(CONTINUED FROM PART 2)

Moore: What happens in the sequence, then, is that say we have a person with 100 acres zoned RS already. They would like to get their maximum lots out of that. But because of the standards here, these criteria that we have, they can only get one and 20 for now. So, what happens is if we design the development right so that they are not actually 20 acre lots but they’re, say, clustered-type lots. That person still has the ability, when the infrastructure then is in place that can handle a higher traffic volume, that they can go back and redevelop that property at the appropriate time. In the meantime, we have addressed some of their property rights issues. We’ve given them something while the County is moving forward and providing the infrastructure.

Stutsman: It’s given them some options, rather then saying absolutely none, because this road can’t handle it, we’re saying you can but it’s going to be at a higher density.

Thompson: Well I think our economy works against us here though. Because there are people out there who want to buy 20 acre lots where their house sits right in the middle and they mow the whole, I mean there’s a market for that now because of our good economy and so we could be opening ourselves up to a whole bunch of development that doesn’t really fit with our Land Use Plan.

Stutsman: But I think that we have to remember that this is just one criteria we’re using in land use decision. It isn’t automatic that if they meet this that we’re going to rezone. We still have something.

Moore: It’s dealing with the existing zoning that we have, the biggest, for me, and I love the bullet you have in your Land Use Plan about infield for the North Corridor. That any rezoning request, even though it’s in the North Corridor, is probably not appropriate in most places. Not always. We’ve had a few rezoning requests where it was so highly developed I felt it was appropriate to take that land out of the agricultural and turn it into residential. But there’s a big portion of the North Corridor where that’s not appropriate. We have platted lots, that’s been noted, and we have a lot of unplatted, zoned parcels that we do not need to have develop out of sequence. It’s a difficult decision, but there are other criteria that you use.

Thompson: I need to ask you another question. Did you just say that if I have 100 acres and I cluster it on 3 acre lots I can put in 5 houses on 3 acre lots, using 15 acres in an 85 acre outlot, and then once the road is paved I can come back and develop my 85 acre outlot?

Moore: Right.

Lehman: But there’s another scenario where, if you sell off 5 20 acre tracks, each of those individuals is going to have a house on 20 acres. That individual may not want to come back and say I want to develop the rest of my ground. That way you are sprawled out.

Thompson: Yes.

Lehman: It’s kind of the up front and the after.

Davidson: It’s up to the developer. As R.J. indicated, it simply gives the developer an option of having some future flexibility for that 85 acres.

Moore: To respond to Carol’s… In our Fringe Area Agreement with the City of Iowa City, in the areas where we will allow growth the preferred style is, or design, is clustered subdivisions with a minimum of 50% and a maximum of 80% of the property being put in non-buildable outlots. What they’re doing is expecting, in their growth area, as they grow out, when that property is then annexed in, that the remaining property, the undeveloped outlot, can be developed at urban densities with urban infrastructure. That’s the same thing for us, that’s the way, in this case, we would be looking at that. It’s inappropriate now because the infrastructure is not there, so we’re only going to give you the 5 lots at the 20 acre density. But, when our infrastructure’s in place that can then handle what the permitted overlying density is for that district, then we can allow a heavier density, a higher density.

Thompson: So when we say non-buildable outlots we really mean temporarily non-buildable outlots.

Moore: Yes, really.

Thompson: I never realized that.

Jordahl: We don’t have to mean that. We could require a conservation easement which would make it a permanently non-buildable outlot.

Stutsman: There again it’s the Board’s decision, when somebody brings in a rezoning or a replatting of that, whether we want to approve that or not. Because we’ve had that, where people have said this is an outlot and we said no, we want to keep it as an outlot.

Moore: That’s right.

Stutsman: But, it doesn’t hurt to ask. They can always bring that forward and the Board can always say yes or no depending on if we feel it’s ready for additional development.

Moore: Because some of the outlot might have been an environmentally sensitive area, you know, it wasn’t just to cover the density issue but to protect something that we value and, in this case, environmentally sensitive areas. Even though it has an overlaid zoning of residential, that it’s protected, and through out Sensitive Areas Ordinance draft that we have before the County Attorney right now, it is one of those tools that we can use to protect that type of ground so it won’t be developed in the future, as Jonathan said. Conservation easements are one of the ideas that we have in that.

Thompson: When you folks considered this, you’re reason for putting this in was so as not to be too intrusive into the property rights of the landowners.

Moore: Well, that’s one of the concerns for me. I’m not quite sure if that was Jeff’s concern. I would think so. But, you know Jeff. That’s a concern.

Davidson: It’s a way of addressing that Carol, for a road that’s getting close to the threshold, but not there yet. Still allowing a developer to have some development rights on a piece of property, but yet acknowledging that we’re getting very close to the threshold that we’ve adopted as we’re not supposed to go over for the sake of the road.

Stutsman: I guess, like you stated previously Jeff, what’s good is this tells developers what to expect, where we’re coming from and there again that plan for approach so everybody’s on the same page about what can be developed at what level and when and how and why.

Dvorak: Again, I think that’s why the Board wanted us to do this and that’s why it’s in the Land Use Plan, is we have had some criticism from developers saying we thought we’d go ahead and develop this but then you’d come up with this thing. You know, you started using and quoting numbers for transportation issues and we had no documentation to go along with that.

Jordahl: Right.

Dvorak: That’s why I thought you wanted us to pursue this.

Jordahl: This is very important.

Dvorak: Take that out. Take that away.

Stutsman: Yes.

Jordahl: We did want you to improve it.

Dvorak: There’s no supposition. There’s no grabbing numbers out of the air.

Jordahl: But, this…

Dvorak: You will know that. Then we were back to… We’ll make up some numbers as the game is being played and that’s not fair to the developers.

Jordahl: I just think that this is dangerous by itself. This, this phrase, not to exceed one lot for every 20 acres. It sounds like come on in and ask us for 20 acre lots. And…

Stutsman: Well, what would you replace it with?

Jordahl: We don’t mean that. It… Well,…

Davidson: It says density of development doesn’t it?

Jordahl: Right. It says density of development. But, a one lot for every 20 acres says one lot for every 20 acres you know and that, if somebody’s going to hear that say something else.

Stutsman: What would you…

Jordahl: It needs to say, a density of development, to grant if we did, the notion. I understand where RJ is coming from. If we limited the density then everybody would zone acres along this road. He’d get something. But, I would prefer the first come first serve notion because it’s simpler. We could say, you follow the conservation subdivision design thing. Something that said, requiring 80% set aside as out lot, not occupying more than 20% of the zoned acres, of the contiguous zoned acres or something like that, or at a minimum density of one house per 3 acres in a clustered design. Something like that spoke, too. See, since we don’t have the conservation subdivision design ordinance in place yet, we can’t refer to it as part of this policy. But, if we did, that’s what we should do is to say and developed according to the guidelines in the conservation subdivision design ordinance. So, in lieu of that, I would like to say something that speaks to its goals. May be 80% out lot. Maybe maximal lot size.

Moore: We can do that.

Davidson: It’s up to you all.

Jordahl: I mean, we could still say you could develop 20, at the rate of 20, one house per 20 acres of zoned land that you own, but…

Moore: But, it should be clustered.

Jordahl: Not sprawled about. Needs to be clustered.

Stutsman: Oh.

Moore: Clustered in a percentage of an out lot.

Davidson: Right. I mean, that’s the language you’ve got to use.

Moore: Yes. We’ve done that in (inaudible).

Jordahl: Right. See, I mean, just that stuff in here. I…

Davidson: RJ just said something like minimum of 50 and maximum of 80.

Jordahl: And I see I’m not on board with maximum. I think you should be able to cluster as much as you can set aside 90% of your acres as an out lot if you want.

Dvorak: It depends on the density requirements. Because, as you know, throughout the county, every area, and our fringe areas are doing it, too. There are some density requirements. There are some areas that are talking about one in 5 and one in 3.

Stutsman: You mean (inaudible)…

Jordahl: But, the whole idea of clustering is that you can put them on quarter acre lots and then run your centralized waste treatment facility on a subshared area.

Stutsman: Could you come up with…

Davidson: I was just going to say, though Jonathan, with clustering, you do get into some of those issues of onsite waste treatment and some things. You might… Septics, a conventional septic system might be acceptable on 20 acre lots and it wouldn’t be on a (inaudible) lot.

Jordahl: No, the notion. I mean, Randall Aaron, when he was here talking about this stuff, the idea is that, R.J. back me up here, that you can put the houses on smaller lots and the whole notion is that the septic drain field goes out in the larger shared area.

Moore: We just did something similar up off of Dubuque Street, where we put the… It was a 3 acre minimum, but we put the lots were at half or less of that. And we had the shared wastewater system on that part of the out lot that where it didn’t have any negative impacts on the character of that out lot that the environmentally sensitive features or whatever.

Davidson: I mean, (inaudible).

Moore: It’s good development.

Jordahl: That’s what we’re trying to do with the Land Use Plan. So, I’m just saying, 20 acres by itself, the way this stands here, is giving us the wrong result.

Moore: Well, we might be able to… That might be something that, I think Jeff and Rick have both said, that we could add something to that that would encourage that or make that (inaudible).

Stutsman: And…

Davidson: I mean, is there a majority of the Board that would like to see us put something in like that?

Stutsman: Yes. That’s what I was going to suggest.

Lehman: I think what we’re worried about is, we got say a guy with 100 acres. He’s going to sell off 5 20-acre parcels. This individual buys and puts a house on there. He’s not going to develop anymore. So, we got more demand out there. It’s going to actually draw on more ground to be developed. If we got a 100 acres here, you’re saying, put this here and the guy, he can develop this later. But, maybe the guy wants to be done with it. We don’t know what the situation is going in. But, this indicates that there’s going to be sprawl.

Davidson: The way we have it now, Mike, allows either one.

Lehman: Right.

Stutsman: Yes…

Lehman: Do we want to dictate which one we want. I mean…

Davidson: Right. And if you do, if you want to dictate the lower one, we need to revise this then.

Lehman: That’s OK.

Stutsman: Yes. Because I think I like the one at 20, the concept, because I think what we’re trying to do is limit the number of houses that can be out there, and if we keep saying one in 5 or one in 3, pretty soon we’re defeating what we’re trying to do. So, I think we have to keep in mind, but I have no problem, too, with putting in some language about encouraging clustering or whatever.

Lehman: See, what I’m worried about here, is if you do it this way, all right, there is 5 individuals out here who lock up 100 acres. Well, then more people want to go out there you’re taking up more ground.

Stutsman: Right.

Lehman: Over here you’ve got the possibility of taking 33 houses on 100 acres. So…

Thompson: Let’s say the septic empties onto that non-buildable, that temporarily non-buildable out lot. What when that gets developed?

Jordahl: Well, that would be a problem that would be covered in the homeowners agreement.

Moore: They’d redesign.

Jordahl: The homeowners agreement would have this jointly owned. I mean, right? The out lot would be owned by the homeowners association.

Moore: (Inaudible) association.

Stutsman: Are we OK…

Thompson: It could be retained by the owner.

Stutsman: Excuse me.

Thompson: Apparently.

Stutsman: To direct staff to do some rework of that and put in some other language. Everybody OK with that?

Jordahl: I am.

Moore: (Inaudible).

Stutsman: Any other comments?

Jordahl: Yes. One about when developers paying to pave a road. Came up with the situation of quarry last year and Cedar Rapids, or rather Linn County, had an ordinance that required that any quarry going in would have to pave the road from its entrance to the next hard surface road period, and we didn’t have that. And so we were left with dust control, and I’m wondering if this wouldn’t be a good time and place to talk about inserting something like that. Not that we’re going to have dozens of quarries going in, but…

Stutsman: Well, are you…

White: (Inaudible).

Stutsman: I think that’s…

White: Unrelated.

Jordahl: Unrelated. OK.

Moore: Yes. That might be something we can do in the ordinance.

Stutsman: But, I think we do need to address that at…

Gardner: Permits.

Stutsman: This whole issue about dust alleviation and I guess I wanted to. OK R.J.

Moore: Those are one of the things I wanted to approach here again as part of this. As you know Sally, a few Board Members, Mike and yourself, have been working with the County Attorney and his staff, our staff and Mike and his staff here on coming up with some policies and criteria for dust alleviation and for improvements of gravel roads to chip seal surface is…our double seal coating. That there’s a policy on improvements for existing roads.

Gardner: Existing, yes.

Moore: To keep those that way if the homeowners or developers there would want that. Jeff has, as you noted here, I think that you were alluding to Sally, has a bullet in here about the existing traffic volumes being such that it would require dust alleviation. That is a policy that we have come at in our meetings and our work sessions with all of our staffs together is we’ve recognized a need for a policy and Mike brought something up recently at our last meeting about Linn County’s method of doing that. It might be something that you want to approach here or address now Sally about that dust alleviation policy, since Jeff has included it here.

Stutsman: Mike, do you want to talk about what Linn County does?

Gardner: Sure. I don’t remember if I made copies for everyone last year or not. But, I got some right now.

Stutsman: I don’t remember.

Gardner: This is the policy that they adopted last year about this time actually.

Duffy: I got one of these last year.

Gardner: What they did was set limits of 200 vehicles on a gravel road as being the maximum. At that point they said that it was the County’s responsibility to provide dust alleviation as a safety measure at bridge approaches, intersections, hills, curves that were sight distance problems and so forth. So, I’ve made a copy of their policy they adopted just so you can review it. I also went into our most recent Department of Transportation traffic count map and tried to come up with a ballpark figure for the mileage we’re talking about in each one of these for each threshold. Last year Kevin actually went out and drove these roads that met the traffic count off the 94 map and measured the hills, the curves, the area that would need to be dug. All I’ve got at this point this year, off of the 98 map, is the actual total number of miles that would hit this criteria. So, this would be if you shot every foot of every road that met the criteria. If you set the threshold at 300 vehicles a day, you’re looking at just over 7 miles. This is in addition to the mileage that we’ve currently got in the calcium program. If you use last year’s rate, would come to approximately just over $21,000. Now, if you set the threshold at 200 vehicles a day, that kind of, that becomes a total mile 14.9 additional miles, which would work out to about $44,000.

Stutsman: And that’s all the whole road? That’s just not in front of the houses and curves.

Gardner: Right. Right. That’s if we shot every foot.

Stutsman: Oh. OK.

Gardner: And there’s going to be some roads out there that you’re going to be doing that. But, it definitely wouldn’t be that much I’m sure.

Jordahl: The point I’d like to…

Stutsman: Let Mike finish.

Gardner: Go ahead.

Stutsman: Because I think he was going to say something else.

Gardner: Yes. I just went one step further this morning and dropped that threshold down to 150 vehicles a day, and that came out to about 38 miles total, and then you are looking at $112,000.

Stutsman: No. You’re talking about the County picking up the cost of this?

Gardner: Right. That’s…

Stutsman: And not…

Gardner: …how Linn County does it.

Stutsman: Oh. OK.

Gardner: Once these threshold are met, then they actually say, as a safety program, that they will shoot those roads.

Stutsman: Jonathan?

Jordahl: What I’d like to point out is that this road dust control policy is a separate issue, in my mind anyway, from the road management document that Jeff has described to us this morning, that there’s nothing. This is the conversation that you and I have had repeatedly about this Mike. That you’re concern, as I understand it, about the policy that Jeff has described is that it would be frightening if it required us to do something about the road at each one of these break points. So, I was pleased to see this document not say and the County will provide at any of these points. So, it’s a little bit disturbing to have this discussed right afterwards.

Gardner: Well, the problem has come up, and we’ve tried working for over a year and a half now, trying to come up with some vehicle that we can implement this dust alleviation thing into everything, and it just… We haven’t been able to come up with anything. So, this was something I had, at the last meeting said, let me run this by you and see what you think.

Stutsman: Our subcommittee discussed about bringing this forth when we were talking about this road management as part of this discussion.

Moore: Well, partially on my part, a large part of this, the dust alleviation policies we’ve been implementing in the 5 years I’ve been with you, it’s not working very well. We have people that promise to participate and then bail on us and then you’re stuck with a bunch of angry residents wanting to know why their dust alleviation has not been continued and the road is reverting strictly to a non-alleviated surface. This is both some of our seal coat roads, I think, as well as our gravel roads. As we’ve been working with the Board and the County Attorney’s staff, one of the biggest problems we have right now is the ability to administer what we are doing now and follow up with it, and for what we’ve been thinking about. Is the bill, even if we come up with policies, how are we going to administer it? I’m going to bang here a little bit. Our staff is, we’ve got more responsibilities than we know what to do with right now. Mike’s is the same way and so is Pat’s. We were looking for a method or a policy that would address concerns of those people living in areas where the traffic volumes are such that dust alleviation’s required. But, also, not over burdening our staff as well, and come up with something that is equitable for everybody. We’re going to have a rezoning before you pretty soon on a dust… On a road that had a dust alleviation contract on it by an original developer that has never participated in the dust. They’ve never paid their share of what they agreed to do.

Jordahl: That was something we discussed earlier and it was… When I sat in on one of these dust control meetings with Mike, I think, and the notion of putting it on their tax bill came up. I don’t know if you were all as you went forward with the discussion.

Stutsman: (Inaudible).

Moore: Yes. We tried that and it’s not very good for us.

Stutsman: Yes. It won’t work.

Thompson: So, if we had a linkage fee though…

White: But there…

Thompson: We could charge for that up front.

White: Right. That’s exactly what I was going to say. There are some other options for doing it and to just to piggy back on what you’ve just heard, I too, have gravitated to the conclusion that we are spending hours and hours and hours trying to figure out a system for a very small economic problem. The figure that Mike used was $21,000. We’ve spent more than that in meetings, trying to identify the problem. If the economics of this are really so small, isn’t the answer let’s just do it. If we need to find an additional source of revenue, that’s a different issue to deal with. A linkage fee I like a lot. We could do a dust alleviation surcharge to a building permit that would go into a fund that would then support whatever the dust alleviation is. My recommendation would be if you look for an additional source of revenue, it’s very important to get it up front rather than on ongoing basis to avoid all of these administrative headaches of how you collect it, how you enforce it, how you get equity.

Thompson: When you say $21,000, you mean annually, right?

Gardner: Right.

White: Yes.

Stutsman: OK. I’m confused. I wonder if we should continue this discussion with dust alleviation or if we should put this on for another and deal with what we’re doing with this road management.

Thompson: Well.

Jordahl: No, I say they’re linked.

Thompson: I notice it says we’re going to get some information from the County Attorney.

White: They’re linked. But, Jonathan’s right. It really is a separate issue. Inevitably dust alleviation shows up a couple of times in this document.

Stutsman: Yes.

Jordahl: And it’s…

White: So, they are linked.

Jordahl: Contradictory as well to what you just said about linkage fees under gravel roads point C, talking about this per mile dust alleviation fee to be paid annually until such road is upgraded to a higher standard. We’re right back to asking the developer to pay.

Davidson: Jonathan, that could be taken out.

White: That’s just language, this is…

Davidson: Yes. That was just language when we (inaudible).

White: At our last Road Maintenance Committee meeting, which Jeff has quite enough to do and wasn’t at, we said wait a minute here. We’re not making any progress. There’s some linkage, there’s some chicken and egg issue. Let’s get the proposed performance standards in front of the Board. See what the Board’s interest is in proceeding with this sort of policy and then we’ll come back and look at making a specific recommendation on dust alleviation.

Davidson: Yes. Jonathan, I certainly completely agree with the merit of what Pat has just laid out. If you were to adopt a policy like that, perhaps something tied to a building permit, you just drop this out completely, because basically you’re handling it on another end.

Jordahl: Yes. OK.

Stutsman: All right.

Jordahl: My big concern is Mike’s long standing objection to having his policies at Secondary Roads linked to a Board sort of development slash road improvement philosophy or planning document that would obligate the County spend too much money. But, with the dollar figures that you’ve got here, I agree with Pat. We’re talking about a relatively small amount of money. If it solves a relatively persistent problem, it would also provide I think a nice kind of like what are we giving for all this regulation that we’re putting in here. We’re saying, well, you can’t do this to your land you can’t do that. You only need circumstances, but, when you get these circumstances we’re paying.

Gardner: It also address the question of when you’ve all got the calls, why are you putting, providing dust alleviation on this road and not on ours.

Stutsman: Or the calls where somebody calls in and said, when I moved here 10 years ago there wasn’t traffic. You’ve done all this rezoning of subdivisions. Now all of a sudden I’m dying because of the dust. Then I think we’ve got a responsibility to say, OK, we’ve approved the subdivision, then we need to upgrade the road.

Jordahl: Yes.

Moore: And per our Land Use Plan about development pays for itself. Pat’s recommendation, boy, I was sitting here thinking about that. I mean, if we can tie it in to building permits, associated with the development on that, we do get the developer to pay one way or another. The user of that service is going to pay back into that fund where we expend those resources to do that.

Davidson: And building permit, it makes a real nice connection between a dwelling being built and cars then moving into that dwelling and creating dust. I mean, it’s a real nice connection between…

Jordahl: Yes it is. You want to put dust on this road, pay for it.

Stutsman: Yes.

Davidson: Yes. As opposed to just a platting, which doesn’t create more dust.

Stutsman: Charlie, you haven’t said anything since we’ve started this discussion.

Duffy: Well, I couldn’t get a… I was trying to beat Jonathan. That’s what I was trying to do. But, that’s just a joke now.

Jordahl: I apologize for cutting you off earlier Charlie. I really do. I wanted to let Jeff get finished.

Duffy: Jeff is concerned and I don’t want to give anybody hell, because I’ve known Jeff for a long time and he’s a very good City employee. Johnson County Council of Governments, that’s City oriented. Who was… Were you the Chair last year?

Stutsman: Of… No, yes, I think it was last year.

Duffy: I’m so…

Stutsman: Chair of Johnson County Council of Governments.

Duffy: I’d really like to see maybe that restructure and have some voting representatives from grass roots, people that lived in the County for years. I know it’s kind of tough when we have the death taxes and capital gains inheritance tax. When your time is up and you’re in a government there with their hand down and others probably might defend me. That’s where a lot of this farm land is going, but it amazes me as I sit here, nobody mentioned prime agricultural land. There’s a difference in land unless your selling chemical commercial fertilizer. Now, it does not mean that everybody should build a house on marginal land. That’s the kind of land that I have on my own farm, and building a house here just 3 years ago, I picked the poorest spot on the farm to build it. Land, at which costs $7,000 extra. I’d like to add that. I could’ve gotten maybe a different car than what I’ve been driving around. It’s all dust. Driving on county roads that didn’t have any development on them, because dust, because it’s up from the car and into the car and I can show you the car out in the parking lot yet. Where does the dust come from? It comes from the rock that is put on the road by the County Road Department, 20% fines, that’s where most of the dust comes from. But, we have good rock. I often think maybe, if we can put it on in the fall, instead of the spring, it might help. Then again, this fall we didn’t have any rain. But, in a rural area, you hear all this bologna about we’re not paying enough taxes and all of that. We’re 18% of the population and I’ll tell you, 18% of the property tax or 18% of the population pay 37% of the property tax. So, that’s all I’ve been hearing. It’s kind of a city/state thing. A lot of people think they shouldn’t even have county government employing everybody including the County Attorney, except the Auditor. It’s very difficult. If you don’t want to build any building out in the rural area and that’s what this plan is, I believe. It’ll get so tough you can’t afford it. Building the cities on some of the best farmland that we have, that is not right, and that’s being done right here in Johnson County with CSR land 95 or better. I remember there was a zoning south of Solon. This couple had a child with disabilities and we turned down a zoning because it had a high corn suitability rating. I wish I could vote over the way these monster highways from Polk County to Marshalltown, Polk County to Burlington. Everything’s Polk County and evidently they were had a few things to say what happens in Johnson County. But, maybe we should just build in a gambling casino so they can, elderly population could pull the slot machines like they have in Polk County and maybe put up some a race track. That’d be another good thing. Or roller coasters, they’re all in Polk County. But, again I just can’t understand that all these road blocks are being thrown in if a person wants to build on a hill someplace. Actually we have gained and now we have 288,000 acres. We’ve gained farmland since 1993 to 1997. Why do we do that? If you don’t want family farmers, say so. That’s about what it amounts to. A fence line bulldozed out, farmsteads and all of that. I, I have concern being a farmer all these years and I consider that something. Being a Supervisor, I’ve been on a lot of committees before, but what I see with this is just a… I don’t agree with you at all R.J., by the way, that this is a land control plan and we don’t care what kind of land it is. Go ahead and build on a 95 CSR. We’ve had deaths this year again in the rural area farming marginal land. But, there’s a right to farm it. As long as these farmers want to farm, that’s what they should do.

Stutsman: Charlie, you about finished? We’ve got other things on the agenda that I think we need to keep moving along.

Duffy: So, well, I just thought being as some of them don’t go over I was kind of counting the minutes. About 20, 25 minutes and so I thought I’d just say, say a few things the way it is.

Stutsman: All right. OK. What are the thoughts of the Board? We need to start winding this up and deciding where we want to go from here.

Jordahl: I think we’ve given some feedback. I think this staff has a sense of we basically kind of like what we see is what I’ve heard.

Stutsman: I think the majority of the Board…

Jordahl: That’s what I mean by we.

Stutsman: Yes. OK.

Jordahl: Yes. And that’s how the Board acts is as a majority. And the… If you were to kind of tweak this.

Davidson: I heard 2 things from the majority of the Board. Let me make sure there isn’t anything else. One was probably you’re going to deal with the dust alleviation issue in another manner, so we’ll drop that out completely.

Stutsman: All right. Yes.

Davidson: Then was there… Did there finally end up being a majority of the Board to put some type of a provision encouraging clustering at a one to 20 density?

Jordahl: I believe so.

Davidson: Or are you just leaving that wide open?

Stutsman: Yes.

Davidson: So, we’ll modify that. Was there anything else?

Duffy: I think you’d better not railroad this too fast.

Stutsman: Well, we haven’t Charlie.

Duffy: Had a couple of special meetings. Well, the ones that have been working on it.

Jordahl: It’s…

Duffy: I got a hunch that…

Stutsman: We’ve had this before us for what, 2 years?

Jordahl: 2 years.

Stutsman: 2 years.

Duffy: Now, hey, I wouldn’t be running this through too fast. I’m just trying to keep you out of trouble.

Jordahl: The other thing Jeff, was the concept of projected traffic volume versus existing traffic volume.

Davidson: Oh right. We wanted to make that projected down for those subdivisions as well.

Jordahl: Then to the… Then, maybe a little bit of clarification about that line that talks about Sugar Bottom and Newport so that it’s very clear that when we are talking about a paved road we are not talking about seal coat. Because it sounds like you’re looking at Newport Road as the paved terminus.

Davidson: Well, we make a distinction right up front, Jonathan, that a seal coat road is distinct from a paved road. I mean, that’s right on the first page of this thing. So, there shouldn’t be any question that a sealed road is a paved road I don’t think.

Duffy: No, but it’s a hard surfaced road.

Davidson: It’s a dust free road.

Duffy: Judging by what I’ve been hearing from another engineer stating in here, that when it’s built up, I think since 1956, you can’t tell me that Sugar Bottom Road isn’t. There… It should be about 8 or 10 inches thick right now.

Jordahl: Maybe a little clarification on point F. When it says reduced by 50%, you might put in parenthesis 150 so that the person reading it…

Davidson: OK.

Stutsman: What I suggest would… Making those changes, get it back to the Board, and then we’ll put it on our agenda again for another time.

Davidson: How about I’ll reproduce and I’ll, what do you call that, bold and cross out, so that you can see exactly the changes we’ve made and have you take a look at it.

Stutsman: All right.

Davidson: Does that sound good?

White: Let’s touch base on procedure. Jeff and I haven’t discussed this in terms of this particular agreement. But, your comprehensive plan envisioned adoption of a transportation plan, and that’s the context within which I have been assuming this discussion is taking place. In order for this or some variation of it to become part of your comprehensive plan, the procedure eventually needs to refer it to the Zoning Commission for their normal public hearing and recommendation process, followed by your normal public hearing process, before adoption. So, even if you wanted to do everything immediately, it’s still going to be 2 to 3 months before this would be ready for you. It would need a little reformatting to turn it into a plan that would then become part of your comprehensive plan. This is not an argument against inserting this clustering language. But, a caveat is, it’s very easy to forget context. All the plan, the proposed or draft transportation plan is attempting to do is evaluate the adequacy of county roads. My recommendation will be to the extent you can, avoid putting in your "adequacy" of county roads plan other criteria, like clustering or prime ag land, so that the comprehensive transportation, the transportation plan component of your comprehensive plan doesn’t also require public hearing and amendment to your other planning documents. As I say, that’s not necessarily an argument against putting something like clustering in, but the introductory language here is important to repeat, which is, this information is intended to compliment, not replace any other existing criteria you have for evaluating rezonings and subdivisions. The proceeding sentence is these performance standards would be used in evaluating the adequacy of county roads. So, clustering access, suitability, all of those come in other places.

Jordahl: Adequacy of county roads for what? I mean, isn’t the for what, implied in the concept of adequacy?

White: When considering requests for rezonings or subdivisions.

Jordahl: Right. So, I mean it’s tied. I think it’s the concept of the comprehensive plan isn’t it, that things should be linked? I mean, that our economic development plan…

White: What I’m saying is clustering has nothing to do with vehicles per day on a road.

Jordahl: Well, but we… But, neither does one per 20. I mean, that was in here.

White: Well, it does.

Davidson: Yes it does because that controls the number.

White: It controls density. Doesn’t include, doesn’t…

Jordahl: Well, but the density in one sense but the density of clustering is another concept of density. That, that… How density as in how closely you put the houses together.

White: Well… It’s a concept of actual development of land rather than density. It’s where you put the house on a package of land not how many you put there.

Jordahl: Well, if you had, I mean, it’s less dense where it’s open space and it’s more dense where they are put together. It’s still a form of density.

White: Not with respect to adequacy of roads.

Davidson: The 2 scenarios that, that Mike drew, generate the same amount of traffic.

White: Right.

Moore: Right. Exactly.

Stutsman: OK. So, we will put this back on the Board’s agenda and then we will refer it to Planning and Zoning.

Davidson: Nothing referring to clustering if I may clarify that?

Jordahl: Well…

White: Well, no. That’s a… These folks need to decide. It’s a question I want to ask, is could we simply refer to the North Corridor plan or refer to the…

White: We could, but it’s redundant because they’re there.

Moore: We’re going to use them up.

Jordahl: Refer to the…

Stutsman: Can we save this discussion when it comes back for the Board again?

Davidson: I’ll, I’ll bring it back to you with…

White: Jeff will work a miracle here.

Stutsman: All right. And then we can…

Davidson: With… Then you can… I’ll have it highlighted so that you can decide what you want to do with it.

Thompson: Thank you.

Moore: One last thing. We need to, as Pat noted, we need to put this into a format so that it then becomes a Transportation Plan, so that somehow staff is going to have to start doing that. Because I don’t think this, this is basically a report.

Jordahl: It’s a report.

Stutsman: OK.

Moore: And ideas and… So, we need to, we need to do that. I don’t know. Maybe we should work with Jeff and his staff and Mike and Pat’s or something, but maybe… What did you have any recommendations on how we should proceed with putting, starting putting it into a format as a plan?

White: No. Of course, I mean, one of my… That’s a good invitation, a door opener for me to repeat. One of my recommendations, in terms of County policy, has been to try to look to Jeff as the County’s Transportation Planner. We haven’t talked at all about ongoing role in terms of a transportation planning vis a vis (inaudible) zonings and subdivisions. That’s yet a different issue. I think the process that Jeff’s used has worked well and I think that’s really… He and Rick and R.J. can decide how they’d like to proceed, and if they run into disagreement they can come back to the Board.

Stutsman: Yes. I agree.

Jordahl: The…

Stutsman: Just a minute Jonathan. The dust alleviation. Are we in agreement to put that back on the agenda at some future time to reconsider that?

Moore: We should probably have a meeting of our subcommittee again and try to address what came up today and then come back to the Board after that.

Stutsman: Why don’t you set up that meeting then? OK.

Duffy: We’ve talked about that before by the way.

Jordahl: Yes.

Duffy: In Linn County.

Stutsman: Yes.

Jordahl: I would be happy enough to, if Mike was at peace with this, I’d be happy to see it be part of the document, as part of the transportation management plan that Pat was talking about that this needs to be configured as, and I…

Stutsman: I think that’s 2 separate issues. I think I’d rather…

Jordahl: It’s 2 separate chapters maybe, of a…

Stutsman: OK. Anything else? Pat? Oh. All right. Thank you very much for your…

Davidson: Thank you.

Stutsman: Oh and maybe I should open it up to the public if there is any comments. I think there might be some people here that are interested.

Environmental Advocates Representative Pat Cancilla: I’ll wait till you have a public meeting.

Stutsman: All right. Very good. We still have a number of items on the agenda. I didn’t know if the Board wanted to take a break or if you wanted to keep right on going.

Jordahl: A little break might be good.

Stutsman: 5 minutes. A quarter of.

Recessed at 11:40 a.m.; reconvened at 11:45 a.m.

(Continued in Part 4)