Lehman: OK. Our next item would be Business from the Planning and Zoning Administrator, Rick Dvorak and R.J. Moore.

Assistant Planning and Zoning Administrator R.J. Moore: Good morning. Well, Rick and I have discussed, a year or so back we did a mock zoning for the Board of Supervisors and the Planning and Zoning Commission. We’ve talked to a number of the Board Members again, late last year and the beginning of this year about doing that again for you. We think we were hearing the majority of you saying you thought that was a good idea. We know your schedules are very busy right now and unfortunately so are ours. But, we have been able to identify a week in March that, if you were inclined to have us do this for you again, that we would be available to do this for you. That would be the week of March 19th. Right now for our staff, any of those days during that week would be available to us.

Stutsman: ISAC is the 21st-23rd. Were you thinking in the evening?

Moore: We did it during the day the last time. We thought we’d do it again in the morning.

Stutsman: I was thinking it was at night. Why did I think that?

Thompson: It was in the afternoon.

Moore: Was it in the afternoon?

Thompson: It was a nice afternoon, I think a Wednesday. The week before is Spring Break.

Moore: We could do Monday the 19th.

Stutsman: We have small cities, I’ve got down at 6 on the 19th.

Neuzil: Yes, small town meetings. On the 20th…

Stutsman: On the 20th is Planning Council at 4:30.

Peters: You also have a department head meeting at 1:15.

Stutsman: I have to be in Des Moines that… Are you looking at March?

Moore: OK, what about the week before that?

Thompson: Can we move forward into April? That’s Spring Break is the week before, I think.

Neuzil: We’re booked through at least the 23rd.

Stutsman: Well, how about March 6th.

Planning and Zoning Administrator Rick Dvorak: I was going to say, we don’t think, with our staff (inaudible) we can get this (inaudible) we want to present it to you by then. I would rather go into April.

Stutsman: How about that last week in March?

Dvorak: R.J. will be on…

Moore: I’m in Charlotte, North Carolina that week.

Stutsman: Well, I would like to do it before the next Board Meeting in April.

Moore: That’s kind of what we were thinking, to help out the 2 new Board Members, especially, to hear how staff is interpreting your plans and ordinances.

Thompson: Before the evening meeting you mean?

Stutsman: On the 12th, yes, April 12th.

Thompson: So, what about the 4th or the 11th?

Neuzil: Let’s go April 4th.

Stutsman: April 4th looks good.

Thompson: We have a work session in the morning. So, we just come back after lunch?

Harney: We’ve got evaluations at 10.

Stutsman: Are we doing this with Planning and Zoning Commission, the first two?

Moore: Yes, we’ll need to invite them, too.

Stutsman: OK, so for that reason should it be later in the afternoon? Is that a problem with any of their schedules?

Moore: Most of them are…

Stutsman: What about Evelyn? Is that a problem?

Moore: Well, we’re hoping with enough lead-time that they’ll be able to make arrangements.

Stutsman: I just wondered if we needed to take late afternoon into consideration for people that are working. But, 1:30 is fine with me.

Thompson: On the 4th?

Stutsman: Yes.

Lehman: These are going to be situations, but I’ll also talk to some of the people from the Building Inspection. You couldn’t walk through just as if you were an applicant coming to your window. I don’t know if you want to do it this time or another time just for the general public, how a person would work through the system in obtaining zoning, platting, maybe a building permit, maybe we’re trying to do too much all at once here, but, just an idea.

Dvorak: We wouldn’t have to go over that part of the meeting once, where we always in the past tried to give you 3 or 4 examples that you can play with. So, I think that’s a great idea to start with that. That last time we did have some public involvement, too. The league was here.

Thompson: As I recall last time, afterwards we regretted that we hadn’t taped it and sent it to Public Access. Don’t we have in out contract some money to tape a couple of extra meetings?

Video Center Operator Andy Small: You can tape as many as you want.

Thompson: What are you saying? I think it would be good to do that and then send it to Public Access.

Stutsman: It seemed like there was a comment, too, last year, I think they were too easy last year, non-controversial.

Moore: We might be able to include the interns to role play a little bit through the applications for you, have them act as the applicant. But, basically, what your Land Use Plan does now, our newest Land Use Plan is, it identifies areas in the County. The North Corridor is identified as a growth area. The incorporated villages are identified as a growth area. The cities and their 2-mile extra-territorial review area is another area, and the rest of the County is the rural ag area. Each of those has their own policies. We’re going to give you one example from each of those areas and then our staff’s interpretation of what staff reports on zoning you get from me, basically. If you would like, that was brought up if I do remember now, is that maybe we should have role played a little because, you know, take the role you would get from an applicant who is fighting to get what they want, basically.

Stutsman: Yes. That’s what I was thinking, that some of those real controversial ones weren’t the applicant that’s arguing their point.

Moore: Well, we can definitely do role-playing. I think we have some interest in doing that, if you’re up for it. But, we want to do Power Point. We’d like to get back into…We’ve fortunately given Rick the resources the last few years to upgrade a lot of the technical abilities of our office and we would like to do that for you as well. Do a lot of it through the Power Point so you can see maps and soils.

Lehman: OK. Do you want to set that up then for April 4th in the afternoon?

Moore: OK.

Stutsman: We’re going to videotape it, then? How much is the cost?

Small: I’d have to revisit the contract, I’m not sure. It’s definitely not more than a typical portion of…

Peters: $225.

Stutsman: $225.

Lehman: Comments from Bob. Did you want to try out for one of the parts, Bob?

Welsh: I urge you to get that date in the County Attorney’s Office, I mean the calendar. I think from my observation, one of the things which the Board has had trouble with at times is separating personal stories and land use. I’m not trying to put words into Pat’s mouth at this point. I think his council has been land use decisions need to be land use decisions. Am I quoting you correctly?

White: Yes.

Welsh: I think that having him a part of that mock discussion might be helpful to all 5 of you.

Lehman: Good point. OK. That was OK on your calendar?

White: I don’t know. We’ll have somebody here. I will be if I can.

Lehman: OK.

White: I’ll put it on today.

Lehman: Thank you.

Small: How long do you think the meeting will last?

Moore: We think about 3 hours.

Lehman: OK.

Lehman: Next item is Business from the County Recorder, Kim Painter. Good morning, Kim.

County Recorder Kim Painter: Good morning.

Stutsman: Should we have Lora come up, too, for this discussion? Is she available, Kim?

Painter: I don’t know if she was going to be available today. Feel free to call. I’m here today to request and start the process of getting a formal Board approval for a change that we discussed briefly as it relates to my Fiscal Year 2002 budget, which we had our meeting for back in December. That change is to take a vacancy that is a current vacancy, which is classified as a Clerk II, and make it into an Account Clerk I position. This request is being made in order to give the office more help in tracking our revenues, which range between 1.4 and 1.7 million dollars each year. As far as the cost of doing this, it would roughly increase by just $125, the salary of that position. Jeff and Joe should be providing you with new budget sheets for the Recorder Department 11, for Fiscal Year 2002, and it’s important for you to know that for the current Fiscal Year, the cost can easily be absorbed into the money we’ve already allocated. There will be no need for a budget amendment. It’s a small amount of money. It feels to me that a department head, an elected official, has an obligation and an opportunity when a vacancy occurs to consider restructuring. I think this would be a benefit to the office to have the ability to have a person focus in just a more dedicated manner to some of these fiscal issues. So, that is what I am asking for.

White: It’s not technically a reclassification. It’s really just replacing the approved workforce, eliminating an existing Clerk II and creating an Account Clerk I.

Painter: Right.

Thompson: What’s the difference in duties between the 2?

Painter: Well, the Clerk II’s are just sort of more… They don’t focus specifically in any coherent way on fiscal issues. They focus more on the general duties of the office, more heavily on the customer service counter. There certainly is some reporting assignments that go with a Clerk II position in the Recorder’s Office and the individual Clerk II’s do, do single reports that may involve fees collected to some of the state agencies. This position would give us an opportunity to reallocate some of those smaller reporting functions, as well as some of the larger functions. To get extra help for both myself and for the Deputy Recorder on some of the financial reports we do on a regular basis to the Board, to the State and end of the fiscal year items. It’s basically a reallocating of a single individual’s emphasis within the office.

Thompson: Both positions are in the bargaining unit?

White: Yes.

Painter: Correct.

White: Our Clerk II’s predominantly are serving the public in the Recorder’s Office at the counter, taking documents for recording and then handling the Recorder. The Treasurer’s Office is the other place they exist, handling motor vehicle licenses and tax payments, then processing them. The difference is this would be somebody who would track, manage fiscal stuff, rather than counter service and processing documents. This person would have some of that responsibility, partly because the office is as small as it is.

Painter: It’s small. So, there are a considerable number of spreadsheets that we maintain. We frequently have reason to either expand those or adjust those or link those in different ways. We obviously make daily deposits, some of which are fairly substantial, and this person again would allow us greater strength in our ability to manage those kinds of affairs.

Stutsman: Run through your staffing. I meant to ask you for kind of a table of organization.

Painter: Sure.

Stutsman: You have yourself and a Deputy.

Painter: Correct. We have a Clerk III, we have a Secretary II, we have 3 Clerk II’s that are full-time and 1 half-time Clerk II and one vacancy right now. I believe that’s our total.

Stutsman: The vacancy is in what, the Clerk?

Painter: It’s the position that’s a Clerk II.

Thompson: Is it 1 of the 3 or is it a 4th one?

Painter: It is an additional one.

Stutsman: Well, Kim, I want to ask why aren’t you doing this? The fiscal responsibility seems to me like that’s what the department head or the elected official does. So, it sounds like you’re allocating what I think would be your responsibility to somebody else.

Painter: Well, I think in most of the offices where there is a fair amount of money, I think Tom Kriz has a number of people that help him. Obviously his amounts are much higher than mine. Also, in the Auditor’s Office, where you are talking about people who are helping people track money, there is a tradition of having people focus a little more on the accounting itself. It seems to me there are some ways that we could really, I think, strengthen the office in how we deal with those issues by doing this. The person would have the opportunity to participate in the overall life of the office in a general sense, too, because we are a small office. We frequently have people who are on vacation or away for other reasons, illness or something of that nature. So, we need to call upon everybody in a fairly egalitarian manner. The assistance would be nice to have, but I’ll certainly continue to do the oversight and the work that I have done in the past on the financial reports that we make to the Board particularly. Also, it’s probably to be the chief point person who works with the Auditor’s from Eide Bailly at the end of the fiscal year.

Lehman: I have to ask the question the public asks us a lot of times. With technology improvements and document management, do we have a reduced personnel? Are you seeing where you are looking at replacing individual’s duties a little different? Is there any chance you could get along without either one? You’ve got along without the Clerk II. Sally was kind of piggy backing on that is, someone else taking care of those Clerk I duties, even though I know it’s a job description. She had kind of asked you that.

Painter: Right. I would say absolutely not. If anything, certainly I did what I thought was a passable job during the budget hearings of providing information to the Board that indicated that comparable counties are staffed at a much higher level than the Johnson County Recorder’s Office. I think the office runs a very lean and very fiscally responsible organization and provides a tremendous amount of service. We do roughly 25,000 documents to record every year. Our numbers of vital records are increased within some margin or another, but we’re at least 10-11,000 of those every year. The office is frequently under a fair amount of strain, as many small offices are, with people on vacation and people out being ill. I have thought many times that in spite of my strong tendency to be extremely fiscally responsible, that sometimes I feel I am almost dragged towards taking the position that we could use more help. But, I try really hard not to do that and try to be a very participatory officer. As people will tell you, a lot of people who call the office, are surprised when I pick up the phone. But, I do that quite a bit because we often need the help.

White: I’d like to add, too. It probably is accurate to say that as a literal fact, she’s getting along without this person. What she’s been doing for probably about 6 months, she’s experienced 2 or 3 staffing changes. She lost a good long-term employee to another office, another employee from another office transferred in. With a staff her size, each time she’s had a vacancy, she’s been visiting with us assessing the work force. Our approach has been, let’s take them one at a time. It’s very hard for an office her size to orient or transition more than one person at a time. She’s taken a very careful position by position approach and analysis. This is the last piece, at least hopefully it’s the last piece, in the transition that has been going on there for about 6 months now. The cost increase is really fairly minor. You’ve basically got an elected official who has made a judgement about what she perceives to be a little more efficient use of the existing staff that she’s got. I concur on her request.

Thompson: Is there any implication for the… Do we have to get this reviewed by the union or anything?

White: It would be if we were reclassifying. That’s why I made that clarification. We’re not reclassifying an existing employee. We’re just taking advantage of the fact that we have a vacant position. It’s a good time, if you’re going to change the makeup of the workforce, it’s a good time to do it because you don’t affect a person.

Thompson: It doesn’t change the budget that we’ve been talking about?

Painter: No.

Harney: There is no dollar increase in that position?

Painter: Roughly $100, I think, is what it comes to.

Thompson: I remember the $125 because it kind of stood out in the list of budget requests as pretty small.

White: Account Clerk I is a step.

Painter: It’s a slight step above a Clerk II.

White: Above Clerk II, it’s very small.

Thompson: But the new person would be hired at a lower salary than the old one, probably.

White: She also needs to address, by the way, the question of getting along without it. She’s announced, I think, to everybody’s cheers, extended office hours, and she needs this warm body to make this work.

Painter: Yes, please.

Lehman: I think Lora Shramek was not available, but I think maybe Pat answered quite a few of the questions we needed answered.

Thompson: What are we supposed to do? Do we approve this next week or is this for information?

White: A motion to authorize. Not reclassification, but to eliminate a Clerk II from her authorized staffing and replace it with an Account Clerk I. Then, when she puts somebody into the position, the payroll authorization would come through a normal course.

Lehman: OK. If you have any questions you might want to visit with Lora or Kim, if anything comes to mind before next week.

Painter: Anything else?

Neuzil: Yes, it’s coming from a budget that is extremely tight, so congratulations on your efforts.

Painter: Thank you. Thank you. This year will turn out pretty well. I’ll be able to give something back that’s definitely higher than, shall we say the gift loss. It’ll be a good budget this year.

Lehman: Thank you, Kim.

Painter: Thank you.

Lehman: Next item is Business from the County Attorney.

White: No business.

(Continued in Part 4)