White: I will just report that we’re nearing the end of screening and interviewing for the new civil attorney. It’s really fun when you get down to the point where you are getting ready to identify somebody who is going to start to work. I can tell Zoning is already through with the their process. I assume some of you have heard that. They have offered their permanent position to Dan Swartzendruber, who has been their intern. It is really going to be neat to see these 2 new positions coming together. We are going through, as I suspect everybody is, year-end budget analysis. How much is left? One of the things I am about to do, and I kept thinking I was going to send the Board a written memo… This will relate back to earlier discussion we have had about budget spending and what funds get used for and what they don’t get used for, as the case may be. I am going to have some funds leftover in the operational budget and pricing. Danelle spent most of the morning at Iowa Office Systems in Hiawatha looking at partitions and work stations that we have to use to create a work space for this new attorney. I don’t have numbers yet, but I think with virtual certainty that the County Attorney is going to end up spending money that didn’t get used for a couple of vacancy reasons. I am trying to set this new Attorney up, and I will keep you posted. By all means, if you want to persuade me not to do it, the next 3 days would be the time to do it.

Painter: That’s your window of opportunity.

White: As I said, I don’t have prices yet, so I don’t know if this is doable or not. I’m inclined to think it is. But we don’t have an office for the new Attorney so I have to configure some partitions, probably in the old Juvenile Court office space. Probably have an attorney sitting somewhere out in the middle of that, probably similar to the way Sally Robinson did originally.

Thompson: I hope you give him better partitions. So, the Board asked if people would notify us when they were going to do that. Is this our notification?

White: Well, this probably is because I haven’t gotten to it sooner. By all means, call me. My reports to the Board too, Mike Scheer is just doing a terrific job, at least for us in terms of responsiveness, seeking us out, and initiative. We’re just very pleased to have him. So thank you for the choice you made. That’s all I have.

Kriz: I will just cover a couple of things briefly. Yesterday, we had our annual Treasurer’s Tax Sale. For those of you in the building, there was quite a crowd of people. We had 85 people register this year for the Tax Sale. We started at 8:00 and we were completed at 10:45. I would personally like to thank Janet Lyness from the County Attorney’s Office, Gary and Carl from the Information Service Department, Betty Sass and Bonnie Jiras from our office and how they worked through the process. It went extremely well this year. They had just under 900 parcels offered. We got about $650,000 worth of tax dollars received from that. And a very orderly crew when you put that many people together that early in the morning. I am real pleased with how it ended up and we had them in and out. The last people were leaving the building at 11:00 a.m. It inconvenienced our parking lot a much shorter time than usual. Also, in the continuing saga of the DOT, the Treasurer’s office and drivers’ licenses, you will see that the DOT has now changed their driver licenses hours. They are now open Monday through Friday 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. and Saturday from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. I bring that up so you are aware how that is ever changing on the DOT side, beginning to lengthen hours and be more accommodating to the public. The 8-2 Saturday is an interesting thing along with the 5-day schedule. These are all things that I continue to look at as we start to see the shift from the responsibility of drivers’ licenses to Treasurer’s office throughout the state. That will be an ongoing report, probably, as to where that process is in the Treasurer’s Office.

Jordahl: Do you think there may come an obligation from the State to be open Saturday morning?

Kriz: I think it depends on what happens with the driver’s licenses. If that changes then (inaudible) I think this is the beginning of the groundwork being laid for things like that. It is also nice to know that at the county level, we were able to extend our hours. The Auditors Office was open until 6:00, the Recorder and Treasurer open until 5:30 and the Board open longer, before the State got around to understanding that there is some merit having that happen. I think the County should be commended for being proactive in situations like that. And there’s a need for it.

Carpenter: I have a couple of things. Within the next week or so we will be putting in the Jail our new computer system for fingerprinting and photo mug shots. It’s all computerized. It goes directly to the State, so we don’t have to ink roll and have the possibility of bad prints coming back after we do every person. It will cut down on some paperwork. This is the result of a $180,000 grant that we got through the State of Iowa. I think we are about the 5th in the state to utilize this particular operation. The other thing would be that last week we had U.S. West come in and visit with us. 3 of the judges and Pat White came down. U.S. West has a new program going on now where we would like to set up some kind of televised initial appearance to save us from traveling from the Courthouse to the Jail. Most of you probably are not aware, but about a month and a half ago we had an incident where an inmate actually got out of the line, through the hallway maze that they have to go up and down, snuck up one of the stairs, and hid in the Courtroom, until we took count and noticed that he was missing and went back and searched the building. We found him hiding beneath one of the judge’s desk. So, we can talk about Courthouse security, but there are some things that you cannot change. This is one way that we need to try to tighten down, and time-wise, too, it is very important to try and get… It certainly won’t be used for trials or anything like that, but on initial appearances, that is something that will be very valuable. I think probably, Pat, most of the initial appearances the County Attorney Office isn’t there. This is just a matter between the inmate and the Judge and probably the Court Services people. I think it is probably not a unanimous thing, but I think that most people are in favor, because they realize that there will be a cost savings to us, not only manpower-wise, but also security-wise, especially on security. There are times when we get maybe 30, even some days, 35-40 people we have to haul up the hill every morning and back down. We can’t do them all at the same time, because some are female and some are male. It depends on their classifications, whether we haul them together or not. It takes quite a bit of time. As long as we can just do it in the Jail, keep the inmates right there and the Judge can be up in the Courthouse and do their thing, it will work out pretty well. I do think we have the funds. I need to come in after the first of the year and visit with the Board about the funding of it. One time the Board had put away $40,000 for this project. I think that the judges came to the Board and asked them to put it into a Courtroom. Those of you on the Board at that time, remember that. That was gone. But I have been saving up some funds on another thing that is not going to be necessary after the first of the year. I think I have the funding out of that to take care of it. If we can transfer from one to another, because is it going to be a time and cost saving situation. I will visit with the Board later on about that. It’s exciting to see it happen. A lot of the counties are starting to do that, too. For those after the meeting, Jim McGinley who retired from Disaster Services, is having his open house at the department in the squad room for those of you who get a chance go down and say goodbye to him. I am sure he would appreciate it. I guess that is about it.

White: Have they decided on their replacement?

Carpenter: No. Yesterday was the deadline for the applications. I think we received 22 applications from all over.

Painter: Thanks. Tom?

White: Wow.

Duffy: That’s a lot of them.

Carpenter: Yes.

Slockett: Since I have already taken so much time, I will just verify that I believe that August 30th is the deadline. I will read the Code after this meeting and absolutely confirm that. September 28th is the first day for early voting, not September 27th; that I am certain of. I am virtually certain about August 30th, but I will do a little research and make absolutely sure. That is the date that is the deadline for candidates to be placed on the ballot; for example, for political parties to fill vacant positions. It is also the date that the Secretary of State is required to certify the state-wide offices and ballot issues to the county auditors. So, it would seem logical that that would also be the deadline for local ballot issue language to be forwarded. But I didn’t see in our Web calendar a particular indication of that deadline for that date. Although it seems proper, since it is so important, I am actually going to research and verify it. I will let the Board know immediately if that is not the date.

Stutsman: I was not at the Board meeting last Thursday, but this calendar was voted on, wasn’t it?

Jordahl: I think it was presented informally. When did we meet with the Financial Committee?

Thompson: I can’t remember.

Stutsman: I was going to say if this was voted on, we are going to have to put it back on the agenda to suggest changes.

Carpenter: A week ago Monday was when you met with the Finance Committee.

Thompson: It was on the Board’s agenda for Thursday.

White: One of the reasons for my question is that, I think it’s the 69th day before the election. It didn’t seem to fit a timetable. It seems like an odd measure.

Slockett: I think it is 69 days.

Painter: Well, speaking only for myself, Tom, I certainly didn’t mean to imply that you should be docked any of your other report time. So, if you have anything else, you must feel free to say.

Slockett: No, I really don’t.

Lehman: I didn’t have one until I saw that I mentioned Dingleberry Quarry last meeting. A little more update on that. I talked to Tom Scott. You will now hear it referred to as Ernst Quarry. With a couple of residents out there, we were hoping to have a No Through Truck Ordinance out there. Keep the trucks off there, empty and full. Tom Scott said what he would really like to be able to do was to use 280th as an empty route for Cedar County. Johnson County pretty much uses all roads 5 weeks in the spring when they rock roads. Cedar County, according to Tom, uses it throughout the whole year. That is why he wouldn’t want to limit it just to 5 weeks during spring. I plan on visiting with the Secondary Roads in Cedar County, to see what their thoughts are.

Jordahl: Let’s not forget the representation that Mr. Scott made about where these trucks are going to be going during our re-zoning considerations of that.

Slockett: It is explicitly stated as 69 days.

White: It must have something to do with getting from the Tuesday back to the weekend, why wouldn’t they say 70 days or 10 weeks?

Slockett: I don’t know you’ll have to consult a legal historian.

White: There’s not always rhyme or reason to what the legislature does.

Jordahl: I was a voyager to California not long ago with Tom Slockett and Jean Schultz with Information Services to look at what may be a wonderful opportunity for the County to get a break on the cost of new financial software. It would serve all departments and also Human Resource management software. Iowa City was looking at a million dollars plus, for something comparable. The deal we are looking at would involve a $250,000 fee for the software and then some kind of an annual maintenance fee, 15%, 20%, something like that. The cost of getting them to come and talk to us would apparently be reimbursed to us because part of our work with them would be to take this international, global software from the SAP Corporation. You have seen mySAP.com ads on television all over the place. To take that, and digest that into a form that they can then offer for sale to counties and cities and so forth. So, we would be working with them not only to get it adapted to ourselves, but to work with a group of other counties to look at adapting it to other counties in general. I don’t know where that stands in the terms of the same kind of, is it a reasonable period of review that Tom was talking about in terms of the jail, making a precipitous decision just because somebody claims that in the future they may reimburse us. There are a lot of things that we have to pin down. Anyway, that is out there. The Board had quite an interesting discussion this morning on adjusting our land use policy to change the farmstead split provision. That has allowed people with an existing second house on their farm that was existing before 1979 that they can split that off without having to go through a bunch of conniptions with the Board, it is more or less automatic. We’ve looked at the idea of letting any farmer have a second residence on their farm, split off, even if it is a new one. They can just go ahead and build one. If someone wants to have their kid live on their farm with them, we don’t have to go and say, well, we have to re-zone that and we don’t want anymore residential zonings out there. We can say that is an ag dwelling; it is not re-zoned, it is just a small parcel, so the son can have it separately. I am heartened by that. I think that’s a good direction for us to take. But we are not done yet.

Painter: I don’t have too much, just quickly on the Document Management Sub-Committee,. one of the items of ongoing concern has always been a need for overall retention and disposition schedule for documents stored off-site at the Secondary Roads storage facility. We decided to go ahead and work toward the creation of that type of thing. First take a look at what is out there in the shed and begin to catalog that and work with departments to have some notion of when, if at any time those items might be disposable or to consider other kinds of storage options for the County. We are starting slowly, but surly to get more of a handle on that. Anything else from anyone? OK, Sally you have a leadership training opportunity item on the agenda.

Stutsman: There are some moneys available both in the HR budget and in the Board budget for staff training. Carol Peters has researched this opportunity for leadership training throughout the Extension Service. We just want to get feedback from elected officials as to whether there would be interest in pursuing this. What it would be is a series of training sessions that are outlined in the brochure, that we could take advantage of. They would do the training. Carol has tentatively reserved the Armory if we are interested in pursuing this. We would meet on a Wednesday morning or afternoon every other week to do the 3-hour training sessions. You can see what the different topics are, from effective leadership, understanding ourselves and others. I guess these 2 are mandatory. You need to take those 2 in order to finish the rest of the courses up to Section 6. I just wanted to know if there was any interest in pursuing this. We would have to have at least 35 people participate, if we wanted to take advantage of a lower cost. Per participant, it would be $130, if at least 15 people participated. I just wanted to get people’s feelings on if they would be interested in signing up for this.

Slockett: Well, I can say I would be interested in it, if I can work it into my schedule. Are there dates that are set for it?

Stutsman: We have tentatively planned to start July 19th and then look at going maybe August 9th and then the 23rd, every other Wednesday.

Slockett: I just think it is important for us to realize that we all have really crowded schedules and meetings that are called that we have no control over. Something like this, the earlier and more flexible, the better in scheduling it.

Stutsman: We would need to make a decision whether we are going to go ahead and do it because there is money in this year’s budget. We would prepay, so that we can use the money this fiscal year. That is why I want to get an idea if there is interest in participating.

Slockett: Well, of course the money will still be in the fund unused if you don’t do it this year. Then a simple budget amendment could put it back in to use.

White: Each session is 3 hours?

Jordahl: You know the problem that is going to occur with this is that… We cannot assume that we’re not going to do this unless everybody that could conceivably be sent is going to go to every 3 hour session during the whole time. That is not going to happen. So, a given with this is that people are going to have other meetings that conflict with this, we know that.

Slockett: But it sounds like it is important, especially for the first 2 for everyone who wants to go to any of them to be able to schedule it.

Stutsman: Then after that, you could send somebody in your place to bring back the information, so we wouldn’t necessarily have to participate. Is there enough interest to go ahead and direct Carol Peters to have people sign up, either for department heads or elected officials?

Thompson: Are we talking about the first 6 or all 12?

Stutsman: Just the first 6 is what we would begin with.

Slockett: Is there any flexibility in setting the first 2 meeting dates, and would it be appropriate to ask everyone.

Stutsman: I think we could do that.

Slockett: And move it in case somebody wants to go and couldn’t go to one of those. That would seem worth the trouble of going the extra mile to schedule the first 2 when it is convenient to everyone who wants to attend. As Jonathan points out, it is enormously complicated to accommodate everyone’s schedule, even for 2 meetings.

Jordahl: But with the mandatory nature of those, maybe we could ask them about holding those twice.

Slockett: If necessary.

Jordahl: Depending on how many people we had. In order to accommodate schedule conflicts. It would be closer to accommodating everybody.

Slockett: These look good. Do we have any knowledge or way of verifying?

Stutsman: Yes, Carol said that groups who have recently taken this program include the Ottumwa Chamber of Commence, Ida County Leadership 2000, Sac County Leadership 2000, people in private industry and companies such as Telegroup in Fairfield and Midwest Industries, and GoMag in Ida Grove. 20 years of experience in leadership education to Iowans.

Thompson: Who is the trainer?

Stutsman: Jeff Zacharakis-Jutz.

Slockett: He is locally known.

White: He is the guy who does your township training.

Slockett: Right.

Stutsman: At least that is who she has been in contact with. I am assuming that that is who does the training.

Lehman: How do you want to do a poll here? You have us.

Stutsman: Carol just wanted feedback from this group first before moving on to the next step. If nobody is interested, then we would just forget it. But if there is enough interest here, then we proceed.

Jordahl: I am interested. I think we have talked about this before. I am mostly being quiet and trying to hear what the other elected officials say.

Thompson: Well, what we need to hear is that people are interested and that they would attend and send people from their staff.

Slockett: I would attend. Sending people from the staff, I would like to do. That is another question. I wish we had some way of assessing what the County is investing in all of these meetings. I have brought this up before. I don’t mean to be repeating myself in an unwelcome way. There are an infinite number of good ideas in the way that County employees spend their time. I would like it if there were some way we could calculate how much we are investing and compare that for the results along the way. This isn’t a criticism of it. It is just some way… I feel torn by the number of meetings that are called that I would like to attend and seem like good ideas. If I went to all of them, I would never be in the office. There needs to be some way to weigh that and to evaluate it. I don’t know what it would be. My idea was to in some way account for the wages spent by the people who are attending all of our meetings, somehow take a look at it. I don’t know if that is realistic or not.

White: An example of weighing that I encourage is, lets take a look at the community leadership program that already functions here, that Sally participated in, a couple of my people have participated in. I don’t know how widely other departments have considered doing that. This would be the time of the year where we could pick out one or 2 County people and nominate them for that program. It is more expensive than this per person, but I think… My personal view is County participation in that Chamber Community Leadership Program is terrific and that it is appropriate to look at some involvement, not just from us, but from our management and staff level as well. My only point is that would be an example of trying to have some goals in mind. What do we really want to do with funds that are available? What would be the higher priorities? Are there other things? Extension does good work, but I would be more comfortable if we had actually seen somebody do this or have some references.

Jordahl: We had a Dealing with Difficult People Seminar, who taught that?

Stutsman: That was something that Lora arranged.

Thompson: Synchrony, wasn’t it?

Jordahl: Was it Synchrony or was it the Tim Shield’s organization?

Stutsman: Yes, it seemed as if it was somebody else out of Synchrony, I know it wasn’t Paul.

Lehman: University.

Jordahl: My question wasn’t it… Oh, was it from the University Counseling Service

Stutsman: Well, she went to a session and said that this person had presented and she thought that they did a good job and so she asked them to.

Lehman: Dealing with Conflict.

Stutsman: Here we are in June, and we have not used any of this money this year. If I remember correctly from our strategic planning, this is one thing that our staff wanted, was some sort of staff development. So, this is an opportunity for some staff development. I understand what you are saying, Tom, and I totally agree, we have to constantly assess is this worth the investment to put into. The argument about the Community Leadership Program is that it is pretty pricey for one individual, where this would at least reach more people.

Jordahl: And this is if want to demand or require, suggest, or evaluate people on whether they have taken advantage of training opportunities. If we do not provide them, then we are on awfully shaky ground criticizing them for not doing it. Is this something that we could offer for a large number of employees?

Slockett: I don’t know if I totally agree with that. There are numerous opportunities through ISAC, the University of Iowa, Kirkwood, Extension Services, and the Institute of Public Affairs. I guess one thing that I would evaluate people on is their initiative in doing that rather than following instructions to attend.

Jordahl: You may have some people who have good initiative and some people who need to follow instructions to get anything done. Each benefits in a different way, different employees

Slockett: That is true

Stutsman: So are we interested in pursuing this?

Slockett: Doesn’t sound like it. I am not hearing a lot of interest, as one who is interested; that is my observation.

Painter: Well, I really like the look of the outline. I feel fairly good about it. I have a limited amount of people that would probably be able to be made available to participate.

Carpenter: I am a little concerned also. I would like to see something like this. My main concern is if it is good enough. If the teachers would be good enough to handle what we want, because I think it is important that we give our employees an opportunity to go and get this type of an education. I agree with Pat, too, on the Chamber’s deal, but it would take an awful long time to get enough of those people. We are talking two from 35; there is a lot of difference there. I think that anything at all is not going to hurt.

White: A thought that occurs to me is if we can find Extension doing this someplace that is commutable and send somebody and enroll one person who would come back and report or make a recommendation.

Thompson: And there was another plan where you could pay a tuition for a person to attend an existing group. They just said that if we had enough people, then they would… So we could go ahead and do the one person one.

Stutsman: And maybe that would be the better approach to take. My experience with Extension is sometimes they have some real good things, sometimes they can be real wordy.

Slockett: Is this Iowa State Extension? I have a pretty good opinion of them

Thompson: We may not have enough employees to be able to spare 35 at one time. If every department sent one person and every elected official sent one person, we still wouldn’t have our goal.

Jordahl: Another possibility would be to offer it outside of work hours, like Saturday mornings. People would do it on initiative.

Thompson: And pay overtime?

Jordahl: And not pay overtime. So it would be like voluntary self-education, but I don’t think…

Carpenter: Well, you would have the possibility of paying overtime anyway, because their schedules change or vary. They might not be there Wednesday afternoon; they may be off duty.

Stutsman: So I am hearing that people want to explore this a little bit more. Maybe just send one person to the sessions and see if it is worth it.

Slockett: I would also defer to that opinion. I am convinced by the discussion here.

Jordahl: Where are they being held nearby?

Stutsman: We don’t know.

Thompson: I think that they have some that are being held here. That you would just be in a group with other people instead of being in a County group in there with some thought that it would be good to be in a group with other County employees, to share information.

Jordahl: Well yes.

Thompson: But we could still do that in the future.

Jordahl: We have to remember ourselves that we have umpteen other departments, also, that are headed by appointed department heads that might or might not. We need to weigh the utility this is expressed by a variety of others. I think it’s good to get some feedback from somebody who actually has been to one of these. But, we need to…

Thompson: Send a test case.

Jordahl: Yes. I think it would be good not to make a final decision about this thing here today.

(Continued in Transcript Part 3)