MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:

FEBRUARY 8, 2001

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chairperson Lehman called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 8:44 p.m. Members present were: Pat Harney, Mike Lehman, Terrence Neuzil, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson.

WORK SESSION: SCHEDULING DATES AND TIMES FOR FACILITIES MANAGER POSITION INTERVIEWS

The Board scheduled Facilities Manager interviews on February 16, 2001 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and on February 23, 2001 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

MINUTES RECEIVED: JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SOCIAL WELFARE/CLUSTER BOARD FOR JANUARY 29, 2001

Lehman: Minutes we’ve received are Johnson County Board of Social Welfare/Cluster Board for January 29, 2001. Lets get into reports and inquiries from the Board of Supervisors. Volunteers to start?

REPORT (TERRENCE NEUZIL): attended business expo; attended Iowa city area chamber of commerce local government affairs committee meeting; and upcoming listening posts

Neuzil: I can start. I went to the Business Expo at Carver Hawkeye Arena and had an opportunity to sit at the elected officials booth and take a look and meet all of the new businesses and existing businesses. I also had an opportunity to visit with a lot of people around that area. That was a real nice time at the Chamber of Business Expo. Today I attended the Iowa City Area Chamber of Commerce Local Government Affairs Committee. Heard budget presentations from Iowa City, also heard budget presentations from Coralville and North Liberty. As we get much closer in our own County budget it’s good to kind of reflect and see how they’re handling their budgets this year. They’re also of course seeing a lot of similarities in regards to health care costs, capital projects and things of that nature. Good experience. I do want to invite everyone, I’m going to be having what I’m calling some listening posts and going to be called Hawkeye Friday listening posts. Which will give me a chance to be out there and meet as many people as possible. If anyone has any questions or concerns I hope they’ll use that opportunity. These are going to be held Friday’s during lunchtime. Tomorrow I’m going to be here at the office. The following Friday I’ll be over at Jonesey’s in Solon and then on the 23rd I’ll be over at the Iowa City/Johnson County Senior Center. If anyone is interested come on over and have some questions or concerns I’m going to hold those to listen. That’s what’s on my agenda.

Lehman: We can defer any questions we get to you.

Neuzil: Bring them on over.

Lehman: Sally?

REPORT (STUTSMAN): ATTENDED RETIREMENT PARTIES; attended public health department director search committee meeting; upcoming budget public hearing; and letter to legislature regarding property tax LIMITATIONS

Stutsman: Just a couple of things to mention. I went to a retirement for Rod Dunlap last Friday evening. Rod has been the director of the Johnson County Conservation Department for 31 years. He certainly has a well deserved retirement but Rod will be missed. Rod’s done an outstanding job with running the Conservation Department and I certainly wish him well in his retirement. We also had Linda Keiser retirement’s get together Monday morning at Secondary Roads. Linda has been a secretary at Secondary Roads for a number of years as well as with the Planning and Zoning Department. We lost 2 good County employees due to retirement but we certainly wish both of them very well. I had a meeting with the search committee for the replacement for Graham Dameron in the Health Department. Boy is this group organized. They’re doing a great job. There’s 3 subcommittees that are working on this. There will be an interview committee, there will be a committee that will take care of the publications. Another committee to come up with interview questions. We’re really getting going on that. Maybe Mike you would like to mention when we’re going to have our public hearing on the budget. We should probably start informing people when that will be. We’re pretty well ready for the final go ahead for the Auditor to publish the budget and we will have a public hearing for people to hear the budget and to share their thoughts on the budget with the Board of Supervisors. That is scheduled for March 6 at 5:30 and it’ll be here in this room. I hope that people do come out for the public hearing. I think its an opportunity for people to see how we’re spending their tax dollars. What things the Board feels are a priority in the coming year, and for the public to share their thoughts too on how they view the budget and whether they agree with what’s being proposed. Another thing that I wanted to mention to the Board and see if there was agreement to go ahead and do this. Every year the legislature has before them a bill dealing with property tax limitations. They’ve got another bill this year from the Farm Bureau but ISAC has also presented a bill. I would like to send a letter to our legislators talking about what we have done with our budget and what we could not have done had there been a property tax freeze in place. ISAC suggested that we do this so that they can know that if there was a property tax freeze we wouldn’t have been able to build this road that would’ve allowed for economic development and those types of things. Those real life scenarios and how that plays out. But I would like to use some of Jeff’s time to help put a letter together so I wondered if there… if people have any thoughts on that you could let me know if you feel that would be appropriate use of his time to draft a letter to send to legislators. I’m afraid if they don’t hear from us they don’t know how we feel about a property tax freeze and what that means at the local level. I think it’s real important every opportunity we can to let them know how this does impact.

Harney: Is that something that perhaps we should send to the Farm Bureau as well, to tell them how we feel about the tax freeze and how that would affect us?

Stutsman: We can’t deliberate. I’m just throwing this out and people could let me know what you think about it because this is under reports.

Lehman: We could schedule some discussion so people get a chance to…

Thompson: Get a draft of the letter.

Lehman: Anything else Sally?

Stutsman: That’s it.

Lehman: Pat?

REPORT (HARNEY): ATTENDED E911 MEETING; attended 105th command activation ceremony; attended conference board meetings; attended senior center winter mixer; attended ECICOG meeting; and attended a meeting regarding the solon library

Harney: Short week.

Stutsman: You were sitting in budget meetings all week huh?

Harney: Yes. Mike Lehman and I went to the E911 meeting February 1. They were talking about the disbursements of E911 funds. They’re going to be upgrading the radio communications through the… It’s a problem with Fire and Police having contact back to the station and to their firehouses because of low spots and the transmissions are not being received back in. So they’re going to put some booster stations in Solon and Oxford and Lone Tree with some of those E911 funds which will really benefit the fire and emergency services. Friday I also went to the American Legion in Oxford, retirement party for Rod Dunlap. That was a lot of good years of service given to the county by Rod Dunlap. Saturday February 3, I attended the National Guard Armory the 105th Command Activation Ceremony. The new command was brought to Johnson County to be down here out of the Armory. They’re going to oversee 3 area battalions from Cedar Rapids, Fairfield and Iowa City. They’re going to have a total of 1,520 soldiers they’re going to be overseeing in this area. It’s going to add about 40 staff in the area. It’s kind of a compliment to the Iowa City area where they’re working out of here.

Stutsman: At this? Here?

Harney: There will be 40 new personnel here and they’re going to be overseeing 1,500 which is Fairfield, Iowa City and Cedar Rapids.

Stutsman: How does that impact our parking is what I’m thinking?

Thompson: They said not but…

Harney: From inception when they started talking about it until it was actually put into place it was 6 months which was really kind of record time for the military to do something like that. It will be a good thing for the community. On Monday the 5th I went to the City Conference Meeting in Iowa City about the Assessor’s Presentation on their upcoming levy’s. That evening was the Conference here as well for the County budgets for the Assessors. It was a very interesting evening and what their budgets are planned for the next year. February 7, the Senior Center was a winter mixer there. It was for government staff and all of the surrounding communities and people in the community. Just a chance for people to sit and visit about issues in the community. It was well attended but there’s always room for more there. They have that every so often. It said on a flyer it’s 2 or 3 times a year. On the 5th, there is the East Central Iowa Council of Governments. They allocate their funds for cities over a population of 5,000. It was the transportation committee for funds that are dispersed throughout the state. They submitted their budgets for their projects. There are several of them throughout the state that are going to be mandated. Most of those were passed except for 2. The 120th Street improvements from 380 to Shueyville. They’ve set that aside, they don’t have enough funds to do that. I’m not sure what the details were but there was evidently some conflict between what the City plans were and what they were going to do with the Roads. They need to work that out. They also turned down the enhancement of the downtown street through Solon. They didn’t have enough funds to do that project.

Stutsman: What did they approve Pat?

Harney: There’s a whole list of items here that they approved.

Stutsman: For Johnson County what was approved?

Harney: Johnson County got a total of 2,500,000. Part of that was the Mehaffey Road project. They’re also doing the F-15 which is actually west of here near the Amana’s. They’re going to put in a bike trail which will eventually tie in with Highway 6 project and a bike trail from Iowa city area all the way out to the Amana’s. Then on over on 151. I’m not sure where that will end up at. That was all in their planned projects. There was something else here but I’m not sure what it was. I did meet with a group in Solon. They’re working on their library. They’re moving in this week. So they’re in the middle of moving everything in. That’s been a big project up there. Its really a gorgeous library so when I get that finished its going to be worth people going up to see.

Stutsman: Do they have an open house scheduled?

Harney: They’re going to. They don’t have the date set yet.

Stutsman: OK.

Lehman: Great. Thanks. Carol?

REPORT (THOMPSON): ATTENDED MEETING WITH Sharon BUTLER; visited courthouse restrooms remodeling project

Thompson: Mike and I have been meeting with Sharon Butler the lead worker in the Facilities Management Department. We’ve met with her twice this week. On Monday I had a red letter day in my life. I went over to the Courthouse to look at the new construction that’s going on in the bathrooms and I had a chance to visit the tower which I had never done before. That was pretty exciting. Discovered all sorts of old records up there that we’re gong to need to address and gave Kim that good news. But the view is spectacular. Pat always told me what a great view it was but it was as good as he said. That’s all I have.

REPORT (LEHMAN): ATTENDED 105th command activation CEREMONY; AND UPCOMING BUDGET PUBLIC HEARING

Lehman: I went to the ceremony over at the National Guard. The Band gets playing and the blood gets flowing. I ran into a fellow I knew from high school that went to West Branch. He teaches a small town in St. Mary’s south of Des Moines. I didn’t realize he was in National Guard. He was over there the other day. He said he had been in National Guard early in his life and they teaching school the National Guard came through to recruit and they recruited him instead of some of the kids. It was good to see him and get his input. One of the messages they sent was that National Guard in Iowa is growing. Some of the eastern states have actually had to discontinue some of their units because they’re not getting some of the interest in it. I thought that was an interesting comment. Piggyback on what Sally said about the budget hearing. It is open to the public. It is a public hearing. I know we get reports once in awhile questions from the taxpayers. They want to know what we’re doing. They hear and see things in the media. A lot of times they just see the end result, the impact on their taxes. But they don’t get to hear the discussion that we go through. Many , many hours of listening to department heads requests, quizzing them more than once possibly and sorting through all of the requests. It basically boils down to what we can afford and what we need. People that have any questions on that are welcome to attend or get a hold of us individually ahead of time or even after that. March 6. That’s all I have. Anyone like to add anything else?

Harney: Another thing you might want to mention is that I think Major Wieneke is a hometown person. He’s originally from the West Branch area and has served in the Des Moines area for quite awhile. He’s the one that’s come back here and is in charge of the 105th.

Lehman: A lot of enthusiasm. Anything else you would like to add? If not we’re adjourned.

Adjourned at 9:04 p.m.

Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor

By Casie Parkins, Recording Secretary