullivan said management is supposed to mirror the Administration Unit. Shramek said that is what they hope for and with the mirroring of some of the benefits, she said she is seeing cherry picking where they'll go for the payouts but won't go for the lesser vacation. R. Sullivan said that is totally inappropriate. Shramek said it sends the wrong message to the union. Stutsman agreed.
Stutsman asked if beginning today, the Board is agreeing to not allow these things or if it was just for new hires. Shramek said that is the Board’s decision. She said it will be best to get everything documented for the Board to review and then the Board can make decisions based on the documented facts. R. Sullivan asked when the next Department Head Meeting is. Stutsman and Neuzil said the next meeting is September 16, 2008. R. Sullivan said that is an appropriate time to have this issue on the agenda. Shramek said her concern is that there won’t be any follow-up as has happened twice before when the issue was discussed. She said the Board brings it up but there has been no follow-up. She said she isn’t sure if people really are going to be forthright in telling the Board that they have not followed protocol. R. Sullivan said liaisons are going to have to follow up with their individual departments. Stutsman disagreed. She said the Board should take some leadership here and say they are not going to allow exceptions unless they review the individual situations and decide as a Board. She said each Board member approaches liaisons in different ways and has different connections with department heads. Stutsman said that some liaisons say it is fine with them while others say it isn't okay. She said, as a member of the Board, they all need to hear the current situation and all make a decision. R. Sullivan said he agrees with her that the Board does not make exceptions, but that the liaisons would be the ones to check up on department heads.
Shramek added that elected officials have to be treated differently. R. Sullivan said that is a real frustration because the pay out with the Sheriff's Office has had considerable discussion by the Board. He said it is pretty upsetting to him to hear that other departments are doing the same thing. R. Sullivan said they have had long discussions about not being able to do anything about these situations, but they could do something about departments falling under the Board’s purview. He said it makes him angry to hear that departments are doing so when they aren't supposed to.
Stutsman said they haven't had clear direction either. She said department heads want to be good to their employees, and if there is no clear direction, she can see where they are coming from. Stutsman said that is why she thinks the Board needs to have a clear position and consistently convey it to all department heads. R. Sullivan said he thought the Board has done so at Department Head Meetings. He said the Board told department heads that if they are not in the bargaining unit then they follow the employee handbook. Stutsman asked why it is happening then. R. Sullivan said that is a good question. Shramek said it is happening because there isn't any follow-up. Stutsman asked Shramek what the follow-up was. Shramek said follow-up would be if she knows something is an issue in a particular department, she will bring it to the Board for a decision on whether to refer it to the Handbook Committee for consideration for all County employees. Stutsman asked if Shramek would convey that message to department heads. Shramek replied she thought that should come from the Board. Stutsman first asked how the Board will know, then she said she understood that the Board will explain that the process will be not to allow exceptions outside the handbook policy unless reviewed and approved by the Board. She added the Board may consider making exceptions.
R. Sullivan said the Board agreed to include this on the agenda at the next Department Head Meeting. He asked if emails needed to be sent out. Stutsman said that would be a good idea and then the Board could reinforce it at the Department Head Meeting. R. Sullivan said he didn't want this to go on for another 45 days. Shramek said she doesn't like to advertise this because she doesn't want more things added to the existing list.
Harney said he relies on Human Resources to bring pay-out inconsistencies to the Board's attention. He said he doesn't know what the pay-out procedure is for each department, and asked if there is a way for the issues to be flagged for the Board. Shramek said she verifies payroll authorizations and payouts do not come through Human Resources. Shramek said payouts are handled through Accounts Payable. Harney said they kind of go by everyone then. Shramek said she believes the Auditor's Office has filed things in the past, but it would have to come through them. Stutsman said there is a part of her that is incredulous that department heads think they can make monetary decisions. She said since the Board gives them line item flexibility within their budget, they must feel that if it’s in their budget they can set the policies and she is real concerned about this.
Harney said what is happening is they are comparing it with the union employees and are saying they should be treated the same but it’s not the way the Board’s handbook is written. Shramek said she has tried to change it with the hiring of new department heads, but even then it is difficult. She said they question specific entries in the handbook and discover they are dated. Stutsman said that an employee could come forward saying when other employees left, they got some sort of payout. Shramek said it is hard to say no. Harney asked what direction to go in. R. Sullivan said the item will go on the next Department Head Meeting agenda. Shramek asked if the Board wants an email sent out. Harney said yes. Stutsman said she doesn’t understand why people would start doing that if the Board said from this day forward the Board will not allow it. She asked if the Board needs to make a formal motion or take action on it. R. Sullivan said it is already policy and asked if the Board wanted an email from Shramek or the Board. R. Sullivan asked Shramek to submit an email text to the Board for signature. Harney said he doesn't like the idea of just forwarding department heads past rules. He said he thinks the Board needs to say department heads need to follow the handbook, period. Stutsman said the handbook does say exceptions can be considered and approved by the Board. Meyers said if department heads are going to make exceptions they need the Board’s approval.
Assistant Planner Josh Busard said he has consulted with R. Sullivan and Kempf. He said first they’d like to prepare a County sustainability plan just for County operations: vehicles, how they run their buildings, and other efficiencies they can realize. Busard said that after speaking with R. Sullivan the best way to approach this is to create a policy by fall of 2008. He said he hopes the policy will be much akin to the Land Use Plan. The policy will include an implementation schedule and goals the County would like to achieve. Busard said he will prepare a draft, get other opinions, and then seek Board approval.
Busard said, secondly, R. Sullivan and himself are considering organizing an advisory committee to reduce greenhouse gases for the County as a whole. He said the unincorporated county area, Iowa City, Coralville, and all the other smaller incorporated areas will come up with a ten-person panel, fashioned like the Land Use plan, to come up with sustainability goals in the sectors he discussed: transportation, housing, education, and government, and how they can bring that all together. Busard said hopefully the document will be a joint effort by all the municipalities, the County and the University, which can be adopted by the entire County. R. Sullivan said that on August 20, 2008, there will be a joint cities meeting, and Iowa City City Clerk Marian Karr sent out a request for agenda items. R. Sullivan said he put this on the agenda, recalling the Board arrived at a consensus to have just one meeting for all cities countywide. Busard said one thing he learned from the ICLEI conference in Albuquerque was that if everyone comes together to work on a document as a whole, that is the best practice. He said it represents everyone working together. Stutsman asked if they have buy-in from all the other entities. R. Sullivan said they did before the flood. Neuzil asked which communities are sustainable. Busard replied Iowa City, North Liberty, Coralville, Johnson County, and the schools. R. Sullivan said the University has already offered a person who is willing to serve on the advisory committee. Stutsman said to make anything successful all the participants need to buy into the plan. She said she wants to make sure the Board isn't telling folks they need to do this, that they recognize on their own it is important enough and ask to be included.
R. Sullivan said it was Earth Day when the Board was at the Library, and everyone said they would do this. Then a month later the flood happened and people have been busy. Busard said Iowa City and North Liberty are actually in the lead of everyone else. Meyers said if that is the case, they might welcome the joint stimulus package. Neuzil said Iowa City City Council Member Ross Wilburn was trying to pursue a green team approach and Mike Carberry was really interested. R. Sullivan said the Sierra Club was interested in being on the committee but wasn’t sure they’d have enough people to serve on six different committees. He said the Sierra Club said they could definitely have one or two people on one. Stutsman asked if the advisory committee’s purpose and responsibilities are clearly defined. Busard said he is still working on that. R. Sullivan said they had been talking about using the Trails Advisory Committee as a model. He said they do give advice. Harney said he’d like to see this come before the Board. Stutsman said committee members need to be clear about what their role is before the Board proceeds. Neuzil said that perhaps the strategic planning process could be helpful too. He said it would be one of the five majors anyway, and maybe the Board would get more out of that once they know what their charge is. Neuzil said Meyers and himself have the NACo approach to it. He said it starts with looking at what can be done within government, then moves towards examining air and water pollution. Neuzil said with the County’s current flood issues it would be great to have a regional policy restricting building in flood plains. He said all this could be a part of the whole green team approach.
Kempf said they will have representatives from the University and different cities as well as the County. He said these individuals will have vision and direction for their municipality. R. Sullivan said he agrees with Busard that restricting staff people from serving on the committee would be important. R. Sullivan said that staff people are definitely welcome at meetings and welcome to be part of the discussion. He recalled that’s what occurred with the Land Use Committee and it seemed to work well. Harney said he understood, but at the same time someone in authority needs to be part of the committee. Neuzil said the process might mean the Board invests in someone else to help out. Meyers asked if it could be a Johnson County Council of Governments (JCCOG) type thing. Neuzil said possibly, or it could be similar to how the County is hiring a coordinator to help with the Jail issues. He said it could be a pretty heavy task for someone to chair the whole thing. Neuzil said that other Counties have hired individuals or consulting groups to lead the effort.
R. Sullivan asked if the Board is comfortable with bringing this to the bigger group. Busard asked if R. Sullivan will take it to the Joint Cities meeting. R. Sullivan said they should all be there since they all agreed to do it. Busard asked for a time frame to schedule a first meeting. R. Sullivan said the group doesn't meet until August 20, 2008, and they haven’t yet appointed someone from Johnson County. He said there is a month-long process to put together an advisory committee. Neuzil said he is expecting to get some direction at the meeting on August 20, 2008 to see if staff from the County, the City of Iowa City, North Liberty, and Coralville would meet to start putting together a ten person panel. Busard said this is definitely cutting edge in government. Neuzil mentioned some cities, such as Alexandria, Virginia; and Seattle in King County, Washington. R. Sullivan mentioned Morin County, California.
Assistant Planning and Zoning Administrator R.J. Moore said he is working in the metro area on a Joint Fringe Area Agreement so to speak. He said he likes what Busard is saying. He said they need a baseline to start with. Moore said he thinks the Board agrees with Busard's recommendation that they need something in place for the County. He said then, when they go to the larger group they have already determined what direction to take. Moore said if they get ahead of themselves with the larger project before they have a concrete idea of what the County wants to do, they may run into problems that can bog them down. Moore said the risk here is committee members would start to lose interest. He said he thinks they should start the discussions with them to make sure they want to work as a team. Moore thought he would prioritize having Busard and Kempf start putting together policies for the Board to examine and agree on a direction.
R. Sullivan said he agrees, but that before they formally adopt any goals, he would like the group look at it. He said he’d expect the group members will have expertise and experience and bring in new ideas. Moore said he knows Busard and Kempf have done a lot of ground work for the Board and he thinks they have a good start on everything. R. Sullivan asked if Busard is confident that no other city has done anything. Busard said the University has done quite a bit on the operations side. He said he has not heard from Iowa City, Coralville, or North Liberty. He said when he spoke with the ICLEI folks they hadn't done much. He said he thinks Iowa City is starting an inventory and someone in the Transit Department is going to head that up. Neuzil said he thinks the University has plans in place, and part of it is University of Iowa Utilities and Energy Management Director Glen Mowery who does everything such as sustainability issues with the UI buildings. Neuzil said they host conferences and they have public community events. R. Sullivan said he is pretty impressed because the person University of Iowa President Sally Mason said she would like to have involved is her top assistant, University of Iowa Law Professor Jonathan Carlson.
Stutsman said she agrees but she is worried they are getting the cart before the horse. She stated that in order to get people on board the Board needs a pretty clear picture about what they are about. Stutsman said the first thing is a charge defining who should be doing what. She explained that if at the meeting on August 20, 2008 the Board asked people to serve on an advisory committee, they need to have some ground work laid out before the Board tries to recruit people. Meyers said if they are working on a sustainability plan with goals, and an implementation schedule that goes hand in hand with this. Busard suggested they write up a proposal. Stutsman said if she is in Coralville, she would want to know what she signed up for. She asked if they are agreeing to sustainability plans. Busard said they aren't agreeing to a sustainability plan, they are simply agreeing to join a committee to create a plan. He said once they create a sustainability plan, every municipality will have the opportunity to adopt it or not. Busard said it represents general buy-in, it provides documentation for the County to show it is in their sustainability plan, and that the County has agreed to a particular type of vehicle fleet. He said in the future they could discuss extending transit systems to the fringe areas. R. Sullivan said he supposed there will be things the County says they are going to do or not do, and a couple of cities that say they are not doing that also, which is okay. Busard said it is just a guide, like the Land Use Plan.
Harney said he thinks they need to have a plan laid out of what the Board is doing and where they are going. He said then they can go to the combined cities meeting to show people what they’re planning and invite them to be part of it; letting folks know the Board wants their representation to be part of implementation and decision making. Harney said he doesn't want the plan to fall aside because individuals won’t participate. The Board, he said, needs to take a leadership roll. Moore said the joint cities meeting is a good venue for the Board to do this. He said the Board can bring them up to date and that should motivate the cities to come together to formulate a regional plan.
R. Sullivan said so far, Busard and Kempf have done a lot of work but have not involved the community. He said there are people itching to weigh in on this. Busard said if he and Kempf could get their County Operations Plan hammered down it would be a good baseline. Busard said this will allow them to show others they have their act together and are not just creating committees to create more committees. Kempf said once the policy, direction, or mission is developed people will be more likely to buy into the plan. Kempf said people would then feel confident they could implement the plan within their entities and that’s when the buy-in occurs. He said then is the time to form the committee with a common mission statement reflecting all entities are working towards the same goal. He said North Liberty may do things differently from Iowa City, who does it different from Coralville, who does it different from Solon, but everyone is moving in the same direction. Kempf said, as a County, they have to keep moving forward with this.
Kempf said he doesn’t think a lot of entities have done the things laid out for them to do. Harney said there has to be a clear picture of what the volunteers will be doing. Kempf said that is what his policy is and emphasized the need for a clear picture of where the County is going. He said that’s what it will take for people to buy into the plan. Kempf added that at the Joint Cities' meeting, it is important to communicate that the County is moving forward with this. Kempf said the cities will probably say they haven't done a lot but that it is important to communicate to them exactly what progress the County has made and confirm with them that they are still interested. He said they should let them know that in the future a regional committee will be formed. Kempf said they need to be able to accomplish some things before forming a regional meeting and he doesn’t think they are there yet. Meyers said otherwise it may not remain a priority for the others. Kempf said if the County keeps momentum that will motivate the others.
Busard said before they go to the meeting on August 20, 2008, he could write a proposal or a mission statement. Harney said he would prefer Busard and Kempf give a presentation. Stutsman said, no, she wants to see something in writing because there is a lot of talk that things are happening but she hasn't seen any evidence of progress. She said she needs tangible evidence of what the County has done to date. She said she does not even know what the Operations Plan is yet. Kempf said they haven't developed that yet. He said they have met and discussed things they want to do like moving towards a green fleet of vehicles and setting up CAFE standards for vehicle purchases in the future. Kempf said this doesn't mean they will go out and buy 60 vehicles so they are all hybrid, but rather require any replacement vehicles to be hybrid or vehicles that get 32 miles to the gallon. He said those types of things need to be in the policy and it will take quite a bit of work to figure out the details.
Kempf said he doesn't think Busard and himself will be able to simply write the policy and present it to the Board. He said there are a lot of great ideas out there and it will require a lot of discussion to determine which ideas are economically realistic for the County to implement. Meyers said upgrading the fleet is going to be a budget item. He said every year departments submit requests for new vehicles and the County is not going to scrap every vehicle in the County and start over. Kempf said no and there will always be exceptions. For example, he said, a lot of Secondary Roads vehicles won’t be able to meet the guidelines or preferred vehicles of choice. He said there are things they might want to do such as require E85 vehicles. Kempf added that the important thing is that this is new nationwide. He said there are a lot of large cities that are starting to do this practice.
Harney said the whole thing is getting muddier as they go. He said he was hearing that they wanted to put a committee together to make some of these decisions, and now he is hearing they want to have it in place before they even go to the cities’ meetings. Kempf said he is giving his opinion. Harney said it sounds like they are ahead of themselves before the committee meeting. Stutsman said they need to get their act together before they move ahead. She said they complain that the Board always looks a little sloppy when it presents something, adding that the Board needs some clear goals stating what the Board wants to accomplish. She said this should include a timeline. She said she hears the term Cool Counties/Cities but doesn't hear details of what is meant by that. Stutsman asked if people who say they want to be part of the project really know what it means. Kempf said they need to establish what the goals are and what they want to accomplish so people will have something to react to.
R. Sullivan said there are some goals available on the ICLEI website so when they join they are saying here is what they mean. He said the Board has already completed the baseline. R. Sullivan said the Board knows where they are currently and he doesn't think that any of the other entities have that. He said it is less daunting when they see that other cities have done it. Moore said they then become a resource as well. He said they need a baseline for Busard. He said the Board's goal here is to convert their fleet to hybrids and the objective is to complete this by 2020. Moore added that every year they will convert x amount of vehicles to hybrids. He said this can be done in-house, then open it up to the stake holders in the community so the community then has input into the counties’ adopted policies and how they are going to be achieved.
Moore said he agrees 100% with what Kempf is saying. He said that it needs to be done in-house, but they can still move forward with the joint cities meetings and tell them how the County intends to proceed. Moore added they can be a resource to show them how to get started as well so that when everyone is ready to sit down as a regional group they have a baseline too. Meyers agreed saying that if others aren’t doing anything, the fact that it is an agenda item at the Joint Cities’ Meeting will remind them to keep thinking about this. Moore added that there are examples they can share also. Kempf said they could do a printout of the inventory to give to the cities to let them know what it looks like for the County. R. Sullivan said when Stutsman is talking about having something tangible, that is the kind of thing the Board should have copies of.
R. Sullivan said he would like 40 copies of the inventory and possibly other items available at the Cities Meeting. Moore said the Board may also want to include a written explanation of the process. Stutsman said she would like that in the form of a simple handout that doesn't need to be elaborate, but just include the main points. Harney said he would still like to have the individuals putting together the handout be there to give some explanations. R. Sullivan said he didn't say anything to Karr about a presentation. He said he just asked for the topic to be on the agenda. Kempf said he doesn't think they need to do a presentation and that they can be available for questions. R. Sullivan asked if Kempf and Busard are considering a presentation in which case he offered to call back Karr. Kempf said he didn't think they needed to give a presentation, that they could give the materials to the Board and then be available for questions. He said when it came down to it, they would make themselves available. R. Sullivan said he wouldn't be surprised if there weren't a lot of people at the meeting who say they want to get moving.
Busard said ICLEI approached them in Albuquerque, New Mexico about holding a Midwest conference to spur momentum in the area. He said they think Iowa City is a good location since its progressive and in Johnson County. He said it would cost $6,000 to host a two-day conference at the Sheraton. He said they could recoup those costs by charging registration fees. He said ICLEI thought they could get 50-100 people. If 50 people showed up, registration would cost $120. Busard said the fee would include two lunches and two snacks for the two-day conference, or a lunch and a dinner. R. Sullivan asked if ICLEI would put on the conference, or if they are just seeking a host municipality. Busard said ICLEI would help them identify speakers. R. Sullivan said that ICLEI would require the host to find the place and such. Stutsman asked if they are putting any money towards the conference. Busard said ICLEI would not put any money towards the conference. Stutsman clarified that it would be totally the County’s responsibility. Meyers said they would put up $6,000 and hope to recover it with the registration fees. Stutsman said at least $6,000. Harney asked if they had checked the Marriott. Busard replied he had only checked at the Sheraton. Harney added that there was quite a cost difference between the two. R. Sullivan pointed out that this is a situation where if Coralville signs on maybe Coralville would like to donate the Marriott. Busard said it seems like there is quite a bit of buzz surrounding the conference talk, and if it were in December, people would be able to travel. Executive Assistant Mike Sullivan said to keep in mind that the County would get a considerable amount of goodwill well beyond the $6,000 for hosting something like this in Iowa City.
Stutsman said there is still a cost to the County and the Board needs to be aware of that. She agrees they should all share in that, but wanted to know who would do all the work. Stutsman asked who would do all the planning work. She said this sounds like it would be a full time job in planning a Midwest conference. Busard said in the past he has talked with Planning and Zoning Administrator Rick Dvorak and Moore about putting together a County Zoning Administrators (COZO) conference, much like ICLEI, and said it wasn't too bad. He said COZO, much like ICLEI, helped line up speakers and put the program together. Busard said they are non-profit so all the membership dues goes to pay salaries. He said the County is basically the funding source and would be doing the leg work to get everything together. Neuzil suggested Iowa City, Coralville, North Liberty, and Johnson County each put in $1,500. He said it would then be a joint project. Stutsman said they would then have a joint committee too. Meyers asked if it that should be brought up next week at the Joint Cities Meeting. R. Sullivan asked if they should ask Karr to put that on the agenda. Harney, Meyers, Neuzil said yes and Stutsman said yes they should see if there is interest to the help. Neuzil said they are all paying for the nice hotel.
R. Sullivan asked Busard if he can go to the meeting on August 20, 2008 at 4:00 p.m. R. Sullivan said it would be at the Iowa City City Hall. Busard said he has to attend the Conservation Board meeting at Kent Park at 5:30. Stutsman asked if the Board is supposed to attend that meeting also. She asked if it was a joint meetings between the Conservation Board and the Board of Supervisors. Harney said it was supposed to be at the last meeting but was cancelled. M. Sullivan said it was cancelled because of the flood. Meyers said he thought they wanted to have a joint one with the Board. M. Sullivan said yes but it hasn’t been scheduled yet. Stutsman asked if M. Sullivan could find out it the Conservation Board is planning on having the Board at the meeting on August 20, 2008. R. Sullivan asked M. Sullivan to call Karr to ask about the time of the meeting and ask her to put the joint ICLEI conference issue on the agenda. Meyers asked about the Cool Cities Advisory Committee. R. Sullivan said that should already be on the agenda. Stutsman said she was not expecting that to be an advisory committee. R. Sullivan said it would be just to tell them what they are thinking down the road to see if they are still interested. Busard said he thought the ICLEI conference scheduled in December could be the kick off.
Recessed at 9:36 a.m.; reconvened at 9:43 a.m.
Assistant Planning and Zoning Administrator R.J. Moore said that during the subdivision process they need to make sure the existing driveway can be used. He said that is not being done. Moore said applicants are spending thousands of dollars plus engineer fees to get into their process and then find out the driveways don't meet County standards. He said his staff will do whatever the Board directs them to do. Harney suggested a signed check-off list be required before they move forward with the application. County Engineer Greg Parker said one of the other things that is paramount is that all the consulting engineers in this area know the process Secondary Roads has been following. He said there is a breakdown in communication when clients have met with consultants and for some reason the communication barrier is dropped. Parker said he is not targeting any particular firm. He said they should at that point be informed by clients what the issues are. He said it would be in the client's best interest for them to know exactly what is happening.
R. Sullivan said clearly the Board would like to see people be more informed in terms of what the rules are, but they must figure that if they have ten or 15 in a year, there is probably another ten or 15 that people haven't done anything because folks have said they will not be able to do anything because they did know. Parker said people might have just complied with it. Stutsman said she didn't want this discussion again. She said either they have the discussion today, August 13, 2008, and come to resolution or they have a work session. Stutsman said it is not a good use of the Board’s time to hash things out now and then turn around and hash it out again in September. This, she said, should be in a meeting where the public knows and where it is available to the public. Stutsman added there is enough interest in this that is should be available to the public and not be a work session between staff and the Board. Stutsman said she wants to make a decision today and forget about a future work session or if not, they will schedule a future work session.
Moore said they are not one to antagonize Board members so he asked if they should make a presentation on the Planning and Zoning perspective on driveway and access control. R. Sullivan said they should set a future date for a work session. Neuzil said another option is holding it during the evening Board meeting. R. Sullivan said he would rather not do that because it would make the night meeting too long. Neuzil asked if everyone is available on October 6, 2008. Stutsman asked if they had Planning and Zoning. She thought 5:30 would be a good time because people would be coming from work. The Board agreed to set a work session on Monday, October 6, 2008 at 5:30 p.m. R. Sullivan asked Parker to contact people in MMS Consultant’s and other engineering firms to notify them of the meeting date and time. He said there are three or four they work with most of the time. Moore said they keep a running list of engineering firms that do business with them. He offered to do the meeting notifications. Parker said he doesn't deal with the same engineers that Moore does. He asked if there are other items that R. Sullivan wanted to discuss that night. R. Sullivan said he would like to keep it to driveways. Parker said they would schedule another meeting, as there were three or four things that were on the list. R. Sullivan said chip seal was one. Stutsman said she would like to do the chip seal so they could give a date to the County Attorney's Office that they need the policy by October 6, 2008 for review. R. Sullivan said people should be prepared for a late meeting, 8:30 p.m. or 9:00 p.m.
R. Sullivan said the Board is reluctant when it comes to naming buildings in the way that schools do. He said he was thinking about the new Health and Human Services Building, and the departments going into the building, and thought it wasn't unusual to have a room named inside the building. R. Sullivan said Health and Human Services has only been around since Roosevelt, for 70 years. He said for 35 to 40 of those years former Supervisor Carol Thompson has been either a Supervisor, or with Juvenile Court, with the Department of Human Services, or MH/DD. R. Sullivan said Thompson has been an instrumental person since 1967. He said it might be a fitting tribute to name something in the building after Thompson.
Harney said he asked to put this topic on the agenda sometime ago. He said he is against naming the building after any individual person. He said they could name rooms and boardrooms after individuals. Harney said a suggestion made to him sometime ago was to name the facility something like the wing, it is a wing of the Administration Building. He said the more he thought about it, the more he believed that it was appropriate. Stutsman said the agenda refers to a conference room. Harney said he thought the discussion was for the building because he had asked to put the building on the agenda. Neuzil clarified that the discussion is about a conference room. Harney said he thought it was referring to naming the building.
Neuzil said it would be nice to ask the Communications Committee to recommend some names for the different rooms. Stutsman said perhaps they should do what the schools do and open it up to the community. Harney said he wanted to know why naming the building didn't get on the agenda. R. Sullivan said he asked to have naming the conference room on the agenda. Harney said that he had asked that naming the building be on the agenda. R. Sullivan said Secretary II Jo Hogarty went over the language with him, and he specifically said conference room, so that is probably why Hogarty wrote conference room. Harney said he had told M. Sullivan to put naming the building on the agenda. R. Sullivan said the building name can be on next month's agenda. Neuzil asked again if the Board could give this to the Communications Committee. Stutsman said the Board should first establish if it is interested in naming any part of the building or rooms. She said today it may be the conference room, tomorrow the bathroom, and the next day something else.
Harney said he doesn't want the Board to get to the point the University is at where they name everything after somebody. Neuzil asked the Board what they think about letting the Communications Committee come up with names. R. Sullivan said Stutsman brings up an interesting point in that the public will own the building, not the County. He said when the schools name buildings, they take recommendations, but then the School Board picks. R. Sullivan said that although Harney referred to a wing and R. Sullivan was talking about a room, they could certainly decide on how limiting or not limiting they want to be. R. Sullivan said he doesn't have a problem with the Communications Committee. Meyers said they just had a meeting on August 8, 2008 so they won't meet again for another three or four weeks.
Stutsman said her concern with naming the building after a person is that it can be confusing. She said she still refers to one building as the City Council Chamber. Stutsman said she prefers a building name not be confusing. Neuzil said if the Board does choose to name the building, it needs to be a name all five of the Board members are comfortable with. He said he'd support naming a few rooms, or at least discussing it, if all five Board members are in agreement. Harney said there is a lot to be said about what Stutsman said. He said he doesn't have a problem with naming some rooms after specific people. Harney added that it seems like people going somewhere always want a destination. He said either they want to know they are going to the Administration Building, City Hall, or somewhere specific rather than a person's name. R. Sullivan said he wasn't talking about the building. Meyers said the Chamber of Commerce names their rooms with names like Quad Cities Room.
R. Sullivan asked the Board if they want to ask the Communications Committee to address the naming issue at their next meeting. He said from a timing perspective, it is easier to open a building with a name than to name it six months later. Neuzil said he was hoping that the Arts thing would be solved by now but it won't be done by October 2008. He thought it would be nice to have buildings open up with art on the wall. R. Sullivan asked what time frame the Board wants. He asked if the Board should ask the Communications Committee to have a special meeting. Stutsman said no. R. Sullivan asked if the Board should ask them to recommend a process, because if so the Board needs to get that process going. Stutsman asked if the Board has made the decision today to name rooms. Neuzil said the Board didn't say no to naming rooms. Stutsman said the Board needs to give directions to the Communications Committee that yes, they want to start naming rooms, and that the Board wants the Communications Committee to recommend a process, or tell them that they should discuss whether the Board should name rooms and then make a recommendation. Harney asked M. Sullivan to put that on the agenda. M. Sullivan said that naming the building is on the next Key Issues meeting agenda.
Stutsman said someone needs to make a decision of whether they are going to name rooms or not. Stutsman added there is no use planning a process if it won't be used. Meyers said the next Communications Committee meeting would be September 12, 2008. R. Sullivan asked if they need to talk about entertaining the idea of naming rooms at all, because if there are three Board member who don't want to entertain the idea at all then what would be the point. R. Sullivan and Neuzil said they wanted to entertain the idea. Stutsman replied she is on the fence. Meyers said he doesn't have a strong opinion on doing it. He said he could easily accept naming the rooms Room A, Room B. Neuzil said it doesn't have to happen when the building opens. He explained there can be a naming dedication ceremony later, similar to what they did with former County Attorney J. Patrick White in the library at the Courthouse. Neuzil asked Harney if that was something he wanted to pursue. Harney said although he isn't anxious to name the rooms after anyone, if someone wants to, he isn't against it either, if there is a specific reason. Neuzil said the Communications Committee should put it on their agenda. R. Sullivan said the Communications Committee will then hopefully give the Board some kind of report in terms of things to think about.
Neuzil commented that hopefully the Arts Center is on the next meeting agenda. Meyers said, as a caution, the future discussion will be a circular discussion like the current meeting. Stutsman disagreed. R. Sullivan said just so long as the Communications Committee understands that they would like to get some kind of recommendation even if they don't want to make one. Harney asked M. Sullivan if that could get put on the agenda. M. Sullivan said County Recorder Kim Painter is the chair and that he will contact her. He said he had Hogarty put naming the building on the next Key Issues meeting. R. Sullivan said he wasn't working under the assumption that people had no interest in naming the building, as it was just too big a deal. He said for that reason he was okay with just not doing so. R. Sullivan said they could have the discussion next month, but that it seems kind of silly to do one before the other, especially if the Board wanted to name any rooms. Harney said he would like the building to open with a name if the Board is going to name it. R. Sullivan said he would prefer not to discuss naming rooms if they are going to talk about naming the building.
Meyers asked if there would be a sign in front of the building. R. Sullivan said a sign is built into the plan. Stutsman asked the Board to consider naming it the Health and Human Services building because that identifies what is there. R. Sullivan agreed. Harney said a generic name doesn't mean anything to him. Stutsman asked what if it is called the Bill Jones Building. She said she'd wonder if the building is an athletic facility or something else. R. Sullivan asked what Harney was thinking of. Harney responded he had mentioned it, but it isn't on the agenda. Harney said he wants to name it something other than an individual's name or the Health and Human Services building. R. Sullivan said he would like the Communications Committee to take on the whole discussion because it does not make any sense to do them separately. He asked if the committee doesn't want to name rooms, then why would they name the whole building. Neuzil explained the committee is not naming the building after a person, and that is the difference. He said the naming could be discussed. R. Sullivan said he agreed with Stutsman in that clarification is important to the public. Stutsman said they have called the building that since its inception. R. Sullivan asked M. Sullivan to ask the Communications Committee to address both issues.
Deputy Auditor Dana Aschenbrenner said in terms of GASB 45, it had to be revisited with his supervisor, County Auditor Tom Slockett. He explained they were waiting to hear from ISAC (Iowa State Association of Counties), who had submitted an RFP (Request for Proposal) to basically get a pooled rate in association with the Iowa League of Cities and the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities. Aschenbrenner said he believed the email exchange was last April or May, and ISAC Executive Director Bill Peterson said they were very close. He said he has not heard anything since then. Stutsman asked what a pooled rate would be for. Aschenbrenner explained it would be for the GASB 45 actuarial award. He said they made a decision with the Auditor to wait to hear from ISAC regarding the rate they were going to get. Aschenbrenner said they have a fairly good idea what they could get out on the market by issuing their own RFP. He said that is approximately $10,000 for the work. R. Sullivan said it makes some sense to have everyone approaching this from the same direction. Aschenbrenner said he has had no follow-up from ISAC or Slockett as far as where that stands. He said if they don't hear anything by the end of July or early August they would use their own RFPs which are already drafted and ready to go.
R. Sullivan asked if anyone has checked with ISAC. Stutsman asked if Painter still goes to ISAC Board meetings. Aschenbrenner said he doesn't know if it is just within the Auditor group or how ISAC is structured. R. Sullivan said they could call Peterson. Stutsman said someone needs to call Peterson. Aschenbrenner said he would follow up that day because they don't want to wait until the last minute and then find it difficult. Harney asked when the deadline is. Aschenbrenner said they have to have it completed by the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 2009. Harney thought the deadline was August 2008 and asked M. Sullivan for confirmation. M. Sullivan said he didn't have the information in front of him.
Stutsman said she attended a session at NACo about this and she was stunned at how Oakland County, Michigan had so many things in place such as trust funds. She said it made her realize that perhaps the County needs to have something similar in place. Stutsman said they need to know where the County is with financial liability so they can start budgeting. R. Sullivan said there is stuff they need to know by October or November 2008 since there are budgetary implications. He said he does not like the idea of going ahead without knowing what ISAC is doing.
Aschenbrenner said he would make a point to talk to Slockett today about the situation and see if Slockett has heard anything from Peterson or ISAC. R. Sullivan said he would go a step further and said they need to contact ISAC to find out where they are at. Aschenbrenner agreed and said they need to see if anything has been done or if anything has been submitted, if they have received any proposals. Neuzil asked if they have budgeted anything in the current fiscal year. He said he knew the Board had discussed it. Aschenbrenner replied just for the study itself. He said that once the department gets the study back, the bigger question is what to do with the liability, fund it or leave it hanging. Stutsman said she will make a copy of the presentation for Aschenbrenner. She said it included a fully loaded fringe benefit rate which includes funding for an OPEB accrued liability, 21% of the County fringe rate. She said it was the biggest thing on there. Aschenbrenner said the number that comes back from the study can be stunning.
R. Sullivan said it is his understanding there is some disagreement amongst auditors regarding compliance requirements. Aschenbrenner said it depends on where they are at in terms of financial entity. He said they need to ask if they even have the resources to fund something that may or may not come due. Aschenbrenner said as he understands it, if someone retires before they are eligible for Medicare and Medicaid and benefits, then they are able to buy into the health insurance pool. Aschenbrenner said because of their demographics, because they are older and generally have more health claims, it is considered like the County is subsidizing that because by law, they get to pay the same rate as everyone else. Harney asked what the penalty will be if they don't meet the deadline. Aschenbrenner said he wasn't sure but thought they would probably get a bad audit. Aschenbrenner said it might affect the County's credit rating with lenders. R. Sullivan said it is worth noting that there are a lot of municipalities and counties in a lot worse shape then Johnson County, and they are going to have a much harder time complying then the County will. Aschenbrenner said a lot of other entities extend benefits above and beyond what the County currently subsidizes with health care. R. Sullivan said he is less worried about a penalty than doing what makes sense for the County. Aschenbrenner said he doesn't think there is any penalty if the Board decides not to fund the liability. He said they should definitely get a study done by the end of June of 2009, otherwise they won't be in compliance with the GASB-45 standards. Harney said he was of the understanding that this was supposed to be done in another month or two. Aschenbrenner said he has not looked at the negative connotation of absolutely missing the deadline and not having the study done and quantified.
R. Sullivan asked if Aschenbrenner or Slockett or someone from the Auditor's Office will send the Board an email to let them know what he finds. Aschenbrenner said yes. Harney asked if Aschenbrenner would get back to the Board. Aschenbrenner said he will discuss the proposal today and follow up by the end of this week.
Neuzil left the meeting at 10:54 a.m.
R. Sullivan said Neuzil had to leave for a Rebuild Iowa meeting. He said that Neuzil wanted item M on the agenda. Today is a perfect example of why.
R. Sullivan said he has tried to keep the agenda manageable but it is hard. He said Neuzil had said to just have another meeting. R. Sullivan said Neuzil was thinking of having Key Issues meetings every two weeks instead of every month. He said that now the Board has Key Issues the second Wednesday morning, and Neuzil is talking about the second and fourth Wednesday morning. R. Sullivan said he doesn't know if it is good, bad, or otherwise, but he has been trying to manage the agenda and it is impossible. He said he knows Harney has to leave, as he does every second Wednesday of the month. R. Sullivan said they have already moved the meeting to 8:30 a.m. to make it more convenient. He said everything on the agenda is important, but they can't cover everything in one meeting. Stutsman said the informal meetings are getting long too. She said she wondered if some of the items should be on the informal but that is just shifting the situation. Harney said normally the Adam Galluzzo item would have been on the Board's informal. R. Sullivan said to some degree this meeting has been a little bit of the Board's dirty laundry. He said a few discussions were probably not best suited for broadcast. R. Sullivan said he would rather have this type of discussion first before discussion is held in front of the public. Harney agreed, adding this is a work session. Harney said he wouldn't mind having the meetings as needed.
Stutsman said it is interesting how things are evolving. She said that when she first came on the Board, the Board met Tuesday mornings for informal, and Thursday mornings for formal. Stutsman said the Board then collapsed those meetings to one morning, and now the Board is going back to the same scenario of two Board meetings a week. She said maybe the County's business requires these additional meetings. R. Sullivan said he likes Neuzil's suggestion better than trying to lengthen the meeting because some members get a little restless sitting for three and a half hours. He said there is a tendency to rush people through. Stutsman added that attention spans wane. Meyers said that if meetings are scheduled as needed, there is the risk that Board members will have other commitments and can't be at the meeting. R. Sullivan said he could guarantee that since he has been chair, the Board could have had two Key Issues meetings every month. He said there has never been a Key Issues meeting agenda that couldn't have been done twice a month every month. R. Sullivan said that hour-long meetings would not be a bad thing. He said the idea that there wouldn't be a full agenda is not a problem. Harney said the fourth Wednesday would not work for him because he has an Emergency Management meetings the fourth Wednesday of each month. He said if he isn't at that meeting then someone else needs to be there.
Idaho State Nez Perce County Commissioner Doug Zetter stated he was in town to visit his daughter and son-in-law and he decided to sit in on a Board meeting. He said he listened to the Board's discussion about time and management. He said it is the same discussion Nez Perce County has all the time. He said their calendar is exceptionally filled, however they have each department head scheduled in on a different day. Zetter said each department has two hours, and if there is a conflict they bring the conflicting departments in together. Zetter said it still comes down to time management. He said the Board's mention of how they manage a meeting and get everything to flow in that day is very apropos. Zetter said he didn't know if it’s the beast or the belly. He asked what the Board's calendar fiscal year is. Harney replied it is July 1 through June 31. Zetter replied Idaho's is October 1 through September 31. He said he thinks Iowa is on the Federal calendar. Stutsman thought Federal was October. R. Sullivan said, nevertheless, they are different. Zetter said they start their budgeting in May. R. Sullivan said they don't have a choice and are required by the State of Iowa. Harney said they are finishing up their year in April. Zetter said they start their process in May, but the department heads have two weeks to prepare their requests and then the Auditor puts it all in a booklet. Stutsman said it is interesting talking about meeting with department heads. She said Linn County meets with half of their department heads one Monday morning and the other half the other Monday morning. Zetter said their public agendas are Monday's at 1:30 p.m. Stutsman asked how many are on the commission. Zetter said three although Idaho law allows up to nine.
R. Sullivan said they have Strategic Planning on the third Wednesday. M. Sullivan asked if they wanted to just have the Strategic Planning meeting then, and replace it if they need to. Stutsman said either they spend time on Strategic Planning or just forget it. R. Sullivan asked for how long the Emergency Management Commission has met on Wednesdays. Harney said forever. He suggested they should move Strategic Planning to September 4, 2008 and have a work session on September 20, 2008. R. Sullivan replied that then he would never be able to go to Strategic Planning. Stutsman asked when the Commission meeting is and if it is all morning. Harney replied 6:00 at night. R. Sullivan said the Board is talking about a morning meeting. Harney said he thought they were talking about moving the meeting to the evening. R. Sullivan said they were talking about the fourth Wednesday at 8:30 or 9:00 a.m. Harney said that would work. Stutsman asked if they could have the meeting at 9:00 a.m. because she has another commitment at 7:30 a.m. R. Sullivan said that was fine with him. Harney asked if there is a need for the meeting. R. Sullivan said every day he has been Chair there has been a need for the meeting. Harney said he does have a commitment at 11:30 a.m. that day. R. Sullivan said maybe they should start in September. Harney said that works for him. M. Sullivan asked if the Board wants him to change the starting times to 9:00 a.m. instead of 8:30 a.m. Harney said he prefers 8:30 a.m. meeting. Stutsman and R. Sullivan said 9:00 a.m. would be better for them. Harney asked if it would be 9:00 a.m. on September 24, 2008. Meyers said he may not be able to make that particular meeting but normally the fourth Wednesday is not a problem.
R. Sullivan said Neuzil brought up a good point that every time an additional meeting is added there will times when people can't attend. He said the Board would move all the meetings to 9:00 a.m. Stutsman said, just like the discussion with Ag driveways, she thinks they need to better manage their discussions and be more focused. R. Sullivan said for what it is worth, in the eight months he has been Chair, he has never been able to manage the meetings and said it is just too much. He said he can't put on the things people want to have on the agenda, and give it adequate discussion and have the meetings in the morning. Harney said he thought they would see a big change in other years as some of the projects will be dropped. R. Sullivan said his guess is that they would have things to replace those projects, but that they could always cancel meetings if they don't have things to discuss. Stutsman said they could list the Key Issues on the fourth if needed. R. Sullivan said his concern with that is people scheduling other meetings because they think Key Issues may not meet. He said the advantage of having the meeting scheduled is that people will be here. Meyers asked that starting in September the Board will meet the second and fourth Wednesday at 9:00 a.m. R. Sullivan said yes. Harney said that there are so many meetings now that they don't have time to do anything else. R. Sullivan said the Board will try this out to see how it works.
Kempf discussed the SEATS Secondary Roads project. He said the brick and stone work is complete but there is still some expansion joint caulking to do. He said they are starting to place windows in the office building. Kempf said the interior walls are framed and they are doing the rough-in of all the electrical work. He said they have started sheet rocking some of the areas. Kempf said they are moving along fairly well. Kempf said they had an issue arise with the floor, as they were supposed to have polished concrete floors in the entryway, the large conference room, and hallways. He said they had some issues with scalding the floor when they were putting the finish on it which made the floor not as smooth as they would like. Kempf said they figured out a solution to take care of the problem, and it will be at an expense of the building contractor, not the County. The building contractor is responsible for fixing the problem they created. He said they will consider quarry tile in the entryway of the building and then use a warehouse epoxy coating on the floors, hallways, and large meeting rooms. Kempf said he thinks they will have a better looking entryway. Harney asked if Kempf is satisfied with the epoxy; he said he has seen places where the epoxy bubbles up after a period of time. Kempf replied they brought in the same company that was brought in to look at the back hallway at Secondary Roads. He said the bubbling is more a function of installment technique and who is doing the work as opposed to the epoxy product. He said he will look at a couple floors that are three or four years old to get an idea of the quality of the work. Kempf said it will have a wear guarantee on it.
Kempf said all the framing is up on the bus barn, and the roof and insulation are in place. He said the concrete floors and approaches have all been poured. Kempf said they are focusing their attention on the office building so SEATS Director Tom Brase can be relocated into the office portion as soon as possible. He said they had an issue with the furniture order coming sooner rather than later. Kempf said usually they are waiting for ordered items. He said in the current case they wanted to take advantage of a price break and so they ordered the items earlier. Kempf said they have set a September 2008 completion date for the office. Kempf said there have been weather-related setbacks and delays, which have been documented, but the department is working very hard on getting them on track as close as possible. Harney asked if the lines for computers are scheduled in. Kempf said all the fiber optics has been taken care of. Stutsman said Information Service Director Jean Schultz and her staff has done a phenomenal job of coordinating projects. Kempf said Network Administrator Bill Horning and Schultz are always good to work with and that they stay positive when doing projects.
Kempf said as of Monday the final section of concrete floor in the Health and Human Services building was poured, so all the floors have been poured. He said wall framing is two-thirds complete on the second floor and a little less than two-thirds complete on the first floor. Kempf said all the framing and electrical rough-in in the walls has been completed on the second floor for all the framing they have in. He said on the second floor they have about a third of the electrical rough-in done. Kempf said now that the final section of floor is poured they are starting to frame the westerly side of the building. He said they have two-thirds of the window frames installed on the small windows on the north side with the glass installed. Kempf explained they will put protective coatings over the glass to prevent etching. He said half the window frames are in on the south side of the building. Kempf said plumbing is almost complete; the restrooms and water lines are roughed in. He said fire protection came on site August 12, 2008 to install the sprinkler system in the building.
Kempf said the mason is bringing a crew of 15-20 masons and will be coming on Monday, August 18, 2008. He said the mason will be starting on the northeast corner of the building and working southwest. Kempf said the mason predicts that section will take five to six days so he will have a large crew. Kempf said he expects them to work fast and that it will be pretty exciting.
Kempf said in setting the pre-cast panels for the southwest stair tower the crane bumped another panel and the panel fell into a semi-trailer and a light pole. Kempf said the most important thing is that everyone was away from it and no one got hurt. He said proper safety precautions were in place. Kempf said there shouldn't be a delay as they came up with a plan to set the panels for the northeast stair tower while they are remaking the damaged panel. Harney asked if the base anchor was damaged. Kempf replied the base anchor came out. He said the engineers have discussed it and they will have to fix the area, re-engineer, and install new lags in a different location. Stutsman asked how it happened, and said that she was glad no one got hurt. Kempf said setting the first two panels are the most precarious and are needed to establish stability. He said they start by forming a T, the first panel was braced, but the panel is roughly 30 feet tall, eight inches thick, and 10-12 feet wide. Kempf said it weighed 28,000 to 30,000 pounds. He said setting the second panel just right is the key. They were trying to adjust it in place and just bumped another panel. Kempf said it won't cost the County anything but it will cost the company's insurance a fair amount. Stutsman said it is easy to forget how dangerous construction sites are. Kempf said, regardless of the error, the hired company continues to build. He said the construction is moving right along.
Kempf said he still needs to talk to contractors about the north drive entrance to determine if they can fill it out with grout or if they have to tear it out. Kempf said they are concerned that the storm sewer is settled in there and they may have to take the drive out and reset that end of the storm sewer. Kempf said the City has decided that it is the County's storm sewer and not the City's. Stutsman asked how the City determined that. Kempf said because it is there to drain the water off the County's parking lot. Stutsman said she thought City sewers were City sewers. Harney agreed with Stutsman. Kempf said the City Engineer has instructed him that the County is in charge of fixing it. Kempf said the City makes the argument that the County is installing the storm sewer for the new project. Stutsman said they should discuss how much it is going to cost. Harney said he would question that because the City has water coming in there from up above too, it is not just the County's. Kempf said he has done everything he can think of to change their opinion, and has to go with what the City Engineer tells him. R. Sullivan said the Board needs to hire MMS and put them on this. Stutsman said if it is an exorbitant amount then they need to verify that it is the County's responsibility. Kempf said he called the City when the problem arose, and that was the response he got. He said he is talking about the section that runs underneath their drive and goes straight south to Ralston Creek. Stutsman asked how much area they have to fix. Kempf said just the area where the drive and sinkhole are. Neuzil asked if that was something to apply with FEMA. M. Sullivan said it might be but he isn't sure. He asked if they had any experience with City storm sewers or storm sewers being reimbursed. Neuzil said he was sure Linn County had applied for some funding for their issues. Kempf said it didn't collapse, it was just undermined. Parker said it would definitely be something to discuss with FEMA.
Meyers asked about the skywalk. Kempf said he is waiting for his two-week warning. He said the last schedule they talked about was the end of August, first of September. He said prior to setting the beams and starting construction on the skywalk, they will go into City Assessor Dennis Baldridge’s office area to relocate some of his files and rearrange some of his staff and Tricon will build a 10 x 10 room. Kempf said they can do the work with little disruption to Baldridge. He said he will have some noise to deal with but it will be much less disruptive than temporary relocation to the conference room. Kempf said this will happen around the first part of September 2008. He said they are working on the grade beams and pile caps on the north side of the street. Kempf said when they finish pouring those they will begin excavating next to the Administrative Building to put pile caps and grade beam supports. He said the actual setting of the beams will have to be coordinated because they are large, one piece beams and there will have to be road closures. Harney asked if the City signed the paperwork for the cross area right-of-way. Kempf said it has all been taken care of. Meyers asked if the construction would get in the way of the employee recognition lunch. Kempf said it shouldn't.
Neuzil said the only thing he wanted to add as far as project updates was the purchase of the three houses. He said it sounded like the City had approved, or at least given preliminary approval at their meeting last night. Neuzil asked if the County would be responsible for boarding up the houses. Stutsman said there was a rental sign in front of one of them. R. Sullivan said the City doesn't own them all. Stutsman asked if it was the three on the corner. Kempf responded it is the one right on the corner, one east on Harrison Street, and one south on Capital Street. He said he thought it was the one next door. R. Sullivan said he attended the City meeting with County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek and Assistant County Attorney Andy Chappell and thought it was weird because they were there and the members never asked them to say anything. R. Sullivan said the City just accepted what Chappell wrote and didn't ask any questions. Kempf said ultimately the County will be responsible for securing those buildings once they take possession of them. Kempf said it will be that much more sidewalk to take care of this winter. Kempf said they will need some discussion as to how soon or when they want to take the buildings down, if at all, or if they want to wait a year to see what direction the whole Jail/Justice Center takes. Harney said that is an evaluation the Board would like Kempf to make. Neuzil said he assumed they will not tear the building down until they figure out if they will actually use the buildings or not. Kempf said they need to go in and evaluate the building. Meyers said he will volunteer to go with Kempf to inspect the property. Kempf said he hopes to recycle everything possible.
R. Sullivan said before the Board got too far into the topic of ag driveways and the subdivision process, rather than have a work session now, he wanted to lay out some of the issues and a time line for addressing them. Harney said he thought the Board was going to have a night meeting. R. Sullivan said they needed to talk about this to see if the Board is on the same page in terms of what they want to do and where they want to go. He said over the past 12 months there have been ten to 15 driveway-related issues, typically coming up when they have subdivisions. R. Sullivan said new subdivisions don't tend to cause much trouble, it is farmstead splits that have existing buildings and property. He said they have come into a lot of issues in which existing buildings, particularly agricultural buildings, don't fit the current standards very well and people are forced to make some difficult choices. R. Sullivan said the whole Board sees this as a problem they need to address. Harney said one issue paired with that is the ag operations that want a second driveway for semis to use so the drivers can pull in and back out. He mentioned it is a safety issue. R. Sullivan said they are talking about new driveways versus existing ones. He said if the Board wants to draw distinctions, there are pros and cons to where they want to do those things.
R. Sullivan asked Parker to give the Board some background. He added he thought it seemed pretty clear the Board wants to have some kind of work session on this. R. Sullivan said MMS Consultants Representative Glen Meisner could weigh in later with his comments. Parker said he woke at four o'clock that morning thinking he forgot to send a document to the Board. He did get the document to the Board, and apologized for the late delivery of the document. Parker said driveway accesses in the last 12 months have become quite the issue. He said when he first came on staff three and a half years ago, one of his first conversations he had with staff was about driveway access policy. Parker said he wanted to know what guidelines they were following for new accesses or changed accesses. He said the numbers have been used since former County Engineer Doug Frederick was in charge. Parker said he thinks Frederick came up with the numbers and Parker's predecessor Mike Gardner has followed them, and he didn't see any reason to change the policies. He said he'd need a good reason to change policies. Parker added that the issues three years ago were different from today. He said he didn't have any need or interest in changing things. Parker said Secondary Roads is following the AASHTO design guidelines for stopping sight distance. He said Meisner and himself agreed there are different access sight distances that different counties use. Parker said he doesn't have any control over those policies and he doesn't know why they are different. Parker said in Johnson County there is a lot of traffic, and a higher rural population than Linn County. He said Linn County has twice the population. Parker said all things in affect, it is important that the department is held to a standard, the standard that his license requires him to follow is the AASHTO design guidelines. He said that is for good reason. Parker said if Secondary Roads is called for questioning, the first thing an attorney will bring up is the AASHTO guidelines. R. Sullivan asked if it was 500 feet each direction. He said he thought it depended on the speed limit. Parker said yes and according to design guidelines the calculated and the designed are a little different, but at 55 miles per hour, 492.4 feet was the calculated distance, and the design was 495 feet.
Parker said there are three factors involved in highway sight accesses, and he said he will describe each one. He said Secondary Roads follows the most recent AASHTO design guidelines. Parker said 495 feet was rounded to 500, and that is the number that has been used for almost 15 years. He said suddenly those numbers are coming to light in conversation and discussion. Parker said the other two numbers they try to follow as best they can with an additional access point are a 500-foot separation distance from an intersection. He said this means if residents are trying to access a County road, they will see a 500 foot separation distance from that intersection. He said he doesn't know why that separation distance was picked, that it had been the policy at Secondary Roads since Frederick was here. Parker said the other rule in effect is the 500-foot separation between driveways. He said this may be considered a safety issue because they want to minimize the access points to a County road. Parker said combining accesses it is the best thing to do, because they are minimizing multiple accesses in short distances. He said he is sure there were multiple reasons why the 500-foot was decided upon. Parker said in some parts of the County, they have people that want a driveway every 50 feet. He said perhaps there was a compromise at that time, but he has no documentation of anything.
Parker said another policy Secondary Roads may need to reevaluate is that once the driveway has been constructed by the property owner, the County is responsible for the drainage through that driveway. He explained that if the pipe collapses or gets plugged, as long as it is a metal culvert or concrete, the County is responsible for those repairs at a cost to the County. Parker said there might be several reasons as to why the distance was set but he is not aware what they are. He said Secondary Roads is trying to minimize the access out in the County, because it is an increased cost to the maintenance activities in the County. He said they all know that their dollars are shrinking because of the cost of doing things. Parker said the sight distance is absolutely a safety issue. Parker said he has seen sight distances as low as 350 feet on a 55 mile per hour road. He said he looked at an ordinance set by Mills County. Parker said he doesn't recall what the County Seat of Mills County is. R. Sullivan said he thinks it is Glenwood, right by Pottawattamie County. Parker said Mills County has minimal population compared to Johnson County. He said he thought it was interesting when he went on a search engine that he couldn't find a state-wide survey. Parker said he did find one offline. He said the survey did reference the AASHTO design guidelines in the study. Parker said the document shows on a road with 55 MPH speed limit, the required sight distance is 610 feet. He pointed out it is 115 feet more than what the AASHTO design guidelines set. Parker asked if they are increasing safety activities. He said he doesn't know what the reason is; he didn't have the opportunity to talk to County Engineer Kevin Mayberry about it. Parker said the minimum sight distance required on the Mills County ordinance is 390 feet on a 35 MPH road and the AASHTO design guidelines specify 246-250 feet.
Parker said an interesting thing he noticed on the Mills County ordinance is that their driveways do not have separation distances from intersections and/or other driveways. He said they reference local roads, which are County roads. Parker said these roads have a separation distance of 300 feet for minor collectors, which is according to the Federal functional classification of County roads. He said minor collectors are 600 feet and major collectors are 800 feet, and minor arterials are 1,000 feet. He said they have separation distances from 300-1,000 feet and the minor arterials are going to be IWV Road (Johnson County Road F46), Oakcrest Hill Road, and roads like that. Parker said Johnson County is doing 500 feet. Parker said in his liaison meeting yesterday with Neuzil and Stutsman, they discussed if this is reasonable and fair to the property owners. He said that typically that is why he and the Board sit down to discuss things. Parker said they do want to be fair and reasonable to the residents. He said they want to make sense of why they follow the guidelines they have been using for a period of time.
R. Sullivan said when he compares Planning and Zoning to Secondary Roads, he brings up the Board of Adjustment and situations where driveways are too close to a lot line. R. Sullivan explained that the Board of Adjustment looks at that and either grants relief or not. R. Sullivan said that sometimes the Board of Adjustment says they can move things or pursue other options. He said sometimes the Board of Adjustment recognizes that the individual is really stuck and they grant the exception. R. Sullivan said he feels like they need the Board of Adjustment when it comes to driveways. He said there are definitely people who should be told to move their driveway over because it will be safer. R. Sullivan said there are other people that will have to tear down a house. In reference to one particular resident, R. Sullivan said there is no other way for them to do this without tearing down at least the garage, or just not doing a farmstead split. Stutsman said she didn't think they would need to tear down any buildings. R. Sullivan said if they want to have a driveway to the newer house, they would have to use the old driveway, or tear down the garage. Stutsman said she wanted to ask a process question and asked if the Board will be having a full discussion on the topic or if they will set up a meeting concerning it. R. Sullivan said it will be a meeting to decide what they want to talk about.
Neuzil said there are three areas that continue to come up regarding driveways. He said the first is removing existing driveways, two is moving existing driveways, and three is adding new driveways. Neuzil said quite frankly he thinks all three are different beasts. Stutsman added they are agricultural and residential. Neuzil said adding new driveways falls into the agricultural situations where farmers want to be able to have a semi truck turn around easier than have the semi sit on the side of the road or back out into the road to get out of a driveway. He said there are also situations where an existing driveways needs to be removed, some of which have been there since the 1800s. Neuzil said Colfax would be an example of applying for a farmstead split and then being told that a driveway that has been there forever needs to be moved. He said in reference to moving existing driveways, the apple orchard in Swisher has had two driveways since the existence of the building and now they are adding a Planning and Zoning package and now because there are two driveways, they have an opportunity to force them to have one. He said those seem to be the three things that need to be discussed. Neuzil said they probably need to have a work session. He said it sounds like Gardner and Parker are putting together something for the middle of September 2008 to bring the issues out. Harney said an evening work session would work. Parker said those are good points because the driveways are three additional things they look at, and getting back at trying to minimize maintenance expenses, Secondary Roads is trying to get rid of driveways out there. Harney said he thinks they have options to relieve some of that.
R. Sullivan said he would like to ask Meisner, who was kind enough to come in today, and R. Sullivan knew Meisner had dealt with a lot of similar issues. He said he wanted to make sure that they aren't missing something from Meisner's perspective. Meisner clarified that he wasn't here to discuss sight distance and the AASHTO guidelines. Meisner said sight distance is important, as safety is probably the most important thing that comes out of their decision when they do a driveway. He said he certainly didn't want to mislead anyone on sight distance, that 500 feet is appropriate. He said his concern is the spacing of driveways, the number of driveways, and moving driveways. Meisner said he echoes what Neuzil said about looking at existing driveways versus new driveways, and spacing of driveways. He said some of the things that should go into the thought process on policy on spacing a driveway is the surface of the road the driveway connects with. Meisner said speed is an important feature, as well as traffic volume. He said requirements should be different on a gravel road with 20 vehicles per day versus a paved road with 1,000 vehicles per day. He said traffic volume determines road wear. Meisner said most importantly they should have sight distance that meets the requirements. Meisner said sometimes there will be difficulty with terrain. He said if someone owns something that is only 400 feet wide and then splits off an acre for his son, they can't get 500-foot spacing. Meisner said sometimes they have to look at situations where the terrain doesn't allow it or even the physical width of the existing line does not allow it.
Meisner said another issue is the difference between an agricultural driveway versus a residential driveway. Meisner said agricultural driveways, in most cases, have less turn movement per day than residential driveways. He said one last thing they need to consider is fairness to everyone. Meisner said there should not be a hard and fast rule that just because they are splitting a piece of land off that says residents/landowners have to have 500-foot spacing on the driveways. He said that should be considered in a policy defining existing versus new driveways. Meisner said that is something he would like to take a look at. Meisner said he thinks a group named Iowa State University CTRE has conducted studies that looked at driveway spacing. He said possibly they need to get some of the results from those groups to see if they would want to implement them into the policy. Meisner said he worked with Gardner on a few driveways where Gardner's stance early on in his career was if it was an existing driveway and it didn't need sight distance they left it in place. Meisner said that later on, Gardner got tough on driveways where they had to stake them and show where they were going to be on the plat. He said that he tells people in his business that if they operate their business the same in ten years from now as they do today, they may be out of business because there are changes in technology, needs, and use. Meisner said just because there is a policy that has been in effect for ten years it doesn't mean it is something that should exist forever and ever. He said it needs to be revisited at times. Meisner concluded that although sight distance is important, and they need to adhere to that, it is the space in the driveways he has problems with.
R. Sullivan asked if M. Sullivan and Parker have a good handle on what the Board needs to discuss. R. Sullivan said Planning and Zoning will need to be at the meeting. Stutsman requested County Insurance Agent of Record Bob Saunders to present his perspective on any liability issues. Neuzil said County Attorney Janet Lyness should be there as well. The Board agreed to set a date now since everyone is there. R. Sullivan said the Board has had meetings before in which they deal with difficult issues, and he asked if there is something they can do about it. Stutsman said her expectation of the meeting is to determine if the Board wants to change the policy or keep it as is. Neuzil said they should at least have a practice of it, or do as they did in the past, where Planning and Zoning gives their recommendation, Planning and Zoning Commission gives theirs, Parker gives his recommendation, and sometimes the Board says they don't want to do it that way. Neuzil explained that is where they are headed if they don't do it that way. R. Sullivan said the tough thing about that is that these people are paying Planning and Zoning. He explained Moore has a tendency, and absolutely rightly so, to say he doesn't think this can get approved and he doesn't want them to spend $3,000 with the County if the Board is going to shoot it down. R. Sullivan said this would put the Board in a very bad position. Stutsman asked about the date for the meeting. The Board discussed different dates for the meeting, and decided to discuss the topic at the August 14, 2008 work session on setting the implementation schedule of the Land Use Plan.
Stutsman asked about the NACo meeting. Stutsman said they should probably wait until Neuzil is there. R. Sullivan said that people could just talk about anything they went to that they wanted to report back on. Harney said he would prefer that be on Informal meeting agenda rather than Key Issues so the public knows what the Board has done. He said it would be just like any other report. R. Sullivan said the problem is the meetings get so long, that after they have been sitting there for a long time, he doesn't want to make everyone sit there for another ten minutes while he delivers his report. He said he thinks the Board agreed they should do reports because if they pay for people to go to conferences they should be able to explain what they did. Stutsman said she thinks it is more appropriate to have the reports at Key Issues meetings. R. Sullivan said he doesn't really care and it becomes an agenda management issue. Harney said the Board expects other department heads to get to the meetings whether they are Informal or Formal meetings. He said if the public is investing its money in the trips, they should know what the staff is doing and learning. Harney said if the Board doesn't want to do it it's fine, he doesn't care much either way. R. Sullivan said he is trying to emphasize that he is having a very difficult time managing agendas and managing meetings. He said there are just too many issues to discuss and people have to leave meetings, so he is not sure what he should do. R. Sullivan said he is open to any of them, but he has to get some general agreement that if they are going to do it, then they should do it. Stutsman said they could also put time limits on discussions. R. Sullivan said setting time limits feels artificial to him because if something needs more time, it should be given more time. Stutsman said setting time limits helps to focus the discussion as well. R. Sullivan asked what the Board wanted to do with the agenda. He said he assumed they want to move it to some other time but he wasn't sure when and asked if it would be next Key Issues.
Harney said it bothers him that Supervisors who are elected to do a job, who are expected to attend meetings, and expected to address these situations, volunteer for all these other groups. Harney said its great to do that but then those individuals are not here for the Board meetings and it's very important that all Board members are here representing the community. He said he understands why a lot of these things get done but he still thinks that as elected officials, they are supposed to be doing a lot of this during the Board meetings. R. Sullivan asked what he meant when he said Board meetings. Harney replied that the Board is trying to schedule around others volunteer commitments. He said he does it too. R. Sullivan said he understands and that this is a challenge for all the Supervisors. Harney said he thinks their first priority should be getting work done in the Board meetings. R. Sullivan said that is why he is glad the Board decided to hold a second Key Issues meeting because it is set and the expectation is that all Board members will be here. He said trying to do a catches catch can will never work.
R. Sullivan asked if they wanted to move the NACo reports to the next Key Issues meeting. Meyers asked about adding it to next week's Strategic Planning work session. Harney said he thought Key Issues would be better for the NACo business. R. Sullivan said he is open to either one. Stutsman said it would be the next Key Issues meetings. R. Sullivan said he could move everything to the next one and that some of them are recurring anyway. R. Sullivan said they have meetings coming up with North Liberty, Coralville, and Iowa City.
R. Sullivan asked if they have any additional items for the agenda besides what was discussed with Busard. Stutsman said something came up the other day that made her realize they have to sit down with the schools and talk about what their plans are. She said it was when she and Neuzil were at the liaison meeting discussing the new school. Stutsman said they were discussing how the main route to that road is on a gravel road and now she wonders what the Board will be expected to do about it. Harney said he had said that from the beginning. R. Sullivan said it was on Kansas Avenue. Stutsman said the minute the school opens, Board members will start getting phone calls about how dangerous it is because of the dust and the school buses traveling on the road. R. Sullivan pointed out Clear Creek Amana won't be at the meeting either. He said the City of North Liberty is on the agenda. Stutsman said maybe they should say schools, not Iowa City School District but just any school. Harney said last week North Liberty chip sealed that road from their end into the school. R. Sullivan said it isn't in the direction that people will be coming from. Harney said it goes west into Tiffin. Meyers asked if that is a County road or if it is inside the City limits. Harney replied it is a County road. R. Sullivan asked if there is a specific issue the Board wants on the agenda. He said he wasn't sure if the right audience would be at the meeting.
Stutsman said it goes back to regional planning and how the County has to start doing that. She pointed out that what one entity does impacts everyone, and if it isn't on the radar screen then the County is forced into upgrading the road because of a decision someone else made. Stutsman said that isn't fair to the rest of the County. Harney said it is what happens historically. He said he remembers City High and Regina's dirt road. Stutsman asked if it's right to continue it just because it has happened in the past. She said that came up at the flood meeting also adding that what people do upstream affects people downstream. She questioned if they all should be off in their own realms, making decisions in our own little vacuum. Stutsman said it is a problem, and the Board can say that's how it goes, or the Board can say departments need to be at the table. She asked, for example, if building the new Junior High in North Liberty will impact County roads. Stutsman said the Board better put the north/south road on the Five Year Road Plan.
R. Sullivan said item N (internal processes, expectations, and other operational issues of the Board of Supervisors Office) is recurring. He said items L (meeting agenda items,) N, and O (comments from the public,) are on every agenda. He said they will try to put together an agenda for the next meeting, which will be the second week of September, and from then on it will be every two weeks.
Adjourned at 11:26 a.m.
Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor
By Nancy Tomkovicz, Recording Secretary
Sent to the Board of Supervisors on October 28, 2008 at 3:00 p.m..