Stutsman: Moving on to discussion/action needed regarding 3 month pilot project of holding the informal, or formal and informal meetings on the same day. We have Bob Hardy with us, who has been with us most of the morning to help with this discussion. Bob was with public access television, and broadcasts our meeting. We have made a change, and when we made that change to move to having both the informal and formal meetings on the same day, we said we’d do this for 3 months and then we’d evaluate it and see if we want to continue and make any adjustments. Bob’s here to offer his input as to how it is going, and the Board offer their comments on how you feel it’s been going.

Lehman: I haven’t received a lot of personal input one way or the other. I don’t know if Bob gets any direction that way or not, or if any of the other members have…

Thompson: I’ve had a few people say they thought it was a pretty good idea because it can all be on TV.

Jordahl: I think they have in the, what I’ve heard, and there haven’t been a lot of comments about this, is that people enjoy having the informal on TV. I’d almost say if we’re going to go back to 2 days a week meetings, what we ought to do is televise the informal and just let people know what the vote was by putting it in the newspaper.

Stutsman: That’s a good thought.

Thompson: We do publish our minutes.

Jordahl: Yes. The informal’s where the meat of the matter is.

Government Access Representative Bob Hardy: It’s really up to you all. I’ve provided you 4 hours to do whatever you want to with that. The only thing that I would like to bring up is that if we go with access of that slot, unless there’s a minor excess a half hour, or something like that, we can often accommodate that. But if we go too far in excess too often, I’ve requested that Andy break the informal and the formal into 2 different tapes. At that point, you would have to decide how you would like that to be cable cast. My suggestion would be alternating them over the next week or so, trying to get both of them on so everybody could watch everything. The problem, again, that I have is that I often have other programming behind you, and if I have 5 tapes show up, I go, what am I going to do with this other stuff. We do have limited slots for the tapes, too.

Videocenter Operator Andy Small: If I do have to break the meetings apart, that puts excessive production time, and the meeting does play today. My ability to do that, say a meeting goes until 2:00, my ability to break them apart, since everything happens real time, means that I can’t even get it over to them, even though my studio is literally half a block away, or a block away from them. It makes it convenient to…I mean, I’m running in there, last minute, every other week, trying to get it in there. That would be very challenging.

Hardy: The only other alternative is to set up a schedule where the informal and the formal are already divided in part, and then you’d have to adjust with Andy about what he has to do for postproduction. That would be your concern with him. That way, everybody would know when they could watch the informal, when they could watch the formal.

Stutsman: There’s a thought. That would be more consistent and more fitting in with public information so that people would know, rather than just kind of hit and miss. One week you get both, one week you don’t get… I’ll weigh in. I really like this schedule, and I really want it to work. I know that our meetings are running longer and I can’t quite figure out why this is happening.

Hardy: Everybody’s meetings are running long this year. Iowa City, Coralville, I don’t know what it is, but it’s in the air.

Stutsman: I think we run our informal meetings a lot shorter than when we used to meet on, or, our formal meeting’s a lot shorter than when we used to meet on Thursday. What we were doing was meeting all morning on Thursday and all morning on Tuesday. That’s not the issue. I think we’re trying hard to move the meeting along, and keeping it… I think there’s just a lot of discussion items on the agenda anymore. But anyway, the only other suggestion I would make is that we start, well, we start at 9:00, don’t we? I was thinking if we started maybe at 8:30 instead of 9:00, it would give us another half an hour or whatever.

Jordahl: But Bob’s still got a broadcast slot of 4 hours to fit us into.

Hardy: Right, we have 4 hours, and it starts effectively at 5:30. Is that your afternoon?

Jordahl: Yes, that’s the afternoon meeting.

Hardy: 5:30, it runs 4 hours from that point. That’s the hole I have open for you which you can fill with anything, for that matter. You could have your meeting, and if it only ran 2 hours, you could put on a videotape of something else about Johnson County. We are looking at format changes for the channel, which could add an advantage to some of the information needs that the Board may have. At the point that we have something firm out, I don’t know if we have a contact person on the Board, or if you want me to talk to Andy. We should discuss those, because we’re looking to consolidate, for information purposes, for consistency, some of the things that pertain to different sections of the community. Like County information, for example, would go on a certain time, certain day. Logically, it would be built around your meeting, because that’s consistent with the live program that we do. There are some opportunities coming up, but for the time being and in the future if you want to continue this, your options would be to just fill the 4 hours and decide what you want to put in there. We can divide the 2 meetings. I can play one on one day, one on the next, or we could look at any other option that you want to do, as long as the 4 hours stays relatively the same. We might be able to extend that a little bit if you guys keep meeting for longer periods of time. I again caution you. Eight hours of a meeting of the Board of Supervisors is not going to be very popular with the audience.

Jordahl: Are you suggesting that we’re less than fascinating?

Hardy: Well, let’s put it this way. I think it’s more endurance, it’s a question of.

Stutsman: Well put, very diplomatic. What’s the feeling of the Board?

Jordahl: I like the idea of dividing. Go ahead, Charlie.

Duffy: Sally, I’ll agree with you. I think if we’re going to do this, keep them both together. But I think we better cut down on reports from the Supervisors, where you’ve been the last few days. Because that’s in the past and I’ve got some here, but I never did give a big laundry list, and I think that’s where a lot of time is consumed. I time it myself, some of them, you’re talking 45 minutes. I guess if I did that, (inaudible).

Stutsman: Yes, support that, or just reporting on things that are heads up to the Board. This is coming up, or you need to be aware of this, some meeting, and forget about I attended the Crisis Center breakfast, or I attended this committee meeting, unless there’s something that came out of that meeting that has direct relevance to the Board, either today or at some future time. It’s not a good use of time to go on and on about that.

Hardy: Well, let me offer you an opportunity. As I said, we are reviewing our format and looking to make a more user friendly format for people. I think one of the problems with the kind of television that we do is that, often, it’s sort of hit and miss on what you’re going to look for. We also have questions on the schedule that goes to the newspaper. We’re trying to get the schedule, in some form, on television, so people can do it digital, whatever the case may be. I would suggest that you decide who you would like to be the liaison, and as we’re going through the format changes, that I could contact them, we could work out something for the future. Now, our format change probably won’t come until towards the end of the summer. We are moving from where are current location is to a new location over in the parking ramp that they’re building next to the Senior Center, which is going to give us a larger production facility and a few other opportunities that we haven’t had before. That’s when we’re looking to make that move. It gives us a couple months to talk about what’s going to meet your needs, and perhaps there are other things that you might be interested in as well. Of course, all of those adjustments may require that you also adjust with Andy, so you have to keep that in mind. We sort of fell into this, and I don’t mean that negatively, one day you guys decided you wanted this televised. There hasn’t been a lot of rhyme and reason to the planning for this, mostly because, most of the time, nobody thought about rhyme or reason, just put us on the air. Maybe it’s time you think about that. How do you really want to approach your audience, what’s going to work for them, what’s going to work for you? For example, your announcements can come in a whole different segment. We could do things like that.

Stutsman: Yes.

Hardy: But you may have to pay a little bit more for that. You may have to have Andy tape those differently or cut them out. You may have to do a little bit of this or a little bit of that. It’s different than just sitting here, having Andy shoot you and putting it up on the air.

Stutsman: I hear a subcommittee.

Small: Ware you talking about like a scrolling CG?

Hardy: Not so much a scrolling CG. I mean, it could be. We could incorporate them into (inaudible). There’s a variety of different approaches to this, and I think that, let’s say that your television years have now come to maturity and it’s time for you to maybe look at the way that you handle the available resources you have and to see how that can best suit the needs of the Board and of the County. As opposed to just using this as your primary resource for communicating with your constituents.

Stutsman: Rather than hammering out those details with the 5 of us…

Hardy: Right.

Stutsman: I would think it would be a better use of time to have a subcommittee work with Bob and Andy.

Hardy: Right. That would be a better use of time for me, too. I think these are the kinds of things we have to look at from a lot of different angles for you folks.

Stutsman: Is there anybody willing to work on that?

Lehman: Does that fall under the communication?

Stutsman: OK.

Jordahl: Yes. I think so.

Stutsman: Jonathan and I will work on that.

Hardy: OK.

Stutsman: OK. Very good point.

Small: Just one thing. Currently, there is limited postproduction. By that I mean I mix this live. It’s first generation. It’s as good an image and audio as it’s going to get. If I then separate the 2 out, it doubles my time. It lowers the quality by about 20% and makes the availability on Thursday a timely distribution of this tape for the public very difficult. It makes it considerably… Nowadays, Thursday is just a non-day for me. It’s Board of Supervisors day. When I got back from (inaudible), we got to scramble to get everything done. If we were then editing these tapes apart, the time is just, there is no time. Everything happens in real time. I have to sit there and I’ve re-watched this meeting one more time today. You’re talking about separating meetings apart. That’s re-watching it once, then making all the copies to give out to people. That’s re-watching it again. By eliminating the reports, not eliminating the reports, but eliminating the past stuff that’s happened and just focusing on what’s coming up, I watch the counter on the tape and you’re talking 30 to 45 minutes, sometimes an hour when you hit those reports, where the reports use to be bang, bang, bang. Now they’ve become report/what’s happened in the past, future and discussion. Because discussion carries over and works where the reports are now much more controversial than just, this meeting, this meeting, this meeting, did it, this meeting, this meeting, this meeting, going to do it. It’s what should we do about this meeting during this time. If there was a way to shorten that up or just focus on the earlier reports or even just bring out a sheet of paper that I could shoot with the camera for a few minutes while you take a break. That would cover everything that’s upcoming and someone could sit there and just write it down, where you say call us at this phone number. Well, they’re not going to be able to do it that quickly. So, it could be a format to change their logistics, a few sheets of paper.

Hardy: I think, if I may interject, I think that one of the things that if you develop a plan, then you can look at how much you have available in terms of resources to deal with some of the issues that he is talking about. Also, what kind of contribution the channel might make to help facilitate what Andy is trying to do, too. I think the biggest issue here is that you seem to have a desire to communicate more information in a limited amount of time. Planning will make that possible if you just say, OK, I give you 4 hours. If we can fit it in, we’ll do it. You’re going to lose the ability to communicate the availability of that information to your audience. I believe that we could all work out something that makes sense at a cost-effective range for everybody. It’s just a matter of sitting down and making a plan for this. Each year, all of the government organizations print out thousands of pamphlets and other kinds of informational material. This should be viewed in the very same way, that this is part of your effort to inform and communicate with the people out there. It should be built into that plan that you do for print, for Internet, for whatever the case may be. I think it’s just time that we do that for your benefit, if you so desire. We could continue on the way that we’re doing. 4 hours is 4 hours. I plug it in. I turn it off.

Stutsman: No. I think this is a wonderful opportunity and I appreciate you’re willing to sit down and work with a couple members of the Board. So, I think we should just…

Hardy: I’ll contact you later about a schedule, whatever will work out best for that. We need to be a little bit further along in the reformatting process before I would incorporate you into that process. We need to make sure that we understand what we’re doing so I can make promises to you that I can’t make right now. But, at that point I’ll contact you and we’ll get your subcommittee together, and Andy, and we can talk it out.

Stutsman: Very good. OK.

Small: Do you think it will be that quickly once you’ve moved in?

Hardy: It’s hard to say, Andy. Hopefully, it will be. Hopefully, we’ll have the new format go up about the time we move in. It’s a nice juncture of the beginning of the fiscal year. That’s about when we’re going to move in and a new location and a variety of other things we’re trying to plan out that makes the channel more user friendly, if you will. We’re really not television. I’ve said this to you before. We are a resource and the resource is used sometimes, like sometimes you’ll see all of one kind of pamphlet gone and other pamphlets just stay there forever and gather dust. We’re not too different in that. If people come to us when they want to see something, they don’t come to us when they don’t care. So, when you have the issue about the Senior Center that you just discussed, seniors will be watching this program. Yes. But, I doubt very seriously if you’re going to get very many teenagers tuning in at that point. So, you have to look at it a little bit differently than just television.

Stutsman: OK. Well, we’ll wait to hear from you then.

Hardy: All right.

Stutsman: And go from there. Thank you.

Hardy: No problem.

Stutsman: Discussion Report Regarding the Finance Work Group. Carol, I think you put this on.

Thompson: Yes I did. Mike and I met with the Finance Work Group this week and I wanted to put this on this part of the agenda so we could have a little discussion. We went over last year’s budget sessions and talked about places we’d need additional training for the department heads. Changes that we might make to the budget forms. One of which is, you know the column that we had marked where they could indicate if the money was for a grant? The Auditor’s Office didn’t feel that we used that too much this year, so they would like to take off that column and add room for another history column, which seemed like a good idea to me.

Jordahl: History column meaning what?

Lehman: Past year.

Thompson: Another prior year.

Jordahl: Yes. So we could look at the trends in the department.

Thompson: So we would have more numbers to compare with.

Stutsman: Oh. All right.

Thompson: We bring this up now because this could be a year when there would be 3 new Board Members at the final month of the budget process. So, it’s extremely important that we have our ducks in a row and have this go smoothly. One thing is that we don’t know what the salary line items are going to be because of the Union negotiations. We know that that probably isn’t something we can change. But, there was a suggestion that the Compensation Board perhaps could meet earlier. So, we were going to talk to the Board Members and see if they would be willing to meet in October instead of November, when they met last year. We also were going to contact the departments that have boards ahead of time to ask them to plan in their budgeting process to have their boards meet in time for them to get their budgets in on time. This is the big one. This is a hard decision that we’re going to have to make. The fact that budgets don’t come in on time from the departments just throws a monkey wrench into the whole thing. As the Board more and more wants to look at one budget, in relation to another one, the lack of one budget messes up the whole spreadsheet. I think the feeling on the Finance Work Group was that we need to take a stand and make a requirement that these budgets get in by the due date. The stand, of course, would have to be that, a budget that didn’t get in on time got the same amount of money as last year and no increase.

Jordahl: Which would be a pretty big hammer.

Thompson: It’s a big step. So, that was the thing I think we really need to talk about today, because if we were going to do that we would have to tell them now and keep reminding them. We couldn’t just drop in on them in October and say, well, there’s going to be a deadline now.

Stutsman: We have a Department Head Meeting coming up and an Elected Officials Meeting and it’s good to inform people. I know it really does create some problems not having those budgets in, for everybody, for the staff, for the Board in trying to review them. I think the staff does what they can to try to tell people, encourage them to get in, work with departments. But, I think sooner or later it’s just like with your kids. You got to draw the line and say there is other consequences. I guess maybe, I’m to that point. I think for a number of years we’ve really tried to work this out and it just hasn’t worked out on a volunteer basis. So, maybe we need to go to the next level. Which departments are we talking about?

Jordahl: Certainly not ourselves.

Thompson: Ours was in on time.

Stutsman: Yes. Well, it goes… Sometimes you need that little nudge.

Jordahl: We just state.

Stutsman: I didn’t want to say hammer.

Jordahl: Just state…

Thompson: But the hard part is if we say it, we have to follow through.

Jordahl: …very plainly, anyone wishing to have an increase in their funding for the following fiscal year will need to have their budget in by blank.

Stutsman: But, Carol makes a good point when she says, but we need to follow through. Wonder if somebody doesn’t have their budget in and there is something we want that department specifically to put in their budget as a new staff person, because it’s something that we feel fits in with our strategic planning. Then, we’re going to have to hold to our plan and maybe put off something that we had in mind.

Jordahl: Well, we could say any department proposing an increase in funding for the following fiscal year, will need to have a thing in there. We can always shove something in that they didn’t propose. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?

Stutsman: Well, I guess the best illustration would be like the Board I think was pretty well supportive of putting a new person into the County Attorney’s Office, for instance. That’s got to fit in with our strategic plan and where we are going. Wonder if that department didn’t turn their budget on time and yet, we were really committed to hiring a new person in that department. What we are saying here is, we’re saying, same budget as last year.

Thompson: They have to wait another year.

Jordahl: What we do is we give them that new person and nothing else they ask for.

Stutsman: Well, not…

Thompson: I think we’d have to follow through.

Jordahl: I’m saying it would be following through if what we were saying was not there will be no increase. But, we could say, departments proposing items or line items or increases to line items in their own budgets will need to have that in by this time so we can compare them. We could even go ahead and state the Board may wish, for programmatic reasons, to make increases in certain departments and certain items at its own discretion. But, no departmentally requested. It would be easier to draw a line and say nothing, no, period. But, to follow your point, I think there would be a way of saying, Board discretion over it’s own proposals or projects may result in some increases to departments, but no departmentally proposed increase. There would be a way, it’d be sloppier, but there would be a way.

Thompson: Well, are we in favor of doing something like this. Straw poll?

Stutsman: I guess I am.

Jordahl: Yes.

Lehman: I’d like to see something worked out.

Jordahl: We do now. If they don’t have it in by the time we certify the budget, they don’t get it.

Stutsman: Yes, but we’re talking about way back when.

Thompson: We’re talking in the following year.

Jordahl: I know. I know. I’m just saying we’re moving the date back a little bit from the date of certification of the budget to some other date. There’s already a deadline.

Stutsman: OK. How do you feel Charlie?

Duffy: I liked it the way it used to be and it looks like I’m going back to the past all the time. But we just changed it last year to submit a budget no more than the previous year and have a wish list of some of these things you’d like to have. Evidently, it wasn’t professional enough, but that’s why we had to get rid of the wish list. But, that’s what it means. It’s simple to follow. But, you’re right. These budgets have to be in on time. I believe we spend 100 hours on those.

Thompson: Yes.

Stutsman: Yes. It takes a lot of staff time to continue to follow-up and follow-up and follow-up and that’s not efficient use of people’s time.

Thompson: So, do we agree that we put it on the budget or on the agendas for the Elected Officials and the Departments?

Stutsman: I think so.

Duffy: Good thing you brought this up Carol.

Thompson: The other thing we talked about was, we need to have a plan with HR for how departments get authorization for new positions. If they get a grant or something during the year, then somehow we end up with more positions than we actually had in the budget, which is something that we need to address. It’s probably an HR policy that we need to work out with that department. It would assign a number to each personnel position that would stay with that position. The way we do it now, it’s assigned to the person. If that person leaves and a new one comes, it can increase in hours. We probably need to have the hours and a number follow the position through.

Stutsman: Then, if the grant terminates then that person just doesn’t automatically become another staff person.

Jordahl: Deana had some… If that position, say it was a position that already existed, the grant was going to turn around and fund. We had, Deana made some comment about one department that had a request for budget amendments that actually balanced out with other funding they’d gotten and yet they were requesting more money. It’s like well, who is monitoring that. It’s part of this picture.

Thompson: Well, obviously Deana was.

Jordahl: Yes, Deana was and we need to make sure that that continues.

Thompson: The other thing that the Finance Committee would recommend is that we have an orientation for new Board Members. Not just to the budget, but to all the workings of our office, so that people would know how the phone works, and know how the meetings are run and things like that.

Stutsman: Oh yes.

Thompson: So, that might be something we could plan before the election to get in place between November and January.

Jordahl: That’s a good idea, a welcome aboard thing before January 1st.

Thompson: Yes.

Stutsman: Yes. I think that does sound like a good idea.

Jordahl: There might be some time in the future where that was a kind of a hot political moment maybe we could have, if neutral staff conducts such an orientation.

Stutsman: Anything else?

Thompson: No. That’s it.

Stutsman: OK. Thank you. Good report.

Deputy Auditor Mark Kistler: May I ask something about the Comp Board? They’re scheduled for November 15th. Some of the information that we get for them might not be available if you move it up to October, like the ISAC Survey of Salaries and Elected Officials (inaudible) November.

Thompson: Well, that was just what we needed to know, because it would really help it they could do it a little earlier. But, we don’t want to throw a monkey wrench into how they work their committee, either. We want them to have the best chance to do a good product.

Kistler: Some information might not be available yet. That’s the only think I’m thinking about.

Jordahl: So, by… Can you suggest a date of either now or later?

Kistler: I really wouldn’t recommend going before the middle of November, because the ISAC survey doesn’t usually come until November. That’s a pretty critical piece of information.

Thompson: Yes. That’s good to know. Thank you.

Stutsman: I had another thought about (inaudible). Anything else then?

Thompson: No.

Stutsman: OK.

(Continued in Part 5)