• Report (Painter): Attended Budget Meeting with Board
• Report (Stutsman): Upcoming Employee Recognition and Upcoming Open House for Duffy and Jordahl
• Report (Thompson): Work Done on Administration Building Heating System
• Report (Duffy): Compliments to Road Crews and Upcoming Budget Work Session
• Report (Lehman): Review of Heating Problems and Solutions
• Report (Jordahl): Attended the Tiffin City Council Meeting, Upcoming Discussion Regarding Jail, and Thanks to the Board and Other Elected Officials
• Report (Stutsman): Recognition of Doctor Bozek
• Discussion: Items Related to Storage of the County’s Paper Documents
• Discussion: ID Card for County Employees
• Discussion: Electronic Availability of County Documents
• Report (Kriz): Earlier Closing Time at Clerk’s Office
• Setting Date and Time of Next Meeting

Chairperson Painter called the Johnson County Elected Officials Meeting to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 1:35 p.m.

Elected officials present were: County Attorney J. Patrick White; County Recorder Kim Painter; County Sheriff Bob Carpenter; County Supervisors Charles Duffy, Jonathan Jordahl, Mike Lehman, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson; and County Treasurer Tom Kriz. Staff present: Auditor’s Office Recording Secretary Casie Parkins.

Painter began reports from elected officials by saying she just finished the first round of her budget process with the Board, thinking it went pretty well. She said she felt good about how the forms worked.

Stutsman announced that employee recognition would be Thursday December 21st at 11:30 in the Boardroom, and hoped that many people could attend. She also announced an open house for retiring Board members, Charles Duffy and Jonathan Jordahl, the following Thursday, December 28th, from 2-4 p.m.

Thompson noted that the Board had been working with Facilities Manager Mike Scheer to get the heat in the County Administration Building working again and noted it felt good indoors this day.

Duffy said that he thinks the County Secondary Roads Department, State DOT, the City, and other people in the snow removal business worked really hard to get the roads and sidewalks cleared so people could use them. Duffy especially complimented the County Secondary Road Department for working all night. He noted that the Board has been working on the budget, and said that there was to be a budget work session after this meeting.

Lehman summarized the problems with the Administration Building’s heating system, explaining there are 2 thermostats in the Boardroom that actually work the opposite of what you’d think they do. If it feels too warm in the Board Room- it’s set on 55- they should actually turn it up. He said it forces cold air in to cool it off. Lehman said there is no heat source in the Board Room, being an interior room, it is expected to keep warm from the surrounding areas. Lehman thinks they may be on the right track. There are other things to work on, including a piece of the boiler that’s not kicking into the second stage. He reported a new part has been ordered. He also noted that the building is heated with radiant heat, which is baseboard heat. This means exhaust fans have to pull the air away; the baseboards don’t blow air out. He said that is why people have been asked to keep things away from the baseboards, to allow the exhaust fans to pull the warm air away from the baseboards. If the system can’t get to the warm air, it’s pulling cool air. Lehman said they also think the fan is running too much, creating a vacuum, sucking in cold air when people enter the building. Walking in the front door people should have a blast of warm air hitting their faces, not the cold air that is actually coming in with them.

Lehman reiterated that they’re on the right track. There’s no one thing, he explained, and said that they’re waiting for some controls from Johnson Controls to regulate it electronically. Right now they’re doing it manually. Lehman explained that RM Boggs, Inc. would have a representative at the Administration Building at 7:00 a.m. to meet with Scheer and see what the building is like in the mornings. Lehman said that it is fairly simple, but the thermostat settings are completely opposite of those in a home. In each department, he noted, they could keep doing it the way they have been, but the Board Room is different, and hopefully the signs would remind people. Thompson asked if they should set the thermostats colder to get the temperature warmer? Lehman affirmed that this was they case. He said when he came in this morning one of the thermostats was at 85, so the settings were fighting each other. Lehman said this was a simple mistake, because when you turn the thermostat up, there is no heat forced into the room. The only heat in the Board Room is from the surrounding walls, body heat, and so forth. To cool it off, he said, air conditioning will bring cool air down. By turning the thermostat up to 85, Lehman explained, it actually brought cool air down, instead of generating heat. Stutsman suggested that, once the thermostat was on track, there should be a training session about the building with the elected officials and department heads. She said that everybody was tinkering with the thermostats, so it’s no wonder things were totally nuts. Lehman cited the example of the previous Physical Plant Manager spending time learning about the heating and cooling system at the Jail. Lehman said that there are some repairs that need to be done in the building, and noted during times when systems sit inactive, they sometimes have problems due to moisture, corrosion, and dust.

Jordahl reported that Lehman is well-prepared to be the Chair of the Board of Supervisors. Jordahl said he attended the Tiffin City Council Meeting last week, at the request of the Coralville City Council. He stated that Tiffin and Coralville are verging on each other’s territory. A number of farmers to the south of Tiffin, Jordahl said, had requested annexation to Tiffin voluntarily, which Tiffin didn’t think was significant because it was voluntary. Jordahl explained that Coralville took exception to this because part of the voluntary annexation was what exists in a fringe area agreement with the Board of Supervisors as part of Coralville’s designated growth area. Jordahl wanted to call people’s attention to the existing agreements, and said this will be on the Board of Supervisors’ next informal agenda. Jordahl said another discussion that will be on that agenda is the Jail and setting up a future meeting to get all parties involved in taking pressure off the jail. He cited law enforcement agencies, the County Attorney, and programs such as MECCA. It was his hope that they could pass a motion the following week to ask these parties to sit down and talk to each other. Jordahl thanked everyone for accepting him as a member of the Board of Supervisors and a County elected official, and further stated he will sincerely miss working with the Board and other County officials.

Stutsman added one additional item regarding the upcoming employee recognition, saying that Dr. Bozek would be recognized with a plaque, and Dr. Dobyns would be saying a few words.

Painter introduced the next item, which she said was a broad topic. She said the County has a Document Management Subcommittee, which she has been chairing since she took office a couple of years ago. She reported that they have met, up until now, primarily to talk about the technology aspect of managing the County’s documents. She said they’ve had an annual budget-related process where they request departments interested in migrating to new technologies from paper/document-type technologies, provide a survey to the subcommittee, and then they would create some plan for implementing these new technologies within their office. The area of paper document storage, especially with the fairly substantial amount of paper documents that the many County departments store outside their offices, hasn’t really been squarely addressed yet. Painter said she had placed it on the agenda in order to get input from the Board of Supervisors about what they’d like to see happen while all the elected officials are together, and then they could respond or ask questions. She said that this is a large topic, for several reasons. It involves some of the statutory provisions in regards to how long the County is supposed to keep papers for all the different departments in the County. She made reference to a book from the State Historical Society that tells how long the different departments in a courthouse are supposed to keep their many kinds of documents. For a subcommittee usually involved in technology, people have a lot of questions about how long to keep documents such payroll sheets. Painter said the landscape was beginning to look pretty large, bringing doubts about embarking on a new approach to what may be an iceberg under the surface.

Thompson began addressing this issue by stating that the Board of Supervisors has, in the Space Needs Budget, set aside for a number of years, $40,000 to put in a deck in the County Storage Building. But, she said, because Pat Langenberg is gone now, they don’t know exactly what the plan was. She asked if anyone else knew anything about this. Lehman said he had talked to Langenberg, who had told him that the plan had fallen by the wayside and had been low priority. Langenberg had also told Lehman that the Board would have to work with the Sheriff’s Department on controlling access because of evidence storage there. Langenberg had told Lehman that there wasn’t anything physically wrong with the plan, nothing to prevent it from being done. Lehman said the Board could revisit this issue but would have to work with the Sheriff’s Department. Thompson wondered if they needed more room to store evidence, as well, and Duffy answered that the building was originally a storage facility for emergency vehicles. Carpenter said that they need height in the center of the building and on the west end, the way it is now. He said they might be able to put another deck on the north side, like on the south end, but there are other concerns. One is the entrance into that deck, because they can’t come in through the same doors the Sheriff Department uses. Carpenter said at one time there was talk about an elevator being put into the building. Stutsman asked if this would not be very expensive, and Carpenter agreed, but would need to be done for handicapped accessibility. Carpenter said the footings are in place on the north side for supporting a deck, but underneath where the deck would be he still has a storage area. A deck on the north side would not be the same structure as on the south, where they have a bathroom and other storage areas underneath, because he needs the area beneath to maintain the rescue equipment. The new deck would be the same height and size as the one on the south side, but would need it’s own entrance.

Stutsman suggested that the money would be better spent on some other kind of system of document storage. She surmised that they would spend a lot of money making the facility ADA-accessible, and to create a separate access to it, and in 5 years it would be full and they would have the same problem of having no storage space. White said that they need both. He said they needed storage for physical items in paper form, but also need to devise an ultimate concept with every department categorizing everything it keeps, with a policy that says how long it stays in paper form, when it gets pitched, or when it gets scanned. White stated that he did not think they could ever get away from the need for physical storage. He also brought up a related issue regarding the second deck, regarding discussions about acquiring property immediately south of the current storage building. This item is still on his desk, he said, but not of high priority. White stated that he is still an advocate for more physical storage space. Painter said that she tends to agree with White on this issue. She said that she has been involved in some large projects converting massive amounts of paper documents that must be permanently stored into digital format. She thought that cost runs up much faster than building space. Painter thought the County needs a good retention and disposition schedule. She had done an informal count, based on the Iowa County Records Manual information, and the Clerk of Court had something like 159 records listed that they needed to keep permanently, and some of them had to be microfilmed. She reported that the Recorder has 56, the Auditor 51, and it is quite a big list. She said that in finding an off-site storage location and building some more space, it has to be well managed, with a comprehensive schedule of some sort.

White said that the existing building is pretty economical, in terms of the type of construction. It’s not glitzy, he said, and that it works pretty well for a wide variety of storage, from vehicles, rescue equipment, and materials the Sheriff needs on the 1st floor to lots of paper on the 2nd floor. Thompson asked if the building was heated, and White said yes. She further inquired if all the Clerk’s records were there, and White said no. He said they did them a favor by giving them temporary space. Stutsman asked why this was the case, and White said they were very squeezed in the Courthouse, and the Clerk requested a favor, and they were just trying to get along. Thompson asked where the rest of the Clerk’s materials were stored, and White replied that some are in the garage behind the Courthouse, and some on microfilm. Jordahl spoke about the cost of land that could be purchased on which to build a storage facility, noting the high cost of the Capital Propane ground compared to poor sand farmland 30 miles away. He indicated that they did not need wastewater treatment, only electricity for climate control. Stutsman noted that it was pretty handy when people needed access to those records. Thompson said they would have to count in staff time to go to a storage facility. Carpenter said that there was a bathroom in the current facility, and 2 furnaces, and Civil Defense has a room in there for supplies, and those are accessible through the south doors. He also noted where they have a deck built that the Sheriff’s Department utilizes for their paper records and other items that they keep. Under this, Carpenter said, they lock their small evidence, and the vehicles and rescue equipment utilize the rest. Jordahl stated that he did not intend to malign the current building, but pointed out that Capitol Propane was not the only alternative to that current space for additional record storage.

Jordahl asked Painter to clarify what she said earlier about off-site storage being comparatively top-dollar, and wondered if she meant the retrieval service that operates in Linn County. Painter replied that they have several grades of storage. Their most expensive, Painter said, would cost $8,000 per month, just for the items they have at Secondary Roads. Thompson asked what they would get if they just went to a moving company, like one used storing furniture. White replied the cost would eventually be more than creating their own facility. Jordahl said that they should create a facility like the one they have now, but put it on land the County already owns at Secondary Roads, with a septic system-based waste facility for no more staff than would be using the facility at any one time. Jordahl said that this would enable them to get the things out of the 2nd floor of the Secondary Roads Building, which is probably a fire hazard, and establish a rolling destruction system. By removing the material from the second floor of the Secondary Roads building they could eliminate a potential fire hazard. Thompson said that since any new space was going to cost a lot, she was interested in assessing how much material could be disposed of, to free up space that is already being used. Painter noted that there are several steps that they have to go through. The first step, she said, was an inventory process. Painter said that the Document Management Subcommittee began that process with the Secondary Roads facility earlier in the summer. The next step, Painter continued, would be to assess that inventory with department heads and elected officials, and roll into the 3rd process, which would be the creation of a schedule. Thompson said that her hunch was that there was more there that they had to keep than they think. She said that she knows there is probably some material that people just didn’t feel like getting rid of. Painter noted that at Secondary Roads, they did not come up with much material that they could toss. Thompson said that SEATS had a few things. Painter said that there probably are some boxes that they need to get rid of, but said that they would not produce a lot of new storage.

Lehman asked if the Space Needs Committee and the Document Management Committee needed to sit down and work out some recommendations. Painter said yes, that at the very least they needed to look for some additional people to help participate. Thompson said that once they have identified things that need to be disposed of, they need to look at what it would take to do it. Thompson continued by saying that if people had staff sitting around with time to go do it, they probably would have done it. She said that there is probably a backup for a reason. Lehman said they could just go out to Secondary Roads and put up a building without sewer and water. But, he added, somebody needs to investigate if the building might have another purpose down the road, and if it was going to be worth the money. He said that even on the Strauss property, instead of just a pole building, maybe sewer and water were needed if it were to become something else in the future. He said they did not want to put something up, and then tear it down. Carpenter shared one of his concerns; because Strauss property had LP gas on it, they had to put double firewall on the north side because of the University electrical plant being there. Carpenter noted there was a lot of extra work, and added costs, due to the location. He noted the trade-off between staying in that area and losing savings by traveling further. He added that building within the city limits means following stricter guidelines. Thompson said they knew they had a lot of paper records, but asked about evidence space, cars, weapons, etc. Carpenter confirmed these things were being stored. Thompson asked what kind of storage was needed, was it shelf space? Carpenter replied that his department was fine with that for right now. His main concern was with the rescue equipment, the boats, hovercraft, snowmobiles, and those types of vehicles. They need to be readily accessible to them. Carpenter stated that the building was designed to build a second story the same as on the south side. They couldn’t go the full length because he needn’t to utilize some area that’s taller than the ceiling under a deck. He said that they have one door that’s 14 feet or 16 feet, so they need that height, and also need ventilation as well.

Stutsman asked Painter if her committee could make a recommendation regarding that decking or a separate location? She said they could, noting that the next regularly-scheduled meeting was March 14th. Carpenter told Painter that Jim Jensen put the decking on the south side, and that if she called him he could give her a pretty good idea of what that cost. Lehman said that he’d like to see Document Management come up with their end, and then with the Space Needs Committee merge this thing together. Stutsman said she was going to be adamant about getting rid of stuff. She said that she didn’t think it was a good use of taxpayer’s dollars to continually build buildings because people don’t want to deal with having to go through junk. Painter agreed, and said, however, that the process was showing them, in at least one of their 2 facilities, that what they could throw away was very minimal. In some cases, Painter said, departments have very good schedules, and know what they can get rid of. In other cases, she continued, it might be worthwhile to sit down and visit with White and be sure that, for example, is the Historical Society’s book something that they can go by. Is there a margin where they could possibly get rid of more than they think? They don’t get rid of things that they shouldn’t get rid of, but they do need to get rid of everything they can. Stutsman said, if anyone has gone out to Secondary Roads, they’ll know that there needs to be a better system of storage. She said that it is literally thrown in there, and you spend more time trying to sort through things. Stutsman said that this is not a good use of staff time, to climb over boxes. Along with the whole system, Stutsman said, there has to be a good process in place for retrieving things and putting them in an orderly fashion. Painter said the Document Management Subcommittee- herself, Jean Schultz, Tom Slockett, Tom Kriz, and other people as they can attend- can think about how they’re going to do that or who’s going to do that with them and for them. She said they can think about the Physical Plant Department helping out or outsourcing some of the work.

Painter said that she wanted the Board to know that this was a very big project, and if it hasn’t moved as quickly as the Board might have wanted, it was in part because of the other area of the implementation of technology which is also an important priority. There are times, Painter said, when it almost feels as though the 2 halves are bigger than one whole should be for a subcommittee. Thompson said that she thought that Painter was going in the right direction, because the technology will stop the flow of physical material coming in, to some degree. Jordahl said that there was a knowability factor here, as Painter was suggesting about that book, of what things have to be held in perpetuity. He was thinking of some sort of a calculation of a per person in the County per year growth in the need for paper storage for each office, based on the type of document that needs to be kept. Jordahl said that this could then result in a formula of what type of space would be needed to reach how far into the future. Taking that number, you could either build a building or approach the legislature and say that in their review of these matters, the following seems to be ridiculous, and they think this should all be, if possible, stored electronically. Duffy said that history is repeating itself, because a few years back they thought they had this storage problem whipped. In the Courthouse, Duffy said, as you go in from the west, the room used for storage was terrible. There were some documents in there, and now it’s a nice, small courtroom. Duffy said that they thought they could put everything on microfilm-disk, and they found out that for some things, they have to keep the original document. He asked White if this was correct, and White said that microfilm is very impractical for storage purposes, and that a lot of money had been spent. Duffy said that they had tried it, but it hadn’t worked very well. Painter thought they were moving in a good direction and they would keep working as a subcommittee, trying to work more closely with Space Needs, and keep the Board posted on how those things were progressing. She said that the first thing to do was to do an overall inventory of the departments. Thompson said that what the Space Needs Committee would need to know was some estimate of the amount of square footage per year that it grows.

Kriz said that someone had mentioned that through the DOT an identification card was available for a dollar. As a test, Kriz said, he went and got one made up for himself, and then ordered a packet of the forms from the DOT. He passed this around, and said that it had to be authorized by an elected official or department head. Thompson asked if they would charge the County the dollar. Kriz continued that it would have basic information, like where you work within the County, and it has to be signed by the department head or official in charge. Kriz said you can set a limit on the time the ID is valid; it can be for one month or for up to 4 years, like a driver’s license. They take the picture, he said, and you have to have your own identification or driver’s license with you when you get it. Kriz said it’s a fairly simple process. He said that though he did not advocate a lot of people using ID cards, there could be a point in time that it’s nice to have, especially for travel. Often there are special rates for government employees. He said that the ID cards are a very under-utilized thing that the DOT offers to counties, cities, and state employees. Kriz said they do have the forms now, so anyone could just contact him. Lehman asked what the fee was, and Kriz said it was a dollar. Duffy remarked that this was pretty cheap, and Kriz agreed, saying that the State didn’t make any money.

Kim Painter asked if this would be a benefit to County employees when they’re traveling? Kriz said that he didn’t know the legality of it, but that the cards were supposed to be used in conjunction with government functions. Stutsman said that she remembered going to Des Moines when she was at state meetings, staying at Hotel Fort Des Moines, and they had government rates. Stutsman had asked them for the government rate, and the woman had been gracious enough to take her business card, but she was very uncomfortable doing it. Stutsman later got the ID, and said that the rate was worth it. She said that the County pays for it, so it’s savings to the County to have that. Kriz said that this was another aspect that could be looked at that might save tax dollars. Thompson asked if the DOT would bring their camera over to the County Administration building. If they put drivers licensing in the Treasurer’s Office, Kriz noted, they would have it anyhow. Lehman said that it would be good for building inspectors, assessors, and Board of Health employees. Thompson agreed that it would be a good idea for anyone going into someone’s home. Kriz said one of the nice things about it was that you could restrict the length of time it’s actually an authorized thing. Painter asked if this was something that was available now, and Kriz said it was. Kriz explained that you’d have to have one of the forms filled out, signed by a department head. Thompson said that supervisors have to collect the IDs from people when they leave employment. Kriz said therein lies a problem, noting that he would want a detailed list of who in his department had one, and that this would be a big responsibility. Duffy said that he knows that federal employees have ID cards, having been on Bruce Babbitt’s Water Commission, traveling through the Midwest. That if businesses know a person is connected with the Federal Government, they’ll take a lot off of the room, plus they’ll give priority to getting the room, too.

(Continued in Part 2)