MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
JANUARY 20, 2000
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chairperson Stutsman called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 9:25 a.m. Members present were: Charles Duffy, Jonathan Jordahl, Mike Lehman, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson.
REPORT (DUFFY): THANKS TO CITY, STATE AND COUNTY FOR WORKING DURING SNOW STORM
Stutsman: I’d like to call to order the informal meeting for the Johnson County Board of Supervisors for Thursday, January 20, 2000. Business from the Board of Supervisors. We have a short, short agenda today under the informal.
Jordahl: Let’s see if we can do it.
Stutsman: No kidding. Reports. Mike, I think we’ll start with you today. I’ve been trying to take turns and I think it’s your turn to begin reports from the Board of Supervisors.
Lehman: I don’t believe I have anything new to report. Just working on the budgets, and looking forward to making progress on that. Thanks.
Stutsman: Thanks. Charlie, do you have anything this morning?
Duffy: Yes. The budgets are very important. I know for myself, and the rest of you agree, we should thank the State, County, cities, others, for really getting on this snowstorm. They worked almost all night, and the roads and rural areas are not 100% clear, but they got most of it off there, so the folks can go to work. The same way with the City. I know Iowa City was up all night, Solon, and the folks that take care of our parking lot. I got here pretty early this morning and they already had 2/3 of it cleaned off and they hauled the snow away. People were out there probably shoveling driveways. You can go on and on. Sidewalks, and things like that. That’s the way you have to do it, in case of a bad storm like that. I know people appreciate that.
Stutsman: Thanks, Charlie. That is a good point to remember to thank those people. Carol?
Thompson: On Tuesday I attended the Senior Center Commission, and learned that they’ve already collected $47,000 in their campaign to finance the skywalk in part. There’s going to be a retreat on Saturday and I’m going to attend that. I also should report that the Board unanimously, with myself abstaining, approved for Jay Honahan to come back to the Board and make an appeal for us to appoint a citizen rather than myself to the Commission.
Jordahl: Carol, how did that make you feel? Are you OK?
Thompson: No, they made it clear that they didn’t mean it personally.
Stutsman: I’m sure they didn’t, they just have some strong feelings about the Board of Supervisors appointing a Board member instead of citizen to lead that Commission.
Jordahl: I think this is back in the realm of the nice personality. I’d like to report that Carol has a nice personality, too, and it couldn’t have been personal.
Stutsman: I agree. Anything else?
Thompson: Yes, the Juvenile Crime Prevention Policy Board met yesterday morning. You folks nicely excused me from the budget meeting to attend it. (Inaudible) came and talked about the interface with the school district, and the joint ventures that we are funding together, and also some of his thoughts about juvenile crime and things that we can do to prevent it. It was a very interesting meeting. Our next meeting is April 20. We’re looking for members for the Commission, so if anyone wants to apply, they can get an application here at the office, or get one off our website. I’m sorry, it’s April 19 at 4:00 in the afternoon for our next meeting.
Stutsman: Carol, do you want to briefly say what the Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Council does?
Thompson: Yes, it’s a coalition of citizens and professionals and people who join together to try to redress the juvenile crime problem in our community, especially with prevention efforts. The goal is to get to children as soon as possible, make the earliest intervention that we can in their lives, and hook them up with a responsible adult who will assist them in becoming responsible citizens.
Stutsman: Good. Thank you. Anything else?
Thompson: No, that’s it.
REPORT (JORDAHL): UPCOMING SPACE NEEDS COMMITTEE MEETING; and UPCOMING GIS COMMITTEE MEETING and UPCOMING GIS COMMITTEE MEETING
Thompson: Jonathan?
Jordahl: I just want to point to a couple important items that are going to be dealt with in meetings tomorrow. The Space Needs Committee that meets at 10:00 in the morning tomorrow here, and the name doesn’t necessarily communicate very clearly to the public what that is. This is looking at the overall building needs of the County, including the… How much is that 900 pound gorilla of the jail project that we need to deal with. The jail is doubly overcrowded, and we’re going to have to do something about that space. That’s 10:00 here in the conference room tomorrow. At 1:00 in the afternoon we have a meeting of the Geographical Information Systems Subcommittee of the County Computer Committee to look at this project that is being proposed to link all the counties databases to the map of the County. You can do all kinds of inquiries of things that might be relevant to various policy decisions that the Board makes, in particular, Zoning and so forth. This would be of use to a variety of departments. The Department of Health, for example, we were discussing just the other day, in the Wastewater Committee meeting that we had on Tuesday. It’s got a horrible title, I can’t get it straight ever, but the idea is, if you have a septic system on a small lot of an acre or less, you might not be able to relocate the septic drain field where you want to. What do you do about that, if you have a subdivision packed together of those? Geographical Information Systems, where they could link the question of the date, for example, of the permit for a septic system to the parcel map, you’d be able to tell which are the old ones and things like that. You can call it up right away, instead of having to go through the files of paper and spend a lot of staff time doing that. That meeting’s going to look at the report that we got from the consultant and probably make a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors concerning possible funding. This is a pretty big deal here, whether we make a commitment to all the expenditures involved in that process. That’ll do me for reporting today.
REPORT (THOMPSON): HOUSING COMMITTEE RECEIVED FIRST APPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION
Thompson: I did have one more thing.
Stutsman: All right.
Thompson: I forgot to mention the Housing Task Force has had 2 applications for Housing Rehab Funds, and there’s still funding available. This is for owner occupied housing for rehabilitation in the rural areas of Johnson County and cities of less than 5,000. Applicants could call this office and we would send out a packet.
Stutsman: Good. A couple things. Department Head meeting was held on Tuesday. We meet regularly with our department heads. Items on the agenda included an explanation of the gift law, by Pat White, which is always informative for elected officials and public officials. Also spent some time talking about an update on the budget, where we’re at and what the time line is for that budget. There’s always a lot of interest by department heads on what the Board is considering as far as the budgets. Hopefully, that will help with communication about where we’re at and where we’re going and help them in planning, too. Next Tuesday will be Iowa State Association of Counties. I think most of the Board is planning to go to that. That will be in Des Moines. There will not be many Supervisors in the office. I don’t know if we’re all going or not. I know I’m going and Jonathan…
Jordahl: Whoever’s taking the van, I need a ride.
Stutsman: OK. All right. Mike, were you planning on going?
Thompson: I’m not.
Stutsman: Carol, you’re not. Charlie?
Duffy: I’m not. I’m invited to another one though, Economic Development on the 8th, and Governor Vilsack will be there, about rural development. I don’t know, the way things may go whether he will make that. ISAC’s coming up anyway.
Stutsman: All right. This afternoon we have our joint meeting with the Johnson County Board of Supervisors, City Councils of Iowa City, Coralville and North Liberty, and the Iowa City Community School District. That meeting is at 4:00. It will be at the school administrative offices. The ideas of these meetings are to talk about issues that affect all of the entities. We will be attending that. As I said before, we’ll be meeting on the budget this afternoon. Time is ticking away on this budget process, so I would hope that Board members will spend some time reviewing those requests from those departments one through 6. If you have any questions on the budget, if you could meet with Deana or meet with Dan ahead of time to save us time during our meetings, so that we can start nailing down where we’re going with this budget and what we’re going to be approving for funding and things. Are there any other reports or comments?
Stutsman: Moving on to discussion from the public.
Reverend Bob Welsh: A few housekeeping things from my perspective. You might ask them, when they put the agenda on for this meeting, you get the formal minutes from the agenda item, then you have to go back in to get the informal agenda. It seems to me that those could be combined as one for your meetings for today of the Board of Supervisors. 2nd is that I think it would be of help if, like when you mention the clerk’s report, the Auditor’s report, if the Chair could briefly summarize those, because I think persons would be pleased to know the amount of dollars that those departments generated. It would help them get a better understanding of the (inaudible) of their tasks at that point. The 3rd concern in relation to that was that I was amazed when I called up the agenda today at the lack of items on the informal, just because I guess that would mean that you’re not going to have any real items on your formal agenda next Thursday. I don’t know… Something must have slipped up there in the process.
Jordahl: That’s an interesting point.
Welsh: The other is whether or not you want to have an opportunity for public discussion also as a part of your formal meeting. That seems a judgement call at that point, otherwise it places it way at the end, that’s particular true of your Thursday evening meetings at that point. Then, one question, in light of reading the paper this morning. If my taxes… If you need an extra $100,000, how much would my taxes, and other people’s taxes have to raise to generate $100,000.
Lehman: You’d want an example of a couple different scenarios, individual, with a certain priced home or land?
Welsh: Whatever.
Stutsman: There are a lot of variables that go into that. What township you live in and things. We could get that information for you, Bob.
Welsh: Let me tell you the reason. I read today about taxes for the Juvenile Detention Grant. They’ve been receiving $200,000, (inaudible) given them $60,000. My arithmetic says that’s a shortage of $140,000. Would that cost me an extra dollar in taxes for you to be able to pick out that $140,000, or would it be an extra $2, or $3? My guess is that that might be a very wise expenditure of dollars. It seems to be often what we do, when you talk about the Jail. At that point we have to spend the money to house prisoners. Anything we can do to prevent violence and crime, seems to me to be a very wise investment. I guess again, as one taxpayer, I would say to you as you look at the budget, in those whole areas that are prevention of human needs, don’t skimp. Challenge the taxpayers of Johnson County to willingly and enthusiastically pay for those dollars for those programs to prevent future expenditures. I’m amazed, for example, in child care, the statistics seems to be that hours spent on altered early education and care will save $7.16 in special education, crime, health and welfare costs. I guess I’m a fiscal conservative enough that if you tell me I spend one dollar here I won’t have to spend $7.16 there, I want to spend a dollar now. I think that would be true of persons in Johnson County.
Stutsman: Thank you, Bob, for your comments. We’ll take those things into considerations. Charlie, this is just…
Duffy: Bob, on this worksheet it does say each $100,000 of change in this budget, and it adds up. Now there’s a lot of departments could give it the same argument that you have given us. I know children are important, and it’s been talked about for a long time, and I think we do take care of people in need, but…
Stutsman: Charlie, these are just…
Duffy: …if you want the $100,000, it’s on this sheet here.
Stutsman: I want to remind the Board that when we get to the discussion from the public, we can take input, but we can’t get into deliberations because that’s not part of the agenda, so that’s why I’m cautioning Charlie to…
Duffy: I was just offering him this source.
Stutsman: Yes, and we will get that information to you, Bob. Thank you. Good points were brought up, and we’ll take those into consideration. Carol, did you have a comment?
Administrative Assistant Carol Peters: Bob’s comment is so correct when he says that there’s not much on this informal agenda today, but the reason for that is basically because you just had an informal meeting 2 days ago. It’s just like with any transitional period, whether it’s the way you keep your bank account, or whatever, this is just a normal part of the transition. In regards to discussion from the public, that has always been a part of the informal agenda.
Lehman: I might add that next week’s meeting, we could have a large informal portion. It may take a little while to balance itself out, or just as demand dictates.
Stutsman: All right.
Jordahl: I want to ask a question here regarding public discussion. Could Bob’s comment be treated as an inquiry, and then receive an answer back from the Board?
Stutsman: Yes, yes, but I caution… So many times, when we answer back, then we start moving over into deliberations. I always want to err on the side of caution under advisement by the County Attorney. Once one person starts responding then somebody else says something else. Pretty soon we’re over the edge into deliberations. I would prefer to keep it strictly as discussion from the public and very, very minimal response to comments.
Lehman: Is that something where we could have our…
Stutsman: See, now we’re getting into deliberations, so I think we need to…
Lehman: It’s a point of interest, I think, for the public. That’s what Jonathan is saying. We have a chance to educate people and televise.
Stutsman: It’s a fine line, it really is.
Welsh: What I would say, Sally, is the fact that some exchange is valuable. For persons in the community to have questions to ask the Board, I think that’s very appropriate. I think that citizens should expect some response at this point, not merely to say… I realize on the issue I asked, you might not have data right available, but there are the other things where you would have, could share that information.
Stutsman: But the problem gets into, if we start having a discussion about the budget, it wasn’t listed on the agenda. Some other member from the community says gee, here they talked all about the budget, they made some deliberations and decisions, I didn’t know they were going to talk about that. That’s where it gets to be very tricky about moving over into deliberations, start making decisions, and not having it on the agenda. Next item, we are scheduled to have a presentation to employees in recognition of years of service. We are going to recess the informal meeting until 11:30, because that’s when we plan to have our reception. This is always one of the more pleasurable things that the Board of Supervisors does every year, and that’s recognizing employees who’ve been with the County for 5, 10, 15, and this year, Carol, we have one 25 year employee?
Peters: Yes. Actually, we had 2, but the first one was presented a couple weeks ago.
Stutsman: Right, right. We’re going to be recessing, and we will be in session again at 11:30.
Recessed at 9:43 a.m.; reconvened at 11:30 a.m.
DISCUSSION: PRESENTATION TO EMPLOYEES IN RECOGNITION FOR YEARS OF SERVICE
The Board recognized employees with 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 years service. Stutsman noted what a great asset the employees are. She handed out certificates to each employee, with pins going to employees with 5 years service and a plaque to employees with 25 years service.
Employees recognized were as follows:
30 years of service: Deborah Jensen, Debra Lewis, Ruth Barnhart
25 years of service: Patrick Zimmerman and Richard Svatos
20 years of service: Kathryn Kasson, Carolyn Burke, Sharon Jones, Thomas Jacobs, Rebecca Loyd, Anne Lahey, Dan Kramer, Dorothy Richards, Margo Magee-Swim, Larry Brecht, Robert Dolezal, Christine Dwyer, John Hennes, and Daniel Vincent
15 years of service: Diane Kaster, Mark Kistler, Theresa Beranek, Bonnie Jiras, David Tiffany, Dorothy Voparil, Margaret Juels, Larry Olson, Sally Murray, Susie Koshatka, Gary Kramer, Patricia Lane, John Conner, Joey Lande, and David Wagner
10 years of service: Charles Duffy, Vicki Riggan, Katherine Wise-Gosnell, Lawrence Rossman, Evelyn Wolfe, Teresa Jensen, Joan Lind, James McGinley, Howard Whetstine, Heather Fay, Lynn Kubit, Ronda Yoder, Steve Delaney, Isabelle Klaren, Jerelyn Robertson, Ron Schneider, Elodie Manternach, David Moran, An Fevold, Kevin Bell, Stephanie Clark, William Deatsch, Steve Dolezal, William Rockafellow, Phillip Schintler, Brett Campbell, Linda Keiser, and Carrie Wells
5 years of service: Mark Fedler, Bonnie Lacina, John Grier, Gregory Tinnes, Thomas Trump, Mark Wyatt, Sharon Everts, Francine Austin, Vida Brenner, Ruth Lorack, Leo Baier, Burnell Chadek, Jean Sexton, Steve Singer, Honora Walsh, Craig Margulis, Jessie Montgomery, Raymond Donovan, Debra Horning, Diane Buckman, Ann McGinley, and Fred Brown
Adjourned at 11:45 a.m.
Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor
By Casie Parkins and Mark Kistler, Recording Secretary