Lehman: Terrance.

Neuzil: I attended the Mental Health/Developmental Disabilities Advocacy Committee. Pat Hartin is the new Chairperson for that Committee. We reviewed some of the Committee’s assignments and also discussed the need to enhance the Committee with additional members. Hopefully, the public will be interested in participating in this Committee. We’re looking for consumers or family members that represent MR/DD or BI, any of those populations. We right now have a rep for Mental Health but are looking for reps for Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities and also Brain Injury. We’d like to see and encourage more community involvement particularly with this committee. Some of things we discussed, we need to do a better job utilizing the press and make awareness of activities and projects that Developmental Disabilities is working on. It was also pointed out that participation is important and is also recorded under the guidelines of Senate File 69. So, we can kind of get credit for it if you will. Also discussed was sometime in the mid to end of February, Elaine Sweet, who is the Director of MH/DD will be holding a work shop and some information sessions for new members of the Planning Council as well. So, I’ll try to attend that and I know Pat, you knew about that, too. We’ll try to attend those meetings and learn a little bit more about MH/DD and particularly the Planning Council process. So, that’s the gist of the Advocacy Committee. I also attended this morning a couple of different meetings with Iowa Child and particularly with Ted Townsend, who is giving presentations at each one of those. One of those was through the Area Chamber of Commerce Local Government Affairs. Another was coordinating with the Chamber, but also with ICAD and a few other groups, who again, Mr. Townsend gave a presentation and gave some background into the Iowa Child project as it starts the process in our community. I’ve been asked to work with the Legislative Committee on Economic Development to help write the Chamber’s position on immigration. I had the opportunity to write the position on Workforce Development and we’re going to try to incorporate immigration into that Workforce Development and particularly emphasizing skilled positions. With immigration it seems like there is some kind of… It just seems like there are certain characteristics of immigration people get a different sense of what that means. But, it means skilled workers and unskilled. But, primarily I want to focus on skilled workers, particularly in our area and that need. We’ve got some individuals with Oral B, a good example, who are not from this Country who will have to leave this Country, most likely, even though they are heading that division. So, it would be nice to be able to loosen up some of those laws as well. That was just a couple of the Committees I attended.

Lehman: OK.

Stutsman: I might add, Mike, if anybody is going to the legislature or Des Moines plan ahead. There is no place to park. A couple of the visitor parking lots are torn up because of the construction they’re doing on those buildings. I thought I was going to have to park in Ames. I finally did find one place, so be prepared.

Lehman: It looks like our new Supervisors are getting their feet wet here with committees and information and stuff. That’s good to see.

Lehman: I attended the Executive Committee with the MH/DD and basically we looked at trying to do the Quality Assessment Survey, how the best way to do it. Basically, the 3 questions they want to answer were consumer satisfaction, and services received, consumer needs and case management survey satisfaction. We’re going to be meeting again on the 16th here in the morning to try to come up with some recommendation to bring to the Planning Council for that afternoon. A lot of very interesting discussion there. Of course, attending the GIS interviews, Sally and I, I don’t think we’ll become what they call tech heads, but we pick up a little bit more information all of the time of the questions.

Stutsman: We have just enough information to be dangerous, don’t we.

Lehman: Yes. It’s interesting, the interviews and the applications they’ve used and the occupations and jobs they’re in now. It’s just kind of interesting that your mind kind of wanders with things that we’ll be able to use them with. Just the experience that these people have and how far some of them are ahead of even our thoughts of beginning stuff. Carol and I were up at the jail there with Dwight Dobberstein who is an architect for Neumann Monson. We went over to try to diagnose a little bit more what we want to do with the jail as far as repairs and pinpoint Dwight. Sit down with some vendors and stuff to have things we want to look into as far as what needs to be done there, the Physical Plant part of that. Carol and I, we attended our last United Way Meeting that the agencies are asking for County funds. So, we’ll be sitting down with Linda Severson and kind of gnashing our teeth and going over the recommendations and the requests for funding from those organizations that do receive County funds. I believe that’s all I have.

Lehman: Any other discussion from the Board, if not we’ll open it up to Inquiries and Reports from the public. Carol, if you’d like to identify yourself for the Auditor. Most of us know you, but I want to make sure you get your…

Carol De Prosse: Carol De Prosse. I just have a couple of questions. One I’d like to ask Terry or the Board of Supervisors in general about conversations with Mr. Townsend, at the Iowa Child Project, in terms of is he planning to come to the Board of Supervisors and when.

Neuzil: He is going to be giving a presentation next week.

Stutsman: On the 18th.

Lehman: It’ll be basically a presentation. It won’t be a public hearing or open discussion, but he’ll just be presenting the topic to us.

De Prosse: What time is that?

Lehman: I don’t believe we have a time set. I think if you want to check mid-week we should be able to give you a little bit better pinpoint of the time when our agenda is set.

De Prosse: At this point in time, can you tell me anything about what he may be asking or expecting from the Board of Supervisors? Will he be making a request of any kind to the Supervisors or will it be strictly the type of thing I went to out in Coralville where he basically just talked about his project and not making any requests?

Stutsman: Maybe I can answer that. They contacted me back in December, when I was Chair, and my understanding is it was just going to be a presentation just to tell the Board what their plans were and just informational. I didn’t understand that there would be a request for anything. Just inform us about the project.

De Prosse: So, there is no correspondence on record or anything between Mr. Townsend and the Board?

Stutsman: No.

Lehman: My impression is, if you’ve attended some of these other meetings, it will probably be the same information.

Neuzil: The presentation where he does it on the computer.

Lehman: I think it’s just another avenue for him to reach a different audience. I don’t think he is coming with any request for funding or partnership that I am aware of.

Stutsman: I think what they’re doing, and probably Terrence can verify, is just informing the community. Not just this community, but they also asked for the surrounding boards of supervisors so that they can just tell anybody who is interested about the project and what their plans are. It will affect this whole area, not just Johnson County.

De Prosse: I know. That’s one of the concerns that I have with him. Last week when I attended the meeting then there was a mention of Dan Holderness coming to the Board of Supervisors, I think Sally you mentioned it, talking about some of the projects and things that Coralville had underway in suggesting that Kelly Hayworth come at the same time as (inaudible) else made that addition to that. Has that meeting been set up?

Stutsman: That hasn’t. I have not contacted Dan and Dan is the City Engineer for Coralville.

De Prosse: He’s the City Engineer. OK.

Stutsman: Right.

De Prosse: OK. With regard to this morning’s meeting, I just wanted to make sure I had a couple of things straight. When you were talking about gathering, are they going to start gathering statistics yet, or are they simply going to start trying to set out some perimeters of the statistics that can be dealt with?

Thompson: They have a software program down there with lots of things in it. What we did this morning was identified the fields that they are going to put into an Excel spreadsheet. Once it’s in the spreadsheet, then we can use that to ask questions.

De Prosse: OK. So, they’ll put information from what period of time? Because (inaudible) this weekend by calendar year…

Thompson: I think we decided for the year 2000 because that will be the most recent year that we have total data.

De Prosse: OK. So, starting January 1st of the year 2000 through…

Thompson: January 31st.

De Prosse: Of this year.

Thompson: I’m sorry. Through December 31st of 2000, so we’ll have 12 calendar months.

De Prosse: OK. So right at the moment there isn’t any intent to look at data from this calendar year, 2001.

Thompson: Not right now, but we can do that.

De Prosse: No, no. I just wanted to make sure I understood because I missed that part of it. That’s fine. Can you run through the data that was going to looked at? Do you have notes on that? I think that would be valuable for…

Thompson: I can try but it will just be out of my head. It will be name, birth date, prisoner number, date they came in, time they came in, date they left, time they left, referring agency, race, sex, and there is one I am missing.

Stutsman: Charges?

Thompson: The charges. That’s it, the charges by Statute.

Harney: By Statute, right.

Thompson: So, we’ll be able to look at the charges.

De Prosse: I thought you had made the request for it to be a textual reference as well.

Thompson: Right. So, we’ll have both ways.

De Prosse: Right. OK. That sounds good. A general question. When I write a letter, or anybody from the public writes a letter to the Board, like I sent for example or I write a letter to Pat White. But send a copy to the Board and ask in this case that you distribute it to Board Members, how is that information tracked as a matter of public record? I ask this because the City Council has an item on its agenda where they receive public correspondence and that means that it’s available to the public to review what other people have written to the City Council. I’m wondering if you know whether or not, when I do something like that, if it’s a matter of public record. I ask, because somebody told me awhile back that when I contacted the Library Board about an issue that I had concern about, that if I wrote to all of the Library Board Members, and these were not elected officials. This was an appointed board, but I sent the same message to everybody. Or sent a single message and asked that it be distributed to all of the other board members that it was a matter of public record. So, I was wondering how the County Board of Supervisors keeps track of public correspondence and if you’ve ever considered that as…

Lehman: Carol may want to answer that.

Peters: Basically, anything that comes into the office we treat as a public record. So, if you want to see something, unless it’s confidential of course. Referring to the letter that you mentioned, we also have, if it’s asked to be distributed to each individual Supervisor, if it is something that is of time immediately, we make a copy and give it to each Supervisor. Otherwise, we have a stamp and we circulate it. As it goes from one Supervisor to the other, they check off saying yes they have seen it and then it is filed. But, you could come in and say, hey, Carol, can I see the letter and we’d sure get it for you.

De Prosse: I guess my question is more wondering how I might know what other people are writing to the Board of Supervisors. Maybe nobody writes but me. But assuming that somebody might occasionally pen a note, Carol had several emails that you mentioned today of people that had questions about statistics that might be gathered, which is actually what got me thinking about the matter.

Peters: If it said just to Carol or to Sally, or Mike or somebody, only they would know that unless they shared it.

De Prosse: So, then, the Board does not receive as a matter of any agenda item public correspondence the way the City Council does.

Lehman: No.

Thompson: Do they read all that correspondence in their meeting?

De Prosse: No. They don’t read it in their meeting, but sometimes it’s very interesting.

Thompson: So, they list it like we list the minutes that we have here on our agenda?

De Prosse: I can’t remember because it’s been awhile since I’ve seen it. But I know they did it way back when I started on the City Council and I know they still do it because occasionally someone on the Council will say, so and so wrote a letter to the Council and it’s in our packet this week. Then, it’s available to the public, to the press and to all of the Council Members and so forth. Sometimes it’s really interesting, quite frankly. You find out what other people are kind of interested in, in terms of the public. Or maybe they don’t come down and make a presentation to the public. So, I just wondered what the process is here. Basically, you’re saying that if I came down once a week and asked to look through the file of correspondence that it would be available some place.

Thompson: Yes.

De Prosse: How about e-mail, for example?

Lehman: Those wouldn’t be circulated. They’re on our computers. Unless they are printed out and saved by an individual they aren’t circulated through another course.

De Prosse: I have nothing in mind here except other than the fact that you raised this question about e-mails today. Again, with the Library Board, I was told that if I sent an e-mail to the Library Board and it went to all of the Library Board Members, that it was a matter of public record. I wondered, and I never followed up on it, but I wondered for example how they would make an e-mail a matter of public record. Do you save them?

Thompson: I don’t save the ones that come to me personally.

Stutsman: Janet, do you know?

Lyness: I’ll be glad to look into it. I’m not going to give you an answer right now.

Thompson: When you get one, you don’t have a way of knowing whether everybody got it or whether only you. Sometimes you can go in and look.

Peters: The items that I get in the e-mail that are for the Board I forward to all the Board and I keep copies of that.

Lehman: The ones that come to us individually that don’t circulate to you.

Peters: I would have no way of knowing that you received an e-mail.

Thompson: Another interesting question for Janet.

Lehman: I think what your point is, is there is material that maybe should be shared with the public, but I don’t know what guidelines we’d use to do that.

Stutsman: We don’t have any guidelines.

De Prosse: I don’t know either. I just think it’s something to at least consider. Maybe I’ll just inquire a little bit more on my own and see. I don’t even know if there is a law that covers it. I was just told by the Library Director that, as far as the board was concerned, any correspondence that I had with them, if I had it with every board member that it was a matter of public information. So, I raise it only as these things come along to kind of cover everything.

Lehman: We’d have to do some research and find out if we’re required to or we want to have someone or some system that would pull those off and store them somewhere. It could be done I’m sure.

De Prosse: I don’t know that you necessary do and it might be more trouble that it’s worth. I don’t know how much correspondence you get. But on the other hand, when certain kinds of particularly interesting issues to an individual member of the public arise, no matter what that issue may be, he or she might think that there is correspondence between the Board and that individual member of the citizenry, or other citizens as a group. Then they might be interested in knowing what that correspondence was about.

Lehman: I think you could probably, like we do e-mail back and forth or we do pass things on, but to get into the point like Terrance said, mentioned dialogue outside of an agenda. Trying to lobby other Board members by e-mail, maybe for a stance you want to take or someone else has taken and you’re trying to pass on. It’s kind of a fine line there. I think it needs to be researched.

De Prosse: That raises an interesting question. Can you send an e-mail to other Board Members?

Stutsman: If we start deliberating.

Lyness: It’s fine to exchange information, but you shouldn’t be debating what you should be doing here. If you want to debate something put it on the agenda. You can keep talking if you have more questions.

Lehman: She’s talking about it right now. We’re debating and this should be just comments and inquiries.

De Prosse: I was trying to answer my questions. I didn’t see that as going over.

Lehman: She’s warning us we’re maybe getting close to the edge here.

De Prosse: OK. Does anyone on the Board know when the next meeting with our local legislative delegation is? Is it the 17th of January? Did I see or hear that date?

Stutsman: We only have the one before the session.

De Prosse: I thought another one was coming up.

Stutsman: We don’t have another one.

De Prosse: Not specifically with the Board, but it would be one that you would still may want to attend. I think it was like (inaudible).

Stutsman: Like the League of Women Voters or the Chamber.

Thompson: They already did have their public meeting didn’t they.

Stutsman: No, they have one during the session. Is it the last Saturday of the month, Terrance?

Neuzil: I think so.

Stutsman: I think the Chamber has theirs at 8 and then the League has theirs at 9:30, the last Saturday of the month.

Neuzil: Yes. The 1st one would be the 27th.

De Prosse: The 27th.

Neuzil: Yes, would be the 1st one.

De Prosse: Where is that?

Neuzil: It would be at the Iowa City Public Library, I believe at 9:30. Is that right, Sally?

Stutsman: Yes, that’s when they usually have it.

De Prosse: With the rising fuel cost, what has happened to the County’s budget to accommodate that? Pat made me wonder about that.

Stutsman: Where is Jeff?

Thompson: I was just talking with Jeff about that today. There is a few departments that have some problems, but we’ll have to have a few more months of expenditures before we can really see what is going on.

De Prosse: Does it look as though enough money… Because that’s huge, what you’re describing, is a huge increase that I don’t see how even a generous energy budget could have anticipated that much of a rise in energy costs.

Harney: What I was speaking of was natural gas. The fuels though are on their way up, too. I think gas went up a couple of nights ago just $.10 overnight.

De Prosse: Isn’t this a natural gas rather than you don’t use propane?

Stutsman: No.

Thompson: Well, as far as our County Buildings, we have a contract.

Stutsman: I think we’re on a contract.

Thompson: So, we have a set price for awhile.

Stutsman: So, we’re OK.

De Prosse: You may be using more but the price is set by a contract. Like a budget plan or something.

Harney: LP gas is the same way. It’s going up as well.

De Prosse: OK. Thanks.

Lehman: Other inquiries or reports from the public? Yes. Would you like to identify yourself for the Auditor?

Cami Marsha: Yes. My name is Cami Marsha and I have a question regarding the new farm split that was put in on December 1st. I think it’s great that it went in to act, because it’s great because it keeps family farms a lot together. I know we are possible able to build on the family farm. The question I have is, and I spoke to one of the Supervisors today who was very helpful, and it is on December 1st I think is approximately when it went into effect that we looked into the family farm split to see if we could build on it. We were told by Planning and Zoning that as long as bought more than an acre we would have no problem. It was just a formality that we did have to submit an application. The other thing is we asked if there was a time frame, if we had to wait, if we could wait till after the 1st of the year to start the process. They said, no that would not be a problem, because we wanted to speak to our lawyer 1st and then the holidays came. The thing that we ran into just this week is a road count. I’ve heard 4 different numbers. We’re talking about Sand Road. I know some of you are familiar with the Sand Road and some of you aren’t. From the Hills Road to Highway 22, I’ve heard 4 different numbers from different people, including the County Engineer, the Board of Supervisors and the Planning and Zoning Committee. What we’re asking is we were told there was no way it would go through with the road count being so high. But, when that road count was 1st done, there was a detour on that road. I have not gotten any information whether it was completely redone again or whether they just substituted some numbers. What I’m asking is what are we supposed to do. Other people on that road have already been able to do the farm split, have been able to put in their application and told it would probably go through. Yet, we were told ours can’t because of the road and we’re within a mile of each other on the same stretch of land. So, I was wondering what we are supposed to do if some people get to go through, some people don’t and with all of the different road counts.

Lehman: I can respond a little bit to that, not to get into a debate. Pat and I were going to meet with members of the Zoning Department and Secondary Roads and try to work something out. Like you say, there are IDOT counts, there are the County counts, they can talk about raw counts and it’s very confusing. We want to sit down and figure that out. There are some pickups in the system, this farmstead split. We talked about it when we came in and how it was going to affect road counts and farmstead splits. I think it’s affecting a little bit more than we had anticipated. I’d like to revisit that. I know one application on that road, I think it’s going to have the same affect. They’re going to be subject to that road count, too. I can’t give you a time line, but I think there is some interest in revisiting that. I’ve had some discussion this past week with planners, consultants and stuff and they have clients out there. It’s going to be quite a change and impact that they hadn’t anticipated and I don’t think maybe we anticipated. So, I think it is subject to a possible revisit. But, Pat and I know we’ve talked to Zoning here and we’re willing to sit down and talk to them again. I understand your situation. I talked to individuals and I thought it was an automatic farmstead split but it’s subject to the road count.

Marsha: Right. It’s really hard for you to probably understand this, but we are already in the count. I know we are because we farm on it. We live on the north side of the Hills Road right now. Our farm is on the south side. We are in that count because we go to the farm so many times a day. So, by us building a house on the farm, we will not increase the road count because we are already included in it because we travel the road so many times a day. But, I understand that you can’t know that but that’s just another…

Lehman: Might even decrease the count somehow.

Marsha: So, we just pretty much need to sit tight and wait.

Lehman: I know the people I’ve talked to like to get their plans made and when the spring get something done. Pat and I are pursuing that. Maybe talk to Pat and we’ll try to make contact back with people that have contacted us. Not to give them false hope, but let them know what we’re progressing on that.

Thompson: When we put the ordinance in, we designated the road count that we’d be using. We knew that there would be some glitches like having the detour there. We talked about doing another road count or using different data.

Marsha: That’s what I wanted to know if there was one in the plans. What I was told by the County, like Planning and Zoning and our surveying company that we were going through, is that we would have to wait to do this. If it stayed the way it is we would have to wait to get it updated because they just updated the northern part of Sand Road. We would have to wait. Right now that’s not even in the 5-year plan, so I can’t see waiting another 5, 6 or 8 years to build.

Lehman: We need to decide whose count we’re using and if we need to change the criteria to anticipate that count so people know. The Zoning Department has been at a loss, too, because an applicant comes in and they said, well, it looks like this count you’re OK. Then, they check with Secondary Roads and they got a different count. They don’t want to see you spending money if there is no chance of you progressing any further.

Marsha: OK.

Lehman: Thank you. Any other inquiries or reports? Anything from the Board? If not then I guess we stand adjourned. Thank you.

Adjourned at 6:44 p.m.

Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor

By Casie Parkins, Recording Secretary