MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
JANUARY 11, 2001
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chairperson Lehman called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 5:43 p.m. Members present were: Pat Harney, Mike Lehman, Terrence Neuzil, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson.
DISCUSSION: IOWA CITY CHAMBER LEGISLATIVE MEETINGS IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
Lehman: We can go into our Informal Meeting. I believe our first one is an update from Joanne Hora. I don’t believe Joanne is here yet. We can move on to Business from the County Attorney.
Assistant County Attorney Janet Lyness: Nothing.
Lehman: OK. Business from the Board of Supervisors. We have some Discussion Action Needed for the Iowa City Chamber of Legislative Meetings in Washington, D.C. I believe Sally, you attended that in the past.
Stutsman: The reason this is on is that Linda St. Claire had contacted me and Linda is the government liaison with the Chamber and talked about representatives from Johnson County going to Washington, D.C. to work with legislative members about different issues affecting this area. She said that they plan this trip on a yearly basis and was wondering if there was somebody from the Board that was interested in going. I mentioned this last week and being that it wasn’t on the agenda we couldn’t have a full discussion about it. It’s on the agenda tonight to see if anybody is interested in going. She said the cost is $1,200 and that includes air, hotel, breakfast, shuttle and some meals. It would be February 25th, 26th and 27th. At that time there wasn’t anybody from Johnson County going. Terrance, I understand that there are some people that are planning to go now.
Neuzil: Yes. The Chamber is going to be sending a delegation. As far as government appointees, we have Mayor Fausett, I know that is going to be attending, Kelly Hayworth is going to be attending and I believe that Iowa City is still trying to recruit as well. Steve Atkins was not able to participate, but I believe they are trying to recruit one of the City Councilors and they would like to recruit one of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors, if possible. I’ve shown some interest.
Lehman: Yes. Terrance had posted me and I think maybe some of the other Board Members. Do you know some of the topics they’re going to be trying to pinpoint?
Neuzil: The main areas that the Chamber is going to be working on coming up here will be transportation, particularly the highway, the airport, also some trains, as those are pretty hot issues right now particularly in our area. They are going to be going there as well to look at legislation in regards to Brownfields. Medicare will be an issue, along with the University of Iowa. Immigration will be another issue that is starting to become a pretty hot issue, particularly in the State. That will also be addressed on this D.C. trip. Then, the potential for additional education and this new issue with Iowa Child might as well be discussed during this meeting. However, that particular one is one that I’ve not seen as of yet. But, immigration, Brownfields, transportation and Medicare seem to be the hot issues. I’ve had a chance to talk a little bit with Lisa Dewey at SEATS, in regards to transportation to see if there was a way that we could have a meaning to go to this. She had shared with me the breakdown as far as federal funding that Johnson County does work through the Eastern Iowa Council of Governments and Johnson County Council of Governments. But, assistance for Iowa City and Coralville, along with the potential for North Liberty and Tiffin, would be beneficial to have Johnson County be kind of looking over that as well. The 965 extension, which is going to be an issue in the near future, for not only Johnson County but Iowa City and Coralville, as we have to work up a joint agreement there will be another potential issue and potential funding that we could get some federal assistance for. So, transportation seems to be one in particular that could be of big significance for Johnson County.
Lehman: It’s always interesting to go to these. You kind of go to the horse’s mouth on the stuff where you find out if you want to get some answers. Kind of cut to the chase and find out who the contact people are.
Neuzil: Yes. The only way to make this really beneficial is if you feel like we should have representation and I would be happy to do that. I feel my responsibility to go to all of the different department heads and let them be aware of what is going on here and see if I can as well bring issues of interest to the federal level.
Thompson: Do we have money in our budget to pay for this?
Stutsman: Carol?
Neuzil: That’s what we talk to Carol about. We all look at you now, Carol.
Administrative Assistant Carol Peters: Yes, there is money there. It will depend, too, a little bit, on if you decide to send a representative to NACO, as to how much money will actually be there.
Thompson: When is NACO, in June?
Peters: The registration is in June. The actual meeting is in July. So, there would be money left over in that particular line item.
Lehman: OK. That’s the National Association of Counties.
Peters: Yes.
Stutsman: Mike, are you interested in going?
Lehman: The dates wouldn’t work out for me.
Stutsman: Oh, OK. All right.
Thompson: I’m not, are you?
Harney: No.
Thompson: Terrance, it’s up to you.
Neuzil: Yes. I’m definitely interested in it. I’d be willing to put some of my own money into this as well.
Stutsman: You probably will put some of your own money in.
Neuzil: Yes, I know that. I obviously will coordinate with Carol and make sure everyone knows how much of that would come from the County, so the taxpayers know. I’m definitely interested. I think it would be very beneficial to start those kinds of contacts, even at that level.
Stutsman: I said that about putting your own money in. Washington D.C. is a pretty expensive place and we have pretty limited budgets. It seems like anything you want to do costs money, but I think it would be a good opportunity. We haven’t taken opportunity. We haven’t taken advantage of something like this.
Thompson: We put it on for next week?
Lehman: Yes, for next week. You can do some more research on it if you’d like.
Neuzil: I’d be happy to.
Lehman: I appreciate your report on that now.
Neuzil: OK.
WORK SESSION: SCHEDULING BUDGET HEARINGS
The Board scheduled budget work sessions for January 17, 2001 at 1:00 p.m., January 22, 2001 at 1:30 p.m., January 29, 2001 at 9:00 a.m., January 31, 2001 at 9:00 a.m., February 6, 2001 at 9:00 a.m., and February 8, 2001 at 9:00 a.m.
JOANNE HORA: SENIOR CENTER UPDATE
Lehman: Jo Anne Hora is here to give us a report on the Senior Center Update. JoAnne Hora.
Senior Center Commission Member JoAnne Hora: Thanks for letting me come. I’m sorry I’m late. Traffic was horrible.
Lehman: Everybody’s trying to get here.
Hora: I’m excited to announce that the Senior Center has raised their $120,000 that we had committed to raise for the skywalk. If you read the Gazette yesterday, or was it this morning, the City Council approved the plans and the specs for $286,000. We have raised the $120,000, so the City has committed to fund the rest of it. We’re excited about that. We’ve had many generous contributions from the community and we will be recognizing them. Some way we haven’t come up with that plan yet. We’ve also almost finished the accreditation meetings. We had the final one, I think it’s the 25th of this month. We’ve had excellent community response in that everyone that we’ve asked to be on our community has volunteered to join us. It’s been really a learning thing and I was excited to be involved in that. Then, on page 4 and 5 we have been doing public hearings. We’ve had 2 public hearings so far for the general public for the parking recognition for the new parking ramp. We’ve had really good attendance from the public and we’ve had some really great questions. There is a couple of things that have come up that we will look at and go back and hopefully we propose that to the City and hopefully those will be taken into consideration. Tomorrow we meet, I think it’s 2 p.m., we meet with in-house agencies and we’ll go over this. I’m assuming you do not want me to go over this in depth. Now, if Jay was here, he would do that word for word, but I won’t do that. Things are going well. We’re hoping that, I think they say the parking ramp will be open some time in the summer. I think probably the summer, does that start June and end in September, or what. But, we think that the skywalk and the ramp will bring more participants to the Senior Center. Do you have any questions?
Lehman: It looks like real thorough proposals here on the parking.
Hora: We worked really hard on this.
Lehman: Your posts, are they at the Senior Center or are they distributed to other areas?
Hora: They are mailed. Are your names not on the list?
Lehman: I’m just thinking for the public, I would think the media is probably going to cover some of the proposals and stuff. It’s kind of interesting. They’ve done a lot of work on it and I was thinking maybe, if they had questions it would be covered in the media, but very thorough here in this.
Hora: We can talk about that tomorrow.
Thompson: Thank you.
Lehman: Thank you.
Hora: I hope I didn’t mess up your night.
Lehman: Not at all. We’re very adaptable as you can tell from trying to set our budget hearing times.
Hora: Thank you.
Lehman: Thank you, JoAnne.
Lehman: OK. Minutes Received. Johnson County Empowerment Area Board for December 7, 2000. Those were circulated around, along with the minutes of the Johnson County Board of Social Welfare/Cluster Board for December 11, 2000. The Johnson County Nutrition Board Minutes for November 18, 2000. The East Central Iowa Council of Governments Meeting Minutes for December 20, 2000.
REPORT (LEHMAN): VACANCIES ON VARIOUS JOHNSON COUNTY BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS
Lehman: Carol had reminded me here just to make an announcement of the Board of Supervisors. There are 7 vacancies yet on the Johnson County Building Code Board of Appeals. They need one member representing the electrical industry who will serve a 5-year term. One member representing the plumbing industry will serve a 4-year term. One member representing the building industry will serve a 3-year term and one member qualified by experience in training in mechanical design construction and maintenance will serve a 2-year term. 3 members qualified by experience and trained to act upon matters pertaining to interpretations of the Building Code will serve 1, 4 and 5-year terms. This is a new Committee and that’s why we’re starting with staggered terms. The duties will include to interpret the Johnson County Building Code and the amendments and to hear and decide appeals where there is an error requirement or decision or determination made by the building official in application interpretation of the Johnson County Building Code or Amendments. To be eligible, you have to be an eligible elector of Johnson County, which you need to reside in Johnson County. We’ll make the public aware of that. I also have 2 vacancies in the Johnson County Cluster Board Social Welfare Board. These duties include reviewing policies and procedure for local department of Human Services, making recommendations for changes to ensure that effective services are provided in Johnson County. You can contact the Board here for applications on those. Also, we have vacancies yet on the Johnson County Compensation Commission. These are 1-year terms that end December 31, 2001. These duties include to assess damage to all properties taken by the applicant and located in the County. We’re still looking for applicants to fill those out. If you have any questions you can call the Board here and I can give you further details or you can obtain an application here at the Board.
Lehman: With that we’ll move on to Reports and Inquiries from the Board. Carol, would you like to start?
Thompson: Sure. Monday, the Continuous Quality Improvement Committee met at the MH/DD Department. We decided that one of the tasks of our Committee, which we’ve been working on for a long time was to have a survey of consumers, which will measure consumer satisfaction, as well as the effectiveness of our provider agencies. It’s a pretty ambitious group of things that we want to find from this. We’ve pretty much determined that because we already have existing data, we would use at least some of the questions from the survey that was taken in 1996. So, we feel like we made giant steps on Monday. Also, on Monday the Heritage Task Force met. Had a nice report from the people who go to the Older Iowans Legislature. The Youth Development Policy Board met yesterday to do their planning for next year and their meeting is next Wednesday, January 17th at the Coralville Public Library at 10 in the morning. That’s a public meeting that people can come to. Also, the provider’s group met at Oakdale on Tuesday. One of the projects that they’ve taken over, which I thought was kind of interesting was, they call it training in a box. You make a little packet that anybody can be trained to use to go out and talk to groups of people. The one that they are working on now is to talk to parents of adolescents about how to talk to your kids about drinking and drugs. These are just the 2 things I’ll pass them around to the Board. I’ll put the thing on them and pass them around. So, it would be like, for County employees for example, they would come at lunchtime, they would come to our site and they would talk to employees in this building on 2 occasions. The first one is called, What’s Brewing and the 2nd one is called Tapping the Keg. They’re just little kind of hands on things about how do you talk to your kids about these things. If they ask certain questions, what answers might you want to give things like that, they’re kind of nice little things. We met with Johnson Controls to talk with them about whether they might be able to take over managing our buildings in lieu of hiring someone. Mike and I will be coming back later on with a more intensive report about that. This morning Pat and I met at the Jail with the statistics people from the jail staff and also with Pat White. We identified the data that we want to be able to use in collecting our statistics. I think we had a pretty good meeting. The jail staff will pull out that data out of their database and give it to Jean Schultz and she’ll get it into a format that we can use. I think we’re going to be able to ask just about any question that we want to know the answer to by the time we get done. The only other thing I have is the Housing Task Force Meeting is next Thursday, the 18th, at 2:00 here in this office.
Lehman: Thank you. Pat?
Harney: Tuesday, we had an MH/DD Meeting. The Research and Development Committee met up at the North Governor Street address. Rosemary Randolph is the Chair and Elaine Sweet is the manager up there. They conducted the meeting and discussed the needs assessment about the consumer survey that she touched on. They’re setting their goals and objectives and their case management review. Elaine updated us on the case management and how they are going to do that, that seems to be working very well up there since they’ve done the review and brought things up to date. There is going to be a planning and transportation forum they’re going to sponsor at the Sheraton on the 27th and 28th. Basically, that’s addressing individuals with disabilities, mental and physical and how we can address their transportation needs. It’s going to be a pretty good program. They’re going to put many agencies within the community together to address the problems and discuss what they may or may not do. Tuesday we had the Chamber Agriculture Committee. Mike and I attended that. Discussion was on the upcoming Ag breakfast at Montgomery Hall, at 7 a.m. January 18th and February 18th. They’re going to have a tentative awards recognition breakfast at the Westfield on February 13th as well. Their discussion surrounded the upcoming 2006 World Plowing Contest, whether they’re going to hold that in Iowa and where they’re going to hold that for sure. They may end up scaling that down a little bit and having a farming expo or farm progress show somewhere in Iowa. That is still in the making. Last night I went to a meeting on my own. It was the Mid American Energy Forum at the Public Library. I was a little disappointed there wasn’t more people there. It was very informational. The natural gas prices, as everyone knows, are at a record level right now. In 1999, it was $2.50 a million BTU’s and now it’s at $10. Homeowner bills are measured in thermal units. Their costs have gone up to $1.05 per thermal unit, which is about 3 times what is was last year. Mid American purchases their fuels on the open market, they don’t produce the fuels themselves. So, they end up buying and trying to pass this on to the public by storing through the summer months and stuff and they’ve been working on that. They do have assistance available for low-income families that need assistance. Basically, what that works is not to pay the bills but it’s to help winterize the home, installation and different things like that. They’re willing to work with the public, if there is people having problems with making the payments. They do have payment plans set up to help work with that through Mid American and they’d be willing to help them. This is really affecting people with fixed incomes. It really puts a burden on them. The costs are up and according to Mid American, there is no sign of the lowering of the costs of the fuel for 18 months to 24 months at all. So, that is going to continue. Actually, they are saying electricity is the cheaper way right now to do some heating than it is with the gas.
Lehman: Thank you Pat.
Lehman: Sally.
Stutsman: OK, a couple of things. Had the Empowerment Board Meeting last Thursday. We continued to work on the strategic planning process. One of the things that we did authorize is that the legislators are asking some feedback on what different empowerment areas are doing. We will be sending 2 people to the State legislature sometime in February with the Display Board about some of the things we’ve been doing locally so that they have an idea what’s happening, how the money is being used and hopefully will continue to fund and even enhance funding for the different areas. Mike and I have been participating in the GIS interviews. We have had 2 so far. We have 2 more tomorrow. One individual withdrew so we are interviewing 4 people for the initial interviews. Then, we will meet tomorrow afternoon and make a decision on those we would like to call back for a second interview. Hopefully we can get this done within the next couple of weeks, these 2nd interviews and get somebody hired sometime by the middle of February. Attended a State County Management Meeting in Des Moines today. We had an orientation for new members and then had an update about things that are coming up. One thing that might be of interest to the Board is discussion we had about a court decision that is going to impact counties. It was Sausalito versus Woodbury County. This was an individual who was denied services in Woodbury County. He had dementia and so there were a number of issues that came out of that court decision that is going to require legislation this legislative session. I will be working on a subcommittee to draft some proposed changes that will be presented to the legislature. One of the things that will have to be changed is concerning the appeal process. The judge determined that having an appeal heard before the Board of Supervisors is not going to be allowed anymore because we are not impartial decision-makers. So, that is going to have to be changed. There were some other things having to do with the involuntary commitment process and having designated people with dementia as whether they are eligible for services or not. So, there will be some changes that will come out of that. We also had an update about the waiver report. Evidently a consultant was hired to review the Iowa Waivers. There are currently 6 waivers. They are thinking about combining some of those wavers so the system will be a little bit user-friendly so it won’t be so difficult to access. So, if you’re interested in hearing that final report it’s not on the DHS web site, but it will be available within the next week or so, that report. Then, we spent the rest of the day talking about the role of the State County Management Committee and the things we’ll be working on this coming year. At the top of the list was funding and addressing the issues of funding inequities between counties. So, that will be one of the things we’ll be working on. We’ll also be looking at contracting quality assurance issues, looking at best methods in the state, what different counties are doing and how we can learn from what’s working well. It was a good meeting, real interesting. So, I’ll keep you updated on what’s happening on the State level.
Lehman: Thank you.
Stutsman: That’s it.