Stutsman: Business from Tom Hanson, Assistant Coordinator of the Johnson County Emergency Management Documents for Izaak Walton Buyout Program. Oh, Marty, I don’t want to embarrass you but women do farm, too.
Kelly: Oh, I’m sorry. Well, I’m not in great shape. I’ve got to announce something here. I just became a grandfather on Saturday. A baby girl.
Stutsman: First time?
Kelly: No, number 4, but a little girl, born up in Minnesota. See, if we had a lot of jobs here, my son would be working here in Iowa some place, and I wouldn’t have to send my wife all the way to Minnesota to be a bachelor for 10 days.
Planning and Zoning Administrator Rick Dvorak: Have you heard anything from Rudi’s?
Kelly: Yes, they’ve got their… I’ve told that to Mike.
Lehman: I don’t think Rick was here, but…
Dvorak: We’re still going to pursue the (inaudible)?
Lehman: Yes, the hearing January 27.
Kelly: We’re going to have the meeting. They stood in line at 11:00 on Sunday night, and we’re 2nd in line, and we’re awarded the bonds. I go to the North Liberty City Council tonight for their other CEBA and the…
Lehman: Rise?
Kelly: The rise for the railroad. Tonight I’ve got to do one in Coralville at 7:00 and one at 7:45 here tonight. Thank you all, thank you very much.
Stutsman: OK. There’s Tom. Assistant Coordinator of the Johnson County Emergency Management Documents for the Izaak Walton Buyout Program.
Jordahl: Lots of them.
Stutsman: Yes. Go ahead. I was just going to make a comment. Izaak Walton is spelled wrong on here. I meant to say that the other day.
Assistant Emergency Management Director Tom Hanson: I probably did that.
Jordahl: You couldn’t have.
Hanson: First one, I think, on your list. OK. A little background. We’re dealing with the State and HUD. I was very cocky when I went into this to the fact that I thought well Johnson County, surely we’ve gotten money from HUD before. But we haven’t, so consequently, we don’t have these little hoops in line that HUD would like to have. Before we get to that, I’ve got another thing. HUD has sent 2 contracts into the County to be signed by the Board. Where’d they go? We have to have them?
Jordahl: I gave that to you…
Hanson: I’ve got the contracts signed with the State. That’s taken care of, and they’re happy, but they won’t release money until the contract with HUD is signed by the Chairperson.
Stutsman: I gave that to Carol Peters. We need to put that on the agenda. There was only one.
Hanson: Yesterday?
Stutsman: What do you mean, yesterday? This morning I gave it to you.
Hanson: OK, good. I’ve been calling Des Moines and explaining…
Stutsman: But there was only one contract that I saw. Is there another one that you’re missing?
Hanson: Just one. I had them keep mailing until one surfaced for us. We need to get that back into them, the problem being there’s a process here, and it takes some time. The 15th, we’re scheduled to close on Izaak Walton with 2 of the people.
Stutsman: Oh, February 15. OK, all right.
Hanson: I’m sorry. Excuse me. The 15th of February we’re scheduled to close with Gill and Southwick. Without getting the funding through, it takes probably 30 days to get a release of funds and stuff through HUD and getting everything in order. The surprise that came up was to find that they wanted this affirmation of policies. I’m going, woah. This is new. When I found that no, the County doesn’t have them, I went to Pat, and I’ll be honest with you. I tried to talk him into using Iowa City’s, I tried to talk him into using just anybody I could think of, and no. They have to be the County. The first one, of course, is an affirmative fair housing project. If you’ll notice, this is just something that we have to put in the paper, is a notice, that yes, we are for this. It’s a federal. We’ve designated an office to contact in case someone thinks that we’re not fairly managing this program. That person to contact could be anyone, a Board member, our office, your Human Relations office, Charlie, just anyone we want to get into that. That one is FYI and not anything but information purposes that the County does agree fair housing, which I’m sure is not a problem. The next one is a policy on the use of excessive force, and in my cover letter, we all refer to 24 CFR. These are federal things that we do anyway, but they want us to acknowledge that we understand that there is a federal rule that tells us these things. I talked with Bob Carpenter on this one, simply because the law enforcement side. Bob read it through, and he said Tom, that’s already a… You know, this is part of code and everything. Why do they have to have this? As I’ve said, it’s federal monies, and another hoop for us to insure that we’ve got our act together and in a row. The next one is the Code of Conduct. Again, it comes out of a CFR. It’s a federal requirement. The County’s been working under this, it just has never officially said oh yes. The young lady downstairs in your Human Relations?
Stutsman: Lora?
Hanson: Lora. When I talked to her office, and visited her, she has a lot of this. She’s been working on this. I wanted to assure her that if it wasn’t for the project that we’ve got to push, I probably would’ve went into her office and set this down. We have communicated on this. What this basically says, again, is that the person in Johnson County, or an agent of Johnson County doesn’t have their hand out. That’s again federal regulations, the federal law and rule. Then, of course, we go into procurement policy, and that’s how you operate anyway. You do this. You don’t bid anything out without, you know, your seal bid system. Tom does it all the time under whoever your Procurement Officer is. Again, they just wanted it officialized, is a way of saying it. They want it to show that yes, we understand and we know these federal laws, and yes, we do operate under them. My problem, of course, is time, in that the closing’s coming fast, the government system is not real fast in Des Moines, by the time this goes through. What I’m asking for is for you to sign these as a resolution. The fair housing one I want to get in the papers as fast as possible.
Stutsman: I can see no problem with putting these on Thursday’s agenda for approval. Does anyone else have any…
Jordahl: Feedback from Pat would indicate that it’s all square?
Hanson: Yes. In fact, I sent one part. There’s another part of this that we already had, and I sent into Des Moines, and they accepted that. These are just the ones that they need to have on file that we are aware that yes, there is an Excessive Force Policy. Everybody’s got it.
Stutsman: But they just want proof.
Hanson: They want proof that we’ve got it. If I feel you used excessive force, I contact the Board or the Sheriff’s office or the County Attorney. It’s the same thing everywhere else. That was my proposition on this. The Affirmative Fair Housing Policy I have to put in the paper.
Stutsman: Publish, you mean?
Hanson: Had somebody talked to me, I’m sorry.
Thompson: I think we have had to publish one of those when we got the money from HUD, or from wherever we got the Housing (inaudible).
Stutsman: Yes.
Hanson: We have to publish that to show that we’re not going to be discriminatory.
Stutsman: All right.
Thompson: The other 2 policies, the Procurement and the Code of Conduct only apply to this particular project and the things there…
Hanson: Yes.
Thompson: It applies to you, basically.
Hanson: Me.
Thompson: The use of excessive force. That’s a very interesting one.
Hanson: Well it’s…yes. I talked to Bob about it, and the County Attorney. The language in it was really, I thought, confusing. Bob and I went over it and the County Attorney went over it. We thought we cleaned it up.
Thompson: Well, it prohibits us from using excessive force in non-violent civil rights demonstrations. It just seems really unlikely to me that we’re going to have any demonstrations as a result of relocating this.
Hanson: Of this. Well, I don’t know.
Thompson: You never know, do you.
Hanson: The thing of it is, and it’s a State law. I’m not a law officer, but you react with the amount of force that’s directed towards you. You just can’t react with more force than necessary to solve the situation. That was how Bob explained it to me. It’s a technicality, if you please.
Stutsman: All right.
Lehman: You mentioned a 30 day timetable. Is that if we get to sign stuff on Thursday, or does it hinge on that publication?
Hanson: Yes, I’ll get the publication in. I’ve done the other publication, and I’ll call the guy this morning yet and talk to him. We do have the contract. That’ll make him happy.
Stutsman: Yes, and I think in the future, Tom, I think if those contracts are sent up here to the Board office then…
Hanson: They were.
Jordahl: No, I got this at home.
Hanson: At home? Oh, I’m sorry.
Stutsman: Yes. I think that’s where some of the delay comes in, because Carol just monitors those things, and she knows exactly what to do with them when they come into the office.
Hanson: Sure. I’ll contact him this morning on the phone.
Stutsman: Great. OK, then let’s…
Lehman: Do we need some discussion on who we want to name as the agent for the Fair Housing? Angela Williams, Department, maybe, or should it be the Board?
Thompson: Since this is just for this project, I guess it would be Tom.
Stutsman: Yes, I would say Tom.
Lehman: Right, OK.
Jordahl: Not only did I get it at home, it was sent to my old address.
Hanson: Oh no.
Stutsman: You got another letter, too, that was sent to your home that we were passing around. The announcement that we got the funds, the courtesy copy.
Jordahl: They come with this yellow label on it, it’s redirected through the change in address thing.
Hanson: The Affirmative Action Fair Housing Policy. It doesn’t matter. Who’s going to take that?
Thompson: We have been using the East Central Iowa Council of Governments, but Angela has left there, so we don’t have the name of a person to put on.
Jordahl: Affirmative Action. You say the Affirmative Fair Housing Policy is what you’ve been talking, you’re the contact person for that?
Hanson: Well, we need an office. Board of Supervisors.
Stutsman: Deana, why don’t you research that, and see who is appropriate to put on there.
Hanson: I can call him and ask.
Stutsman: OK. We’ll put this on the resolution form for Thursday.
Jordahl: We don’t have a housing office. Carol’s been kind of leading the charge on that.
Hanson: Carol. There we are.
Stutsman: If you could check that out, Deana, then we can include on there. Any other questions?
Duffy: Yes. Tom, do you think this time, now, we’re going to get this done? It’s been a year and a half. We’d have our Emergency Management meetings and discuss it every week…
Hanson: I know. We’ve been at this an atrocious amount of time.
Duffy: There wasn’t any problem at all.
Hanson: What?
Duffy: There wasn’t any problem right at the start. It was to get 4 people off the flood plain, but yes. It used to be HUD was in the paper quite a bit of the time.
Hanson: There was just an article in the paper, Charlie, that Harkin got another 7 or 8 million released for Independence, Iowa. The program is very close. As soon as we get the closing on Gill and Southwick, then we let the bids on the demolition of the 2 subjects’ houses down there, get that out of there. Then I turn around and I have to deal with Hull, yet, which is no problem because she owns the land that she’s on. This is all a budget and if there’s money in the budget yet I have one other person who would like to be involved. But, I don’t want to deal with that person till later. Until after we close on what we’ve got on our plate right now. I don’t want to start bringing things in and having it muddy the waters.
Thompson: Thank you.
Stutsman: OK. Thank you Tom.
Jordahl: Nice metaphor to end on.
Stutsman: I don’t think you need to come back Thursday unless you want to.
Hanson: Yes. Thank you, because I’ve got to do a speaking date.
Stutsman: OK.
Duffy: Tom, thanks for everything you did for Y2K.
Jordahl: Yes.
Duffy: You put a lot of time and effort and…
Hanson: Where were you? Were you there Charlie? You came down didn’t you?
Duffy: I was all over the County with all of the deputies.
Hanson: All over the County with my deputies.
Duffy: Deputy, yes.
Stutsman: Does the Board feel that Tom needs to come back on Thursday to go through these? I think it’s pretty…
Lehman: We can call him if we have some problems in the meantime. I don’t…
Duffy: If you’re not doing anything, I’d feel better if he was here, because there’s so much red tape.
Stutsman: We need to move on, OK?
Jordahl: Just the one thing about that would be to acknowledge his role in Y2K on camera would be thing.
Stutsman: You said you had a speaking engagement or something?
Hanson: (Inaudible).
Stutsman: Oh, as a matter of fact, we’re doing this Thursday night.
Jordahl: Thursday night, 5:30.
Stutsman: I think we’re OK.
Hanson: If I can get it in, I’ll stop by.
Jordahl: If you can’t, don’t.
Stutsman: Thanks, Tom. Business from Lisa Dewey, SEATS Director, regarding the approved missed rides and rider conduct service policies for Johnson County SEATS. Good morning, Lisa.
SEATS Director Lisa Dewey: Good morning. This morning I’m here to talk about 2 service policies.
Stutsman: Excuse me, I want to introduce Bob Simpson, who’s a Chair of the SEATS Advisory.
SEATS Advisory Committee Chair Bob Simpson: I’m very happy to be here to support Lisa.
Dewey: Back in February of 1999, the Paratransit Advisory Committee was asked to assist and draft the service policies with regard to missed rides and rider conduct for SEATS service. A lot of hard work has gone into that. There were subcommittees set up to help draft and put together 2 service policies. Since then, these policies have been drafted and redrafted with the assistance of the Paratransit Committee and the subcommittee. Reverend Welsh was a very big part of that, as well as other subcommittee members. In November of 1999, the draft policy was submitted to the Paratransit Advisory Committee for their approval, which they gave. In December, we had a public hearing on December 13 to have input from the public with regard to these 2 policies, which is required by the Americans With Disabilities Act. Through all that, these 2 policies have been developed and the input taken. The Missed Rides Policy would have… In both of these policies, the approach is educational. We want to really work hard with the riders to educate them as to the impact that they have with regard to the service of SEATS. With regard to the Missed Rides Policy, we define what a missed ride is, and then we talk about the approach and how we would approach educating the riders and their care providers, to work with both. The emphasis is on to educate those individuals, and what the impact is when they do not take the ride, or miss the ride and don’t cancel them in advance. 2% of our service right now is missed rides, and that, last month, we had 99 people who did not get rides that might have been able to use those rides if that service had been cancelled in advance. We want to educated people to let them know that if they cancel in advance, it really helps other riders to be able to possibly get rides that we weren’t able to do for them. The policy has that if an individual has missed 2 rides in a month, then the SEATS driver would notify the office and let them know that the person did miss a ride. When they’ve missed 2, then we would work with the agency and the person and council them on the missed rides to help them understand the negative impact. The SEATS Advisory Committee, or a community volunteer, will also be asked to visit the individuals and their care providers, if they have a care provider apparent. If it’s just the rider independently, we would work independently with the rider. Once a counselor has made contact, they would then contact SEATS and share the appropriate information so we can kind of work together to come up with a plan on how we can prevent this in the future. If, after the initial education process has been utilized, a rider has 2 or more missed rides in the following month, then a SEATS representative would contact the rider and/or the care provider and discuss the rider’s situation and impress upon the rider and/or the care provider the impact of that action. Every attempt will be made to help the rider work out his or her problem before a written warning is signed. If the missed rides continue, a written warning would be sent stating that if they missed 2 more rides in the next month, it would result in a suspension of service for 1 week. If the rider misses 2 rides in the next month, he or she will receive a letter stating that within one week their SEATS service would be suspended for one week. I do want to indicate that for trips for purposes, this was a very difficult area, because there was some controversy. But it has, through the public process and the Committee’s process, been determined at this time, if a person is suspended from service, they will still be allowed to use SEATS to go to and from work or to and from medical appointments. But we will review this policy and the impact it’s having and the service down the road to see if that needs to be modified. These are not in stone. These policies will be reviewed, and if they need to be modified through the Committee process and the Board and everything, we would make those changes, but we believe that this is a good start with this policy. It will help educate people and hopefully make some changes in the service, of people missing their rides. There is an appeal process. If a person is to be suspended, they may appeal that through the appeal process. They have to do that within a week that they received their notice. Their service will continue during the appeal process. The Appeal Board is made up of 3 members, a citizen representative serving on the Advisory Board, an elected representative. We hoped to determine that by the city of residents serving on the Advisory Board, and a SEATS rider or community volunteer chosen by a random drawing. We will put out a request for anybody who would like to volunteer on this Appeal Board through the riders, to see if any of the riders would like to volunteer. They would be on that Board for one year, and they would be heard. The Appeal Board would meet in a location close to and accessible to the rider whose appeal is being reviewed, and they would do that within 2 weeks of the appeal. The Appeal Board would hear the appeal. SEATS would not be on that Board or participate on that Board. It would be totally separate. The Appeal Board would then hear the information, and then they would make a decision as to whether to continue on with the process. Their decision will be final, and any argument at that point or any disagreement, they could go to further civil, further appeal at other governmental level. But the Appeal Board’s decision would be final. With regard to subscription service… Subscription service is when a rider does not have to call in their rides because it’s a routine ride that’s automatically scheduled. That’s a service that we have. We do have some of this. If a subscription rider has his or her service suspended twice in a 12 month period, the rider will lose his or her subscription service. That doesn’t mean they lose SEATS service. Once their suspension is up, they can continue to use SEATS. They would just have to call their rides in and request rides. We are limited by the amount of subscription service we can provide. We have several riders who have to call in and request rides based on what’s left available. If someone loses their subscription service, then they have to start calling to request their rides, and don’t have the privilege of being able to have it automatically scheduled. If a rider continues to miss their ride after the first suspension, and the next month they have another no-show, they would then have their service suspended for 2 weeks, and it would continue, for the 3rd time it would be 3 weeks and so on. We would continue the education and counseling effort, because we do put a strong emphasis on that even through those suspensions, and we would try to work with the individuals to try and help them correct that problem. That is the Missed Rides Policy. The Rider Conduct Policy, the purpose of this policy is to assure the safety and comfort of our riders, safety being number one, and both these policies will apply to all the individuals riding SEATS. I will tell you that these 2 policies, once the Board approves or makes a decision on these 2 policies, if they are approved, they will then need to go to the city councils to be approved, because this is part of the ADA Plan that will have to be adopted. It will go through JCCOG to do that, to update their ADA Plan. Even though Johnson County SEATS does more than just ADA, because we are involved in the ADA service, we’ll have to go to JCCOG for updating their plan. I have talked with them and if things are approved here, I don’t see a problem with Council of Governments approving theirs.
Stutsman: But it doesn’t mean that it’s got to go to individuals city councils?
Dewey: No, just to JCCOG. It will go to each individual city, but it’ll be through their process. We are concerned about the safety and comfort of our riders and our drivers. Again, this is an educational approach, and it is to work with the riders and/or parents, care providers, school and employment personnel. If we have an individual who has violent, illegal, or seriously disruptive conduct, the Americans With Disabilities Act allows us to suspend, terminate or make conditional provisions for their service. Our approach is to try and educate and work out a plan to prevent this behavior from happening again. Again, we would work with those individuals to develop a plan on how to prevent them from taking place. If the initial education process has been utilized and the rider continues to display the inappropriate behavior, then they will receive a written warning indicating that another episode of their inappropriate behavior would result in a suspension of services. Included with the notice will be possible alternative measures. We’re talking about things that they might be able to do to prevent that behavior from happening in the future. If they have another episode of inappropriate behavior, he, she and/or the care provider and program staff member will be sent a notice of suspended services. We would be working with care providers and agencies. They would get a copy of the notice as well as the parent and the rider. If the rider’s independent, it would be the rider and somebody from the Committee. The length of suspension services may be for no more than one week, and the Director would work with the rider and/or care provider to determine the suspension time, which means it could be for less than that. If the rider then returns to utilize the SEATS service and continues to display inappropriate behavior, the rider may again receive suspension of service and/or possibly termination of service. Termination does not mean it’s permanent. If that behavior can be shown that it has been corrected after a period of time, then we can consider having that rider come back to utilizing the SEATS service. If the rider is suspended and then they continue to show that behavior if they come back, then we would discuss termination of service. Again, if a rider’s service is terminated, the rider and/or care provider may follow up at a later date if the behavior has been corrected, and the (Inaudible) or the SEATS Director determine if service may be restored and consequences if behavior again continues. Again, the appeal process is the same as with the missed rides. They would go to the same Appeal Board, they would here within 2 weeks, they’ll have a hearing close to where the rider is so it’s convenient for the rider to get to. Again, their decision would be final. These 2 policies will be included. Once they’re approved, they’ll be included with a riders’ guide that we’ve developed that informs riders of our service and operations and things like that. The policies would be included in that riders’ guide to let them know. We would not implement these policies for at least 60 days after the final approval from the JCCOG, of adoption in their ADA Plan. This would be to allow us to make sure that the riders get notification of the policy and start the education process with this, and to let them know when it would start, so that people are aware of the 2 new policies. Any questions?
Stutsman: Any questions?
Duffy: Yes, Lisa. I’ll say it to start some place. There were some missed rides, and did you say 99 people…
Dewey: Those aren’t the ones that missed the rides. We had over 150 missed rides. We’ve had up to 200 and some. I don’t have all my figures of actual numbers.
Duffy: How many people would have taken the rides? Do you keep track of that on.
Dewey: One month we did look at what percentage of the rides would have been able to have been met if people had cancelled in advance. 64% during that one month would have been able to have their ride. A little over 2/3 would have had their rides if people had cancelled in advance.
Duffy: In figures, 2/3 would be about how many?
Dewey: 66. If you’re talking about the 99, 66.
Duffy: That almost makes me think that you should expand the service. If there’s 66 people who couldn’t get on the bus, so to speak.
Dewey: Well, what we’re saying is 66 could have if people had cancelled in advance and not missed their ride.
Duffy: I understand that, and that’s very important. I wondered if they all showed up, but there’s still been…
Dewey: The 99 still would not have gotten their ride. If the 100 to 200 so people had met their ride, they would have all taken their ride. They had that service. They wouldn’t have missed anything. We still had denied 99 people service.
Duffy: Is that right? That’s very interesting.
Lehman: It’ll come from 2 different directions. You can look at expansion or you can look at efficiency. We’re trying to look at efficiency.
Dewey: We’re trying to look at both right now, and we’re looking at what we can do to help with the service.
Simpson: My first step is to use a policy such as a committee as Lisa has suggested in an attempt to address the problem. If that fails, then I think we’re going to have to move something else. It’s obvious. That’s why things are so tentative. I think we’ve got a meticulously fair policy which has within in a carrot and stick. Which of those are we going to be able to use in the long run? I think the committee hopes that it will be the carrot, but I don’t think we should be afraid of imposing stronger sanctions, if that’s necessary, to make this available to the folks who are currently being denied. Also, Charlie, if you’re interested in expansion, we’re all for that, too.
Duffy: Well, I’m just concerned that even if they would have shown up, we have a lot of people that don’t have rides.
Dewey: Yes, we do.
Thompson: I like how you revised the sentences about the suspension. I think it’s much easier to understand, now.
Dewey: I have to say that I really appreciated the Advisory Committee and the subcommittees that helped develop these. They really did a good job and they worked really hard on them and had a really good input into these policies. I really do appreciate their assistance.
Duffy: I think Bob, being a Chairperson, knows how to run a meeting.
Stutsman: He’s done an outstanding job, tremendous supporter of the SEATS program. Lisa, a question, if the Board approves these policies and they move onto JCCOG, and there are changes at JCCOG, do they come back to us or to the Committee?
Dewey: Yes, they would come back here before we implement any changes that we make to this. This would go through… But I have already talked with the cities, and they are really happy these policies as they are. Are there any other questions?
Jordahl: Yes. In the Rider Conduct Policy draft, under Educational Process, in the 2nd paragraph, right in the middle under where it says SEATS Director, it says SEATS Director or staff member will then evaluate the issue and speak with the rider and/or care provider program staff member. I think maybe what’s meant there should be and care provider or program staff member.
Dewey: No, because not all riders have a care provider or program staff member, so it’s the rider and/or these 2. If they have one, we will talk with both people. If they don’t have one, we would only talk with the rider.
Jordahl: What it says to me in a vein that I would disagree with is that you could speak only with the care provider and not the rider, the way this is worded, and we don’t want that to happen.
Dewey: No, that’s not the intent. The intent is that unless the rider is someone who’s so cognitively inferior, we could not have that discussion.
Jordahl: It seems like…
Dewey: That’s why it says rider and/or.
Jordahl: Yes. But in the missed rides policies and procedures you have a similar policy that you want to contact the agency. You said there in, what is it, you count the first sentence and then there are 2 paragraphs and in the next paragraph it says when the person has had 2 missed rides in less than a month, the agency, if any, working with them, will be notified and the agency with counsel with the person. I want to suggest that that language that works in the Missed Rides policies might make this clearer, too.
Stutsman: I think Jonathan has a point. When you do read that, it does say and/or. To me, too, it drops off the…
Dewey: I could take out the or and put at the end, if any, and that would work just as well. If it says speak with the rider and care provider program staff member, if any.
Jordahl: In the other one, it says the agency, if any, working with them. That might also be, in a way, nicer and more consistent than saying care provider program staff member. That’s sounds a little more hierarchical. Agency working with them sounds more like in the educational mode of working together.
Dewey: I can add agency, but I’d like to keep care provider in there, because some riders aren’t in an agency program but they do have a care provider. It could be a family member who’s the care provider.
Jordahl: But you don’t have that in the Missed Rides Policy.
Stutsman: I think we’re basically saying the same things for both policies, we’re just saying, have consistent language for both.
Jordahl: The other thing that I would mention is you talk at the end, when you’re talking about the missed rides policy, about emphasis will continue to be placed on the education of the rider throughout the process. I think that that is possible to do, but it’s also… The nature of an appeals process is sort of adversarial. To make the emphasis there educational is going to be a challenge to continue to look at not trying to prove whether or not I missed the ride, or whether I had an excuse or not, sort of us versus them. I like the idea of look at what you’ve caused here. Because of this, somebody else wasn’t able to get a ride, the caring about the other person, that’s all a good thing. Somehow in the process of appealing and proving and so forth, that may be lost. I just wanted to mention that I don’t know how you could say it.
Dewey: We’re just saying that even though they may be suspended, we would continue to work with them in the future to try and prevent that. They may receive the suspension, but we would still want to work with them and continue the education process.
Stutsman: I think that’s real good. Any other comments?
Duffy: It’s the policy, the way I read it, and when it gets around to these, maybe it already has, to the ones who miss rides, it’s really not a real strong message, it’s just nicely written. Like, a missed ride doesn’t include a ride missed for reasons beyond the rider’s control. Things like that are good to have in there. I think it’ll be positive.
Jordahl: I agree with Charlie. I think it it’s really a testimony to the Committees work, the way that this has been through many, many people, and lots of consideration back and forth. It shows that writing things as a committee can work.
Stutsman: Yes. Lots of good input, good comment from Jonathan. I would agree. We have other things on the agenda, so I would like to keep moving along. One more comment, Bob?
Simpson: On behalf of the Advisory Committee, I’d like to thank the Board of Supervisors, particularly for the advice that they’ve given us in this matter and for the confidence you’ve shown through, at times, troubled waters. We thank you very much for that.
Stutsman: Thank you, Bob. Are we ready to put this on, then, for Thursday, with those changes? If you could get those changes to us?
Dewey: I’ll get those changes to you today.
Stutsman: OK.
Welsh: May I suggest a wording change, Jonathan, which would be, with the rider and with the care provider/program staff member if applicable.
Dewey: If you’d meet with me after… If you want to get with me for a minute, I’ll be more than happy to get that.
Jordahl: I still like the agency, if any, working with them, because it sounds like they’re together. Anyway, that’s a detail.
Stutsman: Lisa will work on it.
Dewey: Thank you.
Stutsman: I would suggest that we take a short break. Would 5 minutes be enough? Come back in here at 20 after?
Duffy: 10.
Jordahl: If we say 10 then it’ll be 15, so we might as well say 5 to mean 10.
Stutsman: We are recessed for 5 minutes.
Recessed at 10:35 a.m.; reconvened at 10:43 a.m.