Stutsman: Minutes received. We had Hawkeye Area Community Action Program. The Board of Directors meeting for February 24, 2000, and East Central Iowa Council of Governments Minutes from March 30, 2000. Reports and Inquiries. Charlie?

Duffy: Well, kind of fast, we did meet with Iowa City and the School Boards, yesterday at 4:00. Just to kind of get through this kind of fast like and maybe Mike can quote on the road thing that we were talking about. But, it looks like that one of the concerns of the School Board was that there are a lot more people up Northwest of here, (inaudible) the impression that I got, that maybe someday we’ll have to get a new school building.

Jordahl: I didn’t quite hear the last there Charlie.

Duffy: I think someday, that probably what he was trying to say is, they would (inaudible) have to build a school up in there someplace.

Jordahl: Yes.

Duffy: That’s what I got from it.

Jordahl: Yes, I think you’re right.

Duffy: Well, let’s see. Then I went to the Johnson County Emergency Management Meeting and one of the big items was the liability on HazMat Team. Like, we have an agreement with West Branch, for example, and I guess Pat White looked over all of this. The other thing is that, this is a different committee and so this will show you where the revenues come from and I think I’ll stamp that and just move it around. The other thing is it’s Secretaries Week. We have 3 people, Carol, Deana and Jo Hogarty, I think are the, I know you do, too. Some of the greatest people working in this office. They’re more than secretaries, but they do some secretarial duties. I remember one time I figured out Carol Peters’ job description. I had a whole list and one of them was Psychiatrist. She listens to people.

Jordahl: Amen.

Duffy: But, anyway, it’s great to work with these people.

Stutsman: Good point.

Peters: I (inaudible) happy with this staff. Thank you very much Charlie.

Stutsman: Maybe we should kind of look at our calendars for next Tuesday, planning a lunch, if that would work for people to take people out to lunch. I’m just throwing that out. We can talk about that later. I’ll talk with individual Board Members after the meeting, if that would be OK.

Jordahl: Yes.

Stutsman: OK. Anything else Charlie?

Duffy: Well, there’s some, but forget it.

Stutsman: OK. Carol?

Thompson: The Housing Task Force met this week. We’ve had 10 applicants call in about the grant that we have this year. But, we don’t expect that all of them will be approved. So, we’re still taking applications and we still hope that people will call in for them. One applicant has been approved and has completed their project. Two more have been approved and are working on it. The others are in various stages of the application process. We did learn that repairs to septic systems are an eligible grant under this federal grant. So, that’s something that people might want to know. Then we submitted that Federal Home Loan Bank Grant, the same one that we had this year. We submitted a request for funds for next year to continue. We also re-submitted a Rural Housing and Economic Development Grant, the one that we didn’t get last year. We resubmitted that for this year. That one would include a staff person for ECICOG, to help work on some of these things. Then, we discussed a Countywide housing consortium, probably with the Iowa City Housing Department taking the lead, that would give us the larger population that’s necessary to apply for some other kinds of federal funding. We had a presentation from Chris Bergen from the Furniture Project, who talked about her program. If people have furniture that they are going to discard and it is in good shape, they can call the Furniture Project and they’ll come and pick it up and then redistribute it to people from Emergency Housing or the Domestic Violence Project, where they might need furniture. She mentioned they took 59 tons of furniture away from the Landfill last year and redistributed it to people who could use it.

Jordahl: Wow.

Thompson: I thought it was interesting that they count it in tons. Then, the other thing that I wanted to mention is that the Juvenile Crime Prevention Policy Board also submitted support letters for the same 3 projects that the Board approved this morning and those have been sent in.

Stutsman: Is that it?

Thompson: Yes.

Stutsman: OK. Jonathan.

Jordahl: I wanted to talk to you particularly, Sally. I don’t know if you’re… ECICOG is today?

Stutsman: Well, and that’s part of the problem with these Thursday meetings and I forgot to bring it up is that, I have not been to ECICOG or JTPA since we started this meeting. It’s impossible. They start at 11:30. Carol, can we put that on the agenda for next week to discuss? Either we need to have somebody else go to those meetings or talk about changing these meetings. I don’t feel comfortable as Chair leaving at 11:30.

Jordahl: Right.

Stutsman: Here it is a quarter to 1.

Jordahl: It’d be easier for somebody else to leave.

Stutsman: Yes. So, anyway, we need to discuss that.

Jordahl: So, there was an item that came up yesterday in the discussion with the Iowa City, Coralville and North Liberty School District about regional transportation possibilities for the SEATS. A possibility that SEATS could serve as a way to help get people in here, which could help our job market situation, Senior Dining and others. It could be part of an Economic Development picture. Dee Vanderhoef said that this should be an ECICOG thing, which we discussed up there. We should suggest our representatives promote that. Maybe I’ll talk to Lisa about it, be happy to talk to you about it more, too. There is a thing coming up on Friday the 12th. An economic development forum at Procter and Gamble and I was invited to that, but I think either Mike or Charlie would probably be more appropriate since they are working on the Economic Development Plan. That’s 3:00 Friday, on the 12th of May. I don’t know if you guys have got your schedules and could look at whether that’s a possibility. They wanted somebody to give the County’s perspective on this. I could go, but it seems like you guys might want to do that.

Stutsman: Is that it?

Jordahl: Yes. That’s all that I think is of…Oh, Crisis Center Breakfast coming up.

Stutsman: Nope. We’re not going to do it. I mean, it’s good to know that, but that’s not what we’re going to use reports for from now on.

Jordahl: It’s an upcoming thing. It’s not a past thing.

Stutsman: I know. But…

Lehman: I can’t say I attended Earth Day as a speaker.

Jordahl: No, that would be completely out.

Lehman: A public announcement, I can’t even say that this is the first day to vote at the Auditor’s.

Stutsman: We need to set down some policies.

Lehman: Early voting.

Jordahl: You could say that.

Lehman: Remind people to make a study and also vote and study your candidates and vote. I’m going to follow up on our joint meeting with the cities and School Board on Sioux Avenue and encourage the Secondary Roads and the City to come to some type of solution out there on Sioux Avenue. It’s a County road but traffic leads to a City property and I think we have mutual interest there. We’ll try to work that out. Jonathan and I met with Iowa City on the Fringe Area Agreement with discussion on Commercial Use Growth Areas, is primarily what we were trying to work out. We’re going to be meeting again in May. I believe that’s all I have.

Stutsman: OK. Thank you. Let’s see, a couple of things. First of all, the GIS Committee met on Monday and went through the job description for the GIS position and that’s pretty well on track. Had 2 job descriptions, one from Linn County and one from Black Hawk County and kind of putting together a hybrid of both of those job descriptions. Gave that to Jan and she’s going to work on that and then the Committee will review that again on May 12th, so that we can stay on track for getting that position hired and in place. Also, had a Computer Meeting Tuesday afternoon and the recommendation at that Committee was to go ahead and allocate. Was it $21,000?

Jordahl: Something like that.

Stutsman: To the Planning and Zoning Department so that they can sign a contract and begin their Document Management work in order to free up some space. But, that recommendation will be coming to the Board for final consideration. Yesterday, I was in Des Moines all day long and that’s why I was not able to attend the Joint Cities Meeting. It was the first meeting of the, well, it wasn’t the first meeting of the Risk Pool Board. It was the first time where we’ve actually reviewed applications for risk pool funding for MH/MR/DD Departments from the State. Just for the Board’s information, there were 5 applications. 3 met the requirements of the process and a total of $295,385 was allocated to those 3 counties. It was the first time the process has been put into place. There are certainly a lot of things that need to be worked out. We had a lot of feedback. But it was very informative to listen to counties and how they try to deal with these Cap Budgets and addressing the needs of the clients in their counties. The idea of this whole Risk Pool is to have State dollars available for those counties that do not have any more monies to put into their budget that have unanticipated costs. So, we have 5 this time and there seemed to be a pretty clear feeling that there would be a lot more next time we spent funding on… That we’ll consider these and it’s done on a yearly basis. It’s a $2 million fund that can be carried over from year to year and hopefully the State will continue to put additional dollars into that fund. That’s it that I had for today. Let’s see, we still have the Board agenda, is there anything else?

Small: Two things before I totally forget them and never to be remembered again. One consideration for the video, once again, will be that print out. You’d be amazed at how good a piece of paper with a list of stuff would be. Informative wise, all these access channels, over half the programming is just these lists of things that would really be a great way to talk about upcoming events. The other thing is, if you guys would possibly consider it, a way to keep production costs down for me and just make everything go smoother is, I don’t know if you’ve ever considered possibly moving the meeting till Tuesday. That would free up a lot more time between Tuesday and Thursday to do all the extra stuff after hours and split tapes and make copies and maybe that would free you guys up for these important meetings that you have currently scheduled on Thursday. I have no idea. It’s just I wanted you to… If you could pass those along to the Committees before they’re forgotten into the video void, I’d appreciate that.

Stutsman: Good, good suggestion. OK. Anything else? Under Business from the County Auditor we have a Discussion Regarding Proposed Changes to the Fiscal Year 2000 Budget and that has to do with the budget amendment.

Peters: Right.

Stutsman: I didn’t know if there was anymore discussion that was needed on that or we had some discussion when we set the public hearing.

Thompson: Apparently, they didn’t think there was.

Peters: Oh no. No, I was going to call them when they got to that item. So, if you want to take just a couple of minute break, I’ll get…

Jordahl: Yes.

Stutsman: Well.

Peters: It’s almost one, so I’m not sure.

Thompson: I read all the materials. I didn’t have anything else I wanted to discuss.

Stutsman: I guess I didn’t either. I thought you brought up a good question about the Courthouse.

Jordahl: The other thing was Deana’s memo concerning some of the Health Department funding, as to whether a budget amendment was necessary there.

Stutsman: I think that needs to be addressed with a couple of the Board Members sitting down with that particular department. I guess the other thing that comes up is the request from the Veteran’s Affairs and how we want to handle that. This is a tough one.

Jordahl: You’ve spoken with the Director there.

Stutsman: Yes.

Peters: Do you want to continue on that budget? I can get the people. Do you want to do that?

Stutsman: I don’t know.

Lehman: I think we may need department heads more.

Stutsman: Yes. We’ll have a public hearing. I don’t think we really need to have anybody.

Jordahl: But, if we change the changes to the budget after the public hearing, do we need another public hearing?

Stutsman: No.

Thompson: We reduced.

Jordahl: If we reduce. OK.

Stutsman: It’s just like when we have it for the…

Jordahl: OK. All right.

Stutsman: Just for your information, Deana and I did meet with the Director of the Veteran’s Affairs. It’s a real tough one to deal with because we gave a budget and we tell, like, all departments, this is your budget for the year. You need to live within your budget. Well, now he is coming in and saying that there has been a lot more rev increases and that part of his budget has gone way over, to the tune of $7,000. So, I’m concerned about a precedent we’re setting here, is that whenever a particular part doesn’t live within his budget, then all they have to do is come back in and then we’re going to put more money into that budget.

Jordahl: We made some very specific recommendations about that budget when we were discussing that during budget funding time. It was my understanding we’re not following him.

Thompson: We also talked with him when he came in and asked for the increase about whether it would mean an increase in the total budget. He assured us that he could get through this year without an increase. Then, we had some correspondence with him, stating that we expected him to live within the budget. So, I kind of feel like it’s the same as telling the Department Heads they have to get their budget in on time. Did we really mean what we told him or not?

Jordahl: Yes.

Stutsman: All right. I drove down, or went to Iowa City yesterday with Kelly, or to Des Moines yesterday with Kelly Yeagy, who is a CPC from Washington County and also handles their General Assistance and their Veteran’s Affairs. She said what they do in her County is that they have a set amount that a Veteran is eligible for. Once they’ve gone over that amount then there is no more assistance. Where here we have 4 assists a year, there is no financial limitations. As Leo pointed out when he came here, people can get assistance for rent, or for food and burials and some other things. Well, people are coming in and getting their rental assistance and can get 4 rental assistance. Then that throws that way off, where maybe if we maybe gave some direction that they go to a specific dollar amount and then somebody has $200 and if you use it all up for rent then that’s it for the year. Or you could use it for food or you could use it for…

Jordahl: We already gave that direction during his budget presentation and he basically said no, I’m going to work this out with my commission, is my recollection of the meeting.

Thompson: Yes, they can change their guidelines, they can lay off staff, they can do what departments do when they have to live within their budget.

Jordahl: We told them that. I was emphatic on this point at that time.

Stutsman: Well, then, they come up, said this is the need. These are people that need service. These are the people that need rent. Rents are high in Iowa City. OK. All right. We have Dan Stolze from the Auditor’s Office. I didn’t know if anybody (inaudible). Hi Dan.

Jordahl: We could put a budget amount in there. Charlie talked earlier about the, not just Charlie, everybody. We talked about the need to put money in Senior Dining. Well, these are people that paid their dues and so forth who want to put the money in there. There are 2 issues here. One is, do we, quote unquote, meet the need in this area and what do we mean when we say this is your budget.

Thompson: Yes. I believe strongly in services to Veterans and I feel that they deserve to have good services. But, this is a matter of administration of the money that we gave for good services. This isn’t a matter of whether Veterans are deserving recipients or not.

Jordahl: Right. We gave them the money.

Stutsman: Well, we can’t make any decisions about the budget amendments here, but just for some discussion…

Jordahl: Well, we’re discussing.

Stutsman: For public hearings. Anything else? Any other questions for Dan about any of the other budget amendments that came forth?

Jordahl: Should we?

Stolze: Should we…

Jordahl: Have discussion about other budget amendments?

Stutsman: Well…

Thompson: There seems to be some discussion about the Health Department and whether the revenue and the new expenses should equal each other. We probably need to talk with them before the public hearing to get that straightened out. Just for myself, I’m going to have to have some extensive explanation of that.

Stutsman: Yes. OK. Anything else? If not, any other business from the County Auditor?

Jordahl: Did we have closure on the issue of that 10, 3? We were going to take that out of there.

Stolze: Yes, I’ve already done that as a matter of fact.

Jordahl: OK. Thank you.

Thompson: Guess we’d better not talk about it anymore.

Stutsman: OK. Any reports or inquiries from the public? OK. I guess we’re adjourned.

Adjourned at 1:53 p.m.

Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor

By Casie Parkins and Mark Kistler, Recording Secretaries