Lehman: Next we go to Business from the County Attorney. Pat had an item here on the handbook amendment for sick pay compensation to retirees.

White: I’ve given you a memorandum dated June 13th that includes a specific recommended amendment to the handbook. You also, for background, have copies of memorandums with dates of May 22nd and… Actually I think we’ve got the wrong date on one of these. Are those 2 that are dated June 13th?

Lehman: Yes.

Thompson: Yes.

White: Well, obviously, one of those is mistaken. Maybe they’re not. In any event, there are 3 all together. The recommendation is that we amend the handbook to provide that employees with 20 or more years of continuous employment, at the time of their termination or retirement, shall receive a lump sum payment for 25% of their accumulated sick leave. I want to put this in some context of the County personnel policy. County personnel policy evolves because it’s fairly disconnected in a variety of ways. The County Employee Handbook applies to all county employees, but the employees who are covered by a collective bargaining agreement are covered first by the provisions of that collective bargaining agreement. We currently have, in Johnson County, 6 collective bargaining agreements. So, there are 6 groups of employees who are covered by the provisions of those agreements. I don’t have an exact count, but if we have approximately 400 employees total, we probably are between 200 and 250 who are now covered by collective bargaining agreements. That’s just an estimate. That was, frankly, a mistake in policy that occurred in the mid-70s, when the Iowa Public Employee’s Relations Act was first adopted by the Legislature, the existence of so many collective bargaining units just complicates our ability to deliver personnel policy in a uniform, consistent, predictable way. That is an ongoing goal of ours, is to have county personnel policy, whether it’s in the handbook or collective bargaining agreement, be as rational as possible, as consistent as possible, from employee to employee, and a minimum of just irrational or unexplainable difference in the way employees are treated by virtue of what department they happen to be in. So, as we evaluate collective bargaining decisions on a strategic basis, or handbook decisions, a goal is, is there a reason related to the function of a department why employee A gets or doesn’t get a particular benefit, and why employee B or C gets or doesn’t get a particular benefit that is rationally related to what their job is and what their department is. Or, is it just coincidence? That they happen to be in the SEATS collective bargaining unit, or the Ambulance collective bargaining unit, or a position that’s not covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Our ongoing goal, then, is to minimize the situations where somebody is looking at their benefit package and saying, gee, I don’t understand why I don’t have access to this. Going back probably 5 years, roughly, we began to get proposals from collective bargaining units seeking a benefit that is similar to the language I’ve now proposed to you be adopted as an amendment to the handbook. That employees with 20 or more years of continuous employment get a lump-sum payment for 25% of their accumulated sick leave. And each time that’s happened, we’ve made an evaluation of that proposal, had discussions with the Board of Supervisors in Executive Session, and now, in 5 instances, have made a county policy decision that we agreed that that was a good benefit to add in to the county’s package. We now have collective bargaining agreements with our bargaining unit employees in Ambulance, SEATS, Secondary Roads, Sheriff, and Social Services, that are providing this exact benefit that I’ve recommended we add into the handbook. It is only the Administrative Unit Collective Bargaining Agreement that employees do not have access to that benefit. At the risk of revealing a previous bargaining strategy, we would have been prepared to agree to that in the Administrative Unit, but they had other priorities, and their goals in the last round of bargaining didn’t include that benefit. So, part of my purpose in making the recommendation to you now is that, with 5 Collective Bargaining Units having this benefit, it’s pretty hard to say to the non-bargaining unit employees that there’s any rational reason why they don’t have the same benefit, other than, they’re not covered by a collective bargaining contract. And one of our collective bargaining and personnel policy goals has always been, we want to be neutral as best we can, in terms of delivering wage or benefits to employees. We don’t want to favor people who are in a collective bargaining unit; we don’t want to penalize them. We don’t want to favor people who are not in a collective bargaining unit; we don’t to penalize them. We want to be as consistent as we can. And as over the last few years now, we’ve gotten to the point where 5 of our 6 units have this benefit. I just think it’s very difficult to offer to the non-bargaining employees any rational explanation for why they don’t have the same benefit. A second underlying policy goal for us has also been to try to deliver as nearly as we are able the same wage increase or same benefit package for non-bargaining unit employees who are in a department covered by a collective bargaining agreement. That constitutes what I would describe as an unwritten historical policy. For example, now, I forget whether it was 2 years ago or a year ago, the Sheriff’s collective bargaining unit won, in arbitration, 5 weeks of vacation for senior employees. That was a position that we had resisted consistently. But, once the arbitrator, in binding arbitration, ruled that senior employees covered by the collective bargaining agreement were eligible for 5 weeks vacation, we then are immediately faced with the question, how do we deal with that for the management staff that are not covered by the collective bargaining unit, but are actually more senior to people who now have it? Our traditional approach has been to say, if the rank and file in a department have a benefit by virtue of collective bargaining, arbitration, or agreement, we’re also going to deliver that benefit to management, so that we don’t penalize senior management employees and favor the rank and file workers in that department. You don’t find that anyplace in the handbook; it’s just another factor of trying to balance these multiple collective bargaining contracts and the handbook, and the variety of issues that present themselves in trying to achieve balance, rationality, and equality in our personnel policies. Well, this proposal would, if put in the handbook, then clearly deliver this same benefit to management non-bargaining people in Ambulance, SEATS, Secondary Roads, Sheriff, and Social Services, that are now available to their rank and file people, and if adopted, would leave as the only county employees who wouldn’t have this benefit, the employees who are covered by the Administrative collective bargaining agreement. Again, because our goal is fairness and equality, we are certainly prepared to seek to agree to this benefit in the next collective bargaining round with the Administrative unit, and it’s not impossible that we might talk to them about doing that sooner. Now, that’s the context within which I make this recommendation to you. The more fundamental policy reasons why we’ve already agreed to it in 5 Collective Bargaining contracts, and why I think it’s a good idea for us now to extend it to those employees covered by the handbook, is a combination of factors. We have talked with Boards of Supervisors multiple times over the past several years about looking for ways to enhance retirement benefits. We’ve talked some about trying to find a way to participate in deferred compensation; we’ve certainly had some discussions about IPERS. At least 2 of the current Board members haven’t been here for those discussions in the past. Sally would have been involved in several of them, and Mike and Carol probably fewer. But the reason we liked this proposal when it originally came from one or 2 unions a few years ago was, it really did provide a potential enhancement for long-term employee retirement, and 20 years is the threshold that we picked, but an employee who’s contemplating leaving county government at that point would be able to plan a one-time, measurable retirement benefit from the county. There’s not a large number of people every year who, either have under the collective bargaining agreement, or will, if this is expanded, take advantage of this, but it might be 2, 3, or 4 people a year, would be my estimate. Secondly, it’s advantageous to the County, we believe, because it works in combination with another provision that we really already have for all employees, and that’s a sick leave to vacation conversion. We started implementing in our collective bargaining agreements probably now, close to 10 years ago, a provision that allows employees who’ve accumulated enough sick leave to have more than 90 days worth, we’ve allowed them to convert that to vacation. So, if you have 120 days worth of sick leave accumulated, you’re eligible, everybody is, to convert 30 days of that to vacation. Then either to use the vacation within the county policies or, when you leave employment, our policy requires that you be paid cash for your unused but accrued vacation. So we do have lots of employees, they tend to be the more senior employees, who have been for quite a period of time, converting accrued sick leave that they have above and beyond 90 days to vacation. Which then they either use or take a cash payment with them when they leave county employment. This provision, put in the handbook, would complete the incentive to employees to retain sick leave, rather than to call in sick or stay home sick when they might be at work. Our goal always is, we’d much rather have them at work than we would not at work, regardless of what circumstance it’s under. But a pro-employer advantage to this approach is, if employees know they won’t leave employment with up to 90 days sick leave available, they’re more likely to be at work rather than to resolve close calls or days that they could be at work even if they’re not at their best or 100%. It just builds in another incentive for the employees to try to save their sick leave because they would know it would still, the 90 days that they can’t convert to, they know it would be available to them when they retire or leave County employment after 20 years. And 90 days is not just an arbitrary figure. That figure was chosen to be a fill-in or a package with our disability plan, which kicks in after 90 days. That’s why we have, both in the handbook and the collective bargaining agreements, before the conversion is available, you have to have 90 days accumulated, because our goal is, we don’t want anybody to have a serious illness or injury that has them off work and having to wait 90 days for their disability, but not have sick leave available. So even that is part of a package that we’ve fit together to try to provide comprehensive sick leave/disability package. I just think the amendment… I think it’s time for it, because we’ve got nearly half of our workforce now who does have this benefit. The only people that have it in a literal sense are the people who are covered by 5 collective bargaining contracts. That’s a situation that I’m just not comfortable with, looking at the non-bargaining employees and saying, the only reason you don’t have this is, you’re not in a collective bargaining agreement. So, I think it’s time. I think it’s actually a little past time that we do this. Part of why I say that is, you’ve got a couple of long-term employees leaving the County soon who would, this would have, had it been in existence, be able to serve. My recommendation is that, obviously you wouldn’t be voting on it until after the 1st of July, but if I’ve persuaded you that it’s a good addition to the handbook, that when you adopt it, that we either make it effective July 1st or, we could talk about budget implications. But it would also be possible, in a motion, to do this as a phase-in that would say, people retiring or terminating between July 1st and January 1st or any other date would be eligible for half or 2/3 of the benefit that would otherwise be available. I think the idea would be to make it fully available for people who are leaving on or after July 1st. Some of the discussion that you’re probably aware of, and some of the background memos focused on the departing Director of the Health Department. What I really tried to do with my recommendation to you, now that I’ve been talking, June 13th is the correct date, I did 2 the same day, that’s why it’s correct. But I think it’s important to try to analyze this and make a decision not in the context of his request to the Board of Health, which denied his request at my recommendation because I don’t think they should be tinkering with the handbook, and the handbook just doesn’t provide it for now. Just another brief historical aspect of that. Maybe it’s been 6 or 8 years ago, now, but after years of pressure and cajoling and pleading from me and Boards of Supervisors, the Health Board adopted the county handbook instead of, as they’d historically done, having their own handbook. I don’t want to see us go back to where they’re, if we can avoid it, where they’re making individual decisions that are different than the handbook.

Thompson: So we’d be putting this on for a vote for next week?

White: Well, that would be my recommendation if you’re comfortable doing it.

Harney: I certainly want to treat all the employees the same, and it also discourages the use of sick leave, if they could come to work at all. I guess the only issue I really have, you slightly touched on it is, and I’ll have to check with Jeff is, is what effect this is going to have on the budget which we hadn’t planned on, for this coming fiscal year.

White: We could design almost any phase-in that you thought you could make work, budgetarily. I haven’t done any attempt to project. You don’t always know who’s going to leave at any one point.

Lehman: We might be able to go back the last couple years and at least get somewhat of an indication, but like you say, it could go in cycles, where you might not get anyone retiring with these qualifications one year, and the next year you might get 4 or 5.

Neuzil: I think it would be important to have some budget impact. I’d like to hear, maybe, some comments from Human Resources.

Thompson: Don’t we have an accrual for unused sick leave that we owe the? So, we’d be paying out money that we’ve accrued, would…

Harney: I believe HR could give us an estimate of how many, give us a number of people that are, maybe, eligible within the next year.

Horne: I think she did provide us with that. I’d have to sit down, one-by-one, and look at what those people, individually, would have, with built-up for, look to convert, talk to payroll and get the exact numbers, then add it up.

Neuzil: And then study it in regards to, if this is something that should be done this year, or should be through the budget process, too.

Horne: Like Pat said, it would be hard to tell in any given year. The best I could do would be to give you a total, (inaudible) affected by now.

White: There’s actually an advantage to the County that I’ve left out that is fairly important. It might actually reduce the conversion requests, because the way this is written, this is certainly subject to being discussed, but the way this is written, people could, if they chose to, stop converting above 90 days because they’d know they’d be able to cash it out at the same 25% ratio. So, somebody who didn’t want an extra week’s vacation, and there are people like that, might choose not to convert, but just to leave it there a little longer.

Harney: Would it be a maximum number of hours or sick leave that they could be paid for?

White: Yes.

Peters: Oh yes.

White: 9…

Peters: It depends on if you’re a 37.5-hour wage or a 40-hour wage, but basically what it is, it’s the equivalent of 120 days is the cap.

White: Right.

Peters: You cannot accrue any more than 120 days.

White: If you have that much accrued, it just stops. That’s the point at which people are now converting, is between 90 and 120 days. When they approach 120, they convert to vacation to take it back down to 90 days. But then, under our policies, they’ve got to use the vacation. They can’t carry it over, which is a good policy, by the way. I’m not proposing we change that.

Lehman: OK. We have direction, then for next week?

Horne: Lora will be back tomorrow, so he could converse with her, and then we could take it to the Board next week.

Lehman: OK.

Thompson: She sent us an email, a list of employees who would be affected by this, if we make the change. Of course, we have no way of knowing which of them would be retiring.

White: They would be eligible, rather than…

Thompson: I don’t think there’s a budget line item for these payouts. I think that they come out of accumulated money that we save up because we have (inaudible).

White: Right, but that’s true now of vacation accruals. Somebody leaves and they cash out their vacation, which might otherwise carry over into the next fiscal year, the departments are just, they’re stuck with absorbing that. It certainly would be possible to create a central services system…

Horne: Similar to the merit pay?

White: Yes. To bore you with a long, long, long-ago recommendation, I’ve always thought one of the things that we ought to look at doing, and we, again, this is another reserve or account that we’ve just never seemed to have had the money to establish. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to create an account that people could go to for temporary help. If you get a modest-sized department that has 2 maternity leaves at the same time, it can be pretty tough to staff that, or serious injury if you’ve got people gone in pay status. If you have a need to supplement your workforce in the face of temporary medical absences, I’ve just always thought that’s an appropriate central county line item that people could come to you and say, I’d like to hire somebody temporarily. That’s a different issue than sick leave.

Thompson: So we’ll put this on for next week?

Lehman: Yes.

Thompson: It’s OK with me.

Lehman: We’ll have some documentation, some information…

Horne: I’ll see what I can do, get some numbers for you.

Lehman: OK. Thank you, Pat.

White: I think I’ll skip to 6C and do a quick Reports and Inquiries. I was notified yesterday by the Iowa City Cable TV division that the Courthouse Rededication was going to be playing on Cable Channel 4 Monday the 2nd at 12:30, Wednesday the 11th after the Coralville City Council Meeting at night, and Tuesday the 17th at 4 PM. Now, my only hesitation in announcing those is, they also told me it was going to be last night at 7:30, and a couple people have told me today they didn’t see it at 7:30 last night. So, I’m not sure if there was an error in the communication, and I’ll double-check that. I also, I was just going to put a short footnote on your discussion with Cheryl Whitney. It really is worse this year in terms of budget situation. Almost every year, because the legislature runs until late April or May, long after your budget is adopted, we’re in a period of uncertainty. That’s been true of the Juvenile Crime Prevention Grant every year, where we’re down to the wire without knowing how much money we have. I spent the last 2 days in Des Moines also. I was there doing depositions, but I just happened to see the local news Tuesday night, and it was a young man who I would judge to be probably in his 30s who was an employee of the State Department of General Services, who reported for work Tuesday morning and found out he had no job. That General Services agency is part of, trying to figure out what to do with their budget cuts, had laid off, without any prior notice, sounded to me like close to 100 people. So, this young man epitomized folks who went to work Tuesday morning for the State of Iowa, only to be told their job was over, not next week, not next month, but right now, and who left the building without a job. As he was trying to describe this to a reporter, you could certainly tell he had tears in his eyes. That put a real painful face on what’s happening with the State budget. That’ll be repeated in lots of locations. Item 6B is Report and Discussion regarding possible real estate purchases. My need is for an Executive Session to discuss price, but we can only discuss price in Executive Session, so if there are any questions or other discussion other than price, we should do those in open session. The properties that I want to talk about are the Fisher property, which is on the middle of the block on Dubuque Street, right north of here, next to the Ambulance Department. Since our last meeting and Executive Session, I’ve had discussions with the owners of that property, and I’m ready to report to you on the specific price that I’ve negotiated and am looking at. I’ve had more limited discussions with the realtor who’s the listing agent for Plamor Lanes, and I need to report to you in Executive Session the tentative price negotiations for that property, as well. I don’t necessarily need any non-price discussion, but this would be the time if any of you want to discuss non-price questions, or ask me anything about either of those properties.

Lehman: Anybody have any questions that fall in that category?

Thompson: We’ve pretty much covered both of those properties in prior discussions, I think.

White: Yes.

Lehman: OK. I would suggest that maybe we go to Inquiries and Reports from the public.

White: I was going to suggest the same, so that when we go into Executive Session, then there’s nothing left but adjournment.

Lehman: OK. I might just jump back and remind the public that the Johnson County Board of Supervisors and staff are going to have a reception in honor of Carol Peters for her 30 years of service for the county. That will be Friday, July 6th, here in the boardroom from 3-5. We’ll have remarks at 4:00. We invite the public to attend that, and wish Carol well in her future endeavors, and congratulations on her past service. With that I go to Inquiries and Reports from the public. Anyone have anything they’d like to bring up?

Welsh: I have some information to you and the public in general. 5 of us went to Heritage last week in relation to a program on Farmer’s Market Senior Nutrition program. The federal government is providing, to those persons who are 60 years or older and low income, $28 in the form of 14 $2 checks to be used at local Farmer Markets or farm stands to buy Iowa-grown vegetables and fruits. You can’t use it for flowers or for bakery goods. This is a program to try and encourage people to participate in the Farmer’s Market, and at the same time help with the needy. Those checks will be available for distribution at the Senior Center, and also the Coralville Recreation Center, for 4 Wednesdays starting on July 11th. There will be more information on that available. I just wanted you to know that, and take advantage of the television audience to let people know that they should be alert to that possibility coming up. Just as an item of information, last night I got a call from a person from (inaudible), expressing some concern the state has not yet had a contract with Heritage for the coming fiscal year. I told them, to my knowledge, you all haven’t signed a formal contract yet. So, I just wanted you to know that this is not the only Nutrition Program; they have some concerns about the reduced funding out at Heritage, at the (inaudible) and their staff, all of those items are concerned. A real good item of news, and again, it’s information for the general public, is you know we’ve set out a SEATS survey. One of the plans is to not only mail this out to individuals, but we took packets of surveys to various institutions like nursing homes, goodwill. We were a little discouraged to find that nursing homes don’t have this as a high priority, and so we’re not sure that the major nursing homes are going to actually assist their people in filling out their surveys. But if you could count that number, we would have had 628 surveys, not counting the nursing homes, and so far, this is without Goodwill and Systems Unlimited response, we have already 314 surveys in. That compares to when this was done in 1999, 136 surveys. So, we’re already at 2 and half times what it was last time the survey was conducted, and close to, we’re going to be over 50%, if you discount those nursing homes, return on the surveys, which I think is just excellent. So, if anyone’s listening and they still have surveys, Mike O’Donnell has been elected to the new chair of the Nutritional Advisory Commission. Mike and I are going to be opening those surveys on July the 10th, distributing them to that (inaudible) committee, and then we’ll have a report for our Transit Advisory Committee on August the 7th. So, I think that’s a tremendous response. I had about a 2-hour conference yesterday, an hour and a half, for this lady who had various (inaudible) of the survey, and so there’s been some real (inaudible).

Lehman: Thank you, Bob. Good report. Are there any other reports or inquiries from the public? If not, I guess we’ll go back to business from the County Attorney, regarding possible real estate purchases. I’d entertain an Executive Session if there weren’t any questions for Pat about non-dollar items.

Motion by Harney, second by Thompson, to enter into Executive Session at 11:50 a.m. to discuss purchase of Plamor, and Fisher properties under section 21.5(1.i), Code of Iowa, "To discuss the purchase of particular real estate only where premature disclosure could be reasonably expected to increase the price the governmental body would have to pay for that property." Roll call: aye: Neuzil, Lehman, Thompson, Harney; absent: Stutsman.

Lehman left at 12:15 p.m.

Neuzil left at 12:31 p.m. and meeting recessed due to lack of a quorum at 12:31 p.m.; reconvened at 12:35 p.m. with Neuzil present.

Motion by Neuzil, second by Harney, to leave Executive Session at 12:55 p.m. Roll call: aye: Neuzil, Thompson, Harney; absent: Stutsman, Lehman.

Adjourned at 12:55 p.m.

Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor

By Casie Parkins, Recording Secretary