Lehman: Next item is Business from the County Attorney. OK. Business from the Board of Supervisors. We have correspondence from Robert and Phyllis Denim regarding junk cars. I think everyone had that letter. We frequently get these, people asking about ordinances and how they might apply. We’ve got Andy Chappell here, Assistant County Attorney. Rick Dvorak, from Zoning, and Kot Flora from the Board of Health. If somebody would like to address how these are handled and if there are any changes that need to be made and how these requests need to be answered. What recourse these people have. Basically, they are asking about their neighbors have what they would consider an eyesore or nuisance because of (inaudible) property.

Dvorak: Kot and I do try to work on complaints like this. Our ordinance talks about a junkyard. What we find a lot is junky yards. Our ordinance doesn’t really cover what some lady thought was aesthetically pleasing. We do investigate every complaint on a priority basin. We do take pictures. We do try to make contact if possible. We’ve never, since I’ve been here, filed charges against anybody about a junk yard. We have about junky yards. The difference is, we can prove that that person actually gets some profit off of the vehicles or the junk or whatever is on his property. So, we do try to enforce that. I will speak for the Health Department. I do know we work with them frequently. We try to take turns. They investigate some, we investigate some and then we investigate some together with their staff. I think we have had pretty good cooperation through the years. I know Sally has got some complaints recently that we worked on. We have, ever since we received this letter Andy Chappell has been put on staff. I know we’re working with him on trying to come up with a junk car ordinance, similar to what most municipalities do and what some cities do. I’m not sure where we’re at on that right now, I don’t know how much the Board wants us to investigate into that. We will give you some samples of a junk car, or junky car area type of ordinance where people just put them out there and leave them. They’re not selling them off, they’re not buying them for selling transmissions off of them, they’re not doing that, but we’re seeing a lot of them out there. So is there a problem out there, I guess it’s in the eye of the beholder. If I lived next door, I’d say there is a problem. If I didn’t live next door, I don’t think there’s a problem. So we’ll do some research, I’m speaking for myself, we’ll be glad to continue to do some research for you. Andy and our staff will work on some junk ordinances. A lot of those are done through the Health Department. Some of them are done through the Zoning Department. We will work with Kot on that, if you’d like us to pursue that. I’m not sure if you’re getting a lot of complaints, we’re getting a few, we’ve had pretty good luck. We’re working on three this week. Rueben is doing inspections and actually have notified three people that have junky yards, have junk cars all over, and they’re very attractive, very unnerving. This complaint or concern that you received, I drove up by there Tuesday and it’s pretty crappy.

Thompson: Have you notified them that it’s come to our attention?

Dvorak: No. Haven’t done anything on that one yet.

Thompson: But you have a procedure to follow to do that.

Dvorak: Yes. And we don’t have to have complaints. We do it on our own sometimes too. I think that’s important that we’re not picking on people, that we do work mainly on complaints, but we also do go out and if we see something. Like we got a complaint about one spot so the guys when they were going out there to look at one spot, they found 2 spots that were worse than the one spot they were going to. So we notify in a nice letter. It’s not a nasty letter, just hey would you work with us, like the complaint Sally got.

Stutsman: Yes.

Dvorak: Would you work with us on getting rid of some of these junk cars.

Thompson: So Rick, what’s the time frame. You send the letter and then how long do you wait before you…

Dvorak: We request in the letter, the first letter we send we request that either they remove and abate the type of nuisance that’s on the property as we identify it within 30 days or they contact us within 10 days and tell us about their process. Because in the winter time as you all are aware, it’s hard to pick up a refrigerator, it’s frozen down on the ground and it’s hard to get rid of some car because they’re froze down to the ground. Then in the spring it’s hard because the ground’s all mud. So we work with the people, some we worked on for 6 months to get it cleaned up. But it took a long time to get to that point, it may take a while to get the area cleaned up. Again, if you want us to devote more energy to that, we are going to work on an ordinance with Andy and we’ll present that to you for discussion and Kot may actually have something to say also because they probably get more complaints than we do.

Disease Prevention Manager Kot Flora: We have a health nuisance regulation that’s been on the books for decades. It’s pretty broadly written so that if we get a complaint that comes from wherever, we’ll go and investigate it, but we have to determine whether it causes a public health nuisance. Aesthetics is not part of what we’re going to be regulating. So if the situation presents harborage for insects and rodents and is an unsafe situation like a refrigerator with a door left on where a child could get into that, then we can deal with that through this regulation. But we get very few. We probably, we don’t have any outstanding complaints right now that we’re investigating; they’ve all been closed out. Dilapidated buildings would be another example of something that we can deal with because that would be a public health nuisance. But we have no outstanding complaints right now, and we probably get under 10 of these a year, maybe under 5 of these a year. So the numbers coming to us are not great. We do accept anonymous complaints so we don’t discourage anyone from complaining.

Stutsman: I think what the Board has to be ready to deal with is that if we do pass an ordinance, then we’re going to have to enforce it. And how much staff time are we willing to devote, and maybe additional staff, to enforcing such an ordinance when I kind of hear them saying there are situations and I can be very sympathetic to those people that live next to an unsightly place. But then I’m torn with the idea that one person’s junk is somebody else’s treasure. So I don’t know. I kind of think the system we have in place works and I think too, with additional help from the County Attorney’s Office, which we haven’t had in place to follow up on these letters and things. I think that it works. Sometimes it just requires being brought to people’s attention that what they’ve got maybe isn’t real attractive to their neighbor or whatever.

Neuzil: What is Linn County, of course in the letter here it talks about how Linn County has an ordinance. Is it something of that nature?

Dvorak: Yes, I contacted Linn County right after receiving that, and in talking with one of their staff people, they don’t do it a whole lot more different than we do. I was hoping that they had something in place and Andy correct me, I think it’s called municipal infractions where you physically go out and you tag it and give them X amount of time, they pay a fine, they have to get it off the property. If they don’t, we go out and take it off the property, and put it on their taxes or send them a bill. That is the way most cities do it. In talking with Linn County, at least the person we talked to, they didn’t do it that way. They did it through the Health Department, to the best of my knowledge, that’s what they responded, they did it through the Health Department and through the Zoning Office as a violation of the… Actually what we look at is the violation of the junkyard ordinance, in other words it has to be M2 to be a junkyard, but that’s a little more difficult to prove than a junky yard. That’s why I prefaced this whole conversation. But 95% of the time we get voluntary cooperation. I’ve never filed charges in the 11 or 12 years that I’ve been here on that. We have on other things, but not on that issue.

Thompson: Well I know that the person who wrote this letter asks for us to get an ordinance. But I think what they really want is for the situation to get resolved, so I personally would feel comfortable if you just followed your usual procedure and maybe you could come back and inform the Board in a few weeks about what happens.

Dvorak: What’s frustrating for us is we then discuss it with this person and this person says well look at this neighbor, this neighbor, this neighbor, this neighbor, and frequently that’s why instead of just talking with this person, we talk to the other people like we did on the one we worked on last week and this week. Because inevitably they’ll say, well they’ve got a worse yard than we have. I don’t know if you get that too. So, we try to indicate to everybody that we feel in a specific area. In this area, if I lived out there I’d have some concerns. But again, so many people have moved out in the country in the last 4-5 years that aren’t used to seeing this, where I lived in the country for 20 years and I just drive by and don’t think about it.

Neuzil: Maybe something in regards to maybe some fencing requirements could resolve some of this maybe...

Dvorak: Well, our requirements are pretty restrictive on front yards. That’s where we get most of the complaints….

Thompson: Well it says one of these old cars is near the road, 6 feet of the road, isn’t that in the roadway?

Dvorak: That one I will talk to Secondary Roads about because I was not aware of that until I went down there and yes, it is in the right-of-way. That one can be cleaned up right away.

Thompson: That will help.

Lehman: It gets back to the question, is it because abandoned cars, they forget about something they’re collecting. I don’t know if you reference in a letter that there are salvage yards that they’ll come out and get that car, maybe even pay them some dollars. Any reference to the County Cleanup that Johnson County has twice a year if it’s junky. There’s ways for them to really cut their costs, but it still takes their effort. Sometimes it needs somebody to push you to get what they want to do anyway, but have to prioritize it.

Dvorak: The one I worked on last month, the guy said, well my wife’s been after me for a year to clean this mess up, so thank you. I’ve been wanting to do it and now you’ve encouraged me and that’s what you’re saying.

Neuzil: Right, but this seems like there could be some options in regards to fronts of yards, fencing, potentially even the number of abandoned vehicles.

Stutsman: Well you can’t require somebody to do that though, unless we have an ordinance, right?

Dvorak: Yes.

Neuzil: Well that’s some of the options I think I’d like to...

Dvorak: We look at that when we...

Neuzil: Yes.

Dvorak: Again we sit down and discuss it but we want to be real careful in putting up fences that can create a visual obstacle on the roadway. We discuss things with them, we talk about every avenue and we put the burden on them to tell us how they would like to clean it up. I never put the time limits on them other than the initial letter. He says it’s going to take 6 months, fine, you said 6 months, you’ll get it done.

Stutsman: I think earlier, you brought up a good point too that I think people have to realize that as we see more and more people move out to the rural areas, I think they want to have urban expectations in a rural area. I think we have to take that into consideration too, that rural lifestyles are sometimes very different than what you see in urban areas. You have to be willing to accept that too when you move out.

Dvorak: Agreed.

Neuzil: If this area’s like in an area within, say, 2 miles of the city, and things of that nature, do we have any different rules with the city at this point?

Dvorak: It’s our call.

Neuzil: It’s our call.

Flora: But screening something off if it’s truly a health nuisance isn’t going to help so we don’t want to replace just a visual barrier for something that truly is a health nuisance. We want to get those things cleaned up.

Neuzil: Yes. I’m talking more about the junky yards more than the…

Flora: Yes.

Thompson: Do junk cars harbor rats and stuff?

Flora: Well if they’re open, you know if the windows are broken out and that sort of thing. But we’ve also had complaints about rats, rat harborage along the river. So you’ve got to take into consideration the natural environment that you might expect. But you don’t want to have an attractant to rats. You don’t want to harbor them in a car or a house that has windows broken out and that sort of thing.

Stutsman: By the same token, every outbuilding on a farm has rats in it too, you know so rats are going to go where there’s shelter.

Flora: Right.

Stutsman: Doesn’t have to be a car.

Flora: Have to use common sense.

Lehman: OK, well I guess I hear sentiment to…

Stutsman: Are we giving them direction to (inaudible) write an ordinance?

Assistant County Attorney Andy Chappell: Can I get some clarification, we did talk about the Board of Health when you have a health nuisance, if indeed there’s a process through which we go when we try to get those abated. That’s a very specific thing and I don’t know that that’s specifically in this case with the car that we’re talking about. Rick also mentioned the fact that has a basis as a factor of zoning. You can’t have a junkyard in just any old place; there are some zoning restrictions. He also noted that junkyards are a little different than just like he put it pretty well, a junky yard. A junkyard you have to prove under our definition of a junkyard that’s in our ordinance they have to prove somehow that there’s some sort of business going on, that there’s some sort of exchange going with the junk. It’s not just cars sitting there. I guess if there’s an ordinance you want me to look at, that’s fine, or if you’re directing me to attempt to draft an ordinance to get rid of junk cars I’ll do that, but I haven’t heard that.

Stutsman: I don’t think so….

Chappell: I just want to be clear on…

Neuzil: I don’t think we’re there yet.

Thompson: I would rather follow the current procedure.

Stutsman: Yes.

Chappell: And the process that I think Rick has described and he can correct me, I think is just strictly voluntary. You, Carol, asked what’s the time frame after you send out these letters. Technically there would be no time frame, because we had no enforcement measure while we’re doing this, asking people voluntarily to clean up their yard.

Thompson: But you’d know; if you went back and looked in four weeks, you’d know whether they’d done anything.

Chappell: You’d know whether they’d done anything but if they haven’t, the real question is do we have any power to make them do anything. I think what Rick is doing, and he’s had a lot of success with it in the past, he’s writing people voluntarily sort of acting as a mediary, saying we the County have received complaints about your property and these things, could you contact us to see if we can’t discuss how this could be cleaned up. If they call Rick and Rick, will you correct me if I’m wrong here, they call you and say I’ve got a bunch of junk cars out there, I plan on leaving them sit and my neighbors can go take a flying leap. Unless we have an ordinance to force them to do something, or they pose a health hazard or in some other way create a nuisance under the State Code, then Pat is stuck.

Dvorak: We do, as Andy mentioned, we try to work voluntarily as we do on every violation that we get, or complaint that we get. But if we were...push come to shove, I think we could probably, through the work of the Health Department and through our office. Because there’s always something else out there, there’s abandoned batteries, there’s antifreeze or there’s transmission fluid. There are other things out there. In fact we had the major case down here where people were burying batteries. We can bring the DNR in on things like that. So, if push came to shove and not in every case, but in some cases, I think we could prosecute somebody, we’ve just not chosen to. Because it’s difficult. It’s not an easy process.

Chappell: But Rick you are talking about, when you say prosecute them you mean under some other ordinance, like a health…

Dvorak: Right.

Lehman: I’m not hearing a consensus to draft an ordinance. But I’m hearing something that Rick has been basically taking care of these that we’ve passed on to him, Kot with the Health Department has been getting some. Do we want to continue that way or do we want to have them sit down and maybe collaborate a letter, a form letter even, that will be sent out to these people that we do get complaints about?

Dvorak: We do that now.

Lehman: OK.

Dvorak: We do have a standardized, pretty much standardized. Every place is a little more unique.

Stutsman: Basically, I think we want to continue with what we currently have in place. If it continues to be a problem, revisit an ordinance, but I don’t hear the majority for…

Lehman: Yes, I don’t either, although Kot says you may get 5 complaints and hopefully resolve them, but if I’m one of the people making the complaint, it’s a big thing to me, like Rick had said.

Thompson: I wouldn’t really be interested in an ordinance until I heard that there were 20 people a year who were telling you to take a flying leap.

Neuzil: That’s what I was kind of coming at too, is that as our County changes, I think we’re probably going to start to hear more. When that does take place then some of the alternatives of, that should be…

Thompson: It seems like it’s not ever a very good idea to just make an ordinance for one situation.

Stutsman: Well and quite frankly, I see our County changing more to being higher expectations about rural living. I can see us having fewer of these places because there’s peer pressure. You don’t want to be the only junk place on the block. Another point too is that sometimes I think it’s very easy to have another rule and another regulation and government you take care of the problem. Sometimes I think just a visit with your neighbor and saying you know, this really is not best. Sometimes that doesn’t work, I agree that it doesn’t always work, but I would rather take the approach we’re taking right now than putting another rule on the book.

Harney: I don’t think you’ll find an argument from me…

Thompson: Our correspondents want some answers. Are you going to answer them or do you want us to answer?

Dvorak: Let me work with Kot on that and I’ll probably… Let me work with Kot on that and get one of their inspectors and…

Lehman: The letter is addressed to the Board so we would like to…

Thompson: If you could let us know.

Dvorak: And we’ll get you something next week or so. OK?

Lehman: OK.

Dvorak: Yes. We didn’t put in complaints in our annual report, maybe I should have.

Stutsman: Well maybe you should because if it gets to be more of an issue, we might have to revisit it.

Dvorak: I think that’s a good, and that’s something that we’ve never done but maybe at a point in time that we could start doing it. We get a lot of complaints but we handle them.

Stutsman: Kinds of complaints…

Flora: We also ask people when they call in or if it’s just a casual conversation would you like to lodge a complaint. Because we want to know if they’re serious enough about it to be lodging a complaint rather than just blowing off steam. Because there are those situations where it’s a neighborhood feud and, really, you have to dig pretty deep to come up with a public health nuisance to justify ordering cleanup.

Harney: Well, you run into a problem too of what is farm clutter and what is junk out there. A lot of farmers reuse it. Putting the things like that and you really have to be careful how far you go with it.

Stutsman: Oh, you can get really offended.

Dvorak: We very seldom, our office very seldom tries to go after a farmer on their stuff. Because if they’re out in the middle of a 160 acres, the public health nuisance is to themselves. That’s my example and the (inaudible) should be more….

Flora: It depends on what it is.

Dvorak: Yes.

Stutsman: You could even have disagreement between husband and wife about what’s junk.

Dvorak: We get that a lot.

Flora: That’s true.

Lehman: Has a spouse turned another spouse in?

Dvorak: We’ll get back to you.

Lehman: Thank you Kot, Rick, and Andy.

Lehman: Minutes received from Johnson County Empowerment Area Board for February 1st, 2001 those have been circulated. Now we’re down to reports and inquiries, who would like to start?

Thompson: I’ll start.

Lehman: OK, Carol.

Thompson: We’ve been informally notified by Heritage Agency on Aging, and they will be following this up with a letter which we should maybe get today. The budget allowance that they made for the Senior Dining this year is $345,640 which is significantly less than we had last year.

Stutsman: Is this going to have, are we going to have to put this on the agenda, how we’re going to deal with it?

Thompson: I think we probably are. The other change that we’ve been hearing about with Heritage is, in the past, the Heritage Agency on Aging has a task force in Johnson County which has a set of bylaws. Under those bylaws, the County Board, that’s us, appoints the members of the Heritage task force. There’s a proposal now to change the bylaws so that the Kirkwood Board will appoint the task force members. The reasoning of course is that it’s a Kirkwood agency; Kirkwood is the sponsoring body for the Heritage Agency, and therefore it’s within their purview rather than ours to appoint those Board members. I would anticipate that this will be somewhat controversial, so I just thought I’d give everybody a heads up about that. The Senior Center had its retreat this week.

Stutsman: Carol, going back to that. I’ve been getting some calls on that. Are we going to put that on the agenda to discuss?

Thompson: Well it’s interesting because it’s time now to be making those appointments and the bylaws haven’t been changed. So I would anticipate that we’ll have to be notified about the bylaw change before anything can happen. Bob Welsh is already gone, but the Heritage people seem to think that the Heritage task force body can approve the different bylaws. So it’s possible that that’s going to be on next month’s agenda for the task force to approve the bylaws. I don’t know that that would ever come to us because it’s their bylaws that say that we appoint. So I don’t know but I’m sure (inaudible).

Stutsman: It’s kind of out of our hands.

Thompson: Yes. Then the Senior Center had its retreat on Saturday and discussed a number of things. I think the group agreed that the major thrust for this year should be the accreditation, finishing that up, since we’ve gotten a good start on it in the last year. There was also a lot of discussion about the Council of Elders, which Al Monsanto alluded to. They also have a set of bylaws which says that when the body falls below a certain number of people, it becomes obsolete, or it ceases to exist. This happened last fall. So that and the accreditation meetings, caused the Commission to get thinking about another way to receive input from participants in the Center. To me, that’s the overriding thing, is they need an effective way to get input from people. The Council of Elders worked for a number of years; it doesn’t work now and they have proposed a different way to do it, which consists of 3 committees, which would have a more focused task. I don’t know if this is going to work. The thing that’s of concern to me is that the committee members would be appointed by the Commission rather than elected or appointed externally. So I think that will make a difference to how the Center runs. Then the other thing was to revisit the 28E and the letters here, it’s circulating around, we’re going to have to put that on the agenda. We should probably do it when Pat White’s here because I would guess he has some strong feelings about this. The goal of putting it on the agenda seems to be to lessen the degree of partnership and make the Senior Dining program be of the same status of the other agencies that use the building. To me, that abrogates the 28E and so that’s a big issue for us. The only other thing that I had to mention was the yesterday Pat and I met with the Jail Statistics Committee. We had a really good meeting, I thought. They’ve set up a new database using the jail statistics for the complete year last year, everybody who was in the jail even one day is on the list. And we identified some people that may have been left off and they’re looking into getting them on there. I think we all agree now that we have a database that’s going to produce accurate statistics for us.

Neuzil: Could you get that on an agenda item maybe next week or so? We can kind of have a real good discussion on (inaudible).

Thompson: One thing we talked about was, we’re going to have another meeting in a week or so and they’re going to bring in some printouts of the database. After that we thought maybe it would be a good idea to put it on the agenda for the next Joint Cities meeting and take the statistics for each city so that they can look at it and we can ask them to consider their public policy and maybe identify some areas where we can work in partnership to do different alternative methods.

Neuzil: Excellent.

Stutsman: When is that next Joint Cities Meeting?

Peters: Hasn’t been set. Basically what happened, was at the last Joint large city/county/school board meeting a date for the next meeting was not set. It is the Board of Supervisors’ turn to host the next meeting, so I would think as soon as there’s some agenda items, I’ve had no correspondence at all from anybody requesting…

Thompson: Well I think it’s time for, and it would be a fairly lengthy agenda item so we probably should limit the (inaudible).

Stutsman: And there’s some things that I’d like to put on, so I wonder if we could put that on next Thursday to discuss when we’re going to discuss that.

Peters: I think everybody’s been so busy with budgets; that’s the primary…

Lehman: OK, thanks Carol. Pat?

Harney: Friday the 23rd, Sally and I attended the Chamber Ag meeting at the Montgomery Hall. There was a presentation given down there by the Army Corps of Engineers on the lock and dam system on the Mississippi and the studies that they are doing down there. There are several things that they are looking at when they give the values of the lock and dam systems and all that. They’re looking at enlarging the locks and see if they can’t perhaps move some of the barges through quicker instead of 600 feet, maybe moving it up to 1,200 feet with a little additional work and construction. It would still take a lot, but they think they could move the merchandise up and down the river a lot quicker and the grain if they had that set up to go a little larger. They’re also looking at the long-term economic justification for such an upgrade, compared to what the cost would be and the benefits. They’re looking at the, I think they said they would expect something like 290 million dollar return by 2050 if they did do some upgrades down there. There’s a lot of discrepancies in discussion about what the value of upgrading that is and what damage it may or may not do to the Mississippi River and the waterways and not only the Mississippi, it’s the waterway through Illinois as well, because they’re used a lot in there for grain as well. So there was a lot of good information passed out at that meeting, at least I thought there was. I’m sure Sally…

Stutsman: Well and I was just going to say too Pat, I think that Ag committee has done a great job of bringing some real good programs that are just real informational. Because that’s why I went, is I don’t understand all that the Corps does. It was very, very informative.

Harney: Sally and I met Tuesday with the SEATS Director, and had a good discussion about how their effective business is going as far as the fuel cost, how it’s affecting the transportation. She’s having some problems with the cost of fuel as well as vehicle maintenance and we kind of went over those and she’s working on that. Tuesday night, I went to Williamsburg; it was the Iowa Valley Resource Conservation and Development meeting out there. A lot of their agenda is on the land stewardship. It’s all federally funded, and they’re doing a lot throughout the United States. Iowa is probably the leader. Between Iowa and Minnesota they have the majority of the counties that belong to this stewardship program. They do a lot for the communities, on conservation as well as working with even playgrounds. They help develop playgrounds and things like that. It’s all federal dollars that are put forth. They’re working a lot right now on a riverfront project over at Marengo and again it’s conservation and cleaning up the riverfront and doing some work there. They also mentioned they’re going to have a regional meeting in Cedar Rapids which is coming up on the 27th, 28th, and 29th at the Crown Plaza. To give you an idea how big that is, there’s going to be 7 states represented there. Iowa is sponsoring it this year, so they’re going to have quite a turnout. They’re going to have like 5 different tours that are going to go different places in Iowa, the Amanas and just different projects that’s going on as far as conservation things to look at. They also mentioned that, and I’ve kind of heard about this and never paid much attention to it before. They reminded people that right here at the Museum of Art, right next to Hancher, south of Hancher, that there’s a display there, that there’s some construction going on in Washington D.C. It’s about Native American heritage, a lot of paintings and photos and things on display down there and it’s a rare opportunity for that to be in the Midwest because it basically stays in Washington D.C. and the only reason it was taken away from there was because of the construction so it was put on loan here. So if people have the opportunity, it would certainly be worth going to see. As Carol said, we met with the Sheriff’s Department and Pat White on the jail issues. I went to a meeting last night down at the Sheriff’s Department again and that was on emergency management. At that time the Sheriff told me that he had contact with the 6th Judicial District and he had assigned one of his staff members to work with them to do some research on the health issues in the jail and that they may be able to do something. So that’s moving along as well. Other than that, I think that's pretty much it. The Emergency Management meeting they are going to be coordinating a tornado spotter program, training people on how to spot tornadoes and so forth, which is going to be the 21st of March at Montgomery Hall.

Lehman: OK. Thanks Pat.

Stutsman: Pat does such a good job with reports. It’s a hard act to follow. I’ll give it a try. I attended a MECCA board meeting and about the only thing significant to report to the Board with that meeting is that they are going through a process of going through their bylaws so they’re going to be making some changes there. I’m one of those rare people; I enjoy going through bylaws. Isn’t that just nuts? I don’t know why it is, but anyway, these are good bylaws. I don’t know where they got the template for it, but they cover everything. The other thing I wanted to mention with Pat, that meeting with the SEATS Director, a couple things is that Lisa will be meeting with Elaine Sweet and Bill Gorman to begin looking at the Systems contract and working out some of the details on that. Lisa also has put together an RFP for maintenance for the SEATS Department. It is at the County Attorney’s Office and hopefully she can get that back so that she can have some kind of maintenance agreement in place by July 1. That’s it.

Lehman: OK, thank you. Hear from our frequent flyer, Terrence?

Neuzil: Yes, that’s right. Well, earlier this week I had an opportunity to go to Hiawatha to check out, as I sit on the HACAP Board of Directors, and I’m always enlightened by all the different programs that are out there that do provide assistance and I’m real pleased that we have such a strong one in our area with HACAP. During that meeting, I was selected to join a team of 3 others, we will be going to Washington D.C. in May to work on energy assistance and weatherization along with workforce development issues. A new issue, or an issue that’s going to be fairly strong in this administration with our new president has to do with faith-based legislation and the effects it will have on our government agencies. So I’ll be doing that in early May. Speaking of Washington D.C., just got back on Tuesday. I was honored through the fine members of our Board to join a delegation of leaders through the Iowa City and Cedar Rapids Chambers in Washington D.C., Monday and Tuesday. Those attending included individuals like Iowa City Mayor Ernie Lehman, Coralville Mayor Jim Fausett, Coralville Councilor Henry Herwig was also there, City Planner Kelly Hayworth, there was a number of University of Iowa officials, Cedar Rapids officials as well including Linn County Supervisor Lu Barron. Our team brought to the table many issues, including work force development and immigration. We discussed a number of transportation issues, including funding. An example in our area, funding for a bridge overpass over Highway 218 through, this would be in conjunction with Deer Creek Road, through the study from the Johnson County Council of Governments with the Surface Transportation Plan. We discussed brown fields; these are contaminated sites like former industrial sites or, say, a landfill. We have a couple that have been identified in our area, one in Iowa City and one in Coralville. Hopefully going to get some Federal assistance for cleanup there. We have also had an opportunity to discuss some light railway, a study to be done between North Liberty and Iowa City that would provide with the use of the Crandic Railway, potentially a trolley system or a small train system that would go between those cities through Coralville. Some other things we discussed included Amtrak and the potential of Amtrak coming through Johnson County and through the Quad Cities through our area, on its way to Des Moines and Omaha. We discussed some other things, including a lot of University of Iowa initiatives: education K-12, disabled students funding, Kirkwood, the Eastern Iowa Airport, so it was pretty intense. It was a lot of information and I really want to say kudos to our Senators, Senator Harkin and Senator Grassley, who took a large amount of time out of their schedule to meet with us along with Congressman Leach and Congressman Ganske, who has a lot of interest now in our area as he’ll be making some future plans of his own. I also want to say kind of a thank you to Richard Bender from Senator Harkin’s office and John Conrad of Senator Grassley’s office. These are, if you will, the 2 players that the top officials for their staff, who probably spent maybe, probably over 10 hours with us, which is just an unbelievable amount of time. It kind of shows you the kind of credibility and the kind of seriousness they take on behalf of our leadership through Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. I just wanted to say I’m happy to be able to represent Johnson County and to provide the necessary presence and also future influence in bringing federal money and assistance to our area. I hope that the Board will continue to allow me to go and help represent Johnson County. So again, I want to say thanks to the Board for that opportunity. I think it was very effective and I believe that we’re going to see significant funding to our area because of that meeting. With that I just want to add that I’m going to have another Hawkeye Friday listening post on March 2nd, that would be tomorrow, Friday. It will be held here at the Johnson County Supervisors in the conference room. Then on March 9, I’ll be at the Nickelodeon Restaurant and Bar on the Coralville strip. With that, thank you very much.

Lehman: Thank you, Terrence. I guess I spent quite a bit of time, along with Carol Thompson, to learn this energy management system. I don’t think we’re in line for an honorary degree in mechanical or electrical…

Stutsman: Everything you wanted to know…

Lehman: Right. But with that we’re looking forward to our second round of interviews for Facilities Plant Manager, tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll have a candidate come out of that. Also, last week we had announced the township trustee orientation meeting was tentatively set for March 7th and Carol had informed me that their handbooks have not been printed yet, so we’re going to put that on hold and schedule that for a future date. I guess that’s all I have, any reports. Thank you, public hearing for our budget for 2002 will be held March 6, here in the Boardroom at 5:30. So anyone interested in attending and asking questions, we will be doing a presentation, we’ll try to keep it fairly simple, short for information and then open it up for questions and inquiries from the public. So I’m sure there’s more on that. If the public has any inquiries or reports?

Welsh: Real quick, three things. One, as Carol mentioned, at some time, you’re probably going to need to put on as an agenda item looking at Heritage’s response to several things. In relation to the Jail, I’m glad of the progress that’s being made. I still would urge you to think about scheduling a time while you’re going through that process of the community bylaws to involve and bring more people to the table to look at other possible alternatives. The last thing that I’ll mention that I hope you will do something now that I think about it, is Alan (inaudible) parking proposal that will be going to the City Council. There is one issue that does directly affect the Nutrition Program, which is your program, and that’s the proposal for the 50 parking spaces at the ramp. So the fact of the matter is nobody knows how that’s going to work. I guess what I would hope is that when the City Council discusses that, they would agree that those 50 and 11 should be flexible depending upon the experience and the demand. I think they would be encouraged to do that if you as a Board of Supervisors would correspond to them to that effect. So I don’t know whether you want to consider maybe putting on your agenda next week the possible response to the City on that. But I think that is a very critical thing for your Nutrition Program.

Lehman: Kind of visit amongst ourselves on that see what… Thank you Bob. Anyone else have something they’d like to mention or report, inquire? If not, I believe we stand adjourned.

Adjourned at 12:35 p.m.

Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor

By Casie Parkins, Recording Secretary