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

APRIL 5, 2001

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chairperson Lehman called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 9:30 a.m. Members present were: Pat Harney, Mike Lehman, Terrence Neuzil, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson.

DISCUSSION ON THE FOLLOWING PROPERTIES: MALL DRIVE, THE COURTHOUSE, AND THE COUNTY FARM

Lehman: First item we have there is Discussion Action Needed on the following properties of Mall Drive, the Courthouse and the County Farm. I think this is something that the Space Needs Committee had discussed and wanted to update the public as well as the Board. Carol?

Thompson: Well, there have been some developments. Should we do them one at a time?

Lehman: Yes.

Thompson: On the Mall Drive property, when we bought that property our architect notified us that it wouldn’t accommodate a basement very easily and it wouldn’t accommodate the size of building plus the parking we needed without pretty much a stretch. It wouldn’t give us much room for expansion later. So, we knew that if we were to build a building on that property, we would have to acquire more land. There is some adjacent land that has now become available. Then, since we’ve changed Board members, it’s quite clear that there is also some thought that perhaps we should focus our attention on this area here and try to accommodate all of our County Space Needs on a campus in this location. So, I think we need to decide whether to continue our plan for Mall Drive and acquire more property in order to make that work, or sell the Mall Drive property and focus our efforts down here. To me, while there are many possible solutions to this, those are the 2 that we need to choose between.

Lehman: Would anybody else like to weigh in an opinion or discussion or just different choices might be available?

Thompson: I think Cheryl will want to.

Lehman: Yes, Cheryl Whitney from Human Services.

Department of Human Services Area Administrator Cheryl Whitney: I’d just like to share some information with you.

Lehman: Great.

Whitney: I know this has been a very difficult thing for the Board and there are a lot of resources involved. I want always to emphasize our need for making a decision about the space and need to move forward with this because our current space situation is not adequate. I know there are lots of things to consider when you make a decision. I just tried to put some facts together that I thought would be helpful. DHS has 29 employees at Governor Street and 17 at Eastdale. There are 23 MH/DD staff at Governor Street. Then, Johnson County Social Services, including General Assistance, there are 8 at Governor Street. Then, the 2 locations and the date, we’ve been at 911 N. Governor since 1974 and the Eastdale since August 1, 1999.

Stutsman: That Eastdale location has worked out?

Whitney: It has. There are many advantages to that. We only have about 3,100 square feet there, which for 17 employees is not very much. But, because of that space, we’re able to use a conference room at Workforce Development. We have a small waiting area because of the space outside where people can sit. So, it has worked. The location I think is great.

Stutsman: I wanted to ask you, too, about Workforce Development. There were some plans in the legislature to start cutting some of those offices, the Iowa City office?

Whitney: I don’t think the Iowa City office.

Stutsman: OK.

Whitney: They send staff to some of the smaller counties.

Neuzil: I think the Iowa City could be.

Whitney: Do you?

Neuzil: Potentially, where we would have to go through Cedar Rapids for our resources for that, if it came to that point with the legislature.

Whitney: They had a 10-year lease on that space, I know, and moved there about a year before we moved. So, at that time certainly it was not thought.

Stutsman: But, it has been a good fit.

Whitney: Yes.

Stutsman: I haven’t talked to you for awhile. It certainly had the potential for being a good…

Lehman: For information purposes, both the spaces at Governor and Eastdale are rented spaces. We are buying the Mall property on contract. We’ve discussed possible a building for Human Services and that to tie it in with our rented space.

Neuzil: Without a basement at the facility at Mall Drive, how many levels are currently thought about?

Whitney: Well, we had talked about 2 levels.

County Attorney J. Patrick White: We had talked about a basement.

Stutsman: Yes.

White: A basement is doable.

Stutsman: I thought we always did talk about a basement.

Thompson: It’s doable but expensive.

Stutsman: For storage I think we talked about a basement.

White: The extra expense was going to be the footings. But, the basement for storage was certainly in the plan.

Stutsman: That’s what I always thought, too.

Whitney: Wasn’t it extra tiling around then, Pat, that we’d have to do?

Thompson: To keep it dry.

White: I don’t remember the number. Dwight had estimated something like $2-300,000 extra construction cost because of the water table. But, in a $4 million building that’s a modest add on.

Neuzil: Do you think the additional land then would be necessary that is currently up for sale?

Whitney: There certainly would be advantages for the County in the long term. One of the things that we always run into is we think that a certain amount is going to solve our space problem and it doesn’t. We need to look more long term and to think about parking. We have 72 parking spaces at the Governor Street and it is not adequate.

White: Can I interrupt for just a second on that point just as a refresher. The land that we’re buying on contract, we have a concept plan done by Neumann Monson. That would show a basement 2-story building that would be adequate for the foreseeable future for the Department of Health and the DHS functions and parking strictly in accordance with what the City requirements if we were governed by City requirements. It fits tight. With apologies to Carol, although she is used to this by now, I disagree with one of the things she said in the introduction. We didn’t, when we entered into the purchase agreement, agree that we had to have more land. But, we did talk about the desirability of more land and certainly talked about if land became available adjacent to ours. The potential availability that we talked about was Plamor Lanes, which is now what is on the market. Back then I was an advocate and I would be now, that if we are going to locate DHS and Health on the Mall Drive site, we ought to seriously explore acquiring the Plamor site to expand the campus. We had some discussion back then, particularly some citizen input suggesting that the Mall Drive site was too small truly to devise a human services campus. It was too small to do anything more than locate Health and DHS. Conceptually we had talked about providing space for other Human Service agencies that might want to locate near us. That wouldn’t happen without additional land acquisition out there. Again, just to refresh historically, the DHS office situation is bad enough that a predecessor board, when the current lease was renewed, instructed us to tell the landlord that we would not renew that lease again. The goal was to have them in a new facility by the time the lease ran out. It’s not necessarily critical that the Health Department be located with them, but their situation is pretty grim as well and so it was a logical co-location. What we are really wanting from the Board is just guidance. Not withstanding how strapped our budget is for money, should we look at trying to expand that site by attempting to acquire the Plamor Lanes site. If not, then we need to do one of 2 things. Either try to project a schedule for construction so the employees can get some sense of where this is going to go and going to end. Or, as Carol said, the decision is not to go at that site, but to try to find a campus here. Then, this would be an opportune time to try to re-market that property because of Plamor Lanes being on the market. It’s an opportunity for us to say to the market, well, we’d be willing to sell ours at the same time so that somebody could look at packaging that land for their own development. But, and this jumps ahead a little bit. If the Board is going to say, as an alternative, we want to look at creating a campus around the Admin. Building, there is no question that that’s going to have to be accompanied by a fundamental policy change. The policy has always been the County doesn’t condemn. That won’t work to create a campus. If we are going to try to create a campus at this location, we’re going to have to be willing to consider condemnation of property.

Stutsman: I for one do not like condemning property.

White: We do it for road projects. We’ve always done it for road projects but never been willing to do it for anything else.

Stutsman: But, to me a road project is not as emotional as condemning buildings and facilities.

White: The University does it, the City of Iowa City does it. The City of Iowa City is doing it in 2 major locations.

Stutsman: That doesn’t mean we have to do it, Pat.

Neuzil: The City of Coralville is really doing it.

White: The City of Cedar Rapids did it to build a police department.

Neuzil: The land that is available potentially around the Administration Building, how is that looking at this point?

Thompson: There are a number of things. First, it’s a lot of parcels. We’d have to acquire them one at a time. I agree with Pat that it would require that some of them be condemned. If even one small parcel held out, you wouldn’t have your campus until you resolved that. So, it could potentially take a long time.

Neuzil: Well, I think this is going to take a long time no matter what. We’ve got another burning issue out there, the Jail that I think in my opinion that’s on the front burner.

Stutsman: I’m thinking of the cost, too. I venture to say that I think the property around here would certainly, even at condemnation, be a lot more expensive.

White: I’m not sure it would be much more expensive than that southeast location. We’re paying a good price for that land.

Thompson: Pat and I met with the managers at DHS. Elaine Sweet was unable to be there, but Mike Weinard represented the MH/DD Department. Graham wasn’t able to attend. Was he? Did he come? I can’t remember.

Stutsman: Was Pat?

Thompson: Pat and I were both there.

Stutsman: Oh, Pat Harney. I thought you meant Pat White.

Thompson: We discussed their needs. When we bought the Mall Drive property, they were pretty sure that they wanted to be co-located near other agencies that are listed on this page that are in that neighborhood. But, as we discussed it, it was quite clear that their first priority is to get into a new building as soon as possible. That was the one thing they all agreed on. For staff morale, for efficiency of working, there were a number of reasons. They argued very effectively to get moved as soon as possible. Even if we started building now, you’ve got about a 3-year lag before you’re ready to move into a new building. Even if we had the money, had the land, had a plan and were ready to go. I guess the message we got from them was that having the building, having a plan in place for getting it that’s firm is more important to them than the co-location, although they did make some pretty good arguments for co-location. John Sofer, the Supervisor of the Income Maintenance Unit, the ones at Eastdale Mall, made a very good argument and told a number of examples about how they are able to cooperate with the agencies that are in that same building and in the neighborhood.

Harney: Right now there are at least 3 properties very close here that are for sale. We have an opportunity, I think, to build ourselves a campus and get our services centrally located. I think the potential and the capability have decent buildings here and this particular area would be at an advantage to all of the residents of the County if we are going to do such a thing. Personally, I would like to see them centrally located in this particular area. I know the Health Department, I’ve spoken with them as well and they prefer a downtown location as I know DHS would prefer to be out on Mall Drive. They work with other agencies in that area, but they are a leasing property as well, so there is no guarantee that those people are going to be out there for a long term. So, I think, in the best interest of the County, I would like to see us develop a campus here.

Stutsman: Is there enough parcel space available? I know we talk about the 3 parcels east, but even if those buildings were leveled, would that give us enough space to build.

White: No. You’d be talking about more than that.

Thompson: We have a map that shows…

White: Part of this discussion is that we recommend, if the Board wants to move in this direction, we’d recommend commissioning, hiring somebody working with the Space Needs Committee actually to prepare a proposed campus plan so we’d identify what we think would work. But, my thought is we’d be talking about the Armory, we’d be talking about property east across Dubuque Street, we’d be talking about the entire block north of here and someday in the future we might be talking about the property west of here. It depends on how much you put into a single campus. But, certainly, if you were going to bring Health and DHS, they wouldn’t fit in the property across Dubuque Street. They would fit on the block north of here. But, you’d have to acquire some parking room. One of the variables, and I keep raising this question, just because I want to stimulate discussion, not because I have an opinion. But at some point somebody is going to have to decide whether the one way circle around this block is permanent traffic flow or whether it makes sense to try to link Benton and Kirkwood in a better way or different way. I don’t necessarily mean better.

Thompson: When we were meeting with the managers, one of the other things that everyone agreed on is that we shouldn’t have people trying to cross the busy street with children. So, if we can’t locate the building for the Human Services and Health and their parking on the same side of the street we’d have a problem.

White: Part of my question is, as a potential way to close or limit traffic on Benton immediately north of here and on Dubuque east of here, you’d look at linking Benton and Kirkwood through some of where the Armory now is. You might not need those legs of Dubuque.

Thompson: Do you think we should be approaching the City about this and asking them what their plan is?

White: Yes. If the sense of the Board is the majority of you now would want to move in the direction of creating a campus at this location, we should bring the City in on traffic flow questions.

Neuzil: Pat, you’ve looked into some of that a little bit.

Harney: I have talked artificially with some of the City administrators about the possibility of looking at maybe even closing Dubuque Street and making a better traffic way out here on Benton Street. That would give us the armory and perhaps the properties to the east, which would give us a lot of parking, as well as another building. We need to look also at the block north of here. It seems like there was some willingness to look at the street traffic pattern, but like I say, that was unofficial and there were no decisions made on that, then or no commitments I guess is the way I should put that.

White: A pretty involved discussion. But, then again, one of the things that happens that you can’t really control is the fact that the property east across Dubuque is now being marketed means that there is at least a risk that something happens. Or that there is a private development over there and we saw it on the northeast corner of that intersection where Deli Mart came in and took down an outdated facility. Made a huge investment. If that happened across the street on Dubuque, then that makes it much less doable for us to incorporate it as a campus site. Even if you devised a policy to be willing to do some condemnation you still have to be prepared to go when the market forces are at work.

Neuzil: Those places are for sell.

White: Yes they are.

Lehman: I know Pat and Carol (inaudible) the Space Committee, along with Pat, do you feel you need some more immediate direction here on proceeding with some more information on Mall Drive and or here or do you wish us to narrow our choices down today.

Harney: I think we need to make a decision or at least get an indication as to what we want to do. Like we said, there are 3 parcels available now that are for sale. They could go. They may not. We need to also visit with the people at the Armory and see what their long-term plans are and see if that’s going to be available. We need to make a decision to start making a commitment as to what we are going to do in the future for DHS and MH/DD and the Health Department. We’re paying a lot of rent out and there are space needs. They are all confined and they’re having problems with space. We really need to make a commitment. But, as Terrence said, the jail issue is a big one at hand right now, which we need to deal with and some Courthouse space. But, we do need to make a commitment as to what we are going to do.

Stutsman: It seems to me that if we are going to go the direction of a campus here, I think we need to make the commitment to get somebody to work full-time on the concept. It’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of energy and I think we already spent a lot of time trying to decide what we want to do. I’ve been on the Board for 6 years and this was a high point to get this resolved and we’re not any closer today, aside from buying the property, than we were when we first started talking about it. I think the Board needs to consider that, either in house or hiring somebody outside to begin the work of negotiating and buying property. The other thing I want to throw out is the idea of…I can see the advantages of having everything in one place. I can see some disadvantages in that, too. The one that comes to mind is, Scott County has a similar concept of a campus and everything concentrated in one block. It is a little bit disconcerting to go there to meet with the Board of Supervisors and to see people waiting for court appearances in the same building. I just want us to think about what that means to have everything in the same location. There can be advantages, but there are some perceptions, too.

White: At least at this point we haven’t talked about moving the Courthouse.

Stutsman: No. No we haven’t.

Thompson: That was one of the things in the Space Needs Committee meeting that Graham Dameron talked about at some length. When you have everything in one place, if you have a disaster or if you have a flood or tornado, you’re out. Your whole business is out of commission. He thought that that made it relatively important that the County would spread the sites out around the community.

Lehman: Well, I hear some consensus that we can’t pursue both expansion on Mall Drive and a central campus.

Thompson: We can.

Stutsman: We can.

Thompson: Personally, I have thought that we probably need all the property around here that Pat talked about for future expansion of the County Administration. If we have to in the future add the Driver’s License to the Treasurer’s Department, that is huge square footage that we would need to add. All of our departments are pretty tight for space here. We’re tight for parking. We need more space just for the County operations that are on this site already. I guess I have some question about whether we can accommodate the whole campus on the pieces of land that we’ve talked about so far. One of the problems with co-location, having recently worked at an office that was co-located in the Courthouse when it was remodeled, is that inevitably space becomes tight and whoever is smallest needs to move. So, someone becomes an orphan. The reason I liked the Health and Human Services combination was that they’re sort of equal size so that there is no obvious person that needs to move out when the space becomes tight. That’s just something to consider. No matter what we build, no matter how big it is, inevitably at some point it is going to be too small. I think we should plan for that.

Lehman: I feel 2 different angles here. One is concept and one is financial.

Stutsman: Oh yes. We have to pay for it no matter what we come up with.

Lehman: Sally is saying, do we want to have spend more money to have a professional person come in here.

Stutsman: I think we’re going to have to do that Mike. That’s what I am proposing.

Lehman: The University, I know they have a person that just deals with acquisitions of property along with their space needs. But, they are the person out there in the trenches, dealing with the property owners who are acquiring it. I know Mercy Hospital does the same thing. We don’t have someone.

Thompson: We do. In our Space Needs budget we budgeted money to retain Neumann Monson. Dwight Dobberstein, who is the architect, mentioned that as part of that budget, he would be able to prepare the site concept design.

Lehman: We have the concept part. On the financial part…

Stutsman: I’m talking about negotiating with property owners, working with them, doing all of that investigative legwork and negotiations.

White: The reason that I don’t think that takes a full-time person is we’re talking about maybe 10 years. The reality is, we don’t have any money. Even if we had the perfect plan, we don’t have the money to implement it at this point.

Thompson: I don’t think that DHS and Health can wait 10 years.

White: They can’t.

Stutsman: I guess I see part of the responsibility to this person is to figure out how we do fund this stuff. Even if we don’t have money, what are some things that we could be using or doing to help finance.

Whitney: We’ve spent about $1.5 million leasing the space and on rent on Governor since 1974. That is significant to me. I know there are pros and cons about that but it is a lot of money. I’m sure part of my motivation with the Mall Drive is that it’s tangible; it feels like something that would be doable within a period of time that I can see. We talk about acquiring land here, and it’s a very long-term plan. We don’t have space for the people who are employed in our offices. What am I going to do about that? I don’t have the answer for that. So should I start looking for additional space and outstation people? That’s what we did a couple years ago, and maybe that’s the kind of concept that I… We need, I need some direction.

Neuzil: Well, even if we pursued the Mall Drive location, we’re still talking about many years down the road before we’d be able to build the building.

Whitney: At one time we were thinking in terms of 3 years out.

Thompson: And I guess now, we’re looking at 5-7. (Inaudible)…

Neuzil: Right. And it might be more, because we have a jail problem.

Thompson: In addition to the Eastdale, we spent some money on a bit of renovation at the Governor Street building, and we moved some employees from the Health Department over to the ICARE Building, and then did some renovations in their building to make it last another 3-5 years. But that was just a Band-Aid; we can’t call that a solution.

Stutsman: Well, I know Cheryl has talked about carpet for years, and it’s starting to look like a quilt pattern over there, with the carpet, with the patching that’s done. Sooner or later, we’ve got to make the commitment for her to replace the carpeting over there, or a new building.

Whitney: We’ve got to do the carpet. There’s just no way, now, and there’s other things that just have to be done. But even so, we’ve got people, we’ve got 3 people in various…at least a couple situations, sharing about 150 square foot. We’re not very efficient when we do things like that. The legislature, the governor has asked for additional staff for DHS because of our workloads. If we actually would end up getting more staff, you know, there is nowhere that I can put people.

Stutsman: So then would you be looking to locations outside of...?

Whitney: Well, we don’t have any more room in Eastdale…

Stutsman: Right.

Whitney: We knew that there was no room for expansion there. So, I would be coming saying, we’ve got to have more space. And right now, I think there are lots of people in our office who feel that we’re needing the space at the very moment. I’ve tended to be, try to be calm about it, and feel like we can try to make do. When we have volunteers or student interns, they double up in our social workers’ offices, which are about 100 square feet. It just is not a good working situation for people.

Harney: Yes.

Thompson: I think we both remember, Sally and I were both working at DHS when that building was built. At that time, I felt like the County, when it was pointed out there was a problem, didn’t pay heed to that, went on and on, when finally the Fire Department said that certain areas of the building couldn’t be used, and the ceiling was falling down on people’s desks, and then, finally, a building was acquired. I don’t want to get in that position again. I would rather have a plan and rationally pursue our plan, than to have a crisis arise, and be forced to do something hastily.

Harney: I would be the first to agree with her, that there is a real need up there for space. Anybody that has visited up there knows they’re working elbow to elbow, and they’re crowded, and it’s just not a good working facility right now. There’s no privacy dealing with…unless they go to one specific room. So the workers really can’t relate with the people they’re working with very well. It’s all in the open.

Stutsman: Has the Space Needs Committee done any work in assessing the value of that piece of property on Mall Drive, if we were to put it back on the market?

Thompson: No. But, personally, I’d be most interested in asking a price that would accommodate what we’ve already got in it.

Stutsman: Yes.

Lehman: Does the Space Needs feel that they’ve done all the recommendations, they need some direction from the Board to pursue it any more? Or do they feel that they can…

Thompson: We need an answer from the Board about Mall Drive

Stutsman: Yes, we need to say to the…

Harney: We need to make a commitment from the Board as to what direction to go with this. We need to come up with the alternatives that we feel is legitimate. Now, we need to make a decision--are we going to pursue Mall Drive, or do we want to look at a campus here?

White: If we’re going to look at the campus here, we need to proceed with Neumann Monson, is who we assume we’d proceed with, to design a plan that we could then talk about.

Thompson: I think we should go ahead with that either way. We need to know what land we’re going to need and where we’re going to put new buildings, even if it’s just admin.

Lehman: We know our land cost of Mall Drive; that’s already been purchased. And hopefully, if the choice was to put that back on the market, we’d recoup that, but we need to know some type of estimate, what we’re looking at for acquisition here. So we have 2 choices…

Stutsman: Quite frankly, I think there’s the need for both locations. From what I’m hearing about the needs for the Administration Building, possibly Court Services and a Jail down the road in this location, plus having the separate campus with Human Services, Health, and Ambulance, maybe, at that site?

Neuzil: But it can…

Thompson: It would be a good location for an Ambulance, here.

Lehman: But we do have a cost on Mall Drive, an estimate of the building. Do we need to counter that with some acquisition costs and site plans here, to make a package out of it if we’re looking at possibly doing both?

Thompson: We have the money for the site plan. I think if we could purchase the additional land on the same terms, not the same price, but the same arrangement that we have for the Mall Drive, we would have money to do that.

White: We would, yes, if it’s a contract purchase. That’s one of the advantages of the contract purchase.

Stutsman: I’m overwhelmed by the thought of buying the block north and having it all government offices. I just think…

White: Well, we haven’t even gotten to 2A2 yet, which is a somewhat different version of a campus concept, which is: we’d like to talk about preserving space to deliver Court Services beside the Courthouse, and the specifics there are the City of Iowa City owns 3 properties on the east side of Capital Street, right across from the Jail. The notion is, we ought to begin making plans for some sort of county/city/federal project that would preserve all of that block for future Court Services, parking. The surface parking that’s there now is not a particularly good use of that land, and I’m dreaming, this is maybe 10 or 15 years down the road, some sort of better use of the space for parking might create room to deliver a southwest wing of the Courthouse that would contain new courtrooms, space for court administrators, and supplement the Courthouse without having to replace it or relocate it.

Thompson: Pat, could we get a strong…

White: That’s a very personal….

Thompson: …go on Mall Drive before we move on to the courthouse?

White: I’m sorry.

Stutsman: Yes.

Neuzil: Again, when you talk about Mall Drive, you’re again talking about the idea now of purchasing, to be able to make that space really work, to purchase Plamor Lanes, right?

White: To make it work better.

Thompson: Or another adjacent piece of land.

Stutsman: But I think if we made that decision, I think we could concentrate our efforts on the Armory for the administration needs of it. It seems like I’m almost seeing Administration, Court, and Human Service’s/Health’s needs, and maybe 3 campuses instead of concentrating everything in one campus here. I’m trying to think, sort this through my mind. I think, well the University, University Hospital concentrates everything over there, and it’s confusing, but it’s all there in one location. You can spend half your appointment time trying to figure out which building you need to go to. And I don’t want to have that kind of concept here, but then I think, well, is that efficiency, too, building one big ramp in the middle. I’m just processing my thoughts.

Harney: Another issue to look at is maintenance and so forth is all in one area; they’re not traveling all over the community trying to maintain and clean the buildings, and so forth. It’s just so much more handy, I think, all in one location, or close to one location.

Thompson: While DHS and the Health Department have some functions in common, neither of those offices have a lot of going back and forth with Admin. Also, in terms of parking, one of the busy days at DHS is the last day of the month, which is also the busiest day here, because of the car license plates. So that would create a huge parking problem for us on the last day of every month.

Neuzil: Well, we would provide adequate parking. There’s always days when there’s parking problems.

Thompson: Yes, but we don’t have any, much spillover space here. So, I voted for the Mall Drive property in the beginning; I thought the mini-campuses was a good idea then. We had focus groups with County Department Heads and their feeling was the mini-campuses was the best way to go. I guess I haven’t changed my mind. I think we should purchase the additional land at Mall Drive and try to get a plan in place for building a building there.

Stutsman: I guess I share that same feeling. I think it’s just better not to have everything concentrated in the one location. I certainly see the advantages of co-locating some operations. But I think it seems like it’s such a good fit in Mall Drive, with some of the services that are already, our agencies that are being there, I think by expanding, we might be able to offer some additional space for some other agencies in the community. I would be supportive of continuing with Mall Drive and then looking at what we can do here, as far as the Armory.

Lehman: Well, I voted against the Mall Drive Acquisition…

Stutsman: Yes.

Lehman: …but this, with more property there, I’m not ready to say no. I’d be in favor of investigating the expansion of acquisition of more property there. I know we’ve talked about, with e-mails and faxes and stuff like that, there’s not a lot of hand-delivered documents anymore, so I don’t see where it has to be in the same building all. I guess I would interested in at least pursuing it; I see where it’s going to lead us.

Neuzil: I’m supportive of a county campus concept.

Stutsman: All here?

Neuzil: Yes. Right.

Stutsman: Yes.

Harney: I am as well.

Thompson: So we have 3-2 against.

White: It’s still 3 to 2. Nothing wrong with that.

Stutsman: Does that give the Space Needs Committee direction, then, what to pursue?

White: I think it does.

Thompson: OK.

Lehman: At least to gather data, bring us information for…

Thompson: Of course, a lot of my vote depends on the price…

White: Right, yes.

Stutsman: Yes.

Lehman: Yes.

Thompson: If I feel it’s way too high, I’m not going to vote for it, even if it’s a great idea.

Lehman: Right. If I don’t know what that price is, I don’t feel I’m ready to say no, unless I…

Thompson: Right.

Lehman: It’s concept versus financial.

Thompson: So, the Space Needs Committee should go ahead, checking out the price of the additional property and more about the concept plan for this property. As long as we’ve already paid for it, we might as well do it.

Stutsman: Yes.

Lehman: Yes.

Stutsman: Yes.

White: Well, we haven’t paid for it, we’ve budgeted for it.

Thompson: Well, we have money in our budget for it.

Harney: We’ve budget for it.

Stutsman: What are you talking about, a concept plan, Carol?

White: A map.

Stutsman: OK.

White: A map that would show building footprints, and parking areas, and number of floors…

Stutsman: I see. For the county campus concept?

White: Yes.

Lehman: But that’ll be concept information, not financial information?

Thompson: Right.

White: Right.

Thompson: And it will tell us how much land we would need…

Lehman: It will be a step behind there, just as we’re going to move on with Mall Drive, we’re still going to be behind on the financial end of that.

Thompson: Basically, what he’d do is add up the square footage and the parking, and see how many parcels we’d need to acquire in order to do what we want to do.

Lehman: Yes.

Stutsman: I see. OK.

Thompson: And we can ask him to do it with just Admin., and to see how much additional we’d need for Health and Human Services, without crossing the street.

White: He already knows the square footage, because he was involved in the initial work the Space Needs Committee did to determine what the need was.

Thompson: And then we should go ahead and contact the city about the road, or would you rather wait to do that?

White: Well, I, we need to work with them on a couple of things, including those properties on Capital Street, again, at least to try to preserve the status quo over there, until we’re ready to make some decisions.

Thompson: OK, I’ve got Mall Drive written down, so now you can talk about the Courthouse.

Lehman: Thank you, Cheryl.

Whitney: Thank you.

White: Well, we actually probably need less guidance on the Courthouse. The County Farm, I think, and I think the Space Needs Committee shares this, we have a more immediate need. I’m not entirely clear whether what I’m about to say reflects the full committee agreement. The committee is inviting Jeff Davidson to come to its meeting…we’re not?

Thompson: No.

White: I thought we’d decided to invite him to come that night.

Thompson: No. Let’s…should we…

White: You better go ahead, then…

Thompson: Well, are we going to talk about the Courthouse or the County Home?

White: County Home.

Thompson: OK. In the Board’s strategic planning process, we put this on as an item, but we didn’t specifically assign it to the Space Needs Committee. And then it was, at the last Space Needs Committee meeting, it was discussed, and one of the plans that the Committee thought might work would be to have Jeff Davidson from JCCOG help us with this, since he’s kind of a neutral party, and he’d be able to arrange focus groups, and do the kind of work that we had talked about doing. But as part of the Board’s strategic planning, we still need to talk about that and decide if that’s what we want to do, or if the Board has some other plan in mind.

White: The immediacy that I talk about is the Historic Preservation Society’s presentation to you and their concept on, obviously this reflects a personal bias, but I think it’s a terrific idea. We’ve got this citizen’s group who’s anxious to implement something, and so we ought to move as quickly as we can to decide whether that’s a viable idea. Part of that deciding is, well, what’s the long-term plan for the rest of the land the County owns? So the thought was that somebody like Jeff would be able to sit down and prepare, using focus groups, public consultation, public meetings, going out to meet with potentially affected entities, and design a proposed plan for the whole 160 acres, to show, is there going to be expanded facilities for Chatham Oaks, can the concept that the Historical Society has be approved, so they can start? It would protect future uses of the back 80 acres, or back 100 acres, is the County interested in trying to turn that asset into cash, rather than letting it sit there? Do we need to save it for a potential building site for the county? A whole range of policy issues about use of that land. And again, I think we need…

Thompson: In addition to that, we’ve talked about putting a jail on part of the land.

White: Across the street.

Thompson: SEATS has talked about building a building next to Secondary Roads…

White: Yes.

Thompson: …and we…yesterday Ambulance said they could use space out there. So, we have a lot of candidates for space. In addition, various people come…maybe it’s just because I’m on the Space Needs Committee, but people come and they want to know if they couldn’t have an acre, or 2 acres of that land. It’s like, everybody wants a couple of acres. Well, we can’t…we need a plan for what, exactly what you’re saying, what are we going to do with the whole property?

Lehman: We had a request from the Historical Society, they were going to do some research and come back with a recommendation of what they’d like to see, with the resources that are out there now. I guess my feeling was that they were going to bring us back a proposal, and then bring that to the Space Needs or the Board, and see how that fit in with other types of plans.

Stutsman: Well, no, I think we need to direct this.

Lehman: Well, it’d be our choice after they brought the information to us.

Stutsman: Yes, no, but I think they need to be part of the discussion, but I think we need to take the lead in… They can be one of the focus groups. I feel strongly that our decision about what happens with the County Farm needs to be a large, viewing the whole property out there, and I think the Board needs to be the ones that lead the discussion.

Lehman: OK.

Thompson: Do you think that Jeff Davidson is a good person to help us do that?

Stutsman: Yes, I do.

Thompson: Yes, I do too.

Stutsman: I think that this is a big policy decision for the Board of Supervisors. There’s lots of interest in this facility, there’s been any number of, well, as we’ve talked about, people that have come to with ideas, and I think we make a big mistake if we make it piecemeal. I think that we need to have a big concept, and so we know, reach a community agreement about where we want to go with this, and go from there. I think we’ll just make a terrible mistake if we start saying, yes, let’s give this group the go-ahead, and then down the road, say oh, let’s give this group the, and all of a sudden, we’ve committed ourselves to things that we can’t undo.

Lehman: I guess what I was putting it is, the Historical Society’s request would be put right along with the other ones…

Stutsman: Sure.

Thompson: Yes.

Lehman: Carol said somebody asked for an acre, and this, put it together and put the pieces, not to paint one part of the picture and then see what color we’re painting the rest.

Stutsman: Yes.

Thompson: I talked with Jeff Davidson and he does have some training and experience in doing this kind of work. He had a number of good ideas about how we could hear the demands of various constituencies.

Stutsman: Yes.

Lehman: Yes, and he’d have other resources to fall back on.

Thompson: Yes.

Stutsman: I think that would be great, and I really do support the idea of having a lot of community involvement in this.

Thompson: In our strategic planning, I think we’ve found that we’re most effective when we get each task clearly assigned to a person, like one of us, or a department head or something. Do we want to make that decision?

Stutsman: What do you mean?

Thompson: About who, where…

White: This one needs to be staffed, which is…

Thompson: Yes. And Jeff is a good staff person, but…

White: …the reason for recommending Jeff. Land use planning is one of his areas of expertise, and he can involved the community and the appropriate groups, public meetings.

Harney: I think we need a long-term plan for that particular area out there. As time goes by, and it’s developing, it’s becoming more valuable all the time, and I’m not ready to say that we’re ready to get rid of that property, but at the same time…

Stutsman: Exactly

Harney: I do believe we need a long-term plan, and we need the input from the community, because it’s been there so many years, and I’ll be the first to say…

Neuzil: Does that…

Harney: …that we do need to preserve part of that, particularly the sanitarium and cemetery and things like that.

Stutsman: Sure.

Harney: We do need a plan for that.

Neuzil: Does the land have limitations, because it’s in city limits, as far as what we can or cannot do with that property?

Stutsman: Well, I think that would be part of the process.

Lehman: In regards to the zonings, and…

Thompson: We need to know that.

Stutsman: Yes.

Neuzil: Yes.

Stutsman: I don’t want to give the feeling that I’m not supportive of what the Historical Society has proposed. I am supportive of that, but I think we need to look at the whole plan, the whole area out there, as to what we’re going to do.

Thompson: Well, I think it’s probably important to them too…

Stutsman: Yes.

Thompson: …because we’re doing economic development planning right now. That’s a prime area…

Stutsman: Oh, (inaudible)?

Thompson: It’s designated as an economic development site, and I’m sure they don’t want to develop a lovely little park space and have us add a motel to the back end of it, or something. It needs to be looked at as a parcel of land in its whole, not just as piecemeal.

Stutsman: When you talked about staffing, would Jeff staff, do we, is that part of our agreement with JCCOG, or do we have to…

Thompson: He said we could do that.

White: Yes. My impression is he thinks it’s doable within existing budget, under his supervision. I may well want some of our staff to assist him; Zoning might need to assist him occasionally, Secondary Roads.

Thompson: I think we need to appoint one of us or 2 of us to work with him…

Stutsman: Yes.

White: You or Pat, from the Committee, would be the logical…

Thompson: I was hoping that you’d do the Courthouse.

Lehman: You have direction on that, then?

White: Well…

Thompson: Are you willing to do it? We probably need 2, right? 2 of us? We’ve assigned 2 people to most of our other Boards.

Harney: Sure.

Lehman: I don’t know if that fell under your space.

Thompson: So, Pat could represent the Space Needs Committee, and would one of the rest of you join him?

Neuzil: Well, we’re definitely going to add that parcel, as far as our economic development strategy, but…

Thompson: You know the Chamber of Commerce, there’s other constituencies besides the ones we’ve mentioned who probably would have interest in this.

Lehman: Yes.

Neuzil: Sally, are you interested in that, or do want me, I mean I’d be happy to do it, if no one else would…

Stutsman: One thing I wanted to mention is that, even not, just surveying that area where the County Home or Secondary Roads, but even further east, involving, maybe, even the city about what their plans are for that northeast corner.

Lehman: Yes.

Thompson: Yes.

Harney: Sure.

Thompson: Jeff would know that.

Stutsman: It would be nice to have part of the discussion, too, so that we’d all be moving in the same direction.

White: And certainly Chatham Oaks.

Stutsman: Yes, definitely Chatham Oaks.

White: At various times, there have been discussions about adding facilities,

Neuzil: Yes, apartments.

White: …different types of facilities.

Stutsman: I could serve but I’m trying to think, too, what’s a good fit.

Neuzil: That’s what I was saying, I’ll be happy to do that if that’s what the Board would like.

Stutsman: With the economic development, it might be…

Lehman: We have direction for Pat and Terrence, if we feel that someone else’s background might better serve, we can trade off there, and keep them informed.

Neuzil: All right. OK.

Thompson: So you’ll talk to Jeff Davidson, and get him started?

Stutsman: Who would give the direction to Jeff, then? Do we need to have Jeff come in and talk about what his…

Harney: I think that would be a good idea, get a direction from all of us.

Thompson: Decide what he can do.

Lehman: Can we get him in next week?

Thompson: The Space Needs recommendation was that we talk to him, have him look at the whole project, and then come into the Board and make the recommendation about what he can do. He’ll know what that is after he thinks about it a little bit.

Neuzil: Like you were saying, it would be good to know, and I could try to find out, in regards to what kinds of buildings we’re allowed to even build in that area without a change from the City Council, because it’s within the City Limits. In other words, what kind of economic development could we have? We don’t want heavy industrial, or something of that nature, if, obviously that’s not the direction that the Iowa City Council wants. Not that I’m suggesting that.

Stutsman: I was going to say, I bet the people of Walnut Ridge would have some pretty strong feelings about that.

Neuzil: I think they would too, about heavy industrial.

Stutsman: But that’s what we need to have, a community discussion.

Lehman: So, we feel that we’re going to have Jeff come in, to talk, or are you saying (inaudible) with Jeff, and have him come in after he…

Thompson: Well I think Pat and Terrence should probably talk to Jeff and get him lined up.

Lehman: OK. Let’s do that.

Stutsman: Do you have enough direction from what the Board’s thinking?

Neuzil: Yes.

Lehman: We’re in an informal here, and I had Don Slothower, who’s a adjoining landowner out there, had a few comments he wanted to make, if he’s heard enough, or confused enough, or want to clarify.

Don Slothower: I agree with the direction you’re going, for the plan, plan the whole thing for the County land. I don’t know, really, if you know the dimensions there, or not, but on the east side of Melrose, where Chatham Oaks is, you have like a 1/2 mile, almost a half mile frontage on Melrose. On the west you have a half a mile deep to the east, and then just east of that is development, Southwest Estates, and now Country Club Estates, which is, they maybe have only about 10 acres in that corner that they haven’t developed yet, because they…on their east part, they come right up to the county land. In that south side, I believe there’s 3/4 of a mile long on the south side of the county land. So you have a pretty good sized property on the south side of Melrose. Of course, you have what’s (inaudible), but I just want to see it… Well, the reason I got concerned about this was I heard talk about maybe, the Armory, like you’re going to trade the Armory for some land out there, and the Armory might come out there. I just kind of wanted to say that you may want to be kind of careful what you put out there, to protect the value of the rest of your land. I think you have over 160 acres, maybe about 200 acres, I don’t know for sure, but, you know, I didn’t look up the records or anything, but, that’s just on the south side of Melrose. And you want to kind of look at protecting the value of the rest of your land out there.

Lehman: OK.

Harney: I think that’s been pure speculation as far as the Armory. I don’t think there’s been any talks officially with the Armory personnel as to making any trades or anything like that.

Slothower: Well, I live just across the road west. The road goes south, a dead-end road. It’s called Slothower Road, by the way.

Stutsman: Easy to remember.

Slothower: I live south down that road. I own a farm, just west of the county home.

Lehman: Quite a bit of common…

Slothower: We used to see the milk cows graze out there, when they used to really farm it. The residents of the County Home farmed it with the Farm Manager. Maybe you people don’t remember that, or know that, but they did.

Thompson: Yes.

Lehman: Yes. I think that’s what the Historical Society was looking at, putting together some type of a history and their presentation, preserving that.

Slothower: There’s also a cemetery out there in the center. I think maybe you know about that.

Stutsman: Yes.

Lehman: Yes. I think from your concerns, what we’re talking about addressing them, so we’re not piecemealing this off. Appreciate your interest.

Slothower: Thank you.

Thompson: Are we ready for the Courthouse?

Lehman: Yes.

Thompson: The Space Needs Committee has known for a long time, and our space study showed that the Courthouse is very crowded. In addition, and probably more importantly, it present serious issues about security, and the State is concerned about that. Both Sally and I met with the Clerk and various court officials for several meetings to talk about safety. They did a study, which was Statewide and have never gotten back to us with the results. Although I guess those are forth coming pretty soon. Inevitably, at some point, we’re going to have to address the Courthouse. If we move the Jail, we might want to build another structure at another site and find a different use for the Courthouse. But, if the Jail is going to stay at the current location, which looks like it is there for the foreseeable future, then we might want to look at expanding the Courthouse on the present site. If you haven’t gone down into the workshop in the Physical Plant office downstairs, there is a picture down there of a plan that was proposed, probably 20 years ago. That shows a building built onto the back of the Courthouse that was constructed in such a way that it wouldn’t spoil the view of the Courthouse from the west. It’s kind of an interesting thing to look at for historical purposes. But, anyway, we need to think about that. We need to acquire land. Maybe condemnation would be necessary there, too.

Harney: Going along those lines with the Jail issue as it is and as the Study Committee progresses, we’ll decide whether there is going to be a need for the Jail or perhaps do some things to alter it, to change the plans for the Jail. Maybe perhaps expand within the Jail and move the actual workings of the Sheriff’s Department out and into another facility, which I think would work good on the west side of the Courthouse building a 2-story facility there. Moving the County Attorney’s Office into their opening space in the Courthouse for additional courtroom space and for the judges to have their chambers to work out of. I think we could work something out in that particular area for a long-term solution. It’s just things we need to look at and I think that is a possible alternative that we have.

Stutsman: Where would the Jail Administrative Office go?

Harney: We could move the administrative into that particular area as well on the first level.

Thompson: Build a holding and receiving area on the first level.

Harney: Then the County Attorney’s Office on the 2nd level (inaudible) situation.

Thompson: The Space Needs Committee met at the Courthouse last summer. Board members came. I think Pat and Terrence were both there, too. There are a lot of things to consider. It’s a historic building. It’s the center of our community and has been for most of our history, a lot of things to consider about that building. Anyway, we put in our strategic plan that we would pursue that. We didn’t assign it to Space Needs. So, we need to assign it to someone.

Lehman: What’s our feeling of…

Thompson: I’d be willing to work on that to represent the Space Needs Committee since Pat is doing the County Home property. But, we still need a 2nd person.

Stutsman: What were you thinking of doing, Carol? At one time…

Thompson: Well, we talked last summer about doing more or less the same plant focus groups and things like that. I think Pat White has a different idea.

Stutsman: That’s kind of what I was proposing. Just to ask the community what they want as far as that facility. I’m torn about the Courthouse. I understand it’s historical significance and the beauty of the building and what not. Then, I’m torn with its ability to continue to function with the current demands of the court system, as far as security and things. Wondering if it’s really a good investment to try to upgrade that building when there are limitations. When you have a 100-year old building there are limitations. I always say to the community, tell me what they want. Do they want us to continue to invest in that building and do what we can, or are we to the point of saying it’s time that we look at a new facility.

Lehman: What you’re asking is, do you want somebody to put together some choices and that usually stirs further choices, but do we need to take the first step to hear some options we’ve looked at. There are always members of the public that will think of things that you don’t. But we need to start building this process.

Thompson: We’d have to staff it, too, since I don’t think that this is Jeff Davidson’s special interest.

White: No. We might need Dwight. Again, the concept of putting a facility in that location that would allow courtrooms and Court Services to be housed adjacent to the Courthouse probably needs Neumann Monson or somebody to help us design the space and a footprint. It obviously needs some community involvement, too. I don’t think Jeff is needed for that one.

Thompson: It’s a different process, too, since most of the land around there is owned by government entities. The parking lot is owned by the federal government, some of the property is owned by the City, the University of course owns a lot of it.

White: Private property ownership in that Capital Street block is only 3, or 4, houses at this point.

Thompson: The other question the Space Needs Committee would have is should Pat be part of that process. He’s sort of been delegated to be the manager of the Courthouse building since the Auditor moved out.

Neuzil: I think so. At the same time if we’re talking about moving the Sheriff across the street.

Stutsman: I can’t imagine him not being a part of the process.

White: He’ll keep showing up.

Thompson: Do you want one of us and Pat?

Neuzil: Potentially, obviously Bob Carpenter, our Sheriff, has to be part of that discussion, too.

Harney: Absolutely.

Thompson: Is it enough to assign one of us and Pat or do we want 2 Board Members?

Lehman: I think you have enough…somebody to coordinate it along with…

Stutsman: How do you feel about it? Do you want somebody else to work with you on it?

Thompson: I don’t know. It seems like it gives it more credibility if there are 2 of us.

Stutsman: I’ll help work on it, unless you want to Mike?

Lehman: I know you have some feelings. But, I think you’re like the rest of us. You want to see…

Stutsman: Pat and I will be a good counter balance for each other.

White: I’ll convince you.

Stutsman: All right.

Lehman: OK. So, we have direction there.

Thompson: OK. That’s good work. We got a lot going this morning.

Lehman: OK.

Stutsman: Can we take a break?

Lehman: Let’s take a short break and then we’ll get into annexation of Oxford.

White: Thanks for taking time to talk about this.

Lehman: We’ll take a 7 or 8-minute break here and be back at 20 till.

Recessed at 10:32 a.m.; reconvened at 10:45 a.m.

(Continued in Part 2)