Stutsman: All right. Reports. Board of Supervisors Staff Organizational Plan. Carol, do you want to take that up, or do you want to…

Thompson: Well, we were almost finished the other day, I think. Do you guys want to… You all have copies.

Peters: I have extras in case somebody needs it.

Thompson: What we had discussed was organizing the work in tasks and not assigning new work unless we talk about it first.

Stutsman: Carol, I think I need a copy.

Thompson: What else?

Peters: (Inaudible) bring back the scrapbook.

Jordahl: Yes, bring the scrapbook up. We’ve had, under Jo’s task, the 5th one up from the bottom, the Auditor, we talked about this last year some time, that the Auditor keeps a scrap book of all the articles pertaining to Johnson County.

Stutsman: What do you want to talk about?

Jordahl: What I want to talk about it that the scrap book that we have been keeping here, that Jo had been keeping, is only articles pertaining to the Board of Supervisors. It would be somewhat easier to research things here if that were continued. She had been continuing it even after we had agreed that it should be discontinued. We still have a current scrapbook. I guess I would find it easier and more likely for myself if I would want to look for something, to look here than to look there.

Stutsman: I would agree with you too, Jonathan. I kind of hate to see us give that up, too.

Thompson: She listed it as one of the things that she did, so do you want to leave it on?

Lehman: We didn’t get to ask for how much time, do you have any idea how much time? I know she scans the papers.

Stutsman: But there’s been any number of times, like you’ve said, Jonathan, where I’ve gone back to those scrapbooks to look something up.

Duffy: So have I.

Stutsman: It’s been easy to do, because you know that it’s there, and you have a pretty good idea. But if you have to sort through everything, I don’t know how easy that would be.

Jordahl: Nor how up to date they may be, where I think Jo pretty well keeps up with this.

Stutsman: Is there a consensus to leave that up?

Jordahl: I’m suggesting that we had had a consensus to take it off, but maybe we ought to reverse our consensus and leave it there.

Thompson: On the second page, we need to work on our list of other committees that we have assigned to various people, and then I’ll make a little document that says what you should do if you’re chairing a committee for the Board. Maybe at one of our department head meetings, we can talk to them about what we expect and how that should go. If it’s OK with you guys, I could work with Carol on who gets it.

Peters: As a follow-up, too, on the benefits of administration including health insurance, that basically has been accomplished.

Stutsman: All right.

Thompson: Nice work.

Peters: Also the drug testing, that has been accomplished all with the exception of just physically moving the individual files.

Thompson: That would be a space problem?

Peters: For all practical purposes, that has been accomplished, so you can delete those 2.

Jordahl: This is under tasks to be transferred?

Peters: Yes.

Jordahl: Benefits administration drug testing? I think the most glaring thing to me, and I’m going to say it again, is the phone answering. We have discussed repeatedly the need for some additional staff person in the Board office so that the professional duties of Carol and Deana could be clarified, and the burden of being an alternate receptionist would be lifted from them, and we would have 2 folks in support staff roles.

Duffy: Jonathan, I don’t think we’d better hire anybody now.

Stutsman: That’s a budget issue. We should have brought that up when we were discussion putting together the Board of Supervisors’ budget.

Jordahl: It’s an organizational plan issue as well. As we talk about this stuff here, it says answer phones, receptionist general information (inaudible), but really Carol and Deana both perform that function under our current organizational plan. Either we change the organizational plan to indicate that they answer the phones, or we should hire another person to answer the phones.

Thompson: Well, we have a voicemail system now that we can use for short breaks.

Jordahl: Does that work?

Peters: I can’t tell you how much time…

Jordahl: Works pretty well, does it?

Stutsman: I don’t notice… You’re on the phone a lot, but that’s because people ask to talk to you.

Thompson: You and Deana don’t feel like you need to cover the phone in the same way that you used to when Jo steps out for a while?

Peters: We still cover it too.

Thompson: If it rings, they answer it, but you wouldn’t have to. You could put it on the voicemail.

Peters: Right. A good example of what we do is like yesterday, when Jo was gone, Deana and I were answering the phones. But we had our night button on which meant, let’s say I was on the other phone, Deana was on the other phone, whatever, that 3rd call would automatically go to voicemail. Sometimes we need to step out of the office. Sometimes Deana and I are both gone and Jo needs to step out for lunch, whenever that happens we tried to let 3 quarters of the office know that we’re not going to be here, set the phones up to go to voicemail, put a note on the door. The voicemail has helped tremendously.

Jordahl: I think if you asked Deana, do you have to cover the phones when Jo is out to lunch, the answer would be yes. The answer would not be no, the answer would not be it’s not one of my duties, it’s one of her duties. If we don’t want it to be one of her duties, we need to do something else.

Thompson: Well, my personal feeling was that we wanted to encourage her to focus on her professional duties, and answering the phone wasn’t one of them.

Jordahl: Yes, so then…

Stutsman: But we’re not expecting her to do that every day, all day. We’re asking her to do that when this office is short staffed.

Peters: If Jo was on the first line and the second line rings, yes, we answer it.

Jordahl: It is expected. If Jo’s on the line, and the second line rings, it’s expected that Deana will answer it.

Stutsman: The only other alternative is to hire another person, and I’m not ready to do that.

Duffy: I’m not ready to do that.

Peters: (Inaudible) calls are going to come in.

Stutsman: Quite frankly, I don’t think we could just hire another person just to answer the phone in case that second or third line rings. That would be (inaudible)

Jordahl: The answering person to alleviate some of the confusion we’ve had with voicemail.

Stutsman: Is there support to revamp that? The time is getting late and I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time.

Duffy: Just leave it the way it is until we see how the budget…

Thompson: If this is OK without any elaboration, then we need to go ahead and do it. Mike, you were going to say something before and I cut you off.

Lehman: I just thought we need to hire a temporary person for an hour over lunch. That’s the only conflict we ever have, I see. Are you saying you want the duty in there just so they know that they are supposed to pick the phone up rather than ignore? I think we accomplish what we want to do that way.

Jordahl: Well, Deana knows what she’s supposed to do, it’s just that…

Lehman: If it rings 3 or 4 times I answer it.

Jordahl: But it’s not assumed that you’ll be there over the lunch hour to do it.

Thompson: If you were doing something else, you would probably let it go to voicemail, wouldn’t you? That’s what I do.

Stutsman: That’s what I do, too.

Duffy: That’s right. That’s what voicemail’s for.

Jordahl: But that’s not what voicemail’s for for Deana.

Duffy: Jonathan…

Stutsman: Well, I just don’t think we’re in a position right now to make any changes to that.

Thompson: Maybe it’s something we could talk about in our committee sometime.

Stutsman: Is this committee listed on organizational plan?

Thompson: No it isn’t.

Stutsman: Whoa. We need to make that change. Poor Carol. Anything else that we need to talk about as far as this organization plan? Got all your questions answered over there? A couple of things under other.

Stutsman: I want to remind the Board that at 1:30 we’re supposed to meet over at the Ambulance Department for a progress report. Also, I want to remind the Board that we’re going to do evaluations on Thursday, so I hope that people have their ratings into Carol. Has everybody got their ratings in?

Peters: No.

Stutsman: OK. Then, your comments, bring those to the Board meeting, and I would either ask Jonathan or Carol to bring your laptop in so we could put it together at that time.

Thompson: Will you get us hooked up, Carol?

Peters: Yes, I’ve arranged that.

Stutsman: I don’t need to get your evaluation comments to Carol, just the ratings. Just bring your evaluation comments to the Board meeting on Thursday.

Peters: If you want to get your comments to me, I’ll put them in one document and distribute it so everybody has the same document.

Stutsman: Will you have time to do that?

Thompson: It was OK with me if you just made the grid. I just emailed you the whole document because I didn’t want to copy them over onto a different document.

Stutsman: I think it goes faster if we all aren’t trying to look at all those pages. Have your own documents and then just have a discussion on what everybody’s comments are and then incorporate that. OK. We need to talk about rescheduling Mike Foster’s evaluation. It was scheduled for Wednesday the 26th. Jonathan and I are going to be gone and I don’t know if anybody else is going to be gone.

Thompson: Which month did it have to be done, Carol?

Stutsman: It had to be done in this month, didn’t it? It was difficult getting that time.

Peters: He really likes to stay away from Mondays and Tuesdays.

Stutsman: OK.

Peters: If you guys are gone, should the 3 of us just go ahead and do it?

Jordahl: What about the 27th?

Thompson: In the afternoon?

Jordahl: Yes.

Stutsman: ECICOG is in the afternoon. That’s fine.

Thompson: What time? Like 1:30?

Stutsman: Yes. Was that a problem for Mike?

Peters: I don’t think it will be. I’ll (inaudible).

Stutsman: Let’s try for 1:30. I agree with Carol’s suggestion, just the 3 of you go ahead with that. We can certainly get comments. We’ll have that, it’s just the formal evaluation. 1:30. Carol, if you could let us know. All right. Anything else under other?

Lehman: I had a report.

Stutsman: OK.

Lehman: I’ll probably bring it up again on Thursday for more audience, but Rudy’s Bakery was successful.

Stutsman: They were? I was wondering.

Lehman: I talked to Marty. They had a representative of the law firm line up at 11:00 on Sunday night. I think he’s being treated for pneumonia now. Second person in line.

Stutsman: He’ll get over it.

Lehman: We will need to have a public hearing. I think we tentatively scheduled it for the 27th of January, for the Industrial Revenue.

Jordahl: That would be in the evening then, or would it be in the morning of the meeting?

Lehman: I don’t know.

Stutsman: Didn’t we say 9:00 in the morning, assuming that it would be a fairly short public hearing?

Peters: I thought it was 10:00.

Stutsman: Maybe you’re right, Carol, but I was thinking that we did say in the morning.

Peters: That’s why I have to write things down.

Stutsman: Anything else, Mike?

Lehman: No.

Stutsman: Anybody else have anything that they’re just dying to report? OK, why don’t we hold on until next Thursday? Discussion from the public? Jean? We have a new person with us. I’m assuming you’re with KCJJ?

KCJJ Reporter Kelly Neff: Right, Kelly Neff is the name.

Stutsman: OK. Glad to have you here.

Neff: Today’s my first meeting.

Stutsman: Well, bless your heart, you stuck for the whole meeting.

Neff: That’s right. See how it runs.

Stutsman: All right. I would suggest that if there’s no other business, that we recess until this afternoon at 1:30. Thanks for bearing with us. It was a long meeting. Try to keep it moving along.

Recessed at 12:40 p.m.; reconvened at 1:38 p.m. with Duffy absent.

(Continued in Part 6)