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

MARCH 29, 2001

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chairperson Lehman called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 9:43 a.m. Members present were: Pat Harney, Mike Lehman, Terrence Neuzil; absent: Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson.

COUNTY ENGINEER MIKE GARDNER: BITUMINOUS RESURFACING (OIL CONTRACT); QUOTES RECEIVED FOR APPLICATION OF CALCIUM CHLORIDE TO ROADS IN THE PROGRAM; FY 2002 SECONDARY ROADS BUDGET FOR SUBMITTAL TO THE IOWA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; RIGHT-OF-WAY ACQUISITION FOR GRADE, DRAIN, AND PAVE PROJECT ON MEHAFFEY BRIDGE ROAD (JOHNSON COUNTY PROJECT FM-C052(57)--55-52); AND RIGHT-OF-WAY ACQUISITION FOR CULVERT REPLACEMENT PROJECT ON WAPELLO AVENUE (JOHNSON COUNTY PROJECT L-U-12-1) BITUMINOUS RESURFACING (OIL CONTRACT); QUOTES RECEIVED FOR APPLICATION OF CALCIUM CHLORIDE TO ROADS IN THE PROGRAM; FY 2002 SECONDARY ROADS BUDGET FOR SUBMITTAL TO THE IOWA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; RIGHT-OF-WAY ACQUISITION FOR GRADE, DRAIN, AND PAVE PROJECT ON MEHAFFEY BRIDGE ROAD (JOHNSON COUNTY PROJECT FM-C052(57)--55-52); AND RIGHT-OF-WAY ACQUISITION FOR CULVERT REPLACEMENT PROJECT ON WAPELLO AVENUE (JOHNSON COUNTY PROJECT L-U-12-1)

Lehman: Business from the County Engineer, Mike Gardner.

County Engineer Mike Gardner: Good morning.

Lehman: Good morning, Mike.

Neuzil: Good morning.

Harney: Good morning, Mike.

Gardner: The first item we have is our Oil Contract issue. It’s an annual event that we have to have a bid letting to do our maintenance on our oil road system throughout the County. We have approximately 130-140 miles of oil roads, and we do a bid letting to do the maintenance on that for the summer. This year, the quantities that we’re going to bid have been reduced as a result of some of the work that we’ve done in reducing the mileage of our oil roads out there. Over the past couple years, we’ve reduced it a little over 6 miles, and so I’m reducing the amount of work we’re doing by approximately 2 miles. Hopefully, that’ll be reflected in the overall cost of the program. What offsets that, of course, is the price of the oil that’s going to be bid this year, which we really don’t have any idea of where it’s going to come in. So far, nearly the entire system is embargoed, and we’re not seeing anything out of the ordinary at this point, but it’s still not done with the season yet, so…

Lehman: That’s the question I was going to have, was, how do you know how much you’re going to have to redo, until the embargo season and the damage is assessed?

Gardner: We work with averages. Basically, we try to replace approximately 1/3 of the system a year, not anything in long stretches, but just where the damage has occurred. And that seems to keep us ahead of the game, or at least not losing any ground in it, so that way (inaudible)…

Lehman: So we’d have some flexibility to take care of, maybe, an area that had severe damage, and maybe postpone, or you may have to do a little bit more than you intended.

Gardner: That’s right, and if the prices come in real high, we may have to cut back on the amount of work we’re going to do this year, just to stay within budget.

Lehman: This bid, is this, like, per foot per mile, so you have some flexibility if you need to add onto…

Gardner: It’s bid in gallons of oil and tons of chips, so we can convert that into linear feet and work that way, or square yards.

Lehman: This spring, like the seed that was bid for roadsides, it locks the bidder in (inaudible)?

Gardner: Right. The unit price is what we’re working for, is we get that so that we actually pay for the total amount of work that we actually do on the roads.

Lehman: OK.

Gardner: And if it’s higher or lower, we can adjust for that.

Lehman: OK. The application is, this is all outside work?

Gardner: That’s correct, right.

Lehman: I know years ago, I think the County did its own…

Gardner: Yes, we provided…years ago, well up until about 1995, we actually provided the trucks and the chips, and the contractor applied the oil, and then our crews applied the chips. And we found that it’s been pretty much an even tradeoff, just to let the whole thing. Then, we provided traffic control at that time, and this now takes away some of the liability for the County. They provide traffic control and the whole ball of wax.

Lehman: OK. Any questions for Mike? I know one of your policies has been not to add to the oil chip roads; we’d rather replace them, and not to turn any more gravel roads into chip seal. You’d rather see money put towards major reconstructions, overall.

Gardner: That’s correct. The maintenance on this is just very, very expensive, for this type of road.

Lehman: OK. I guess that goes along with why some chip seal roads were turned back to gravel, and where traffic merits, they’ve treated with calcium chloride.

Gardner: Right. This has been on ongoing process. Back at the peak, Johnson County had over 300 miles of oil, and now we’re down to between 130-140 miles in the system. So we’re making progress.

Lehman: Does this bid also take into effect people that have chip seal in front of their homes, where the rest of the road may be gravel?

Gardner: No, this does not. That is done on an individual basis; they actually contract with the contractor to do the work in front of their own residence.

Lehman: Do you publicize that, to let people know there are certain times of the year, and who to contact?

Gardner: Yes. Anybody who’s been in the program with that gets a letter, and we actually go out an inspect each site each year to see if they need to do some work on it this year, or not, and they get letters. It’s also put out in our newsletter that we put out twice a year, this one that’s coming up, probably in April it’ll get sent out, and it’ll address that issue as well.

Lehman: OK.

Gardner: So I’ll have this on the agenda then, next week, to set the date of the letting and authorize the Auditor to publish a notice to bidders.

Lehman: OK. All right. Next item was quotes received for application of calcium chloride to roads in the program. By "in the program," that refers to traffic counts that were established, and roads that qualify for the calcium chloride due to a certain amount of traffic and then also to spot areas that meet criteria that Mike had set up, as far as bridges, curves, and other criteria that merited calcium chloride to regulate dust.

Gardner: Right. This is the safety program that was adopted last year by the Board, and the threshold was set at 150 vehicles, was where we would spot-treat in front of driveways, bridge approaches, curves and hills where sight distance is limited, intersections, that type of thing. And so we sent out for quotes to do this program. This year we received back 2 quotes, and one supplier that chose not to bid this year. The low bidder was Binns and Stevens out of Oskaloosa, IA, who was actually did the work for us last year as well. His quote was 49.5 cents a gallon, and we estimate approximately 204,000 gallon, which makes it just under $101,000 for that. There’s also a minor item where we use calcium chloride… We have a tank there in the yard where we take delivery on some, so we’re able to mix it with some rock to go patch these roads on an interim basis when they start to pothole and so forth. We also use it as a de-icer sometimes in the winter, for ice control on the road. That they did at 52 cents a gallon, and that was another $1,300, approximately.

Lehman: That’s a pretty small increase, in light of the fuel prices.

Gardner: Yes, it was. It was. I also have shown on the sheet there what we paid the 2 prior years, and so it is up quite a bit from that, but, as you say, from last year there’s not much of an increase.

Lehman: OK. So we’ll have this on for approval, if so merits, next week?

Gardner: Yes.

Lehman: I talked to one of your maintenance road people and he said they were out, able to grade some of the calcium chloride treated roads, they had thawed out enough, and there enough moisture yesterday, they were trying to hit some of those roads. We’ve had a lot of requests from people, and I know your hands are kind of tied because of the weather of actually trying to grade those roads.

Gardner: Yes. We’re out right now trying to do a little prep work on these, get ahead of the game on some of these roads so that when the time comes, there won’t be a big delay then, either. The problem is, this time of year, you’re hoping that the winter is over, but if you spot-rock it, it doesn’t get knit in, and so the first time you get a snow and have to plow it, then the rock ends up in the ditch; it never gets put down. So there’s a little tradeoff there; you don’t want to do a lot of it, but you’re trying to put Band-Aids on things out there in the interim.

Neuzil: As far as your calcium chloride, when do you start spot treating?

Gardner: For this program?

Neuzil: Yes.

Gardner: The application is twice a year, and it’s typically been around Memorial Day and around Labor Day. Last year, we had to go earlier, just because of the conditions that came up out there, so we had to put it in a little earlier, both applications, actually.

Neuzil: So in the spot treatment in front of the homes, intersections, bridges, that’s done through the County… People don’t pay for that, if it’s over 150 cars on a gravel road?

Gardner: That’s correct.

Neuzil: I’ve been getting a lot of calls in regards to the…as far as dust. It’s a pretty common question, and maybe if you could send over kind of a refresher on what the limits are, so that I’m able… So that my call doesn’t go to you.

Gardner: Sure. Sure, that’s not a problem at all.

Neuzil: Thank you.

Gardner: The other item that I guess we need to touch on here was, there was a question the last time we were in about Sioux Avenue and what we wanted to do with that, and we were going to wait until the bids came in. So I’ve got a sheet here that breaks that one down. Sioux Avenue, last year, between Highway 6 and Napoleon was done in accordance with the safety program, in front of houses, bridges, and so forth. Due to it being used as a route to the soccer fields, there was some discussion on where we wanted to do it as a part of the safety program, or if we wanted to do it solid. So here are the numbers for that. For 2 applications on Sioux Avenue alone, the difference between doing it as part of the safety program, spot treating it, and doing it solid would be approximately $2,400. Now, if you wanted to go ahead and do the solid treatment on into the entrance to the soccer park, it would be another $3,166, or a total of $5,564 difference from what we did last year. The total cost from Highway 6 to the soccer park entrance would be $8,350.

Lehman: A little history on that. In the years past, that has been done solid on Sioux Avenue, but not Napoleon. Last year, when instituting this road safety policy, there wasn’t enough traffic on Sioux Avenue to merit it, but we did have criteria to consider as far as parks, and things like that. We had on our joint discussion with the schools, and the cities, about this, and I guess Iowa City felt that they provide 2 dust-free services, to the north entrance to the soccer fields, and the one coming off Sand Road. They felt that was adequate. We got inquiries from individuals who live out on Sioux and Napoleon, which is about 18 residents; we tried to explain to them that there was actually more traffic during the week than on the weekends, it was just that they were home to see it on weekends. There’s a lot of shortcut people taking Sioux Avenue to get to the eastern side of Iowa City for work during the day, and those people may live out there on Sioux, but they’re also gone to work, don’t see that. They see the more compressed time on the weekends. Mike explained that to us, not necessarily to their liking, but it fell in our policy, when we asked Secondary Roads to look at possible costs of doing that solid down there. So, this is something we need to look at, and decide here whether…before Mike makes a decision on how much material he’s going to need there, if he wants to spend that kind of money.

Neuzil: We have other situations like this, where, there’s just certain times of the year where this road, I use that road as well, where I go to work, my other job, and there’s no doubt on the weekends, it’s very dusty. That’s because that’s when people have the soccer games, and how do we… There are other situations like that, where there’s just certain times of the year, certain times of the week, in which traffic is obviously much higher.

Gardner: I can’t think of anything similar to that, where it’s regular. You’re going to have auctions, or graduation parties, or those types of things, but the closest thing to compare it to would be the area up around the reservoir. In the summer or during hunting season, different areas of that would have more traffic generating more dust. The Board actually chose last year, there was a section, a couple of sections on Amana Road that didn’t meet the threshold that it would have fallen into this, at the minimum level, to do the spot treatment. They chose to go ahead and spot-treat the entire length of Amana Road, because the policy does say roads serving recreational areas, state parks, county parks, that type of thing, they can do that. And they also did it on 140th Street Sandy Beach, which runs near the reservoir there as well. It was the same situation as Amana Road, just it didn’t quite reach the criteria for the spot treatment on the entire length, but they chose to do the entire length of it.

Lehman: The only thing we run into is people live out there are not necessarily the ones causing the dust, but they’re impacted by it, by the traffic that uses those roads.

Neuzil: Right, and there’s a lot of people on the east side of Iowa City that use that road. If you were coming on the east side using Scott Boulevard, it’s quicker to use Sioux Avenue to Napoleon to the soccer field than it is to go around, and that’s why it’s used more. So we just want to make sure that that area is safe out there; that’s what this is all about.

Gardner: It did fall into the safety program and was treated on a spot basis, and now it’s just a matter of deciding whether we want to go ahead and do it on a solid…

Lehman: Maybe next week, or maybe before that, you might get the numbers to us of the road counts, maybe help us make a decision of your latest road count out there. I know it’s somewhat skewed because of the detour onto Sand Road, but I think maybe you have numbers previous to that.

Gardner: Yes. I’ve got the ones that we did last year during soccer season. Like you said, they may have been impacted by the detour, to a certain extent.

Lehman: I’ve (inaudible) this discussed 3 times at the city and schools joint meeting. Iowa City felt they’d justified them doing participation in 2 of the 3 routes, and people have the choice to make that, but, like I said, the people that live out there don’t have a choice.

Neuzil: Maybe it’s something that we could come up with a compromise, in which we could maybe put one full application down at the beginning of the soccer season, if you will, and then… Later in the year, I don’t think those fields are used as much. Maybe look at the timing of when those soccer games take place. That might have some impact as well.

Lehman: Well, they do have a spring and fall season.

Neuzil: Do they.

Lehman: It kind of falls (inaudible).

Neuzil: So it does kind of fall in, right in there. OK.

Lehman: Maybe if you could those numbers to us ahead of time, we’d have a chance to digest them just a little bit, because this is a decision we will have to make.

Neuzil: Napoleon was done last year, was that more for the detour?

Gardner: Yes.

Neuzil: OK.

Gardner: Yes.

Neuzil: Of Sand Road. OK.

Lehman: Any other questions for Mike on that subject?

Harney: When you approached the city before for a cost share on that, was that just from Highway 6 to Napoleon, or was it for the entire road?

Lehman: I had talked to Mike and put numbers together, and I presented somewhat, pretty close to these figures to them. I don’t know if it was necessarily the dollar amount; I’m sure that was a little bit in the discussion, but it was more that they felt there were alternate sources for the people using that road. But our gist was that the residents that lived out there, and we’ve run into that in other areas, where a housing development is built, they drive by the existing homes on a gravel road and create more dust. We were concerned about the people that lived out there. We didn’t receive a lot of satisfaction from Iowa City, but their justification was people had another route to use. I don’t know what alternative methods we’d have to control traffic out there…

Neuzil: …besides encourage…that when they send out the soccer letters, of giving them a map and saying these are the routes without a lot of dust for their cars.

Gardner: The other option, I guess, would be having them close that south gate, that south entrance to the soccer field, and forcing the traffic to go in from the north.

Lehman: But that opens a new question, there, of Sycamore Street, chip sealed road, safety, all that traffic that way. No easy answer on this one…

Neuzil: And again, it comes back to, are there enough cars out there that yields not only a safety problem, obviously we know that we’re going to put spot treatments down, but if we have to do it on a bigger basis.

Lehman: One of the concerns is a lot of farm equipment uses that road, with dust, and people not familiar with following farm equipment, or seeing it, dust masking it, and having an accident, with a combination car and farm equipment. I don’t hear anybody suggesting a toll road. Not from me either. But it’s quite a dilemma. If we could have Mike get us the numbers ahead of time, so we can kind of digest that and be thinking about what we want to do, and justify expense if we want to go that route.

Gardner: OK.

Lehman: OK, we can move onto the next item, the Secondary Roads budget, Year 2002. You have a deadline, you need to submit this.

Gardner: Right, this is just the information that we printed (inaudible) budget for our department, and I’m required each year to submit it to the DOT on their form prior to April 15. So that’s what I’m doing today, is bringing it in and letting you take a look at it, so that next week (inaudible) you can authorize the chairperson to sign it for submittal by the 15th of April.

Lehman: Have there been any major changes that you’ve had to make since we’ve looked at it, as far as the funding, anything?

Gardner: No, nothing as far as that goes. The only item I’ve highlighted on there is the revenue/expense adjustment. This was something I guess I wasn’t aware of, and I…well, I had it on the agenda 2 weeks ago, that’s why I pulled it, to find out exactly what that was. I’ve spoken with Jeff and with Chris down in the Auditor’s Office, and they contacted the DOT, and the DOT said include it, or whatever. They didn’t really have a question about it, but I’ve highlighted it on here just to bring it to your attention, that is something that’s a little different than my original submittal.

Lehman: OK. It is similar to last year’s figure, apparently.

Gardner: The revenue expense adjustment? Is that what you’re…

Lehman: Yes.

Gardner: It was readjusted this year. I guess I wasn’t aware that it was done last year, either, but it was upped from $250,000 last year to a $650,000 re-estimate, and then $650,000 for this year as well.

Lehman: OK. But the end result are numbers you can live with, in your budget?

Gardner: Yes.

Lehman: OK. Just making us aware of it. We’ll see that next week, then, for…

Gardner: Yes…

Lehman: …formal.

Gardner: …on the formal.

Lehman: OK. Questions for Mike on that? Next, Discussion/Action Needed on Right-of-way Acquisitions.

Gardner: We’ve been in the last 2 or 3 weeks with similar items to this. These are just more right-of-way contracts, and mostly tenant contracts. Item D is for the Mehaffey Bridge Road Project between Sugar Bottom Road and Cottage Reserve, essentially. This is our re-grade and pave that’s going to take place this summer. I checked with Al this morning, and he tells me as far as he knows, this is the end of the right-of-way, on this project, for this year.

Lehman: OK. Questions for Mike on that? If not, then Right-of-way Acquisitions for Wapello Avenue.

Gardner: This is the same thing. These are all tenant contracts, and this is for the reinforced concrete box culvert that we’re going to be building down on Wapello Avenue, down by Lone Tree, this summer. These are the tenant contracts that should put a bow on this project as far as right-of-way goes as well.

Lehman: OK. So we’ll see this under formal next week, for approval?

Gardner: That’s right, for formal action, right.

Lehman: OK. Any questions for Mike now, or may have some next week. It’s fairly straightforward. OK. Have anything under other?

Gardner: OK.

Lehman: OK. I was going to ask you to maybe stay around for our public inquiries, because we’ve had some individuals ask about embargoes, and we can help clarify that, if you could.

Gardner: OK, certainly.

Lehman: Several people were going to come in and ask about that, so…

Gardner: OK.

Lehman: Thank you.

(Continued in Part 2)