Lehman: Good luck. OK. Next item of business would be business from the Planning and Zoning Administrator, Rick Dvorak.

Dvorak: OK.

Stutsman: I heard Rick say good timing.

Dvorak: Kind of appropriate isn’t it to follow that?

Stutsman: Maybe we should give her a special project. That wasn’t nice, I’m sorry.

Stutsman: Yes right. Maybe we should give her a special project.

Dvorak: It would be a special project. Again, good morning. I had given you earlier in the week copies of our annual reports and I assume you had a chance to look at it. This morning I would like to take 5 or 10 minutes and run through it real briefly. I know most of the Board realizes that 1995, when I was appointed the Administrator of the Department, I started doing this and the Board really seems to appreciate it. It gets better and better and better every year with your input. As you are aware, we have always kind of let our interns kind of manage this so they can put this in their portfolio so they can say this is what we did when we worked for Johnson County. Marty was here this morning, but he had to attend a class, so I was going to give him some kudos for this. I’ll still do it, but he’s not here to accept them. I think he did a very nice job again. He is our first year intern and he’ll be doing it again next year, too. He had some innovative ideas for next year also. The cover page basically is just kind of an overview of what the remainder of the document looks like, it gets into the specifics and again the cover page is just a general overview of what we’ve done in the last year. As you go through the document, of course it indexes, but we’ve included photos of our staff, which we hadn’t done much before in the past. We’ve also indicated the new staff that we’ve added since last year. You’re all aware that Dan Swartzendruber is now our Assistant Planner. We did create a new division of our department last year, which has been quite exciting. I guess that’s the best word I could use. In that department we did hire Rueben Arsate as our Senior Inspector, who was an instructor at Kirkwood. Then, we hired Daryl Carson and Nick Sitzman, who actually was working for Johnson County Auditor’s Office. Rueben is here today. So is R.J. and so is Dan if there are any questions. This document in its entirety will be on our website next week. We kind of wanted to run through it with you today to see if there is anything you would like added or made more clear to the public, we can still have time to do that. We get into all of the boards that we work with and commissions that we work with, so we give them a little credit for the time they spend. We have another Board we just appointed or the Board just appointed. That’s our Board of Appeals, for the Building Code Inspection Program. They had their first meeting Tuesday night. I have a meeting again next Tuesday night and then they’ll probably start getting into the actual hearing process, kind of creating their bylaws for the future and how they want to see the commission operate. With that, get into the nuts and bolts of the document. R.J., do you want to come up here in case I missed something? Marty puts this all together, but the whole department gets involved in interaction and giving me information and so on. The first part we start with is, again, numbers, building permits, dollar fees, things that we’ve generated. Then, we use the 5-year basis for this to show the Board and the public the increases that we’ve tried to generate. You’ll see on page 4 it gets into some graphs. Trying to give you an idea, like in 1996 our total dollars of building permits issued was only $19.5 million. Where last year it was over $35 million. These are conservative figures. A lot of people felt like their building permit fee would be based off of their indication to us of what their value of the structure would be. So, they are always about 10% low. In reality, that was never the case until now, it is. We figured these numbers will probably continue to grow as the amount of building permits continue to be increased.

Stutsman: Rick, excuse me. Just for clarification, the building permit doesn’t include the land.

Dvorak: Correct.

Stutsman: Do they include plumbing, electrical and heating?

Dvorak: Yes.

Stutsman: OK.

Dvorak: Basically the structure.

Stutsman: All right, the structure.

Dvorak: No land acquisition, no sewer system, no wells, no driveways, no landscaping, it’s just the structure itself. You can see that it’s basically doubled since ’96 in values and also numbers. The next page actually gets into the breakdown in numbers with the pie chart showing how basically 82% of our building permits are for single family residential. It breaks it down into, as you know, we don’t do a lot of commercial or industrial. Hopefully, we’ll be doing more when we get our economic development plan in place, which Mike and Terrence will be helping us with.

Stutsman: Can I ask another question?

Dvorak: I’m going a little fast.

Stutsman: I was wondering, the occupant or the person asking for the permit, puts the estimate on. Next year, will the building inspection group put that estimate on?

Dvorak: What the process is now, is the contractor or homeowner comes in with their estimated value. Rueben then refers to the plans directly and he has a chart that he works off of. This is simplified and Rueben can jump in any time. But, he then has a quotient that he uses to determine if their application fee is correct, in other words the fee that they feel like will cost for construction.

Stutsman: Oh, all right.

Dvorak: If they come in for a scenario, if they come in at $150,000 and Rueben comes in at $170,000, we’re going to get additional building permit fees to cover that $20,000 difference. If it’s fairly close and the fee is basically going to be what they think it’s going to be. If it’s lower that’s their problem. Correct? All right. Again, this is the same as all of the communities do around here. It’s nothing unique and it’s based off of the Uniform Building Code, which is a national excepted process that we use. We did 119 residences. I think it goes on to say on the next page that the average housing start for those 119 was $242,578, which in ’96 was $156,640. You can see the quality of housing in Johnson County has really gone up, plus housing cost and construction cost have obviously gone up, too.

Thompson: Is that number, again the cost of the structure only?

Dvorak: Yes. That’s average.

Assistant Planning and Zoning Administrator R.J. Moore: As Rick noted earlier, we feel that that is really underestimated. This is under our old permitting process where we were taking only the applicants’ estimation. We feel that’s really undervalued. We haven’t gotten the actual data yet, but we feel that the cost of housing is actually higher. If you remember recently in the paper, the study done across the State for average housing cost in Iowa, Iowa City was number 1 and Johnson County was number 4 in the State.

Dvorak: For the public again, this is only the rural area. This does not include any of the small towns or any of the towns excuse me. It does include the unincorporated villages but not any of the municipalities. The next page again actually is just basically what I just mentioned to you, the average housing start and the values. Then, we get into the rezoning. I think I’ll let RJ talk about this a little bit because this is kind of where he’s real excited in what the Board has been doing the last 2 years.

Moore: As you notice there on page 7, and again we took a historical look, beginning and going back to 1997. What you’re seeing there on the graph is the number of acres that has been rezoned by the County for other than ag uses. As you’ve noticed, ’97 and ’98 are about the same and then all of a sudden, in ’99 you start seeing a decrease until this most recent year, 2000, where we’re not rezoning a whole lot anymore from A1 to non-ag uses. I think that is a very good reflection, however, early on the Board’s willingness to implement and follow your Land Use Plan that you began implementing in January of 1999. As you notice from some of the other figures, it hasn’t slowed down development necessarily in the County. What is has done is your policies that you are following in the Land Use Plan is directing that growth to where you want it to be, to where you can best allocate your scarce resources. Kudos for the Board for this part, this isn’t ours, this is yours. It’s a reflection on your willingness and ability to stay with your Land Use Plan and follow that.

Lehman: I had to do a double take when it says you had already received 37 rezoning applications for the past year. It seems like we spent a lot more time on them than that. It was 37 as you broke them down but not all of them came to us either. It seems like on our 2nd Thursday of the month, that’s where the priority for our time is spent. I wasn’t sure that was right when I first looked at it, but after reading through it and breaking it down, 37 seemed like a very small number.

Moore: Well, our office is kind of the first step for any applicant coming to the Board for final approval of anything. It’s taken a couple of years for the public to understand what you are doing, what you are trying to accomplish with your Land Use Plan. In the beginning, early 1999, it looked like we were going to stay on a pace, as past years. What we’ve found is that slowed down gradually, as staff was telling the public and consultants that this is what the Land Use Plan says, this is what we’re going to say when we report to the Board and we believe this is what the Board is going to do. At first they are not sure about that, but as we get your decisions and they see and understand those decisions you make in relationship to the plan, it has now they are choosing where they are going to try to rezone now.

Stutsman: To reiterate your point earlier, 37 rezonings, but 119 houses were built in the rural area.

Moore: Right.

Stutsman: So, we may be slowing down on rezonings, but there still is growth and development in rural Johnson County. It’s more planned growth and managed growth and development.

Moore: Exactly. It’s not scattered. It’s not spot zoning. It’s directed. The Board, through your new Land Use Plan, has determined, you went with the 1960 decision that Board of Supervisors made when they adopted zoning and rezoned the North Corridor and you added the unincorporated villages as growth areas. Basically, every place out there is not a growth area. So, we’ve directed it there and again it appears to be working. It’s really been interesting to see the evolution of the Land Use Plan, as you as elected officials have stuck with it and we’ve implemented it.

Dvorak: I did want to say I know that Reverend Welsh likes to review this information. There are additional copies over there for anybody in here today. Everybody else has a copy.

Lehman: I wanted to ask, will this be on the website.

Dvorak: Next week. It’ll be just exactly in the same format we have now we just wanted to wait until after today before we actually put it on the website. Next page gets into the numbers. You’ll look at those numbers and our computer systems are a little funny in that we try to key in different…for querying we query applied and then we query approval. So, you’ll see the numbers may be off a little bit. We may have some number differences because somebody applied for them, but they are still sitting out there waiting for action. They have been deferred or the sewers haven’t… Something has been physically been not completed on the documents or whatever. So, the numbers may not all gel. I did want to mention that. Another good thing is, through R.J.’s hard work and the Board’s, we did down zone 43 acres, I think it was, of M2 to A1, which I think is a real good positive. So, that helps our numbers even a little bit more. Plattings and subdivisions, I think if you want to go ahead and talk about that again, too.

Moore: Normally, in the past, I had been the person that had handled the plattings, but with the change in our staff and additional staff members, Dan Swartzendruber is actually the person now that handles the platting applications for us. As you can see, we have approved 41 subdivisions last year with 154 lots and it consumed 763 acres. We rezoned a lot less than that last year, so what that tells you is we’re pushing development onto that ground that’s already zoned. We are doing that in-fill. We’re accomplishing that goal in your Land Use Plan for in-fill. I remember 3 years ago, when I was doing plats for Rick, I had 100 applications that year for plats. So, we’re even reducing those, but we are getting the direction that we want in the Land Use Plan. We are getting it to the areas we can service.

Dvorak: I’ll talk a little bit about annexations. We get this information that’s always been very important to the Board to see how much ground is being annexed. As you know, we’ve been having a few problems with a few cities on annexation. We’re working on that and I don’t think we want to talk about that today. The figure that we use for 2000, these figures are a year behind. We get this information from Jerry Musser, the County Assessor, and when it says year 2000, 588 acres were annexed, that actually was 1999. That information won’t be available until March or April of this year. What we do is when we get that information back from Jerry, then we include that as like an appendix to this and then we give the Board copies of that too, once that information becomes available. We just don’t have it for this time of the year.

Stutsman: I was just going to say a suggestion for things to add, I would like to know which cities have annexed and how much.

Dvorak: Oh, a breakdown. I think that’s what we try to do.

Stutsman: Is that in here?

Dvorak: No. Again, this year will have that in there as an appendix to that.

Stutsman: OK.

Dvorak: Different cities annex certain amounts. I think we’ll give you all that (inaudible) on a whole separate sheet of paper for last year.

Stutsman: OK. But, to include it in this.

Dvorak: Oh for the last 5 years. We can do that. It’s there we just never put it in there.

Stutsman: I think that tells a pattern, too.

Dvorak: Sure. We’d be glad to put that in there. That’s very easy for us to do.

Moore: Vacancy rate.

Dvorak: Vacancy rate. R.J., you can talk about that.

Moore: The reason we brought that up again is, and we always go back to your Land Use Plan. That’s one of the most important documents for us as we implement your policies and it speaks very strongly to, before you rezone anything new in the County, let’s do in-fill first. One of the things we have to look at as we do consider rezonings is the availability of either zoned ground or platted lots available. In order to keep housing cost and land prices from going higher, you do have to have some available ground for development. Right now we have a current vacancy rate in the County of 29%. What that’s talking about is, we’ve identified all of the subdivisions that we’ve had, the number of lots that were platted out and those lots that are vacant as of today. We think we have approximately 29% of platted lots that are buildable within the County that haven’t been developed yet. So, what we have is, we have 1584 vacant lots out of the total of 5,462 lots. You have to be careful on how you use that. A lot of people, we’re not sure that we actually have that high of a vacancy rate. A lot of people, they’ll buy 2 lots and they’ll build their house right on the bordering lot line and they consume 2 lots. We know we have people that buy 3 lots, they’ll put their house in the center, have the other 2 lots on their sides and they’re not for sale, even though it would appear they are. That’s probably a little lower number really. Part of your implementation schedule is to have you come up with criteria for in-fill. (Inaudible) what’s an appropriate vacancy rate. We haven’t been able to do that yet. Hopefully this year we will be able to get on that and see if we can’t come up with some kind of criteria for you. Right now it’s been real difficult. There’s not very many people that use that kind of judgment.

Thompson: Still it looks like we have plenty of available lots.

Moore: Sure and that’s not even talking about all of the zoned ground in the North Corridor and around Iowa City that’s unplatted.

Dvorak: Next page gets into specifics. These are the other responsibilities our office has to manage and maintain. We have a Board of Adjustment that looks at reviewing the ordinance by request and has the right to issue variances, rulings over decisions I make. There are a few other items that they can look at. The Board of Adjustment looked at 24 applications last year. Of that, they approved 20, they denied 3 and they withdrew 1. That number is kind of funny, too, in that they, meaning applicants, if they’re agreed by something we say, we sit down, spend quite a bit of time giving them opportunities to make applications. We try to resolve those issues before they go to the Board of Adjustment. There is not sense going in there when they are going to get denied. In most cases, we probably have 100 to 200 requests and they don’t fall into the category that we would like them to fall into. They don’t make the setback. We encourage them to move, make things applicable because this shows that they approve 20, which is quite a bit. In reality, those 20 would probably be 20 that we would support. In other words, there is a physical problem on their property, their sewer won’t fit in the right place, there is too much slope in the ground, there is a flood plane area. So, we would encourage them to go to the Board of Adjustment and we would support that application. Very few get passed us that go to the Board that we think should be denied. A few people don’t like to hear no, so they want to make their application and you can see they only denied 3 and 1 withdrawn, which is actually an application that would have been denied. Special exceptions, that’s a little bit different. The Board of Adjustment does have this right, also. As you can see, primarily they are looking at, it isn’t designed just for cell towers, but as you know, the growth (inaudible) to companies right now. That’s the thing they work on primarily. What they did a year or so ago was create working with Excel Company, maybe 2 years ago. They created 14 points that they require each applicant to resolve and submit to them in writing to answer questions such as co-locations, are there other cell towers available to put their facilities on. We get not a lot of complaints. We get concerns from the public about the amount of cell sites on property. When you drive the interstates, primarily you see a lot of cell sites. We really try to stop that and the Board of Adjustment tries to stop that but when they come in and they can justify the need for a cell tower in a specific area, they are required by law to facilitate your cellular phones. They can’t have dead spots out there. So, we require their engineers to come in and produce RF frequency. It’s basically a scatter map that shows the coverage with and without a tower to be on the site. We do have a public hearing, we do notify the neighbors and they do come in and ask for those sites. Again, we work with them before they make their application to advise them of where they should and could click on a tower that is available. We have a cell tower that we just completed that has all of the cell sites in the County and their addresses and we’re in the process of addressing for these cell sites now. So, we have that all available and that is available to the public also. Conditional uses we only had 3 applications last year. I think one was the sand and gravel.

Moore: The dog grooming business. Was it the golf course?

Dvorak: Oh and then the golf course of course. Those 3 items and those were all approved. Boundary line adjustments, this is an ordinance that I think worked out extremely well for Johnson County. In the past, for like Pat and Terrance, in the past if you guys owned a lot together or right beside each other and you wanted to move that lot line, you had to go through a 2-3 month hearing process to move that lot line someplace. Like if there was a creek or woodlands or something you wanted to share or to move on one or the other or something like that. With the publics help, engineers, other attorneys, we wrote an ordinance basically that says, no, we can move that lot line with my review only. Health Department looks at it, Secondary Roads looks at it and then I make the final decision. That’s worked out extremely well. It’s done in house. It can get done in a week. We found a case recently where a person had built over the lot line by accident. So, they just got with their neighbor, they moved the lot line over and everybody was happy. So, it’s a very, very good ordinance that we’ve had much cooperation from the public and it’s worked very well. We had 24 of those applications. Miscellaneous Applications, I am in charge of. Flood Plain Development Permits for Johnson County, I did 6 of those. If anybody builds in a flood plane, it is required to get a permit to do any construction in that flood plane. I did issue 6 permits. Also, I am in charge of issuing all of the moving permits for the County. With the help of Secondary Roads, I issued 47 oversized permits last year. Also, I am in charge of doing the 911 for the County, which includes addressing and the location of the 911 signs. We did 207 of those. 178 were for new addresses. That doesn’t mean a new house. That means a new address. We will address your barn. We will address your hog house. Any place that we feel an accident could arise, we want a 911 address for that. Cell towers, during construction, we found an accident can happen. So, we are addressing all of these and we are putting up the signs and we are paying for that. We don’t charge the applicant. Now, I currently have an application from Quest to put up 911 signs on their little green boxes, their telephone boxes. I am a little hesitant about that so I am going to be working with them and there are quite a few of those around the County. I’ll probably address them. I am a little leery about putting signs on them, 911 signs, because there may be some confusion.

Stutsman: Why would they want 911?

Dvorak: Just to locate it. They just want an address so that people can locate where they are at, which street, what quadrants and so on. I don’t know if I want to pay the 20 bucks to put up a blue sign there. I’ll put an address on it, but I don’t know if I’ll do that. I have to talk to the 911 Board about that one. Who is the representative on that this year?

Lehman: I am.

Dvorak: Mike. OK, So, I’ll be talking to you guys about the necessity to put up a 911 sign. If they want it then we may have them pay for it. We do a lot of 911 addressing that is very well accepted in the County. I did 7,000 of them that one year and it has worked out very, very well. I am moving fast. If there is anything that you want to talk about jump in. Long range planning, obviously R.J. you can talk about that and Fringe Area Agreements.

Moore: We just finished the 2nd year. We are beginning to move into the 3rd year of implementing the ’98 Johnson County Land Use Plan. As part of that we had a number of goals and objectives that the Board had identified that you wanted to achieve. A lot of those we’re responsible for helping you with. First was the Fringe Area Agreements. At the end of this past year, we had 6 completed of the 11. We have 1 Oxford kind of in progress and we’re waiting for a couple of our smaller communities like Hills and Shueyville to complete their Land Use Planning, so they have something to work with. Once that is done then Rick and Dan will pick up with those communities and we’ll start creating Fringe Area Agreements with them. Last year we finished the Sensitive Areas Ordinance and Clustered Subdivision Design Ordinances as drafts, with an 11 member Committee the Board had appointed and we had worked on those for 2 years. They have been with the County Attorney’s Office for awhile to get their review and recommendations on that ordinance and what we would need to change, if anything, to bring it to something that the County Attorney’s Office is comfortable with.

Thompson: Is there data on when that might get finished?

Moore: You’d have to ask Pat that, Carol.

Thompson: Those people worked a long time on it.

Moore: Yes. I saw a memo that a citizen had sent to Mr. White regarding something and he referred back about his workload and stuff and he referred to the 2 ordinances I just mentioned. I think he told her that he was hoping to get to them sometime late this spring to have them back to us so we could start the process again. But, you’d have to ask Pat. We’d like to see it move forward, too. I just talked to one of those committee members today and they asked about it. I had to tell them that’s where it was. Do you want (inaudible) on the building inspection?

Dvorak: Yes. As the Board is aware, and I think most of the public is aware, we did adopt Uniform Building Codes. We started enforcing them in December of last year. I think we’ve had a very good rapport with the public. A lot of the anticipated anxiety that we thought may happen hasn’t happened. We are up to staff now with Rueben, of course, who I had mentioned and Daryl and Nick. I think they are actually doing a very good job. Daryl and Nick are actually taking off for Denver tomorrow to go one of the most recognized conferences in the nation on Building Inspection programs. Do you want to add anything?

Lead Building Inspector Rueben Arsate: No. You’ve covered it.

Dvorak: It’s working well. I don’t know if the recession is bothering people. We are not getting the amount of applicants that anticipated on. But, it’s not the Code it’s the recession. The Farmstead Split Ordinance, I think we’ve hashed that out a lot in the last year. We’re getting applications now and you’ll start seeing them. I think we have a couple next week and I think we’re having pretty good cooperation on that. Road Performance Standards, we struggled with that for awhile and I think we made some incredible decisions and policies on that, that are going to make that work much better. A new thing for Pat and Terrence, last year we did enter into an agreement with ECICOG. It’s required that the County have a hazardous mitigation plan. We have had a few meetings on that and since Terrence and Pat are new I have requested that representatives from ECICOG come to a meeting of the Board of Supervisors and bring you up to speed on what that encompasses and what it details and what we are doing. I know the Board who did sign that agreement have an idea but I know this is new to you folks. They will be coming in March sometime that’s convenient for the Board to kind of give an overview of what we are doing, where we are at and why we are doing it. Economic Development Plan, I think we’ve… Well I guess I’ll let R.J. talk about that or Dan.

Moore: I see that our staff has put R.J.’s name first and really, I kind of have stepped aside a little bit from this other than reviewing what the staff is doing. But, Dan has been basically heading that up along with the interns. I believe they are pretty close to having a draft that they’d like to present to Mike and Terrence. I believe you are going to be the 2 Board Members on the Economic Development Plan Committee. Hopefully, it will be a draft that you are comfortable with that will call the whole Committee back together pretty soon and start on that. As you know, with our Fringe Area Agreement with Iowa City, we’ve run into a few bumps out at the Herbert Hoover Highway and we’re going to try to sit down and talk with them. I think having this as a Countywide Economic Development Plan would facilitate any kind of negotiations or agreements we would make cities such as Iowa City and their fringe areas.

Stutsman: A part of that plan, the Board talked about making a long-range plan for that area at the County Farm. Will that be included in that?

Moore: I would hope so. That would be a part that we would probably need to add.

Stutsman: I don’t want us to lose sight of that. I think that’s something that we need to keep in the forefront about it being included in the Economic Development. I think the idea was, looking at that whole area out there, not just the area where the County Farm.

Moore: With the amount of land there and the location next to 218, that property is something. I know just off the side a little bit, I sent somebody that had an inquiry to the Board Members about a golf course there. Not that I have an interest in that.

Dvorak: I think other than that, I think the report kind of just reviews. There are appendixes that go into more detail of what we’ve discussed this morning and it discusses in the plan itself. I think the last thing is that we will be having a mock zoning.

Moore: April 4th.

Dvorak: April 4th.

Moore: 1:30.

Dvorak: I think the intent is that for the Board of Supervisors and the Zoning Commission, but I think the Board has always made that available to anybody from the public that would like to sit in on that. We’ll have overheads and we’ll have applicants and it will be just like a rezoning. But, it won’t be as easy as they were last time. I’m going to make them a little more complicated so you have to do a little more soul searching. Not that any of them are easy but some of them are easier than others.

Moore: I was just going to say, those mock zonings also, it gives us an opportunity to put forth some of the technical equipment and resources you have given us. Power Point presentations and our mapping and that Rick would like to try that out on you, too.

Lehman: Any questions for Rick or R.J. and members of the staff? It was a very thorough report. It’s kind of shocking, some of the numbers were way off of what you thought they might be.

Thompson: Yes, I was impressed.

Stutsman: That’s what I was going to say, too. You need something like this to reflect and see the work that has been done and to put it in a perspective about what has been accomplished, and what the trends are, and where we’re going. I think it looks good for the County.

Thompson: Nice job.

Dvorak: Thank you.

Lehman: Thank you very much.

(Continued in Part 4)