Assistant County Engineer Al Miller explained that this is the 3rd meeting on the 5-Year Road Plan and the approved plan has to be sent to the State by April 15, 2001. Miller said the bridges in the County with a span length of greater than 20 feet were prioritized and ranked based on their sufficiency rating and a cost per vehicle rating. He said the State puts together a point system used for applications for federal funds. The bridges are prioritized by the number of points they receive in the following categories: sufficiency rating, the posting of the bridge in tons, the traffic count, and detour length. He said that one thing he would like to point out is the maximum number of points is 20 for the traffic counts and it comes in at 400 vehicles per day. He said that anything above that is still at a maximum of 20 points per the State’s procedures. Miller said the Greencastle Bridge is the only bridge on the future project’s list. County Engineer Mike Gardner said they inspect bridges and structures every 2 years, so conditions can change as inspectors look at the bridges and find problems. Stutsman asked if Dingleberry Road is replacing the bridge. Miller said he believes it’s the bridge on this list. Stutsman asked if the road would open up to big trucks if it gets fixed. Gardner said it is still an oil surface road subject to embargo. Miller said another thing to look at is the structure on Rapid Creek that ranks high according to the bridges in the County that would have a similar effect.

Miller said the 2nd type of project prioritized are the oil roads in the County. There are 14 oil roads on the priority list. He said that since the beginning of the process, they did expand on the points allowed for traffic counts and trends and modified how the accident data is analyzed. He said that all of the roads are assigned points on 4 different categories, traffic counts and trends, the crash rate, geometry and the type of service that the roads provide. Miller explained that the only change from the last meeting was a question about Sand Road between Hills Road and Highway 22 about the geometry being straight and the accident rate being high. He said the traffic count that factors into the crash rate was a count done in 1994 because the 1998 count was thrown out because it was done when there was a detour on it. He said Secondary Roads has traffic counts before and after the detour and they are much higher than the 1994 count. He said this factored into the crash rate as well as a few accidents that happened at the intersection of Highway 22 and at the Hills Road. He said Sand Road is now #11 on the list. Miller said the roads on the program are Mehaffey Bridge Road, Newport Road and Sharon Center Road and the north section of Prairie Du Chien from Newport north. Miller said there is nothing designed except for Mehaffey Bridge Road. He said the 1st phase of that is coming close to the final design right now, but the details don’t happen until about a year before.

Miller said there are paving point computations that Secondary Roads is required to do for the State to justify paving a road which are similar to the procedure used by the State to rank bridges. Points are assigned by the following criteria: functional classification, current year traffic count, a closest paved parallel route and the percent of trucks. Miller said there are bonus points if some of the costs are assessed. He said this boils down to if there are 100 vehicles a day it gets 10 points and 400 vehicles gets 40 points, which is the maximum to get. Miller said the other large class of projects are paved roads. He said they look at whether the current surface needs to be rehabilitated, widening the shoulders or correcting any geometry problems before rehabilitating the pavement. The following projects are on the program: Wapsi Avenue south of Lone Tree down to 660th Street, Sand Road rehabilitation project from 480th Street north to meet Iowa City, and the Hills Road from Hills to Wapsi Avenue. Miller said IWV from Blackhawk Avenue to Iowa City is on the future project’s list. The pavement is starting to show serious stress. They ordered a survey for the road to make sure the bridges and culverts are designed to fit in with the new design on the road. He said that before the pavement can be rehabilitated the pavement needs widening and some geometry changes need to be made. Lehman asked if this is because the State has rated the geometry and traffic. Gardner said that the last time they resurfaced it they were told this is last 3R resurfacing job allowed without an upgrade to the road. A 3R job is resurfacing, rehabilitation and restoration.

Miller said these are the programs and the Board can feel free to recommend moving a project on or off. Miller said last year was the first time they put together their future project’s list. He said it originated so that people could see if a road is being considered in the future and they have expanded this to include all paved roads in the County. He said they are looking at any pavement needing rehab in the next 20 years and possibly shoulders, any oil roads and the bridges and structures in the County. Miller said it is for informational purposes only. Thompson said it isn’t certain that a project would have to be on the future plan to get on the 5-Year Plan. Gardner said it’s re-evaluated each year if a change is needed. Stutsman said she is very pleased with this project and how it is laid out. She said not everyone will be pleased but they need to put their resources where there is the most amount of traffic. Lehman said he appreciates the adjustments made and going by the required State standards. Thompson asked if this would be put on for action closer to the deadline day. Miller said they were thinking of putting it on for formal action in March to get it to the State by April 15th. Gardner said this proposal is what they would like to see adopted and any changes the Board wants to make is fine, but Secondary Roads needs any changes in place with the document before bringing it in for final approval.

Lehman: And Discussion/Action needed on appointments to the Johnson County Cluster Social Welfare Board for the term ending December 31, 2001. We have a list of candidates for that.

Thompson: This is the one that has to have so many men, so many women, so many Republicans and so many Democrats.

Administrative Assistant Carol Peters: That is correct. Actually, what it says is you cannot have more than 3 of any one political affiliation.

Thompson: Could you tell us the affiliation of the people who are already on there?

Peters: Well, I know the affiliation of one, which is Democrat.

Reverend Bob Welsh: There are 3 males, 3 Democrats.

Thompson: So we can’t appoint another Democrat.

Peters: Right.

Stutsman: Well, I guess I would be interested in appointing Joan VanNatta.

Thompson: I would too. I liked it that she’s a younger person.

Stutsman: And she’s been in involved with the Community for the Common Good. She’s a Vista volunteer

Lehman: I guess I’m missing one for Lise VanderVoort.

Thompson: I just crossed it, there.

Lehman: I heard some recommendations for her. I don’t know any of the individuals personally.

Harney: I don’t, either.

Lehman: I don’t know if people wish to contact them, or have any questions for them. We do have a week, but we usually take kind of a straw poll, here.

Stutsman: The only one I know personally is Jeff Knox, and I think he would be a good representative on the Cluster Board, but we’re already got males and he’s listed as a Democrat, so I would certainly hope that he would be encouraged to reapply next year. Well, do we want to consider Lise VanderVoort?

Lehman: I see she’s a PHD student in Communication Studies at the University, focus on Poverty Welfare Issues. Goals of becoming a welfare policy researcher. Right now doing a crisis counseling volunteer at the Crisis Center. She caught my eye when I saw it the first time through.

Stutsman: I have no problem with that.

Lehman: Lise and Joan? We can have more discussion next week on that, if someone has a different intention at that time.

Lehman: OK. Next item, the County-A-Day activity. That’s where the Board of Supervisors goes to Des Moines to the capital, and we’re in contact with our legislators. Last year we got to sit in on, I believe it was a committee that was debating property tax limitations. Kind of interesting. We have a list of days. Any proposed dates?

Peters: For the month of February, the dates that are available are… Actually, there are more dates than I’m going to give you available. I’ve just kind of already eliminated them because you’ve had other things scheduled. February 21st and the 14th.

Lehman: I believe the 14th, Tom Slockett mentioned the election machine demonstration.

Stutsman: And the 21st, Pat and I were planning on going to that Mental Health Corrections Meeting up in Cedar Rapids.

Peters: OK, why don’t I call Tammy back and get the dates for March. I’ll just give you the other dates that she gave me, which was the 6th and the 7th. So if you don’t need one of those dates for budgeting.

Stutsman: Well, we don’t know, until we…

Peters: That’s just it.

Stutsman: The 7th. I was going to do site reviews on the 7th. I need to do that then. There’s not going to be another time when I can go out. Are you going to go out?

Lehman: I was going to go with you on the 7th of February.

Peters: Another date was the 8th, but you have your regular meeting then.

Stutsman: Well, we have an evening meeting that night.

Lehman: We have budget scheduled from 9:00 on.

Stutsman: OK. It was one of those extra meetings if we needed it. OK. So it looks like we need to go…

Peters: March?

Stutsman: Yes. Well maybe we should ask first if there was interest in the Board to do this? You know, we’ve done it in the past.

Lehman: Well, we’ve got 2 new members. I thought it was pretty educational last year, to go up there and kind of get an idea a little bit of how they work on a committee.

Stutsman: Pat, for your information, ISAC sponsors this. They’ve done this for 2 years now, and all the different counties across the state have an opportunity to sign up to go out to the Capitol and lobby and talk to legislators about particular issues. ISAC usually meets with us beforehand, in the morning when we go up there and kind of briefs us about what’s on the agenda for that day. Then we have an opportunity to talk with legislators about a pending bill, or what’s on the floor; we’ll know what committee meetings are going on. In the past, our legislators have taken us to lunch. Well, not taken us, they’ve arranged for lunch, let’s put it that way.

Lehman: That gives you a chance to focus in on maybe something you’ve heard or you want to follow up on. They’re right there firsthand with them, something that’s on your mind and something that you’re very aware of. It was a real good experience. (Inaudible), it was good.

Stutsman: Yes. You know, we all have the best intentions about going up and talking to our legislators, but the session slips away, but this gives us a date. It’s open to all department heads and anybody in the County that wants to go. It’s just not the Board.

Peters: Another date that you could maybe trade to get, you might have to visit with Kim Painter is the 20th. You have an elected officials meeting that afternoon, but you might want to substitute this for the meeting with the elected officials.

Stutsman: That might be a thought.

Lehman: I had ICAD (inaudible) planning in the morning.

Stutsman: What about the 28th?

Thompson: We should probably talk about this when Terrence is here, because he’ll probably want to go to.

Lehman: Yes, he mentioned the legislative trip that he wouldn’t be able, there. Other than that, I don’t think he had anything that would interfere.

Peters: I’d be glad to call back for March dates.

Stutsman: OK, that’d be good.

Lehman: Let’s do that, and maybe just kind of circulate it, before we do something.

Peters: Sure. I’ll just send you emails.

Stutsman: All right. Good.

Lehman: All right.

Peters: I was trying to pick a time when the Legislature would be busy working on something I think…

Stutsman: Yes, don’t it Mondays, because they usually don’t get there until noon, so half your day is gone already.

Peters: (Inaudible) of February was kind of early on (inaudible).

Lehman: Two years ago, we had it scheduled, and due to weather, we had to cancel.

Peters: Right. It was terrible. We’ll stay away from the Girl’s Tournament (inaudible).

Lehman: Next item, Minutes Received. We received minutes from the 6th Judicial District Department of Correctional Service Boards and Directors for November 28th, 2000. I think those circulated, so you had a chance to read those. Next is Reports from the Board Members. Who would like to start, anybody?

Harney: I was unable to attend the Transportation Advisory Board Meeting, which was held the 17th, due to our budget presentations yesterday, so I really don’t have a report on that. Tonight I’m going to be attending a forum at the Public Library in reference to fuel costs and its effect on county governments. This is going to be sponsored by the legislators at the library tonight, so I’ll be going there.

Lehman: 7:00, in Room A?

Harney: Yes.

Lehman: Well, OK.

Harney: That’s it.

Stutsman: I was going to say that we finished our GIS interviews. We did extend a 2nd invitation to 2 candidates, and they will be coming here for personal interviews. We’ll be setting up 2 panels that will meet with them, one of them our technical panel that will interview the candidates first, and then another panel that will just work more on management and those kinds of issues. I don’t think we set up a time when those will be, or did we?

Lehman: They were going to try to get a hold of the candidates, and find when they could make arrangements to be back.

Stutsman: OK. Well, of course, we all went to the Department Head Meeting and the Planning Council. I attended a Juvenile Justice meeting yesterday morning, had a very interesting presentation by the DVIP Project, and the programs that they’re doing with children, in connection with the Juvenile Justice and the Tae-Kwon-Do, and how successful that’s been in building children’s self-esteem and things. I think that’s everything I had.

Lehman: OK. Thank you. Carol?

Thompson: The Space Needs Committee met last Friday, and we made a recommendation which Jeff will have ready to share with the Board when we have our budget discussions about the Capital Projects Budget. We have 2 recommendations, one having to do with which project should be funded for the next year, and how the budget should be arranged for next year, and the other one regarding what should be in the Capital Projects Fund. We had a good discussion about that, and I think came up with a good recommendation. Mike and I met with Johnson Controls yesterday morning. They would like to put in a proposal, or they have given us a proposal, to take over the Facilities Management function with the County. I suppose we’ll need to put that on our agenda to discuss that at a later date, about whether we want to pursue that, or go ahead with the hiring process. The Nutrition Committee met on Monday, and the conversation focused a lot about the purchasing of the equipment that is so high-priced that we’ve been discussing now for more than a year. Mike Foster had a proposal for buying it, and thinks that we can apply for Heritage Funding, whatever equipment funding they offer, later in the year, and then probably the Sterba Fund will be able to pay the difference. The Senior Center Commission also met. The Accreditation Committees have almost completed their work. There will be another meeting on the 25th, and then from that, Linda Copping will prepare a consolidation of all the committee’s reports that we’ve done now for a year. Those will be sent on to the Accreditation Committee, and eventually, they’ll schedule a site review and come out and review our program. Then after that it’ll be determined whether we get the accreditation or not. So, that’ll probably happen by the end of this year. It was really a 2-year process. It’s been very enlightening, though, to do it. In relation to the Juvenile Justice Committee meeting, we also decided to make a list of things for summer programs. We had some good luck collecting money last year for small things, for example the Tae-Kwon-Do program, they like to be able to buy uniforms and belts for the kids as they do their testing. That’s a fairly small contribution, so we were going to make a list of these things, swim passes was another, tuition to summer school was a 3rd one, and give that out to people like we did last year. Also this year send it to churches and service clubs, in addition to just our own members passing it out. Last night, I attended my first JCCOG meeting, and that was very interesting. I learned a lot about composting, which I was able to share with my husband when I got home. He was fascinated by this.

Lehman: Thank you. Monday, I went to the Linn County Administration Building. That reminds me that Terrence is in Washington, D.C. for the inauguration, and he will review the tape, and get a chance to cover anything here. He was with us during the formal part of the meeting, and he’ll have a chance to catch up on the informal stuff and be ready 2 weeks from today, when we have our next formal meeting. Monday I attended the East Central Council of Governments Personnel Committee, which was held at the Linn County Administration Building. It’s kind of interesting, that Martin Luther King is not one of the holidays that they observe in Linn County. We went over personnel, as far as their insurance to their employees, the cost-of-living raise, and items such as that. Also, with the rest of the Supervisors attended the MH/DD Planning, and just a heads up to our staff, Carol and Jo, that the Board of Supervisors may be asked to help advertise for Committee openings. I think maybe we’ve done that in the past, but there will be a few openings coming up. We want to make sure we’re aware of that, in case someone contacts you. That wasn’t something we’ve done in the past. With Carol, I did attend this Johnson County Council of Governments, the Urban Committee met at 4:00 at the Senior Center. We elected new officers. The Chair will be Mike O’Donnell, and Marty Jones will be the Vice-Chair for the coming year. Then we went to the Senior Center for the rural portion, and some of the information was the same, and others are just a different slant, from the rural versus the municipality aspect of some of the situations. Kind of interesting, you can ask questions the 2nd time of what you’d absorbed the first time. Don Saxton was re-elected Chair there, and Glen Potter was re-elected Vice-Chair. That’s all I have. Any other Reports or items? Pat will be attending on the Board’s behalf, as you mentioned, the informational meeting tonight at 7:00 at Room A of the library. It’s just about high energy costs, and Pat’s going to take with him some of the information Jeff Horne is going to make available to him about the impact on the County, such as fuel, some overtime, stuff like that, the impact on the County and the impact on the taxpayers as well.

Thompson: Could I mention a couple of upcoming things?

Lehman: Sure.

Thompson: The Senior Center Winter Mixer is going to be February 7 from 2-4. This was originally scheduled as a holiday event, and we had bad weather, so it got rescheduled and now will be in February. And also, they’re having a Lincoln Center Jazz Ensemble at 3 PM on January 24, which sounds like it’s a privilege for our community to have such good musicians coming here.

Lehman: Might want to announce that there will not be a formal meeting next week, due to the absence of several Board members will be in Des Moines for ISAC new Supervisor’s training, as well as some other meetings for the other Supervisors. So our next meeting will be on the 1st of February, formal and informal. I would like to go to Inquiries and Reports from the Public. Please identify yourself for the Auditor, please.

Larry Meyers: I have a question to pose for Al and Mike about the Oil Road Priority schedule. Looking at the traffic count numbers and the accident numbers, it seems that traffic counts are trending upward, that some of the vehicles on the road, but in a lot of cases the number of accidents seems to be going down over the years. Do you guys have anything that you attribute that to?

Miller: No. More traffic, less accidents?

Harney: I think he did mention in his report that he did not include some of the accidents right at Highway 1 and Newport Road, because of the intersection, not being able to do anything with that.

Meyers: Yes, I hear that, but if you look at the facts, what it indicates is that the number of accidents are going down over the years, but the number of vehicles on the road are going up.

Miller: You do realize that those time periods aren’t equal, don’t you?

Meyers: Yes.

Miller: OK.

Meyers: (Inaudible), but if you take 4 columns, go across, it’s…

Miller: All those columns are not equal time frames.

Lehman: The count is not taken on the same date every year, is what you’re saying. It might be a 13-month count versus a 11?

Miller: The accident rate is on that last column, then, is from 97 to 98. If you look at (inaudible) there was 9 accidents in 2 years. The previous column is 94, 95, and 96, and there were 14. So, I don’t think you can say that they’re inconsistent or actually increasing.

Meyers: Well, right…

Gardner: Because the one before that is 90, 91, 92, and 93, so there’s 4 years.

Miller: 4 years of information, you can’t compare that to 2 years of information in that last column, there. Do you understand that?

Meyers: Yes. But on Happy Road, if you start from 1986, there were 770 vehicles in 86, and it rose to 1,680 in 98. And then, if you follow that over, the accidents went from 17 down to 9 in roughly that period.

Thompson: But you’d have to look at accidents per year, rather than accidents per column.

Gardner: That’s what that crash rate column basically does, accidents per 100 million vehicle miles. That takes the traffic count into effect.

Laurie Tulchin: But you don’t know what the crash rate is in ’87.

Miller: In ‘87, I don’t. You’d use the 5 previous years of accidents and the traffic count in ‘87 to do that.

Meyers: Is there any data available as to what types of accidents these were?

Miller: Yes, I’ve got an accident report on all of them.

Meyers: Do you? Are they vehicles hitting vehicles, or vehicles hitting deer, or someone sliding off the road in bad weather?

Miller: It’s a reported accident, so it’s not going to encompass everybody that goes off the road if it didn’t get reported.

Meyers: If they pulled themselves out.

Miller: Yes, exactly. Now, I have a list of all the accidents that I’ve used here, and it shows what type of accidents they were, if it was a head-on collision, and if there was injuries. I have all that.

Thompson: It’s interesting to me that with all the people in the room, no one has suggested that anybody got to be a better driver over that period of time.

Stutsman: Or that vehicles were maybe safer?

Lehman: People may have been out there now, and have become accustomed to the topography.

Miller: I guess that’s another reason why we don’t feel that just a traffic count or just the accident history should make the sole decision in whether we do a road.

Lehman: Good point. Thank you. Any other inquiries?

Laurie Tulchin: Laurie Tulchin. I thought Al that it was nice of you to redo all the Sand Road numbers, specifically singling out Sand Road, because what you said was that you feel Sand Road was safer, and that’s where you expected it to fall on this chart, so you specifically picked a part or went back and looked at data individually for Sand Road to make it fall on the schedule when you thought it belonged.

Miller: Actually…

Tulchin: Can I finish? No, that’s what you said. That’s what you said. That’s what you thought it would be, so you found some data, and that’s where it wound up. And I’m telling you that I can do the same thing with any one of these roads. For instance from 1990 to 1993, you have 12 accident for Newport Road when it was actually 0. And you pointed that out to several Supervisors. It’s listed in the North Corridor Plan as 0 and it’s been 12 on this schedule for, I don’t know when it changed from 0 to 12, but it did. And then this geometry, this is all just a preferential gut feeling kind of a column, and it has absolutely no business being on the schedule. So, what I was told by Mike Lehman was that he wasn’t interested in tweaking these numbers to make the roads come out any way we wanted. Yet the Supervisors were perfectly willing to let you tweak Sand Road to make that come out where you wanted it on the schedule. Now, I’d like to have an opportunity to review this data and make sure that every road is given the same consideration as Sand Road just got, because you guys are just thrilled with the fact that you’ve made some adjustments to the schedule based on public input. Actually, there has been no changes made to the schedule based on public input that we wanted to see. I maintain that this schedule consists of not only facts, but it also consists of personal preferences that make Newport Road in particular look like it’s the 2nd priority road when it obviously does not belong there. I know I could make it come out on this schedule where I think it should be.

Thompson: Well, I think that Newport Road is an important road to the County insofar as, in our land use planning, that will be a, I always want to call it a collector road, but is that the right terminology? A trunk. It will have a status as a part of the whole traffic pattern of the County. Also, I don’t think that the standards were only applied to Sand Road, I think the same standards were applied to all of the projects and hey fell out in a different order.

Tulchin: No, Al said he specifically felt that Sand Road belonged someplace on the schedule and he thought it looked really suspicious that, because it’s such a flat straight road it had such high accidents. So, he specifically went back and looked at Sand Road and decided that the numbers were plucked from certain points in our history where there was a reason that the accidents were so high. So he picked the data points that he liked. Now, I can tell you there is a big mistake here on Newport Road in 90-93, based on the North Corridor Plan, where it is listed as zero.

Gardner: Where did that data come from, if I can interrupt you?

Tulchin: You guys published it, what do you mean?

Gardner: No, we didn’t publish that.

Tulchin: Well, whoever published the North Corridor plan published that as zero. That’s what I want to know.

Gardner: Well, we need to find out where that data came from because we’re using the accident reports from the state DOT.

Tulchin: Well, I met personally with Greg Pickett at Mike Lehman, and I would be happy to devote, I can’t tell you how many hours, to making this document satisfactory to the public, to the Supervisors and to you guys.

Stutsman: I was going to say Laurie, we’re here to represent all of the public. Not just the people who want Newport Road off of this. I think that’s where I have a problem. You want the data to support what you want for Newport Road. I’m looking at data that I can apply to every road in the County to help me make a decision as to what we should do with all of the roads in Johnson County.

Tulchin: I agree with you completely on that and I think you should represent everybody. But, when there are specific problems with this data, no matter how many public hearings we have, your minds are made up. This is a group of, I don’t want to use the word belligerent, but based on every public hearing that we have had since last November, nothing has changed. Nothing except that now Al got the opportunity to look at some data that he considers suspicious and redo the schedule, and bingo, Sand Road looks a lot safer than it did before. Now, I’m telling you there are problems with this schedule. We’ve pointed out a million different ways. The normalization doesn’t make any sense. The geometry doesn’t belong there. The type of uses of prehistoric nothing that is inconsequential to true data points and this schedule needs to be revised to make everybody happy.

Lehman: By everyone who do you mean?

Tulchin: I don’t see any support for the 5-Year Road Plan. When I come to the public meetings, they are open to the public. Now, you may think it’s the silent majority out there that thinks this road plan is great, but they have just as much opportunity to come here as we do and I don’t see them or hear from them. Now, we did a survey of the North Corridor and it was overwhelmingly against the 5-Year Road Plan as far as what is happening in the North Corridor. Now, I don’t expect the North Corridor people to know what is going on in Lone Tree. But, I can guarantee you the farmers in Lone Tree don’t want to see you spend $10 million in right-of-way and road costs for some dinky little road up in the North Corridor. If you don’t believe me, why don’t you survey them? You think you’re representing these people, none of you ran on a roads platform. None of you. It’s not like it was a big campaign thing. The people who are familiar with this schedule are not happy with it. There is nothing that we seem to be able to do to get you to change it. Nothing. We could come here meeting after meeting after meeting and what does it take, it takes Al to look at one particular road and everybody’s thrilled and that makes sense because your gut feeling is straight roads are safe. And they’re not. We hire this Tom Dunbar guy and he sits up here and tells me yes, straight roads are dangerous roads. The curvy ones with the road calming effects and all that, those are the ones that are safe. It doesn’t matter what we do, what we say, what we point out, we cannot change the behavior, period. That is the frustrating thing. I had the understanding from Mike, that we would get an opportunity to talk to Secondary Roads and work on the schedule and you completely blew me off.

Lehman: No, I said I would talk to them, and if I felt it merited, I would get back to. I visited with them.

Tulchin: But, you didn’t get back to me. I had to call you.

Lehman: No, I tried calling you several times. I’m sorry that your cell phone was not available at that time.

Tulchin: I’m in the phone book, I have a machine.

Lehman: OK. The other thing I think I want to remind the public is, we don’t vote on the applause meter of how many people pack in this room. We do try to take an objective look at this. We have confidence in our staff and the information they present to us. I’m sorry it doesn’t please every one of you out there. We feel it pleases the majority and that’s what we try to represent up here.

Tulchin: Based on what? Based on where do you get the sense that it pleases the majority? Where?

Lehman: Based on our staff recommendation and we do hear other input out there.

Stutsman: I think that’s one of the, and I hope I phrase this right, one of the dilemmas of an elected official. We are charged with what is in the best interest of all the County. So, we take the information from our staff, facts, input from the public and make decisions up here, whether it’s on Roads, Human Services or whatever. Now, all of those decisions aren’t pleasing to everybody. We get input saying I don’t like what you are doing here. But, we take that and then still make a decision on what we feel is in the best interest. I can point out any number of decisions where elected officials are faced with that. That’s a real dilemma. What am I doing here? Am I to serve individual constituents or am I to look at the best interests of the County? That’s what I see in looking at this Road Use Plan. Some of the projects we put on here were projects that people came to me and said, I want this road upgraded, I want that done, I want this done. Is it going to be done tomorrow, no, it’s for future consideration. But, that was a response to individual constituents. This Newport Road, we’ve discussed this and we discussed it and really my opinion of what should happen with this road has not really changed.

Tulchin: That’s right and I can’t believe it.

Stutsman: I don’t know if I am to respond to, like Mike put well, the applause meter. If I did that I’d be waffling all over the place on every decision I had up here.

Tulchin: Then, in your own words, you tell me why you think Newport Road is the 2nd priority?

Lehman: We don’t really have this down for discussion. We had the opportunity in several work sessions. This was report on the agenda here, Secondary Roads 5-Year Road Plan. This is Inquiries and Reports. We’re not in here to debate something we’ve already seen and heard. Anything else from the public? Bob?

Welsh: I have a lot of things. I’d like to report the Cluster Board made a presentation to the Child Care Advisory Council about the market being served as a recommendation to the changes. It was very well received. We will make some alterations, then vote and go back on February the 8th. Hopefully they will then join us in making some specific recommendations about how to conduct the market rate survey for child care rates in the State of Iowa and take those recommendations in to the Council on Human Services. I think that’s a real plus. Hopefully, we’ll be able to arrange a meeting, soon with the Cluster Board (inaudible). The other, in terms of your County-a-Day, another alternative for you to consider would be the last Saturday of each month. The legislators are here for a forum and it might be possible for you to arrange to meet with them in the afternoon with the County officials while they are here. That might save you a lot of time in going to Des Moines, while they are right here and maybe get more of your department heads to visit with them. That’s something to think about.

Lehman: That’d be a good option. I know my first time up here was interesting. Terrence, he’s got a background, Pat can always pick something up. I appreciate that.

Welsh: One concern in your whole and I realize the time schedule that you’ve got on the budget. One of your decision packages has to do with the Sheriff’s request, which ties into that whole area of jail and alternatives. I know you guys are meeting (inaudible) some data, but again, like I have in the past, I would encourage you, without too much further delay, to have some dialogues with all the people that you have (inaudible) and (inaudible) and the jail alternatives. It seems to me that that’s an important factor. That whole dialogue is going to impact your budget decision. Again, I’m just expressing concern to move on that, because that vote was in November and here we are in mid January. I’ve heard at least one, I think very good suggestion that I think needs a public hearing.

Lehman: We do have a deadline we’re working against. Thank you for reminding us. OK. Anything else from the public? Anything else from the Board? If not, we’re adjourned. Thank you.

Adjourned at 11:45 a.m.

Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor

By Casie Parkins, Recording Secretary