Lehman: OK, we have Chris Henze, the Roadside Vegetation Manager and he’s here to discuss our favorite subject, noxious weeds.

Roadside Vegetation Manager Chris Henze: Yes, everybody’s favorite subject. It always makes me a popular guy in the spring and summer.

Lehman: I used to hear the definition of a weed was a plant out of place.

Henze: Yes. I actually have brought, well somewhat of a definition of a noxious weed. There is a big difference between a weed and a noxious weed, legally speaking anyway. I brought you guys some, I should have passed these out ahead of time, just some relevant statute. Some of it is the Code of Iowa chapter on weeds and then our local County ordinances on weeds if we could pass this. Nothing was changed, just for your information. So you can take a look at it.

Neuzil: This is a special week, because…

Henze: Oh that’s right.

Neuzil: …and that’s why I wanted Chris to be here. This is National Invasive Weeds Awareness Week. An appropriate time to have Chris come on in and tell us about noxious weeds.

Thompson: I can’t believe that they have a week for poison ivy. That would be a new low.

Neuzil: There’s always a week for something. But we want everyone to be aware of noxious weeds.

Horne: This is like the wrong season, for Noxious Weed Week.

Neuzil: A lot of snow out there right now.

Henze: Yes, poison ivy is one that the County has declared noxious. The State doesn’t recognize it as a noxious weed even though it….

Lehman: I have.

Henze: Yes. Most people just learn what the weed looks like and try to avoid it, but I’m sure that at some time somebody felt that it was strong enough that it needed to be listed as a County noxious weed. Terrence had invited me down here because of the Invasive Weed Awareness Week and I had written up something. I took it home to my wife, what I wanted to bring down here, and I told her, this was going to be for noxious weed awareness week and she had the same…she said, what? She had never heard of such a thing. It does bring up usually a humorous response out of people, but sadly, noxious weeds are something that we have to deal with every day and it does affect everybody whether you are a farmer or somebody living in town. I didn’t prepare anything real formal for you guys; I have a thing that I’m just going to read to you that I, it’s only a couple pages, that I present to different groups when they want to learn about weeds. Then you can ask questions if you like, hopefully not too many. My introduction is, a biological wildfire is gradually consuming large areas of the American landscape. Noxious invasive weed invasions are sweeping across the nation into croplands, rangelands, pastures, forests, wetlands, waterways, parks and refuges, and highway right-of-ways. These invaders are causing millions of dollars of damage to our natural managed and agricultural ecosystems. Like a wildfire, invasive plants can seriously damage native plant communities, increase soil erosion and sedimentation, and interfere with outdoor recreation. However, unlike fire damage, which soon heals, the affects of plant invasions can be long lasting. As biological pollutants, noxious and invasive plant populations grow, adapt, multiply and spread to unmanageable levels over time. Well that makes it sound pretty scary, but there’s always going to be weeds out there, and I guess the…I’m not sure…I got introduced as the Roadside Vegetation Manager, but I also get the hat of County Weed Commissioner, too. I didn’t know if all the new Board members realize that. Why should we care about noxious weeds? Invasive plants affect us all. Whether you live on a farm, in the suburbs, or in the city, noxious weeds affect your life. Farmers have always waged a ware with invasive and noxious plants because they reduce crop yields and interfere with harvest operations. In recent years, the weed problem has escalated. While consumers may not realize the impacts of this weed invasion, they are there. The costs of weed control are passed on through higher food costs and in reduced quality of merchandise. Noxious plants interfere with recreational activities in parks, refuges, forests, roadsides and other natural areas. Since such lands are usually maintained by public agencies, costs associated with noxious weed management in these areas are passed on to society in the form of higher taxes. Noxious weeds also pose a serious threat to native plant communities. This is a long-term threat to bio-diversity, ecosystem stability, and the balance of nature we all depend on. Noxious weeds and other invasive species threaten all of our natural resources. They can destroy native plants and animal habitat, damage recreational areas, clog waterways, lower land values, decrease agricultural crop yields, and some can even poison humans and livestock. Noxious weeds are also a leading cause of species endangerment under the Endangered Species Act. This is about, when I’m talking to school groups and civic groups, this is about where I have to break because I’m starting to lose some of them. Usually the kids are wondering what is this guy talking about. Should we worry about whether the plants growing around us are native to our area or not. Isn’t it all just nature? Well, before you dismiss this issue as unimportant, consider the following. Noxious and invasive weeds in agriculture or natural areas cost our country 13 billion dollars per year. Noxious and invasive weeds are the second most important reason for the loss of biological diversity after habitat destruction. The Bureau of Land Management, our nations largest public landowner, estimates that 2,300 acres per day of its land are being lost to noxious and invasive plants. And nearly 4,600 acres per day are lost to weeds nationwide. I’ll just keep moving. I don’t want to bore you guys, and you have other more important things to deal with. What exactly is a noxious weed? This is a question that I get asked a lot, what actually is a weed. Some people consider lawn weeds as weeds, but there is a big difference, like I said before, between noxious weeds and regular weeds. A dandelion is a weed to some person and to the next person it doesn’t bother them. But what I deal with is what the State and what the County has declared as a noxious weed. Many people are familiar with the concept of weeds in the context of a yard or garden. Weeds are simply undesirable plant species. The same principle holds true for Johnson County’s roadsides, natural areas, farm fields, etc. which are home to a diverse array to native plants. The number and variety of these native species is described by the term biological diversity. Over the past 150 years, many non-native plants have been introduced to our region, both intentionally and accidentally. The vast majority of these plants co-exist with native species and are ecologically harmless. What makes a plant noxious in the context of Johnson County’s natural resources is its negative impact on agriculture, or its ability to spread and crowd out native plants. This is why noxious weeds are distinguished from those weeds that occur in small numbers and are innocuous. Noxious weeds are those able to reproduce in the wild, spread rapidly, which are difficult to control, or which cause a decline or loss of our native plants. It’s not completely understood why some weeds become noxious and some don’t. But because noxious weeds did not evolve locally, their populations are not held in check by natural predators or diseases, giving them a competitive edge over native plants. Noxious weed species can proliferate and spread quickly over large areas, and some are able to completely displace other vegetation. Contrast this situation with the rich variety and diversity of the native plant community such as is seen in prairies and wetlands or forests. Then I usually get asked how did the weeds get here. When Terrance had asked me down here, I didn’t really know exactly what kind of presentation to put together. Usually I have a slide show and a bunch of pictures, but I didn't…

Neuzil: I just think since it’s National Weeds Awareness Week.

Henze: Yes, I believe it was the National Association of Counties that declared this.

Neuzil: I think that just to kind of have an understanding that this is another issue in which Johnson County does provide, uses taxpayers money, and I just wanted to have a little bit of awareness about what this is. As we get into spring and people start to notice the weeds out there, what should they do, what are some suggestions.

Henze: I guess the biggest thing that people can do is learn more about noxious weeds. Which weeds are noxious, how to control them, and that’s part of what, why don’t I just read this to you.

Neuzil: Sure.

Henze: What can be done with noxious weeds? The growing problem if you’ll pardon the pun, of noxious weeds, can only be won by increasing three things, and for once it’s not an increase in budget. There is a need to increase public awareness of the scope and scale of the weed problem, increase public education on noxious weed impacts on agriculture, wildlife, natural resources and the economy. And finally, increase public participation in training to help landowners, farmers, gardeners and others on how to identify and control noxious and invasive weeds. That kind of summarizes it, what the average landowner, farmer, gardener can do if there are… In the two parts of my job, I’m responsible for the vegetation within the right-of-way, whether it’s planting, prairie plantings, noxious weeds, brush control so on so forth. But then when it comes to the Weed Commissioner end of the job, then I’m supposed to be enforcing the Code of Iowa Noxious Weed Law and that applies to anywhere within the County. It could be within the city limits, along the roads, farmers’ fields, so I’ve had, within the last couple years, had several questions about that. I’ve gotten complaints about noxious weeds within city limits and generally I try to let the cities handle them if they want to. I’ve got enough on my plate already. Most cities in the County do have some sort of noxious weed resolution already in place. So I’m not sure if I’ve answered your question.

Neuzil: You have, but I think that as we kind of get into the season coming up, are you going to be having any opportunity for people to learn about…

Henze: I will be putting up a booth, well I usually put one up at the County Fair every year, and then Prairie Preview is coming up next week.

Stutsman: Next week isn’t it? Yes. Tuesday?

Henze: On Tuesday night, I believe. Prairie Preview out at the County Fairgrounds, I believe it is.

Stutsman: Yes, it is and the reason I’m saying is that we have our budget hearing at 5:30 so we do need to get done by 7:00 so we can go to Prairie… Oh, Paul Johnson’s going to speak this year.

Neuzil: Oh, excellent.

Stutsman: Yes.

Henze: It’s a real good thing. I think last year they had two or three hundred people out there. It focuses mainly on prairie and last year I had put up a poster about different prairie plants and asked people to pick out the noxious weed amongst half a dozen different plants and only one or two people out of probably a hundred got it. Most people don’t really understand which weeds are considered noxious. There are a lot of different weeds out there. Farmers may consider water hemp, or different weeds, a noxious weed. They deal with a lot of weeds that are problem weeds but aren’t noxious. A lot of people don’t like giant ragweed growing up, and I get a lot of requests to do something with giant ragweed. It’s not considered a legally noxious weed, so on private property I can’t do anything with it. If it’s in the right-of-way, the only time I really will do much with it is if it’s causing a vision problem. But there are 31… The State of Iowa has declared 27 species of weeds noxious and some of those are much more of a problem than others. I think that list has been around for 60 or 80 years, so when that list was first put together those weeds were probably a problem with the type of agriculture that we had and the weed control methods we had. Now we’ve got much better types of agriculture, better control methods. Johnson County has declared 4 different species in addition to the State list, and poison ivy is one of them.

Lehman: I think you added Japanese knot weed.

Henze: Right.

Lehman: You identified as being a problem.

Henze: Yes, I’ve been scouting around for different populations of it and I think there are about 15 different populations of it, 15 to 20, some of them right here in town. I’m going to try and deal with more of that probably this spring and summer, trying to contact different landowners and tell them that they need to control it. The problem is that it’s easy to ignore because a small population now, you don’t think you need to do anything with it, but you ignore it for two or three years, pretty soon it’s an acre and it’s spreading into your neighbors property and it’s spreading down the creek. Just like any lawn weed, noxious weeds are a lot easier to control when the populations are small. If you let it become an epidemic problem, then you’ve got to spend a huge amount of time and money.

Lehman: I know you’ve contacted several farmers. Sometimes they don’t realize the impact it will have on their own property, let alone their neighbors. Maybe on a road that’s not in front of their home they don’t travel a lot. I was going to ask, you had a group, must be your roadside vegetation crew, they go out and scout this? Do the maintenance people for Secondary Roads? You must have a decent system, that people have been notified; I know in the past that they’ve kind of let things go.

Henze: The Roadside Committee, they have notified me of a few problems that they know about. Within the Secondary Road Department, a lot of the district guys will tell me about different problems and I’ll try and contact the landowners. Most landowners, not all, but most landowners are pretty good about going out and trying to do something once you explain the problem. The most common problem and most common complaint that I get is Canada thistle. It’s a tough one to control, and we have a lot of it. It’s always going to be here. But that’s one that most farmers know. Not all landowners are real happy to see me coming down the road to their place, just because then they have to go out and do something with the weeds that I tell them they have to control. But that’s the law and I’m the one chosen to enforce it.

Lehman: Well I’m sure you use the educational value of the detriment to their crop and reducing the yields and whatever.

Henze: Yes, and it spreads into other farmers’ fields, and it’s not a good way to make good neighbors, to let your weeds spread into their fields. I’m in the process of putting together a noxious weed website about all the weeds that are in the Code of Iowa and the Johnson County resolution. It will have a description of the weeds and color pictures and how to control them, and so on and so forth. I think that’s the most important part of noxious weeds, the education. A lot of people just don’t know which weeds are noxious, why to control them, how to control them.

Stutsman: You will include how to control them?

Henze: Real general recommendations. I’m going to include a lot of links within the website to go to more specific controls, rather than list specific methods. I’ve included areas where you can go and look for different other methods, because there are a ton of different ways to control weeds, whether it is…It all depends on the weed. Some of the weeds that are declared noxious by the State are mainly agricultural weeds, so you may be able to get by with using some tillage. Some weeds, with tillage all you’re going to do is spread the weed. So I include a real general recommendation, but it’s just another way to get it out in front of the public, I guess, teach people about them.

Stutsman: Would that be under Secondary Roads?

Henze: I’m not sure how we’re going to set it up yet.

Stutsman: OK.

Henze: I’m not real sure yet. It’s still, the information is sitting over with Information Services right now, so they’re working on it. It’s all almost ready to go, but it hasn’t gone online yet. One other thing I wanted to show you guys. I guess I won’t end up reading all this stuff. I didn’t realize how boring some of this stuff can be. I wondered why my audiences usually fall asleep. I have a book, it’s called Invasive Plants, Changing the Landscape of America.

Henze: It’s a real good book. It’s put out by the Federal Inter-Agency Committee for the Management of Noxious and Exotic Weeds. It’s a real good book about understanding weeds and why they’re a problem and some of their negative impacts and I just thought I would leave this downtown with you guys.

Stutsman: Why don’t you show it to the camera again and that… Thanks, Chris.

Henze: You guys can take a look at it and…

Neuzil: …become weed experts.

Henze: Right. Well, they’re hard to learn, some of them. Some of them are real common. There are a lot of the noxious weeds that you see in the Code of Iowa that we have very few and some of them we don’t have yet, which is just great. Some of them are just gradually getting here, which is probably the most important time to start controlling them, just like Canada thistle. We’re probably never, ever going to get rid of it. It will probably always be here. But some of the new weeds that are just moving in here, just starting a new population, they’re still manageable. We can still control them.

Harney: I see a lot of sumac starting to grow, but that’s more of a bush or a tree and it’s really getting thick.

Henze: Yes, there’s a lot of sumac.

Harney: It’s not near as bad as poison ivy.

Henze: Yes, it’s not considered a noxious species, but there is a poison sumac, but we don’t get that species here in Iowa, at least not as far as I know. We get a lot of that growing up in the right-of-way. It doesn’t get real big, so generally it’s not a major problem unless it’s a vision problem at an intersection or inside corner.

Lehman: My early version of…recollection of controlling weeds was my dad sharpening the spades and, he handed them out. Luckily I had 7 brothers, but digging the bull thistles in our pasture and then we went to the neighbor’s pasture and did those.

Henze: Yes.

Stutsman: Yes, right.

Lehman: As you were saying, your problem becomes theirs, theirs becomes yours.

Henze: Yes, everybody that I’ve contacted so far, with the exception of a few, have been real willing to go out and control their weeds. I think there’s a lot of people that don’t know that there is even a County Weed Commissioner.

Lehman: I think a lot with the farming today, and getting into the row crops with the no-till. The farmer doesn’t spend quite as much time in a particular field. Maybe he doesn’t, with less trips across, doesn’t recognize the problem. If there were more frequent trips, he’d realize it’s there. I know I’ve talked to a few of them that you’ve…. Once they’re educational, that you’ve explained to them the problem that this could cause and it’s probably causing to them, I think most of them are pretty well aware it, that it’s worth their time to spend a little effort to…

Henze: Well they do affect everybody. Whether you have noxious weeds on your property or not, they’re going to affect you one way or another, indirectly or directly, whether it’s through costs, indirect costs or direct costs for control. More and more species of plants are moving into the United States and Iowa, that are considered ornamental, that are now spreading out into natural areas and areas where they probably shouldn’t grow. So the problem is not going to go away.

Neuzil: So if people want to see you, Prairie Preview, Tuesday night? At the fairgrounds, right?

Henze: I’ll be out there with the booth or they can always contact me at Secondary Roads.

Neuzil: Then the Johnson County Fair, and then soon on the website.

Henze: Hopefully. Hopefully soon on that.

Neuzil: All right.

Lehman: The Prairie Preview will be at 7:00?

Henze: 7:00 I believe at Montgomery Hall at the Fairgrounds.

Neuzil: Thanks Chris.

Lehman: Were there questions for Chris? Thank you very much.

Henze: You’re welcome. I’m going to leave this book if you guys want to take a look at it and I can swing down next week

Stutsman: Great.

Neuzil: We’ll certainly pass it around.

Stutsman: Thank you. Can we take a break now, please?

Lehman: OK, let’s be back at 10:30, about a 7- or 8-minute recess.

Stutsman: Thank you.

Recessed at 10:20 a.m.; reconvened at 10:34 a.m.

Lehman: We’d like to make a little change here on the agenda, just briefly. We have Kathy Lynch from the Department of Human Services. Kathy had a little update here on the Volunteer Coordination Services Contract.

Department of Human Services Accountant Lynch: Yes, thank you. This was just to let you know that in the next week or 2 Cheryl Whitney hopes to have on the formal agenda the contract between the State and the County. Janet is currently looking at it and then will give it back after she’s had time to approve it. This would just be money coming to the County from the State through June 30th for about $5,000 this year. You’ll all have a chance to look at the contract before, and see if there’s any questions. So, unless there are any questions right now, I think…

Lehman: OK. We could discuss this at a future date. Does anybody have any quick questions for Kathy?

Lynch: I think Sally is kind of aware of some of some of the…

Stutsman: Yes, there has been some changes in what the dollars have been.

Lynch: Right.

Stutsman: We’re just using the State dollars this year. Before we had a Volunteer Action Center that the County put some dollars into that had a coordinator that did volunteer services for the whole community. There didn’t, there…as things change, as they always do, there didn’t seem to be the need any longer for a separate Volunteer Action Coordinator Position. So right now we are just going to have a contract for the state dollars which is $5,000 and that will basically take care of volunteer opportunities at the Department of Human Services.

Lynch: Right, and then next year, hopefully it will go back up. If the funding stays the same to the previous amount of the state money, I think it was $7,000, a little bit more.

Lehman: OK, we’ll wait for that, to see that in the future then.

Lynch: OK, thank you.

Lehman: Thank you. Next item, thank you Mike for waiting a moment there. Business from the County Engineer, Mike Gardner. Good morning Mike.

County Engineer Mike Gardner: Good morning.

Neuzil: Good morning, Mike.

Lehman: The first item was changes in your Fiscal Year 2001 construction program.

Gardner: Yes, I passed out some maps to help locate some of the projects we’re talking about this morning. What I need to do, we used to call this a supplemental program, when projects came up that we didn’t put on the program to begin with and needed to add so that we can go ahead and construct in this fiscal year. Now we can do that by resolution and so that’s how I’m going to be bringing these in next week, is to have a resolution with these projects listed on it. The 3 projects are in blue on the maps that I passed out. The one is shown as L 2001 G1, or L 2000 G1, that’s the Lake McBride causeway project and it was actually included in the FY 2001 program, but it was included as a part of the work going to be done between Sugar Bottom Road and Cottage Reserve. What happened was the DNR decided they were going to drain the lake and do some bank stabilization and so we took the opportunity to go ahead and do the work on the causeway below normal pool elevation while the water was down. So we’ve actually got a contractor right now under contract to do that work while the water is out of the lake and we can do the work easier and get a better price on it. That one actually was on the program, it just had a different project number. We’ve pulled it out of the other project, so what we’re spending here, we won’t be spending on the other phase of the job.

Lehman: You’ve re-identified that as a separate…

Gardner: Right. The other 2 projects are culvert projects. L-R-4-1 is down on Dane Road. What happened here was we had a washout last year on one of the abutments of an existing bridge and it brought our attention to a problem. The people who lived south of here were basically stranded. That’s a dead end road at that point. So we patched together a short-term fix on the thing and determined we needed to go ahead and get something designed so that we could get a permanent fix on the thing. That’s what we’ve got here, that we’re going to put in, is a pre-cast box culvert that we do in some of these situations that speeds up the construction project. So that’s what we’re proposing to do on that one. L-U-12--1 is one down by Lone Tree and this is one that was a bridge that was removed several years ago and is a temporary patch. A metal culvert was put in, way undersized, and every time we get rain, water goes over the road, and washes the rock out into the ditch and into the field and we have to go and retrieve that and add more rock to the road. So what we’re hoping to do now is put a structure in there that has the proper capacity, and get that built this summer and alleviate the problem completely. So that’s what we’re hoping to do yet before the end of this fiscal year. It’s all covered by the budget. What’s going to happen is we’ve got some that we had on the program that we’re not going to get done. These are some projects that were a little smaller in scope. If we can get the design work done in between other projects, and the right-of-way acquisition hasn’t been a problem on these. Things flew right through and we’re going to want to get these projects done yet this year. I can answer any questions you might have…

Harney: The one by Lone Tree, what road is that on?

Gardner: On Wapello Avenue.

Harney: Wapello?

Gardner: Yes.

Stutsman: Mike, this just isn’t related to these projects, but you know when we close that road on the Muscatine/Johnson Line, did we ever finish all that needed to be done with that?

Gardner: I’m not sure as far as the vacation, if it ever did get completed. Right now, actually I’ve been every year about this time, Muscatine County calls and asks how we’re going to get rid of that bridge. So right now they are going ahead and removing that bridge, the old bridge that’s in there. So that’s being taken care of, if not right now, soon.

Stutsman: All right.

Gardner: I guess we need to figure out if we have to do any more with that vacation or not. I believe Muscatine County went ahead and did it.

Stutsman: Maybe we should put that on, should we put that on for an agenda item?

Peters: Because you had that public hearing down at Lone Tree.

Stutsman: Yes. It just seems like it’s one of those things that’s just been left dangling. I just didn’t know if we had closure on that or not.

Gardner: I can’t tell you for sure if it ever did get finished or not. I know there was a public hearing, but whether or not…

Peters: It seems like after that we couldn’t find anything.

Gardner: Yes.

Stutsman: OK. Well at least the bridge is getting removed.

Gardner: Yes, it’s being removed.

Stutsman: Is that going to create a problem then, if it’s removed and the road is not vacated?

Gardner: No, it shouldn’t. I mean there is no way to get back to it now anyway. It’s pretty much overgrown and the bridge had washed out around one end.

Lehman: OK. Are there any other questions for Mike on that? Next item was the 28E agreement.

Stutsman: Do we need to talk about the Linn County?

Gardner: That’s what we’re going to do.

Stutsman: I’m sorry I’m ahead of myself.

Gardner: Linn County contacted me here a couple weeks ago and Al and I went up and met with them Tuesday morning this week. They’ve got two bridges up on the County Line Road that we share that they’re planning to replace in FY 2002. It’s on the mile of road that they maintain, so they’ve done all the design and got the thing put in order. What we need to do is get it included in our construction program so that we can fund half of it. They sent with us when we met with them that day, a 28E agreement to get all the legal portion of it taken care of. We have sent that down to the County Attorney’s Office now for their review and I think Andy’s going to be working on taking a look at that to make sure everything appears in order there. It’s pretty simple it looked like to me. I didn’t see any problem with it, but I wanted to get their stamp of approval on it. We have not submitted our FY 2002 program to the DOT yet. We brought it in and got the Board’s authorization for the Chairperson to sign it as it was. We’ve got a couple of options here. What we can do is make the revisions to that document prior to submittal and bring it back and have you authorize that revised document prior to going in which would be my preference. The other way of going about it would be to go ahead and submit it as we had done earlier, as approved earlier and then do a supplemental on it at some future point with these projects included in it. It’s 6 of one, a half dozen of the other, but it just seems to be a little cleaner if we just go ahead and revise the original document.

Neuzil: Since it’s not sent in yet. I don’t see what would be a problem

Stutsman: When does it have to be in?

Gardner: April 15th.

Stutsman: Oh, yes, there’s plenty of time.

Gardner: There’s enough time yet to get that accomplished.

Lehman: any questions for Mike on that item?

Gardner: That one, there again, it’s not going to affect the budget. We actually had another bridge on the County line with Linn County that we had funded in there. What I guess is probably going to happen with that is we’ll just move that out another year, use the money that we had programmed to work on that for our share to pay Linn County for our half of their projects. Then the following year have them program their half of the bridge on the mile that we’re taking care of. Then they can pay us for that later.

Lehman: What road is that?

Gardner: That one is on Seven Sisters Road, just west of the Ely match.

Stutsman: Maybe I missed it Mike. Why wasn’t this included before?

Gardner: It was overlooked actually. We hadn’t met with Linn County for 2 years. They mentioned it to us at our last meeting and we didn’t get it on our program. Like I say, it’s their mile to maintain and so it’s one of those things that just fell through the cracks. They called us last week, or 2 weeks ago and said it’s coming up in FY 2002, we’re getting ready to submit our program, we’d like to make sure that it gets on yours as well. So that’s what happened.

Lehman: OK. Anything on that topic for Mike? Move on to your next item. Discussion/action needed in the right-of-way acquisition for grade, drain, and pave project on Mehaffey Bridge Road.

Gardner: Right-of-way acquisition process on that project is going along very well. I’ve brought in, I think there’s 5 properties here that we’ve got signed and we’ll be putting on next Thursday’s formal agenda for authorization for the Chairperson to sign the contracts with those parties. There are 2 others that have not signed yet. One of them is the Corps of Engineers, we received the documentation from their office just yesterday and we’ll have that to you next week as well. Al is actually taking today off, but he’s out getting the other final parcel signed up today on his day off. So it appears that everyone on that stretch of the project is going to be signed.

Neuzil: Excellent.

Gardner: With no problems.

Lehman: The 5 listed here are the right-of-way contracts that you’re looking at here next week?

Gardner: Right.

Lehman: OK.

Stutsman: Is there money involved with the Corps of Engineers?

Gardner: The property on the causeway itself and in that area is owned by the Corps and leased to the DNR, so the Corps of Engineers is the underlying title holder to get an easement to do some of the work we need to get an easement signed by them.

Stutsman: OK, but you don’t exchange dollars.

Gardner: No. It’s just a matter of getting it recorded that we have an easement across their property.

Stutsman: OK.

Lehman: OK, any questions for Mike?

Gardner: That project is scheduled to be let May 15th of this year. The construction will probably start in June.

Lehman: Is that normal time? I’m surprised you don’t start a little earlier so that construction crews can start in June, rather than May.

Gardner: Yes, we try to… This one will work out pretty well. It’s a pretty short stretch of road. Maybe a mile, mile and a half is all that there’s going to be. So we shouldn’t have any problem getting started in June and getting it completed before the Fall.

Lehman: OK, we’ll look forward to that next week and right-of-way signatures, action on that. Let’s move down to item 8. Thank you Mike.

Gardner: Thank you.

Lehman: Business from Julie Muskovich, project manager for the four counties tobacco control. Good morning Julie

Tobacco Control Four County Project Coordinator Julie Muskovich: Good morning.

Lehman: Julie had handed out some information for us at our desks on our break. Saved us a little time and her time during her presentation.

Muskovich: Yes, I put a description… Well I’m here to update the community partnership grant between, it’s a $100,000 grant from the tobacco settlement between Cedar, Iowa, Washington, and Johnson Counties. So I’m coordinating the project, all the programs that we’ll be doing in the four counties.

Lehman: You’re a new personnel and also is this a new project or is this an expansion of a current….

Muskovich: Oh no, this is a new $100,00 grant that we just received between the 4 counties.

Lehman: OK.

Stutsman: Are you working with the Department of Health? Are you working at the Department of Health or…

Muskovich: No, I’m working at MECCA Substance Abuse Center.

Stutsman: OK.

Muskovich: So the first handout was just kind of a description of the grant and how things were settled. The second sheet was just an outline of the programs and activities that we’re doing to reach our goals. The grant was to be used to reduce tobacco use by young adults, children, and pregnant women. So then we had identified 4 goals which I put on the first sheet to reduce the tobacco use. The first one was to develop strong tobacco free coalitions in each of the 4 counties. That’s what I’m working on. I’m going into the counties as I’m working in Johnson County to get elected officials and community members to get interested in tobacco control and to work together to form coalitions. So on the second sheet I put some of the activities that we’ve been doing to reach this goal. As I’m going to all the Board of Supervisors and City Council meetings. We have a web-site set up for our coalition that can tell everybody about the programs that we’re doing. We’re doing a workshop for tobacco control and smoke-free environments on May 24th, and we’re having (inaudible) who speaks about tobacco control who has flown in from California. I’ll be inviting all the elected officials from the counties to attend that. That will be a way that the elected officials can support our grant.

Neuzil: Is there a date set yet?

Muskovich: Oh yes, May 24th. It’s an all day conference and it will be held in Johnson County.

Neuzil: What’s the website in case anyone wants to view that.

Muskovich: Oh, the website is still under construction.

Neuzil: Oh it’s still under construction, OK.

Muskovich: Yes, my supervisor might possibly know.

Neuzil: Well just let us know and we’ll make sure that we can get everyone to know about it.

Muskovich: Sure, yes, definitely. So those are some of the activities I’m mostly working on the coalition building in Johnson County. The second goal is to encourage strong active youth involvement and appropriate youth cessation programs. We have a coordinator from the University. Her name is Katie Weed and she’s working on a program called the butt out program. It’s to promote students who are 18 to 24 year olds to attempt to quits smoking. It’s not a cessation program, it’s a program where they can sign a sheet of paper that says they are going to try to quit for 30 days. They will quit for 30 days and then they have a witness sign that sheet and then they enter into a drawing for a trip for 2 to we think it might be Cancun, or a really warm place. That’s for all the four counties, so it’s not just for the University students, we’re also going to be going to the factories and all the places we can reach 18 to 24 year olds. That’s one of our programs that’s going to reach this goal. Another one is expanding, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Teens Against Tobacco Use. It’s in the junior highs. It’s a program where students can go into other schools and talk about tobacco use, why it’s not cool to younger children. That’s being expanded in Johnson County as well as the other counties. Right now we have strong programs in Southeast and Northwest. We’ll be taking these students to Des Moines on April 4th for Youth Advocacy Day to speak to legislators about tobacco. As well as we have another program led by another University student, her name is Shelly Wright. It will be a film media project where students of many different ages can enter a contest, enter a video that they’ve made, a kind of anti-tobacco commercial. They can enter into a contest and then win a prize. We’re not quite sure what the prize will be for that. That will be, it’s called the Smoke and Ads for the small screen contest. That will be in all 4 counties. So those are some of the actions we’ve taken for that goal. Our third goal was to provide effective cessation counseling for pregnant women. What we’ve done is each public health department is getting a nurse trained, a maternal health nurse, trained to do a program called the Family Fresh Start Program which was provided by the American Cancer Society. When women come into the Public Health Department, they can get counseling, resources on how to quit smoking. It’s not only for women who are pregnant, but also for women with younger children or if the husband smokes. So that’s being implemented. We’re doing the trainings in the next couple of weeks for the public health departments. So that reaches our cessation for the pregnant women as well. Our fourth goal is to enhance capacity of youth K through 6 to make healthy choices. We have a student from the University, his name is Travis Miller who is working with professors and other people that are on the coalition to develop this program in the schools of all 4 counties. He's working with the administrators and many people within the school system. It’s a way for students to enhance their dialogue with smokers in their lives. They are still developing the program right now for that. He just had been hired, so he’s just started this. The prize so far as he’s decided will be a student from each county can win a dinner with a coach from the University of Iowa if they enter the program. So it’s a way for students to speak with smokers that they know in their lives and to find out about smoking and to make healthy choices. So those are some of the programs that I’m coordinating as well as coalition building in all the counties and getting elected officials and businesses and leaders involved in the tobacco control.

Lehman: It sounds like you’ve got some great goals and some great incentives.

Stutsman: How long have you been with the program? Or coordinator?

Muskovich: About a month, this is my third week.

Stutsman: Oh, great.

Thompson: You have a big job.

Neuzil: Can we set up a trip to the Caribbean or something?

Stutsman: I was going to say, the County Supervisors that don’t smoke?

Thompson: People who already don’t smoke aren’t eligible.

Muskovich: So I’ll be interested in inviting you guys to the workshop since it’s going to be in Johnson County on tobacco control.

Stutsman: That’s the 24th? That’s a Thursday, so we’re not going to be there in the morning.

Muskovich: Yes.

Stutsman: Hopefully in the afternoon because we have Board meetings.

Muskovich: Well it’s all day.

Stutsman: OK.

Muskovich: We’ll be having other things in the counties to get the officials and community involved. I’ve been to a lot of meetings, inter-agency meetings and meeting with organizations.

Stutsman: I just wanted you not to think because we weren’t there we weren’t interested.

Muskovich: Yes, I understand. So that’s just kind of an update. I’ll be back to update you on how the programs are going in the counties.

Lehman: Yes, we’d like to hear a progress report. Feel free to call and get yourself scheduled.

Muskovich: OK.

Stutsman: We appreciate the update.

Muskovich: Thank you.

(Continued in Part 3)