MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
FEBRUARY 1, 2001
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chairperson Lehman called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 9:31 a.m. Members present were: Pat Harney, Mike Lehman, Terrence Neuzil, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson.
Public Health Department Director Graham Dameron: I’m the Chairperson for the Tobacco Free Coalition. I put this item on the agenda. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be here so I didn’t include myself. Eileen can certainly answer any specifics that you may have after she gives her information that she will shortly. The Tobacco Free Coalition has made an application from the Iowa Department of Public Health for a $100,000 grant. But part of the requirement for that is a $25,000 cash match, which cannot be used from State of Federal funds. In the early stages we thought we had nearly all of that covered, but we did not. So, the Coalition wrote a letter to the Board of Health requesting those funds for at least a partial direct cash match to be made available for this year and FY02. Well, the Board did authorize me to spend $1,000 this year and was asking the Board of Supervisors to include an additional $2,000 to be given to the Coalition as a part of the cash match for FY02. I knew you had some discussions about the budget last week so I initially sent that to Jeff. But, this is a follow-up to that request. Eileen.
Johnson County Tobacco Free Coalition Chairperson Eileen Fisher: Our legislature has put us in sort of a pickle because we have been operating without any funds, as you know, for 4 years. With funding our projects basically through the generosity of Mercy Hospital, American Cancer and Graham Dameron for minimal copying fees, printing fees and all volunteer labor. Now what they’ve said is you can have $100,000, but you have to come up with $100,000 to match that. That’s the leverage that Governor Vilsack was talking about when the CDC said, Iowa needs to spend $20 million at a minimum to have a good comprehensive tobacco prevention program in Iowa. They said between $20 million and $40 million is what Iowa should spend. From the tobacco settlement dollars, those $69 million that we had, we’re only spending $9.3 million and then they said, well, we’ll leverage that. We’ll get matching contributions for that. The $100,000 that this 4 County partnership is eligible for, $75,000 we can match in kind, volunteer labor, which we’re able to do because we have a lot of people who are donating their time and resources to this. But, we still have to come up with $25,000 in cash match. Well, what that means for our group is that, instead of spending our time doing tobacco prevention, we’re going to have to put on fund-raisers. If you can try to imagine the number of chili suppers and bake sales and pancake breakfasts that you would have to put on to come up with $25,000, we’d spend our whole 6 months of this grant just doing fund raising. It doesn’t make sense. So, that’s what we’re faced with. The tobacco company spends $55 million advertising in Iowa. That’s about $19 per person that they spend to advertise. So, if we’re going to win this war, we’ve got to start putting money into this. To have these volunteer people in the Tobacco Coalition spend their money doing chili suppers and bake sales and whatever doesn’t make much sense to us. That’s why we’ve said, Johnson County has about $100,000. I don’t know where that money is going to come from. But, that’s why we’re asking for your support. When we look at the smoking rates of our high school and young people, 37% of them are smoking. A lot of that is because the Tobacco Company spends a lot of money to get them to smoke. If we don’t start doing something, these numbers aren’t going to start going down. We have a lot of people who are willing to volunteer their time to work on this. They’re parents, they’re concerned, they love their kids. They’re concerned about the public health in their community. But, quite frankly in our coalition, people have said, this isn’t right. We shouldn’t be spending our time fund raising. That’s where we are at. I would like to tell you some of the projects that we had planned. The Coalition, the 4 counties went together. $50,000 of that $100,000 is dedicated. That’s what Johnson County was eligible for. We’re working with the 4 counties, Iowa, Cedar, Washington and Johnson County to provide smoking cessation counseling to the pregnant moms. We have a group of University students and college professors, Michael Teague at the University of Iowa and Joanie Troaster, who are working on putting on a quit and win contest for the 18-24 year old group, which will take place this spring. We also have some people from the media department, communications department, and a group that is working on doing a TV contest for the best television ad produced by high school and college age students. We are also working on developing an activity for the elementary K-6. Then, another big part of this is to get coalition started in these other communities to get the parents and the police and the schools and health departments involved in working on, because I think what we really need is a grass roots organization in each of these counties. So, there are a lot of exciting things that we have planned. Our dilemma is that now we have to stop and try to raise this $25,000.
Thompson: Graham, you said the total is $25,000, but you are only asking for $2,000 from us?
Dameron: Yes. I was thinking that just a share of that amount. We do have this year $5,000 from Mercy Hospital. I thought that others would put in that. That may be low-balling a bit, but I realize that you also have other things on your plate as well.
Thompson: Was it in your budget request?
Dameron: I submitted an additional one last, because it was between the time that we submitted the budget, it was approved. Then, I brought it back to the Board of Health and asked that it be included in this year’s budget.
Fisher: That’s sort of the other problem, too. The fund raising, it’s sort of past the time. We need the $25,000 for this year, but that was like last year’s budget.
Stutsman: That’s being taken care of currently out of this year’s budget.
Fisher: No.
Dameron: I gave them $1,000 for this year, so that one is taken care of.
Thompson: Do you have the whole $25,000 for this year or just the $1,000?
Dameron: I just gave them $1,000. We had $5,000 from Mercy, or actually $5,500 and we’re still looking for additional money.
Fisher: We have $6,500 of the $25,000 raised. But, from last year’s budget, Graham couldn’t just add money to last year’s budget. The $2,000 that he has put on the budget now would really be for next year, because these grants will be renewable. What we’re working on now is through June 30th and then hopefully the legislature will re-approve spending that money and the grants will be continued.
Lehman: Is everyone clear? I guess I’m a little confused.
Horne: What’s the request?
Lehman: The $2,000, is that for this coming fiscal year or is it to finish this current year?
Dameron: The $2,000 is for FY02.
Lehman: OK.
Dameron: The $1,000, I’ve already committed it.
Stutsman: They’ve got that money.
Lehman: I was looking at if the whole grant is looking at $100,000 and Johnson County is $50,000 and if we’re asking for 2 and you’ve got 3 other counties, that’s very small input for our… If you’re looking for $25,000 from Johnson County for a match.
Dameron: I just submitted that budget and you certainly can increase that. Technically, I suppose we have the money, but it just depends on where we want to put it. I think it’s a very good investment. I do think $2,000 is very low, but on the same token, I know that you do have a lot of other things in consideration. It would be earmarked, similar to the Silurian Fund of $5,000 that we provide every year and so forth. I think that that was very minimal, but at least that ought to be considered and it would certainly be fine if you wanted to consider part of it, if you want to put it in the budget, that’s great.
Neuzil: So, we’re looking at $2,000 for the Fiscal Year 2002?
Thompson: The question is, is it included in the budget we are talking about and I think we’d better pin that down. I don’t know if your request got in there or if it came in late.
Dameron: I did relay that to Jeff and sent you a note last week and so forth to go over that.
Lehman: I remember Jeff making a comment but I can’t remember where it did fall in our…
Stutsman: I have no problem with the $2,000 in authorizing that. My only question is if we should put in more.
Neuzil: Have you had a chance to approach the other cities, the other school districts, the University of Iowa? Because if you’re talking about a commitment from government, then it should be a commitment from government. Have you entertained that?
Fisher: We started out. We sent letters to all of the organizations who were involved in the grant. We sent letters to Mercy, all of the County health departments, the College of Public Health, which of course you know they are limited in what they can do. We talked to the Cancer Center. Then we sent letters to the City of Iowa City and Coralville, which I read in the paper last night that they’ve decided not to give us any money.
Thompson: Both of them?
Fisher: Haven’t heard from Coralville. The feeling is, people think Iowa got all of this money from the tobacco settlement money so we don’t need to contribute from our other dollars to this. It’s just a hard sell. We talked about other fund raising events but they require a large time commitment and that’s the part that we just really don’t want to get into.
Neuzil: If you’re talking about only having $5,500 from Mercy and an additional $2,000 from Johnson County, don’t you have a ways to go?
Fisher: Yes we do.
Neuzil: How are you going to do that without fund raising?
Fisher: That’s a good question. You know we’re not fund raisers. The people are doctors, they’re nurses, we’re not really fund raisers.
Stutsman: I can relate being on that side of the fence where you want to do a program and yet focusing all of your attention on fund raising you think, is this a good use of my time. Although I know our budget is tight, I do support somewhat the concept of local buy in with these programs. So, I guess I support that concept. So, if I’m supporting that, then I say we need to come up with some dollars to support it.
Fisher: So, there is this year’s grant, which because the money has just been, they just appropriated the money last May, they had to hire a tobacco director and get the program started, the money was actually made available like the 2nd week of December. So, now we had from December to June to spend this money and get these programs off the ground. So, the time is short. Then, if they are renewed, we’ll have an opportunity to reapply for Fiscal Year 2002. What Graham has said in his budget now, he had $1,000 that we could use for this first amount, this first year. But, we need to raise $25,000 for this year and all likelihood, another $25,000 for Fiscal Year 2002.
Neuzil: So, your deadline for this Fiscal Year is?
Dameron: March.
Fisher: Yes, really in March.
Neuzil: If you don’t make that deadline?
Dameron: They won’t give us that last amount of dollars. For example, if we raise $5,000, they’ll retain $5,000 from the budget.
Fisher: Our other approach is to send fund raising letters to our members. We have like 90 people on our list of Coalition Members, and to send letters out to other organizations who are interested in tobacco control.
Lehman: I just want to clarify this $25,000 cash match, is that from all 4 counties?
Fisher: That’s from all 4 counties.
Lehman: Has something been done there where, there is a hospital in Washington, there is one in Marengo for Iowa County. I know you’re at Johnson County, but do you have a counterpart that is active trying to solicit donations?
Fisher: They don’t have Coalition’s in those other counties and that’s part of what this grant is, what we plan to do to get those Coalitions started. We have the county health directors involved. We’re hiring a project coordinator and part of what that person has to do is develop a presentation and go talk to the county hospitals, the school districts and the PTA’s and so forth. But, Johnson County really, $53,000 of that $100,000 is what Johnson County is eligible for. A 4th of that would be $12,000, about.
Thompson: If our share is $12,500 and you have $5,500 from Mercy Hospital, you still need 16,000?
Stutsman: I thought somebody else gave $5,000. This was talked about at the MECCA Board Meeting last night, too.
Fisher: No, we have $5,000 from Mercy. Another $500 from Mercy that they had already agreed to before that, then, $1,000 from the Health Department.
Lehman: We have Jeff Horne, our Johnson County Budget Director here. Could you refresh us if we took any action on the $2,000 request for next year?
Budget Coordinator Jeff Horne: It was in there. It was in the budget. It came in later than the Decision Packages.
Lehman: OK. But, we did discuss it?
Horne: We didn’t really discuss it much. It wasn’t a particularly big line item.
Lehman: But, tentatively we have included it?
Horne: Yes.
Lehman: I was thinking that we had.
Thompson: We were worried about whether it was still on the table or not.
Horne: I know. I got the memo from Graham. We just didn’t discuss it in depth.
Neuzil: That’s currently in our proposed budget as of yesterday. I know we’re a ways to go.
Horne: Oh yes. It’s in the tentative budget.
Neuzil: Thank you.
Stutsman: It sounds like Johnson County is on track to go ahead and support these dollars.
Dameron: Maybe down the road if you feel you can do more I think that would be great. I think that certainly shows some commitment from the County.
Neuzil: I hope that with Johnson County’s commitment, the other 3 counties will meet or agree matching up.
Harney: I would certainly hope so. That anti-smoking is a very worthwhile project and all we need to do is look around us and see all of the younger people that are smoking again. It seems to be coming back. I think anything we do to stop some of that would certainly be beneficial. We’ve got that upcoming marathon over at the University as well that goes every year. That does an awful lot if you look around and see the people that have suffered from the consequences of smoking and so forth. I think it’s a good project.
Stutsman: Is that February 10th?
Harney: Yes.
Stutsman: Good. You can send my pledge vote in.
Lehman: OK.
Fisher: Thank you very much.
Lehman: OK. We have a comment. Jonathan, a past Supervisor may have a little history to shed.
Jordahl: I was just wondering if Sally, having come from the MECCA Board Meeting would comment on the question of the loss of federal funding and what program is like MECCA that will result if we don’t meet our quota for a reduction in youth smoking.
Stutsman: That wasn’t address last night at all, it was just basically an update on their involvement with this Coalition and the dilemma of trying to come up with these matching dollars.
Dameron: MECCA is the fiscal agent for this project.
Jordahl: But there is a relationship.
Dameron: Yes, there is SINAR Amendment, which was put on the alcohol drug money which ties in the reduction of the illegal sales to minors in stores and they have to reduce that percentage in order to receive the funds. They lost some funds and I’m not sure where it ended up, but the alcohol agencies or the substance abuse agencies had some probability for a loss of funds as a result of that.
Jordahl: My suggestion being that if that loss were to be eventuated it might far out strip any contribution the County is discussing making.
Thompson: I noticed the other day I drove in a gas station and there was a sign on the window that said a carton of cigarettes was $25. I don’t smoke, so this appalled me. But, it seems like maybe your add campaign should be to get people to not purchase a carton of cigarettes and give you the $25. I’d do it.
Fisher: You probably wouldn’t if you were addicted. One of the most effective things that we could do to help people to quit is to raise the price of tobacco. California has been a good example. Their tax on cigarettes is $.80 higher than Iowa’s. That’s been a big factor in getting people to quit. So, a tax on cigarettes, smoke free environments, activities that get people involved. Not just youth, but people involved in tobacco control, are things that really seem to work. We know what works, we just have to have the will to pay to get it done.
Stutsman: I applaud your work. You’ve worked at this a long time Eileen and I’m glad that some progress is being made.
Fisher: Some of you that I’ve talked to before probably know why I am so committed to this and so passionate about it. I’m sure that everybody in this room knows someone who has suffered from tobacco-related illness, either lung cancer or heart disease. Then, there are those of us who have children who started smoking. So, much to our distress, when we’ve had family and friends who die from lung cancer, then to turn around and see our own kids smoking is really a heart wrencher. But, don’t give up, because if you stay with it long enough they will quit. I’d like to report that my own son has quit smoking now for about 8 months.
Dameron: Now he’s committed.
Fisher: Yes. Our efforts do work. I think that if we care about our kids in this community we need to work to fight the tobacco industry and to keep them from getting people addicted to tobacco.
Lehman: OK. Well, thank you for your presentation. It encourages us to keep us abreast of any developments. If you need to use this as a forum for your educational process, we open the doors for that, too.
Fisher: Thank you.
Lehman: Thank you.
Thompson: If we were going to put in more money than that I think the budget people would appreciate knowing that now rather than next week because they would have to change all of their pages.
Lehman: Well, we can’t take any action here today.
Neuzil: We discussed on Monday when we are going over these again.
Lehman: We may want to do a consensus. Give Jeff a heads up and see what his feeling is. Do we want to take the next item here and then possibly take a break after the County Engineer? Are you waiting for Chris Henze?
County Engineer Mike Gardner: Yes, he’s on his way, I did call him.
Lehman: OK. Do we want to go to the next item 4 or do we want to take a short break and let them get a little organized?
Recessed at 9:55 a.m.; reconvened at 10:05 a.m.
Lehman: Ready Andy? Let’s go back into our Informal Session. Our next Business is from the County Engineer. Discussion Action Needed to Bid Letting Notice to Bidders of Seed and Fertilizer to Purchase in 2001. We have Mike Gardner of Secondary Roads and Chris Henze of Secondary Roads, Vegetation Management. Morning.
Gardner: Morning. I think Chris is having one of those days.
Integrated Roadside Vegetation Manager Chris Henze: Morning. It’s been one of those frantic mornings. Everything seems to be going wrong. Basically what you have in front of you is the bids on the seed that we will need for the upcoming construction season. These are all estimates. Last year we used a good chunk of these and the numbers are similar to what we used in the last couple of years. There are a few different ones on there from last year. You probably don’t remember, but just some experimentation with some different species. Most of this stuff, you’ll notice is the cool season’s stuff that we put into the ditches. You won’t see any of the prairie grasses other than a few, there is switch grass and a couple of mixes that have some prairie species in it. The reason why you don’t see that on there is because we get about $7 or $8,000 worth of free seed from UNI and they apply for a big grant through the federal highway administration. We count on that fairly heavily each year. We’ve got some left over from last year. I didn’t include that on this bid because I don’t think we’re going to have to purchase a lot of seed. Hopefully, in the future, we can keep using that. It’s a good source for the County to get free seed. We get a lot of wild flowers and a lot of native grasses. Anyway, that basically is what you see before you is the seed that we’ll use this upcoming construction season. We’ll send it out to all of the people that bid last year and we’ll publish it in the newspaper. I think we’ve got the dates on there as March 6, if I remember right, for the bid letting. Then, we’ll bring it down here before you guys and then approve it the following week and get going with getting the seed in the ground.
Lehman: OK. Does anybody have any questions of Chris?
Gardner: What we’ll do is just put it on the Formal agenda next week for the Board to authorize the Auditor to publish a notice to bidders.
Lehman: OK. All right. Chris, do you want to make any comments on your display you have down in the lobby?
Henze: Sure. You’ll probably notice I put the roadside display up. It’s a similar display to what I put up at the County Fair and Prairie Preview every year, a lot of the pictures of the wild flowers and some of the different facets of this roadside program, where it’s not just all wild flowers. Some of it’s not just weed control and brush control, erosion control, that sort of thing. Some of the different things that we’re trying to get done within the right-of-way. A lot of it I focused on wild flowers because they are pretty and that’s what people like to see. That’s what sells the program. It’s just trying to get some positive public relations for the County. I put some pamphlets out there. I came in this morning and ran by it on the way up here and noticed that a lot of them are gone already, which is good. They don’t do any good sitting in my office. I’ve already read through them all, so hopefully people can take them and look them over. I put information out there as far as if people have questions on how to contact me. I’d be glad to answer any questions about it.
Administrative Assistant Carol Peters: The other thing that Chris, that he brought up is several of these pictures yesterday and we’ll get them laminated and have them displayed throughout the administration building.
Henze: We’ve got a whole set of posters like that. That’s one of a set of 4 or 5 and then I’ve got several other posters that the DOT, through the Living Roadway Trust Fund that they have put out were illustrated by a local artist. He lives out by Cosgrove and draws all of these posters for them and we get them free to distribute to civic groups, schools and so on. It’s the same way that I’ve got lots of them or did have lots of them. Those are really popular. They don’t do any good sitting in my office. I’ve got to show people what we’re trying to get done. A lot of the species on there you won’t see in the ditch. Whether it’s prairie chickens or some really rare wild flower. Some of you won’t see, but a lot of them are real common. It just kind of shows a representation of what can happen with this roadside program.
Lehman: OK. Thank you very much.