Stutsman: Business from the Board of Supervisors. Item A. Discussion/action needed regarding appointment to the Commission of Veterans Affairs for a term ending May 31, 2002. Leo Baier, Director of Veterans Affairs, contacted me and said that one of their current commissioners has moved out of the County, so they do need to reappoint a replacement for him. It was Merle Myers. Am I correct, Carol, on that name?

Peters: Yes.

Stutsman: Merle has turned in a letter of resignation. We had an applicant, Alan Monsanto, who is interested in filling that role, so if it’s OK with the Board, we’ll just go ahead and put his name into consideration on Thursday.

Jordahl: Did he apply previously?

Stutsman: He applied previously and fulfills the requirements. They try to be balanced as far as different wars represented on the Board.

Duffy: I was going to ask that. He fulfills every requirement? Yes, good.

Stutsman: He’s interested in being appointed.

Lehman: We’re not required to readvertise if we have someone on file? OK.

Stutsman: If that’s OK, we’ll just put Alan’s name for consideration then on Thursday, Alan Monsanto.

Stutsman: Discussion/action needed regarding letter to Judy Parks at Heritage Area Agency regarding County use of elderly waver dollars as it relates to the Senior Dining Contract.

Jordahl: Yes.

Stutsman: Jonathan?

Jordahl: I put this on. We’re not, as a County as a whole, we tried to take yesterday off, but of course we got the Ambulance Department, the Sheriff’s Department are in operation and guess what, so is Senior Dining. Sort of, for a while. Then they decided that the roads were too bad and the staff weren’t there, so they opted to close the operation down, but they did not close down the meeting of the Nutrition Committee at 4:00. I had to find my way into Iowa City and Bob and Mike and I sat down and wrestled with this yet again. As you recall, I had this on the agenda previously, and the Board wanted to insert statements about how we reaffirmed our contract and also handed the matter over to Pat White to make sure what his reading on it was. Pat agreed with Judy Parks of the Heritage Area Agency on Aging. That, essentially our failure to look at the whole cost of preparing as well as providing the food for meals served are the Elderly Waiver Program ought to be not requested from Heritage because that’s sort of double dipping. We get money from them and we’re getting money from the State that’s Federal money also, so we shouldn’t be getting Federal money twice for the same meal. Our contract envisioned, or at least our application of the contract, envisioned the Elderly Waiver dollars being part of the so called County contribution, and so the letter that you have a copy of emphasizes that in the 4th paragraph. It says it is important that we reaffirm that we entered into our contract with you in good faith. This is what he requested that I add last time. Our response to the RFP did indicate that our County contribution to the Senior Dining Program would consist, in significant part, of Elderly Waiver dollars. In the memorandum exchanged between Tom Miskimen and myself, it was additionally clarified that our County contribution was not to be made until the end of the budget year, after Heritage dollars of the contracts have been expended. That’s just a way of, what the Board said was hey, we have a contract. Then it goes on to say here’s the plan. Now this plan is something that Bob Welsh helped to calculate. I don’t know if you’re satisfied, Bob, that these numbers remain accurate here?

Welsh: Yes.

Jordahl: There’s a certain amount of deduction there. Judy might come back and dispute this, because she had a per meal figure that was based, I think, on the whole cost of the program, the whole budget for the thing, sort of overlooking, perhaps, the fact that the County was expected to put in $26,000 toward that whole thing. It calculated the per meal cost in part based on what we were paying for, and also part of that we were paying with Elderly Waiver dollars, so there’s kind of a reverse double dipping factor there. We’re making some subtractions here, both the County portion of the budget and those aspects of the Solon Senior Dining Program that are totally unrelated to the Elderly Waiver Program, which comes up with a slightly smaller per meal cost that we will then subtract retroactively for all the Elderly Waiver meals served so far this budget year, and be rectified at the end of this month. I think, as I review this letter, that I struggled with that first paragraph again and again and again last night and this morning. As I look at it, I think maybe we can just delete it and just go onto the second paragraph and start there. Anyway, that’s where we’re at right now.

Thompson: That’s OK. I think it’s good to lay these numbers out, and then if she wants to write back and ask for different numbers, at least it gives a format for us all to be talking about.

Jordahl: Thanks go to Bob for that. He’s been very vigorous in pursuing these calculations.

Stutsman: Are we ready to send the letter out?

Thompson: Have we been submitting bills each month to Heritage?

Jordahl: We have, but they haven’t been funding us the last month or so because of the dispute over the Elderly Waiver dollars matter.

Thompson: The other thing we need to pin down in here is what month it’s going to take effect. Will it take effect only on the bills they haven’t paid, or will we have to go back and pay them and readjust the bills for the previous month?

Jordahl: Well, it says in the last paragraph, at the end of January, we will make the necessary adjustment to our request for reimbursement. We hope that this (inaudible) the difficulty. I guess I didn’t state that that was meant for retroactively or all the previous months. I had stated that. Yes, retroactive, the 3rd paragraph. We will direct our Nutrition Program Director to adjust his request of reimbursement to reflect this (inaudible) situation, including retroactive accounting of the forgoing months of the current contract.

Thompson: We’re going all the way back to July 1.

Jordahl: Yes.

Thompson: OK.

Welsh: That’s not really a problem. I guess my one request would be that you treat this in the same way that you treat other (inaudible) that you’ve sent out through the years. That is that you all sign off on this so you’ll not need to wait Thursday to take a formal vote. Let me tell you the reason for this. This impacts the RFP, needs to be submitted. It would be good to get this clarified yet this week so we could then really set the impact of that in relation to next year’s funding.

Jordahl: We’ll (inaudible) that line for the submission of the proposal?

Welsh: 28E. Then if you all approve you can sign off on this. That could be transferred yet today to Judy and then Mike, at the end of the week, could contact her to make sure about the adjustments and could then check with her in relation to the impact of the RFP for next year.

Duffy: I’m not so sure that we should do it that way, Bob.

Stutsman: Yes, I don’t know either.

Jordahl: I talked to Judy on Friday, Bob, and told her that our understanding was basically this, although I did not go into the detail of the calculation and the amount of money that would be dealt with. I’m hopeful that she will take this in the spirit that it’s intended, that we are responding to her concerns.

Duffy: If there’s any more conflict, I suggest inviting her down to get this thing over with.

Jordahl: Yes. That’s an important point, Charlie.

Stutsman: Jonathan, can you get together a final draft?

Jordahl: Sure.

Stutsman: So that we can review it one more time, and put it on for Thursday, then.

Jordahl: Maybe we could fax it up to her at that point, to respond to.

Stutsman: Does the Board want to do it administratively? Carol Peters do you have any thoughts?

Peters: Yes.

Stutsman: OK.

Peters: I would have a motion reflecting this, simply because it’s a contract that you’ve entered into.

Stutsman: All right. Thank you for your thoughts. We’ll have Jonathan put a final draft out to the Board members, review it, and put it on for Thursday and have a motion. Are there any more comments about the letter? Didn’t want to shut off discussion.

Thompson: Then do we have to amend this contract?

Jordahl: Pat didn’t seem to be of a mind that we did because the waiver dollars were forecast in the proposal as being all put into the Home Delivered Meals program, ultimately anyway. So long as we subtract them from the total County contribution and then only contribute those dollars that are called for in the contract, then there isn’t really any change in the contract. It’s only the pattern of the requests for reimbursement during the year that’s different.

Thompson: In the contract, we said we would deduct raw food costs, and now we’re going to stop doing that. Would that cause a problem?

Welsh: That’s not in the contract.

Jordahl: Well, in a way we are, though…

Duffy: I don’t think we can do that.

Jordahl: …because the raw food costs are combined in the 350 figure. They’re part of that. We’re not only subtracting the raw food costs, but also anything else that Judy’s construing as double dipping. Which is just a way of us, in essence, making part of our contribution earlier as we go.

Stutsman: Any other comment? If not, we’ll leave that to you, Jonathan.

Jordahl: I’ll work on that.

Stutsman: Thank you for your work on that.

Jordahl: I’ll do that under reports.

Stutsman: Item C, minutes received from the Juvenile Crime Prevention Community Program, Johnson County Mental Health Mental Disabilities Planning Council, 6th Judicial District, Department of Correctional Services Board and Mid-Eastern Council on Chemical Abuse Board of Directors minutes.

Stutsman: Moving down to reports. Jonathan, do you want to start?

Jordahl: Well, as I said, I attended the meeting of the Nutrition Committee yesterday from 4:00 until about what, 6:40, Bob? A number of things were presented there. One thing, probably, of greatest interest to the Board might be the proposed housing project here by Burns and Burns L C. I do not know what L C means.

Stutsman: License Certified. I don’t know.

Jordahl: Licensed Contractors? I don’t know. You could make up, fill in your own thing. But, Mike, they were requesting a letter of support for a project that is a proposed housing development for persons with disabilities and the elderly. It’s on the west side, I think it’s just west of Mormon Trek Boulevard, isn’t it? It says we, as a provider of nutritional services, oh, this is Mike. They’re asking for some possible meal service out there to serve those populations. This is a letter of support from Mike. He says, we believe such a facility should be progressive in seeking out other funding, pleased to endorse them in this visionary concept, and so forth, and pending on Johnson County Board of Supervisors approval, look forward to participating in the project. This is kind of a step in the direction of a new site, I guess you might say. I will make copies of this and distribute it around so you’ll have a chance to look at that. We talked about the basis for making the contract proposal for FY 2001, which of course is related to this forgoing discussion of waiver dollars. But more importantly, related to the question of raises and step increases and merit raises. We have one figure in the contract now of $241,518 dollars for wages. The theory we’re going forward is that since that is more than we will probably spend on actual wages for the year, that it’s sensible to just request a 3% increase on that contracted amount. Mike will be calculating the details of whether his projections of step increases and merit raises for his employees will still fall below that for the coming year. What the committee said last night to me was use that 3%. Go with the present contract amount. Other than that I’ve got a ton of pieces of paper here. If you want to read all this stuff, I know Charlie’s interested in it. I’ll just circulate it. Other than that, be careful where you walk.

Stutsman: Because of the slick…

Jordahl: Yes, it’s slippery. You weren’t going to do anything with this today?

Stutsman: Yes. I’ve been passing it around. I’ll talk about that.

Jordahl: Let’s see here.

Welsh: Jonathan, before you move on with that, I have 2 things. In keeping with the, especially from last year, the food and everything, the projections of what we’ve asked Mike to do is to include an item for our volunteer dinner. (Inaudible) pick it up and just show that that is a part of the program. Under the non-cash directions, you all have a sheet that some agency does for you assigning different responsibilities, like (inaudible) the Auditor’s Office $5,000, a site for Senior Dining. That last year they did that was $13,111 or something like that. That did not include anything for the County Attorney or the Human Resources person. We suggested to Mike that (inaudible) item there of $15,111. We also plan to put into your contribution to the Senior Center for all those items, premise repair. I thought the programming associate, and put that amount in as an in-kind project, non-cash contribution. Another thing we plan to do this year, again this will all come to you in the form that Mike put together, was to calculate the number of volunteer hours that are contributed, plus (inaudible) in our (inaudible). That’s an amazing number. I should have brought that with me. We have a well over 380 hours a week, all the sites and volunteers. That would be contracted out. That would be an in-kind contribution of an equivalent of $100,000.

Jordahl: Yes, it fits into the question that… Charlie, I know you’ve been concerned about the idea that they want us to put more County dollars into this program… In line with the conversations we had with Tom Miskimen last year during the budget process, we’re going to show them what the County puts into this program. We got a couple hundred thousand dollars going into the Senior Center. I don’t know if you mentioned this, Bob, but last night you talked about the…I forget which accounting firm it is, but this cost allocation by department… Heritage does pay for bookkeeping expenses and so Bob took the figure from that report of how much of the Auditor’s Department’s function is allocated to the Senior Dining Program, and comes up with $5,946 for that. You have all kinds of things that we have been paying for this program and haven’t been getting credit for. When they talk about you’re not putting enough money in here, this year they’re going to be looking at some multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars that we do put into this program, it’s going to be a lot harder to suggest that we don’t do enough, I think.

Duffy: Bob, can I ask a question?

Stutsman: Charlie, these…

Duffy: When Jonathan gave his report, but this is kind of important.

Jordahl: This is part of my report, Bob is.

Duffy: Bob, maybe there’d be a new retirement building for seniors. Was that at Coralville?

Jordahl: No, I think it’s in Iowa City.

Duffy: Around the west end out here some place?

Jordahl: Yes, on Mormon Trek near Walden Village or whatever that’s called.

Duffy: OK. What happened to the one on Sheridan Avenue, because I went over there several times, and then they had an open house.

Welsh: I do too, Charlie, remember...

Duffy: Yes. We were over there. That looked to me like that was, I won’t say expensive, but did they… I don’t know how many units were really in there, but they…

Welsh: That was about 8 different houses. They wanted to have a simple place that those persons never really developed that way (inaudible) developed more for single family business, last time I heard about it.

Duffy: Well, it was a real nice place, but anyway, that all fell through after all the work we did on it.

Welsh: That wasn’t your fault, Charlie, at the time. That was the way the market runs. I think they found that they couldn’t sell those units for what they felt they needed.

Duffy: Well, they’re awful nice units.

Stutsman: Anything else, Jonathan?

Jordahl: I was trying to refer, recently, to the population of people at the various sites, and I found that report too, so I’ll circulate that around with this. Let’s see here. Other…

Welsh: Those projections, and (inaudible) with what the Auditor’s Office told you about the variations, the attendance the last quarter at the Nutrition Mills, much better than the first quarter, so the annual projections, which Mike and I were here, we used that quarter projection. When you see the budget, it will be about $8,000 more bills than we have tentatively projected.

Jordahl: Do we have a 2nd quarter report?

Welsh: Yes, we have that in with my December report. What we basically instructed Mike to do is to take those figures for the first 6 months and just project the month.

Stutsman: Mike, do you have anything this morning?

Lehman: Just tidbits from the Iowa City Area Development Meeting I went to Friday morning. Little follow up on the Novartis Seeds. It’s interesting to know that University Pharmacy had worked with Novartis a little bit in the seed coating, the technique and stuff. They also mentioned Proctor & Gamble is going to be doing a 60 million dollar renovation, mostly internal, for chemical handling, but they also mentioned there’d be… There’s line workers looking at transfer from a Connecticut plant that’s going to be closing. Just heads up for this, along with Governor Vilsack trying to recruit former Iowans back and new residents. It’s all demand on housing. People in the business trades and stuff like that, but it’ll put more stress on us for impossible zonings as things flow out over the cities. Also heard on the Iowa Child Projects, which is a committee headed up by Bob Ray. They’ll be doing a feasibility project to the Governor by the end of January, and what that is, it’s a project that’s a brainchild of a businessman from Des Moines by the name of Townsend. He wants to create a rainforest, it’d be a tourist type attraction. They need 1.4 million visitors per year to make it work. They’re looking at locating in the North Corridor area. It’s a priority. One group has been talking about that. I think maybe this week there’s going to be a bill introduced, millennium fund, to the legislature (inaudible) 300 million dollars, but they need some local funds here also between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City commitments to make this thing happen. They think they can get a lot of people a benefit from these influx of tourists.

Jordahl: Do you mean like a terrarium, where there would be a dome over it?

Lehman: I believe, something like that. I haven’t seen any blueprints and stuff, but he’s apparently held some meetings here. I think he addressed ICAD here a while back. It’s pretty elaborate. Des Moines passed on it. They had some other activities, they felt they couldn’t commit to this. This is something you may be hearing or reading more about as this thing gets off the ground. Of course, you kind of look at maybe Coralville, Tiffin area, that kind of stuff, but this group, ICAD, seemed pretty content if they could get it in the Corridor area.

Jordahl: (Inaudible) easier.

Lehman: Well, major areas would all benefit from it. It’s all I have. Kind of a heads up, stuff coming down the pipe.

Jordahl: Be good if they put it some place… Well, never mind, I can’t debate it, can I?

Stutsman: Thank you, Mike. Charlie? Anything this morning?

Duffy: Oh, not really, except I did get trapped in Solon yesterday morning. I go there pretty early for breakfast, come out, car was all iced, windshield all iced, streets all ice. Here comes the first responders, accident out north of Solon, one south of Solon. I knew a gravel road to take home.

Stutsman: Sometimes the gravels can be worse than the pavement.

Duffy: Well, you don’t want to speed on gravel either, but I didn’t have any trouble. Nice, wide gravel road, the first one north of Solon. Ended up in Newport, then I went out in the highway, went around and around (inaudible) lane, there I was.

Jordahl: Maybe we should revert them all to gravel.

Duffy: Well, I told you. There’s…

Thompson: Dust.

Stutsman: No deliberations, moving on. Anything else?

Duffy: At least there wasn’t 4 pileups of semis on that gravel road.

Stutsman: Yes. Is that it, Charlie? We’re glad you got home.

Duffy: There’s other things, but we got other things to do.

Stutsman: Safe and sound.

Thompson: I have no report.

Stutsman: Oh, well, Carol. I’ll take your time then. More than a couple things. I am passing around a reply to a letter the Board received from a constituent concerning some SEATS services. Reply has been drafted. I want the Board to review the letter, and if it’s OK, I’d like to send that out. The other thing is that I’m also passing around that signup sheet that I talked about from the Chamber of Commerce for their Gold Rush 2000 Annual Business Fair. Laurie has asked if I would kind of coordinate that, so there’s one signup sheet. I’ve signed up at a couple of times, so I’d like the rest of the Board to look at this, and if they want to sign up, do so. Hopefully, have this back to me by the end of this week, so I can fax this out to her. Those dates on that are the end of March, March 24 and March 26. Carol, I’ll give that to you. I wanted to alert the Board, I don’t know, maybe you’ve already heard about this, but there is a conference being planned by ECICOG and it’s called the First Annual Regional Land Use Conference, and that’s scheduled for February 22. That’s going to be an all day program from 9:00 in the morning until 5:00 in the evening. Oh my goodness, I guess it goes until 9:00 at night.

Jordahl: February 24, you say?

Stutsman: February 22. Tuesday. It looks like a tentatively good agenda, so I would think that’s something that the Board would want to put on their…

Lehman: Where’s that at?

Stutsman: I don’t know. I have just a draft. I think it’s the Linn County History Center on First Avenue. That’s what’s written on the top of here. This is just a draft. I just wanted to alert Board members. There’ll be more information coming, but at least put it on your calendars.

Jordahl: It conflicts with both the Elected Officials and the MH/DD meetings.

Stutsman: OK. Well, it goes all day, so maybe there will be just things that we want to go to. Legislators will be involved as well as local attorneys. R.J.’s going to be on a panel, I’m going to be on a panel. There’ll be more information coming, but just alert the Board that that’s being planned. Jonathan and I met with Lisa on Friday for our biweekly meeting. One of the things that might be a heads up for the Board, that RFP that they were sending out for those modular units inside the vans, they came back a lot higher than what was originally allocated. The problem is, and if I’ve got my figures right, we had allocated $50,000 for that project. One of the RFPs that came back, the lowest was $72,000. They have negotiated at $65,000. The problem is, if we don’t take advantage of the grant we will lose that money by the end of June.

Thompson: How much was the grant?

Stutsman: $50,000.

Jordahl: Grants are 50, we’re going to need another 15.

Stutsman: It’s just a heads up that there might be a budget amendment coming through. Lisa is going to continue to try to work with the vendors to see if there can be some additional changes, but we don’t know. Just for your information.

Thompson: Sally, where is this Business 2000 event?

Stutsman: It’s in Cedar Rapids, and I think it’s at the Linn County History Center.

Jordahl: Is that the same as the Land Use thing you’re talking about?

Stutsman: Is that what you were referring to?

Thompson: The Business Fair 2000?

Stutsman: Oh, I’m sorry. That’s at the arena.

Thompson: At Carver.

Stutsman: Carver Hawkeye Arena.

Jordahl: When’s that again?

Stutsman: That’s March 24, 25 and 26. The other thing, I just wanted to remind Board members that this is our last informal for a while we move to just strictly formal/informal on Thursday. We have sent out a letter saying that all agenda items need to be placed on the agenda by Tuesday at noon, so I hope that will work. I just want to remind members that we’re going to have to make a real effort of keep the meeting moving along so that we can get everything taken care of in one morning meeting on Thursday morning.

Peters: One of the things that I really request to the Board is with the agenda time frame cut off time, we really need to have that held to in order to take the agendas out.

Stutsman: The only way this is going to work is if we all work together on this.

Peters: Friday, I had let that time line go by and I was finishing up agendas and, was it 5:30, Casie? 6:00.

Jordahl: Carol drove me home about 6:15, I think.

Peters: Waiting for that map to generate. It makes it hard not only for this office, but also for the Auditor’s Office.

Stutsman: Anything else?

Jordahl: Well, you point to the meetings coming up, department heads, the school district, the caucuses, maybe.

Thompson: There’s one tomorrow morning for the Juvenile Crime Prevention Board at 10:00.

Stutsman: Are you going to try to go to that?

Thompson: I was going to. We have a budget meeting.

Stutsman: We start budgets at 9:00.

Thompson: Will it be over by 10:00?

Jordahl: No.

Stutsman: Well, you’re an optimist, but maybe it will. I don’t know. I doubt it, Carol. I doubt it.

Thompson: I think this meeting was scheduled before we made our budget calendar, but I didn’t have it on mine, so I didn’t cross it off.

Stutsman: It’s important for you to go to that Policy Board meeting, I’m going to let you call it, tomorrow morning, see how we’re getting along with the budget. You can always get the tapes and things. Matter of fact, I have 6th Judicial tomorrow afternoon, too. We start budgets at 9:00 in the morning and go in the afternoon, too. We have department head meeting today at 1:30. Continue with budget on Thursday at 1:00. We have our Joint City/County meeting at 4:00 on Thursday. Is that still on, Carol?

Peters: Yes, it is. The agenda just was faxed to us this morning.

Stutsman: All right.

Jordahl: That’s at the school district office?

Stutsman: Yes.

Thompson: Do you think we have tomorrow afternoon?

Stutsman: On budget?

Lehman: I don’t have that down.

Stutsman: You don’t have it down?

Jordahl: No.

Thompson: I just have 9:00 until whenever.

Stutsman: Oh good.

Jordahl: Do we have folks appointed to come in then, maybe for the Juvenile Crime thing, we could shift the budget meeting until the afternoon.

Stutsman: At this late time…

Thompson: Can we do that?

Stutsman: No, the agenda’s already been posted for that.

Peters: The agenda’s been posted.

Jordahl: Yes, that wouldn’t work.

Thompson: We could recess.

Peters: Call it to order and recess.

Stutsman: I’m hesitant to do that.

Jordahl: We may have reporters and so forth that are planning to be here.

Stutsman: Going through the rest of the week… I’ve got MECCA Board meeting Thursday night.

Jordahl: Space Needs at 10:00 on Friday morning and GIS Committee at 1:00 Friday afternoon.

Thompson: Senior Center Commission tomorrow afternoon.

Jordahl: Oh yes.

Welsh: That’s this afternoon, isn’t it?

Thompson: Yes, you’re right, I’m sorry. I’m thinking it’s Monday.

Jordahl: There was a lot of discussion of that Senior Center thing at the meeting yesterday afternoon. There’s the question of your appointment, and I don’t know what clarifications we’ve had about that from our council, Pat.

Thompson: Did he ask for any?

Stutsman: Oh my. I don’t think so. We’re not going to just report on that.

Jordahl: There’s a question about shuttle service on the weekend. Apparently, there’s been some reinitiation of the SEATS shuttle service, and I don’t recall discussing that up here.

Stutsman: I don’t either.

Jordahl: Mike said that he thought he recalled the Board directing him to contact Lisa about that, so apparently there was a SEATS shuttle going to the ramp on Saturday. The question about snow removal, who’s responsibility is it, and the question…

Duffy: We’ve argued about that for years.

Jordahl: Possible redesign of the ramp. Apparently, Bob talked to the architect and found that there was a possibility of putting a door in. In fact, it had been originally designed or designed to have a door at the alley level where you could walk right across to that ramp and go in the side door just like always, and it would cost a whole lot less than the $350,000 expected for that skywalk. A lot of things remain to be clarified there. You’re looking forward with eager amusement to this afternoon’s meeting?

Thompson: Yes.

Jordahl: As always.

Stutsman: Well, if there needs some clarification, if you could bring that back to us, then we will take care of it. Anything else? We will adjourn until Thursday morning. Oh, until tomorrow morning, sorry.

Adjourned at 11:40 a.m.

Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor

By Casie Parkins, Recording Secretary