MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
FEBRUARY 9, 2009
Chairperson Neuzil called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 1:00 p.m. Members present were: Pat Harney, Terrence Neuzil, Sally Stutsman, and Rod Sullivan; absent: Larry Meyers.
Budget Coordinator Rich Claiborne said the only thing that has changed in the budget since the last budget work session is that they reduced the Rural Basic Budget. They reduced trails to $75,000 rather than $100,000. They also reduced $400,000 in Capital Improvement Projects. The budget is down overall by $118,000. Neuzil put together a press release and Claiborne is waiting to get the approval from the Board to put the packet and the press release posted on the website. This will give the public over a month to look at it before the hearing. Stutsman said on the press release she wants to remove the word "further" from the phrase "further funding". The Board agreed. In the last paragraph Stutsman suggested adding that the County is going to publish the budget so the public can look for it in the Official Publications in the newspaper. Claiborne asked how Stutsman she would like it to read. Harney suggested "This week Supervisors will forward to the State of Iowa preliminary figures for the FY2010 budget." Claiborne suggested "This week Supervisors will forward to the State of Iowa and the press for publication the preliminary figures for the budget." The Board agreed to the change.
Stutsman asked if the budget figures coincide with what the Board wants. Claiborne said yes. Harney said last year the State cut back to 82% the Homestead Exemption and this year to start they are cutting back to 72%. He said if the whole thing gets reduced it will be $1.7 million to 2 million affecting taxpayers of Johnson County. Claiborne said they take a five-year time period and average it so they have something built-in. Stutsman said in the past the Board hasn’t given the full credit for the Homestead Exemption, but they have for the Disabled and Elderly Credit and the Military Exemption. R. Sullivan said it is a pass-through and if it doesn’t come to the Board, it won’t go to the public. Harney said the Board did that one other time. He said that since the legislature is starting at 72% this year it will affect the taxpayers. He said that nothing says the legislature won’t cut all of it this year. Stutsman said the only press release she wants to put out for that is for the public to contact their legislators because the Board has nothing to do with it.
Neuzil said general information in press releases is the kind of thing the new executive assistant can put together. Stutsman said at her liaison meeting Planning and Zoning Administrator Rick Dvorak said Senior Building Inspector Ruben Arsate has finished the certification program for Universal Design and that needs to be a press release. R. Sullivan asked if they need an official decision on putting the budget press release and packet on the website. He said that he is fine with it. Claiborne said he will change the wording and get Operations Supervisor/Secretary II Shannon Carter to put it on the website.
Claiborne said Conservation Director Harry Graves and the Conservation Board are not comfortable about how they are showing in the budget a transfer for a $1 million Conservation bond to the Conservation Trust Account. Claiborne said that the County’s auditing firm, Eide Bailly, said that was ok, but for transparency reasons County Auditor Tom Slockett would like to set up the new fund now. They were going to do this after the budget, but with the Board's approval they can set up a fund on February 12, 2009. It won’t affect the publishing deadline because in the State Form Claiborne has the $1 million being transferred from General Basic to other funds. Claiborne said the budget packet will show it going to Conservation Trust and if they take action on Thursday he can update the form. He will have it reposted on the website showing a transfer from General Basic to whatever the Board titles the new fund. Neuzil said there isn’t a vote on Thursday. Claiborne said that is when they are setting the public hearing. R. Sullivan said he wants to make sure all the Board members know what is going on so they can explain it when asked. He doesn’t care how they do it, he just wants to be sure it is well tracked and defined. Claiborne said Slockett is handling it and he just wanted to give the Board a heads-up on that.
Harney asked how much of a difference the adjustment the Board made in the Rural Fund had in the budget. Stutsman said quite a bit, especially in Rural Commercial. Neuzil said it is significant what half a million dollars does to the rural side of the budget, because there is a small pool of people that pay those taxes. Neuzil said looking at the assessor revaluation is why the Industrial impact is so much. Stutsman said agriculture land was going to take a big hit this year because of the transfer of taxes from buildings to agriculture. She thinks its great the Board kept it down somewhat. Neuzil said these are 2008 values, so it is next year they will see the change. R. Sullivan said they can almost assume that the numbers from the budget they just did will be the same next year. Harney said hopefully it will go down. Stutsman asked if R. Sullivan is talking about the budget or valuations. R. Sullivan said if the valuations stay the same the Board should have the same in the General Fund as they do this year. In his mind they could start the 2011 budget now because they know what they have to work with. Stutsman said that is assuming no growth. Claiborne said two of the County's bonds retire in 2010 and that will free up some levy. He said that the County isn’t doing any new bonding this year. Stutsman said she would like to make sure that when the budget packet is put on the website that it says draft. Claiborne said he has a .pdf file which is exactly what the Board has and that's what will be posted. Every page has the word draft on it.
Harney asked what they are going to do about pay scales for elected officials. Stutsman said the Board already included it in the budget and asked if they were going to lower it. Neuzil said everything in the budget is at 3% and he is comfortable with that. R. Sullivan said the Board asked the Compensation Board to do that and that is what they did. Stutsman said she wants to wait until the public hearing and if there is a huge outcry she may be interested in changing it. She wants to publish the budget how it is and go from there. Claiborne said if there is enough public outcry to decrease salaries, the overall bottom line of the Board won't change, since salaries come out of the General Basic Fund. It will just shift that money to Capital Projects. R. Sullivan said maybe people would rather have $5,000 more go to Capital Projects. Stutsman asked how they ended up with the Capital Projects Fund. Claiborne said it is about $4.7 million. Neuzil said that is the additional dollars to reach the $3.50 cap in the General Fund. R. Sullivan said Capital Projects is budgeted at exactly $4.347 million. Claiborne said the public needs to understand that lowering salaries would not lower the budget, it will just shift the budget. Harney said they are talking about nine positions. Neuzil said there are ten elected officials plus the administrative deputies who would be impacted. Claiborne said mostly General Basic and and to some extent General Supplemental would be affected, because the Elections Deputy comes out of the General Supplemental Fund.
Neuzil asked if the Auditor's Office has looked over the State budget form and is comfortable with publishing. Claiborne said yes. Harney asked if they have gone through the final numbers. Claiborne said Deputy Auditor Chris Edwards is gone today but he can look over the State Form so it will be ready for Thursday. Edwards reviewed everything last week and said he is comfortable with the levies and the budget.
Claiborne said everything is ready to go except for setting up the transfer to the new Conservation Bond fund, which is minor. R. Sullivan said it doesn’t change any bottom lines; it is just a matter of showing it in the budget. Claiborne said it is already reflected in the State Form. Harney said he worries about the Conservation Board coming in saying they want $3 or $4 million next year and the budget going up. He asked if the Board can say they will give Conservation $1 million a year and if they want to buy something they have to wait two years. Stutsman said it is a gentleman's agreement. Claiborne said at the meeting he had with the Conservation Board a couple of months ago he explained that the County has a cap and he expects the Conservation Board to work with the Board of Supervisors. He said that if Conservation wants $5 million during some year and the cap only allows the Board of Supervisors to give them $3 million, the Supervisors expects the Conservation Board to work with them because every dollar beyond $10 million is more expensive. R. Sullivan said some of that will become a moot point when the County is bond rated because if the County becomes bond rated with Moody's Investment Services then the $10 million dollar cap is a non-issue.
Neuzil said because the Board of Supervisors appoints the Conservation Board, the Board has the ability to let the Conservation Board know they would like them to stay within the $1 million a year. He said they should save some of their dollars. Stutsman said that is why the Board should've had the joint meeting with the Conservation Board, so they can have open communication about where the Conservation Board is at and where the Board is at. R. Sullivan said he doesn't want to hamstring the Conservation Board if they find something they want to buy in FY13 that is $2 million. He wouldn't want to make them wait until FY14. R. Sullivan said if the window of opportunity is there and the Conservation Board has identified that is what they want, they should do it, but he agrees with Harney that it has to be part of the overall budget picture. Harney said he just wants to avoid spikes in the budget and there are a lot of things the Conservation Board can do such as setting up contracts for purchases where they pay a set amount per year.
Stutsman said she doesn't understand why the Conservation Board doesn't want to have a joint meeting with the Board of Supervisors. Neuzil said the reason it was cancelled was because the Conservation Board hadn't gotten to a point where they had identified any initiatives for spending of the bond dollars. Stutsman said she thought the meeting was to explain where the Board of Supervisors was at on the bond issue. R. Sullivan said to some degree the Conservation Board felt they got that information from Claiborne and maybe the Supervisors should have been a part of that. Stutsman agreed. R. Sullivan said he thinks the Conservation Board, from Grave's take, is that they came away from the meeting with Claiborne understanding what the Supervisors want them to understand. Claiborne said maybe when the Board gets a new executive assistant that person can set up a joint meeting.
Stutsman said she thinks it is important to have joint meetings with the Board of Health and Conservation at least once a year. R. Sullivan agreed. Neuzil said Public Health is getting one ready. Stutsman said they all need to be moving in the same direction. Neuzil said that they are the Board of Supervisors' Boards. Stutsman added especially since the Conservation Board has the ability to do whatever they want with the bond. She said a joint meeting is the Supervisors' only ability to share where they are coming from. R. Sullivan said Neuzil brings up a good point that the Board appoints the Conservation Board and Board of Health members, so it is something to think about every year.
Harney said when the stimulus package comes through he isn’t sure the County has enough working room to get some of the Secondary Roads projects done and they need to make sure County Engineer Greg Parker knows they can’t change their budget accordingly. Stutsman said Parker has reserve funds. Harney said Parker said that he has the reserves spent down because he dipped over $1 million into them. Stutsman said she thought there was $3 million in reserves. R. Sullivan said they can amend revenues too so if for whatever reason the Federal Government gives the County a couple million dollars he thinks they can spend it. They will just have to wait until they can do an amendment. Claiborne said they can show the revenue and expense so it won’t have an impact on the reserves. Claiborne said they will probably be doing a spring amendment around May because by law it can’t be done in June.
Neuzil said they won’t have any other budget meetings except for the public hearing on March 2, 2009 and the March 12, 2009 vote. At some point they need to put discussion about the budget presentation on a Key Issues Work Session agenda. Claiborne said he can work with the Board because he knows they want to have a different presentation this year. Neuzil said he wants to explain the budget by going through the County budget, the County budget including the Joint Emergency Communication Center Policy Board decisions, the budget with the Conservation Bond, and then the total budget. He said they need to make it clear to people that there are three processes now. R. Sullivan said in past budget presentations the Board has been too specific about what Johnson County does, and the people who attend the Budget Public Hearing are coming to the meeting to look at numbers. He said that even though it doesn't transfer as well to an overhead presentation, it needs to have a heavier number focus and less photos. Neuzil said he assumes they want department heads to come like they have done in the past. R. Sullivan said he thinks that is good, because if a member of the public has a question they may need the department head there to answer it.
Adjourned at 1:22 p.m.
______________________________________________________________________
Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor
By:
On the _______ day of _____________________, 2009
By Nancy Tomkovicz, Recording Secretary