MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
NOVEMBER 18, 2008
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Assistant Planner Josh Busard: Johnson County Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Sustainability Plan 1
County Attorney Janet Lyness: Hiring of New Assistant County Attorney Vera McDonnell........ 4
Reports and Inquiries from Executive Assistant Mike Sullivan................................................... 5
Reports and Inquiries from the Board of Supervisors................................................................. 5
Chairperson Sullivan called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 9:21 a.m. Members present were: Pat Harney, Terrence Neuzil, Sally Stutsman, and Rod Sullivan; absent: Larry Meyers.
Assistant Planner Josh Busard said the Board instructed staff to create a greenhouse gas reduction and sustainability plan. He said the goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions produced indirectly and directly from Johnson County operations. He said the focus of this plan was to concentrate on the three biggest contributors, which are operations within the buildings, the County’s vehicle fleet, and daily employee commutes. He said this plan has both short and long-term goals. The first goal is to reduce 10% of emissions by 2010 and the ultimate goal is to reduce 80% of emissions by 2015. He said this plan is going to identify methods to reduce greenhouse gases. He said he will discuss the milestone process and where the County currently stands. He said milestone one has been completed based on emissions now from 2007. He said the County produces about 5,505 tons of greenhouses just with daily County operations. He said in the near future he hopes to work with the City of Iowa City, the University of Iowa, and other surrounding communities to create a community-wide greenhouse gas analysis.
Busard said for milestone two they need to adopt a reduction goal. He set this plan up to be goal oriented and the goals are both incremental and achievable. He said if they achieve their goal of 10 by 10 in 2010 and reduce by 3% they can hit 80% by 2050. He said for milestone three they need to come up with an action plan. The action plan has three phases. He said this was how the initial reduction measures were chosen. First they researched, then considered everything and created a master list, and finally they made selections based on cost-benefit analysis. He said he would expect input from the Board to further deal with the cost-benefit analysis and for some of the goals and measures they would like to see implemented.
Busard said that with any good implementation plan there needs to be resource and accountability. He said once this plan is adopted the Board will need to make decisions on the overall goals, more precisely what steps they take to accomplish the measures and reduction goals. He said the Board will also have to decide who will be responsible for what and what the necessary resources needed are and where they will come from. He said the Board will also need to decide a timeline for plan updates. Busard said in milestone five they need to monitor and verify progress. He hopes they can remain a member of ICLEI and take advantage of their greenhouse gas regulatory tracking software. He said the initial measures he hoped the Board would consider require LEED new construction certification on all newly constructed buildings. He said nationally buildings consumed about 50% of total electricity used in 2007. 1,700 tons of the 5,500 tons was produced by the buildings. He said LEED certification of the Health and Human Services building is projected to save upwards of $15,000, and 185 tons of greenhouse gases annually. He would like a requirement that the remodeling of the current Administration Building be Existing Building (EB) certified. This should save about $6,000 a year and approximately 70 tons of greenhouse gases.
Busard also would like to see a requirement that all Johnson County computers be set for energy saving mode after 30 minutes of inactivity. He said this is something Information Services can do easily. He said doing this would save anywhere from $20-$800 a year. Busard said he would like to encourage and educate Johnson County employees about energy efficiency practices, office equipment use, and encourage department heads to investigate and upgrade obsolete equipment with more efficient models at the appropriate time. He said he wants to provide at least 20% of the County’s electricity from renewable certificates from MidAmerican energy. Few extra dollars they would be supporting Iowa’s alternative energy production. Busard would also like to implement measures for the vehicle fleets that require all department heads to purchase vehicles that get a certain mile per gallon when they replace the fleet. He said this would take more research and a decision by the Board for appropriate standards. He said he wants to educate employees on how they can reduce miles. He said he would like to facilitate employee can and van pooling efforts, and educate them about the benefits of car pooling. He said possibly they could coordinate an effort to implement this, by a bulletin board or creating a call list, or maybe a County website encouraging employees to use public transit. He said they could provide bus passes to employees to create an incentive program for the transit system. He said if the County provides adequate bike storage features in close proximity to the County buildings as well as showers and changing areas, they could encourage biking or walking commutes.
Busard said the five year implementation plan ranges from using green products to purchasing hybrids for the vehicle fleets and using more alternative fuel such as biofuel and propane to maintain the vehicles with the best possible efficiency. Busard said for building management they can purchase LEED lighting, purchase carbon offsets, install solar panels in 10 years, alternative fuel vehicle fleets, and finally implement a four day work week. He said the plan for the president-elects Whitehouse is that 50% of Federal vehicles plug-in by the end of his first term. He said existing buildings will be 25% more efficient, new buildings will be 40% more energy efficient, with an overall 50% reduction of energy consumed by the Federal government by 2015.
Harney said one of the recommendations is that the buildings be LEED certified versus LEED qualified. He said if a building is certified it becomes costly to keep them certified and to keep the certification. He said if they are qualified, they meet those standards and don’t have to pay the extra costs for the certification. He asked if there was a reason for choosing certification. Busard said it is true that one of the major costs in ensuring that the buildings are LEED certified is paying for a third party to come in and verify that what a contractor has done has actually taken place for energy efficiency. He said they chose this because in the past they have caught things where contractors have tried to cut corners.
Stutsman said they have also done some things that were over the top, such as replacing all the toilets for flush control and the contractor and Facilities Manager Dave Kempf said no. She asked once the building is LEED certified, if they have to recertify every year. Busard said no, unless they do some major modifications such as a major remodel. She asked how much they paid for LEED certification on the Health and Human Services Building. Busard said he believes the cost will go through the green council and certifying it would be less than $10,000. He said it is on a square footage basis and he believes they paid less than $10,000 just for the certification. He said he would have to go back and look at the cost for the third party to come in and verify it. Stutsman said the Board needs to know that cost because when she looks at the savings there was not much of a return when they decided to do a LEED certification. Busard said the $15,000 predicted was annually.
Neuzil said he thinks LEED certification is fantastic and he is happy they decided to have the Health and Human Services building certified. Stutsman said they were on the road for LEED qualification and she thinks they would have seen the same benefits without paying the additional cost for certification. She said it was interesting to her that they couldn’t find any other governments that had LEED certified buildings and she thinks there is a good reason for that. She said it was a costly investment compared to the return on investment. Neuzil said the Iowa City Community School District has them. Stutsman said she was thinking about County buildings.
Harney said his only concern is the costs that they put in for the LEED certification. He said in his opinion the LEED qualification meets the same criteria as long as it is monitored and done correctly. He said the $15,000 energy savings cost per year is good, but really it’s the gas omitted that causes the savings, particularly greenhouse gases and the effect on the environment in the long-run. He said in the long-run, he thinks that it is beneficial but he has a problem with the initial cost for the certification versus qualification. R. Sullivan said ICLEI puts out a list that counties are requiring LEED for all new construction, not only their own construction but any new building in the County. He said he didn’t think that people in Johnson County were ready for that step but there are lists of cities and counties that are requiring it for their own construction and its a pretty formidable list. Neuzil said he thinks its a great report and it provides the Board with a good basis of where they need to go. He said that is the next question in the process, where does the County go from here. R. Sullivan agreed and said at some point they have to go through each of the points using Busard’s plan as a draft and vote on if the Board wants this to be official or not, and talk about how to implement the plan if the Board chooses to do this.
R. Sullivan asked if the Board is interested in putting this on the next Key Issues Work Session agenda to go through some of the finer points. Neuzil said yes and suggested that it be put on both the Key Issues and Strategic Planning agendas. He said they have identified in the strategic plan to identify green initiatives County-wide. He said he thinks Key Issues is where it belongs, and over the next three or four months to lay out their steps of where to go from here. R. Sullivan said if Busard would be willing, he would like him to give the Board more details on some of the things. He said he is intrigued by the computer energy savings, and it would be nice to talk to Network Administrator Bill Horning or someone else from Information Services to find out how difficult it would be to have a master computer sleep setting after so many minutes idle. Busard said he spoke with Horning regarding this issue before he put it in the plan and Horning seemed to think that this is something he can order every computer to do. R. Sullivan said this seems like something they can do quickly and without hassle, but he wants to make sure the experts weigh in. Busard said each computer can be manually set to sleep after so many minutes or tell the staff to set that, or they can have Horning do it and know that every computer in the County is set.
Neuzil said they just had a conversation with Kempf yesterday about budget process, and had him continue to identify ways to reduce the amount of energy consumption for saving costs. He said he thinks they came up with a good list of things the County can start to implement into policy. Busard said he tried to set the format for this plan not only to save tons of greenhouse gasses, but also for cost savings. He said with gas at $1.95 today, the wind has been knocked out of the sails of this a little bit and awareness has decreased. R. Sullivan said one of the interesting things that happened with the flood is they lost parking space for a long time, even after the building was reopened, and he noticed a couple of days that a couple of groups of employees carpooled. He said one group was going to Coralville, one to west Iowa City, and one to east Iowa City, and they carpooled because there just wasn’t parking. He said he wished there was a way to make that happen more frequently and he thinks they should make an incentive for carpooling.
County Attorney Janet Lyness said that she hired a new assistant county attorney named Vera McDonnell. She said McDonnell started officially last Monday. McDonnell comes from Cook County where she worked for the County’s State Attorney’s Office for seven years.
Executive Assistant Mike Sullivan said he received the second flood related FEMA reimbursement check yesterday in the amount of $20,035.59. The amount reflects about 20% of what FEMA actually owes the County. Once all the money from FEMA is received, the County will receive a 10% balance reimbursement from the State. He said after FEMA has sent all of the reimbursement money he will sit down and have a closeout meeting with FEMA in order to get the 10% the State filed and reimbursed. He said they are still looking at a few months. He anticipates this being completely done by April or May.
M. Sullivan reminded the Board that there is a budget work session on November 24, 2008 at 9:00 a.m. There is another budget meeting on November 25, 2008 at 9:00 a.m. Stutsman asked if they will be getting information about the budgets before the meeting. M. Sullivan said yes, Budget Coordinator Rich Claiborne will have that. He said they are meeting with Social Services Coordinator Amy Correia and Ambulance Director Steve Spenler tomorrow to finish the departments budgets and he will have that report ready by the end of the week.
Neuzil said it is an exciting week because the Iowa State Association of Counties Fall School of Instruction is going to be coming in Johnson County. Neuzil said he will have a Listening Post on November 25, 2008 at the Iowa City/Johnson County Senior Center.
Harney attended the East Central Iowa Council of Governments (ECICOG) Board of Directors meeting, the ECICOG Policy Board Meeting, the Johnson County Community Foundation meeting, a liaison meeting with Human Resources Administrator Lora Shramek, a liaison meeting with Planning and Zoning Administrator Rick Dvorak, the Ag and Biosciences Chamber meeting, and a meeting with Colonel Reefer from the National Guard Armory about the Armory property.
R. Sullivan said he had a constituent contact him about the University of Iowa in Iowa City doing a study on a model for the flood area that occurred last summer. He said they were doing a study from the dam in Coralville to the Park Road Bridge in Iowa City, and they were concerned that north of Iowa City in rural Johnson County between here and the dam were not being included in that study. He said he did have contact with the University of Iowa and Iowa City and basically they are doing a model of the area from Butler Bridge on North Dubuque Street to the south edge of Iowa City. He said they are doing an equivalent of the stages of the flood and what the water level was and how the water flowed, and if they did something above how that would affect the water in the lower areas. He said they are doing it by foot from Butler Bridge to the Burlington Street Bridge or maybe further south to see what effect each foot would have. He said it is a study on what would happen to their present buildings and if they should be putting money into rebuilding those buildings or if they should be looking at doing something different, and what kind of terraces they would have to build for water blockage. He said they want to maintain the ambience of the Iowa River. He said they have invited Johnson County to participate in their meetings, and if they make further decisions the County could become involved in the process. He said his recommendation is to add Dvorak who had been taking care of all of the flood planning and has been the FEMA go-between, and perhaps Emergency Management Director Dave Wilson. He said if they want a representative from the Board they can do that as well. He said he thinks they are going to have a meeting next week. R. Sullivan said that this is the time of year that Wreaths Across America starts where they put wreaths on veteran’s graves. He said there are 286 cemeteries across America that participate in this. Last year was the first year a Johnson County cemetery, Oakland Cemetery, was involved in this. They are going to participate again this year. He said they are asking for contributions for wreaths which are $15 a piece. Boy Scouts always the wreaths at 10:00 a.m. and then there is a service with a guest speaker at 11:00 a.m. This will take place December 13, 2008. He said the speaker will be Sergeant Major Brad Castle who is a Marengo native and was seriously injured in the Iraq War.
Adjourned at 9:54 a.m.
By Nancy Tomkovicz, Recording Secretary