MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
FEBRUARY 21, 2002
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Budget Coordinator Jeff Horne: Monthly Report for January, 2002
Report (Lehman): Attended SEATS Paratransit Meeting; and Attended ICAD Board Meeting
Work Session: Monthly Report/Update on Strategic Planning Goals (Transportation Planning)
Chairperson Thompson called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 9:46 a.m. Members present were: Pat Harney, Mike Lehman, Terrence Neuzil, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson.
Thompson: We’ll open the Informal meeting of February 21, 2002. The first item on the agenda is regarding the 28E agreement with Linn County for maintenance of County line roads.
Stutsman: Before we get started I wanted to thank you Mike for sending over that information on the Road Use Tax Fund. It was very helpful and very informative. Farm Bureau had asked Carol and I to come and talk about the budget at their Farm Bureau meeting on Monday night. One of their questions was what kind of impact the Road Use Tax Fund proposal changes would have for Johnson County? They’re talking about redoing the formula. So I called Mike and he sent over a bunch of information that was really really helpful and very informative. I thought what was helpful was that timeline, how that formula has changed through the years.
County Engineer Mike Gardner: Yes, the history thing, yes.
Stutsman: It’s obvious to see when it was originally proposed it was mainly for secondary roads and most of the money went for that, but it has slowly changed to now it’s more of a focus on the primary roads and on the cities and towns. This change would make that even more so, but Johnson County came out very favorably so we really couldn’t talk against the proposal the Chamber Alliance was putting together. I just always like it when you can call a department head and they can give you all the background information that you ever wanted to know.
Thompson: It was all too. It was a long document, it was very well organized.
Stutsman: It was.
Thompson: The long sheet that we were just doing is the 28E agreement proposal with Linn County. I believe on the back there is a map.
Gardner: Right. Just a little background. Linn County approached us about a year ago, wanting to update and formalize our county line road maintenance agreement. Just for your information, the one I was able to find in our files out there was dated February of 1930 and Johnson County hadn’t actually signed it. The Linn County Board had, but we hadn’t.
Stutsman: We’re slow to act some days.
Gardner: That was what we had been operating on and I guess I didn’t even look into it close enough to see if we were following it or not, but it was pretty well established who is responsible at least on which miles. Anyway they proposed a map to us and we negotiated then with them a division of the roadway maintenance responsibility and agreed on what you’ve got before you now. They were really anxious to get rid of the mile that is clear up in the West, Northwest corner of Johnson County there was a little stretch there they had to, actually deadhead their equipment to when they had to blade it or plow it or whatever. That was their main objective in doing this, was to get rid of that or make it so that it made some sense. The existing division, Johnson County had about 8 1/2 miles that they were responsible for and Linn County had about 7. As you can see we evened that our a little bit about on this and actually Linn County is now taking care of a little bit more then we are. Linn County division is 7.9 miles for Linn County and 7.5 for Johnson. But both Counties are in agreement. I guess our recommendation would be for you to go ahead and approve this. Then once we have the signed copies, I would send it up to Linn County and their Board would take similar action on it. Andy has reviewed the 28E agreement and feels it’s acceptable from a legal standpoint. That’s what we’re talking about.
Thompson: The agreement assures that they’ll do the same quality of maintenance that we do. Is that basically what it is?
Gardner: They will. Yes.
Stutsman: Do we have to renew this agreement every year now or is it…
Gardner: No. This will be in effect until one party of the other has a problem and wants to change it.
Lehman: Every 70 years.
Harney: Mike, why is that split instead of having a continuous area where you have a truck running, you have it broken up in 3 different places.
Gardner: We have roads coming up from the South and they have roads coming down from the South and they’ve got roads coming down from the North, so it makes it if your blading or plowing, you can come down and just make a loop out of your thing instead of coming down and going over. That’s the reason I think.
Maintenance Supervisor Kevin Hackathorn: Yes, it’s just made it easier…
Neuzil: It kind of makes a loop out of your route.
Hackathorn: Yes, you’re not deadheading back.
Thompson: Any other questions from the Board? So we’ll put this on for our meeting for next week. Do we have agreements with all the other surrounding counties?
Gardner: Similar to the one we had with Linn County. Most of them are very old. I don’t think we have any that have been done recently. Most of the time both counties know whose responsible for what and it seems to be working out so we just continue that way until somebody has a problem with it.
Thompson: The next item on our agenda is discussion/action regarding update on status of road vacation, 01-2001, a portion of old Prairie Du Chien Rd. NE in Section 34 86 and road vacation 02-2002, Oaklane NE in Section 8 17 86 from North Liberty Rd NE Easterly approximately .25 miles. I have a little map here.
Gardner: Yes, that was just to refresh you memory as to where the 2 locations were. We were in, back in September last year and discussed it with you and set a public hearing. The public hearing was held on November 1st, I believe of last year. At the time we decided to wait to take formal action until there was some work that needed to be done on another portion of Old Prairie Du Chien Rd there. We had an agreement that we entered into with a developer for Prairie View Estates Part 4 I believe. There was some work that needed to be done on that segment of the road, which is the part that we’re vacating. We decided that we would prefer to have that work done prior to doing the vacation. Now that work has been completed and just to keep it clean I guess, we decided to hold off on both of them and do them both on the same time. So the work has been completed now. I visited with Andy and he thought it would be best, due to the amount of time that’s elapsed to come in and bring everybody up to date on it informally and put it on the formal agenda next week for your action.
Thompson: Any questions from the Board? OK, this will go on for next week. Thank you. Next is discussion regarding weight embargoes on Secondary Roads.
Gardner: OK, this is an item that about this time each year we come in and ask the Board to pass a resolution so that we can embargo our roads in order to protect them from damage due to the frost coming out of the ground. It’s been a real mild winter as you all know and the roads are looking very good right now, but we wanted to go ahead and have the resolution passed so that we would have the ability to go out and embargo any that did start to show any distress. Particularly, I believe we have a dozen of them out there that the homeowners associations are responsible for the maintenance costs on them. They’re really particular, I mean not that we aren’t, but they are on the phone right away when they see something going out there. So we wanted to at least have the resolution in place, so that if we did get a call we could go out and check it out and place the embargo if we needed to.
Thompson: The embargo can be for what, 6 weeks?
Gardner: 90 days.
Thompson: OK.
Gardner: It typically isn’t on that long. I think I checked and just over the last 10 years, it’s averaged between 50 and 60 days that we’ve had them on.
Stutsman: Will a wet period now have an impact on those roads or that doesn’t both them as much as the freezing and thawing and stuff.
Gardner: The freezing and thawing is what does the damage. Actually warm temperatures and heavy rains is what helps get the frost out quicker.
Stutsman: Is there any frost in the ground.
Gardner: Not a lot. There’s some in a few places the way I understand it.
Stutsman: Isn’t that something.
Hackathorn: There a couple of shaded areas, a bank that’s facing North where the sun isn’t hitting it, there’s a little. But nothing in the road that we’ve really came across substantial enough to cause a problem. Actually an oil road, if we get rain, it’s solid and it will shed most of the rain off if we get a wet period. Our gravel roads will you know, because there’s nothing to shed it, will soak them up a little, but we’re looking good.
Thompson: You consider each road individually, so the 90 days could start on one road at a different time then another road.
Gardner: That’s correct. That 50 to 60 days that I’ve been talking about, that’s from the date that we post the first one to the date that we take the last one off. Like you say, it’s spread out over the whole system, so the whole system isn’t embargoes nearly that long.
Thompson: You manage it so that each road gets the last amount of time to preserve it.
Gardner: Right.
Stutsman: Not putting an embargo would certainly be good, as far as the issues we had with the waste haulers and the hardship that that was going to create by having embargoes. I think to that I heard that a couple of those contractors we able to accommodate smaller trucks during the embargo period. So that was going to be able to be worked out.
Gardner: I did get calls from 2 of them that are making some accommodations so that they can continue to serve the customers out there. They just wanted to be made aware of when this was going to happen. I’ve called both of them now and told them that they’re going to be taking actions next week on it so they can could expect to maybe start seeing them out there.
Thompson: So you’ll bring in a resolution for us to consider next week.
Gardner: Yes.
Thompson: OK. Thank you. Next is discussion/action regarding purchase of 2 new sterling model LT 9500 trucks to replace the 1993 Ford dump truck and a 1993 International dump truck. Total cost will be $109,740 after taking a $39,000 trade in allowance off the $148,740 quote. We have a spreadsheet.
Hackathorn: On the sheet there you’ll see the quotes that came in on it and this is the low one. We purchased 2 of these trucks last year and we’re having really good luck with them, so I see no need not to stray from the low quote.
Stutsman: These are things that are already budgeted. The Board just asked you to come in and update us when they’re making these large purchases.
Hackathorn: Yes, this is more of an informational thing.
Gardner: They’re in the FY03 budget. We won’t take delivery on these until September, but it was included in the budget that I submitted for new equipment for FY03.
Thompson: So the actual payment will be made after taxes come in in September.
Gardner: Yes.
Thompson: Thank you.
Hackathorn: Delivery date is in September for them.
Thompson: That helps on cash flow.
Hackathorn: They will be a 2003 model vehicle.
Stutsman: They’ll be used for summer maintenance work and stuff.
Hackathorn: Yes, snow plows, dump trucks. It’s one of our larger dump trucks.
Thompson: Any further discussion from the Board? So this will be on for next week for action.
Stutsman: We don’t take action on this do we?
Gardner: No. This was just an information.
Thompson: Oh, thank you. Next is discussion action regarding current calcium chloride program and getting quotes for this year’s needs.
Gardner: This was just one we put on. We wanted to just have the Board reaffirm that you wanted to continue the program as it is set up at this point. There won’t need to be any action taken on this at this time either. What we wanted was just for sure that you wanted to continue the program, which I assumed you did based on the discussion we had during budget process. If that is the case, we’ll go ahead and get the quotes sent and get them set back to us and then we would bring that information into you for a review.
Lehman: We’re going to use the same criteria as we had in the past? Is it 300 cars per day on, over continuous calcium chloride?
Gardner: Unless I hear different.
Lehman: Then this sporadic, the curves, the bridge approaches, stuff like that was going to be?
Gardner: 150 and above. 150 vehicles per day and above. The other thing I did want, I had a question on whether we wanted to continue… Whether the Board wanted to continue the exceptions to that that we’ve done during the last couple years, which included Amana road during the spot treatment, even though portions of that fall below the 150 vehicles per day. Another road is 140th Street between Ely Road and Sandy Beach, portions of that fall below the 150 vehicles per day, but we have done the spot treatment on that stretch as well. The third one that we’ve done is Sioux Avenue and Napoleon, from Hwy 6 down Sioux to Napoleon and then Napoleon to over where the City has their oil at the entrance to the sewer plant, we did that solid last year due to the soccer traffic and stuff that comes on that road.
Lehman: Does it still have oil down there Terrence?
Neuzil: No, not much. That road by the way is seeing the frost come through it.
Stutsman: That’s not oil though is it?
Neuzil: That’s chip seal. Our fine Iowa City’s really taking care of that one. The other one I wanted to bring up just as we do the detours. Particularly up in the North part, when we do Mehaffey Bridge, are you going to be doing some of those too? Because we’ve had lots of complaints about not taking the detoured route and finding another route that might be quicker for them.
Gardner: Yes, the marked detours will be done.
Neuzil: Then we get complaints from them. I don’t know what, how to address that or what you want to do with that.
Gardner: Well, we normally just treat the marked detour. This is expensive. With the cuts that we’ve been asked to do, I’m actually increasing the budget for this item by $35,000 just to get up to close to what we were actually spending on it. I guess, that’s the way we were going to proceed, we’ll do the marked detours.
Lehman: You didn’t have this budgeted last when we asked you to make these changes, so this year you have incorporated the additional costs into your budget. Just double checking to see if we want to keep it at that level.
Thompson: So if we approve the exceptions plus last year’s plan, will there be any different roads that are done or will they all be the same as last year?
Gardner: They will all be the same as last year except the detour route. It hasn’t been set yet for the construction to take place up on Mehaffey.
Stutsman: Unless we want to take one of these roads out. That’s always…
Gardner: Just to show you, in FY01, we spent almost $182,000. FY02 I had budgeted $140,000 because I wasn’t sure what the actual costs were going to be. So this year I’ve upped that $35,000 to $175,000, so it’s actually what we even spent in FY 01.
Neuzil: I think that number, once we get the new traffic counts, I have a feeling that this number is going to go significantly up. I think our traffic counts are low.
Stutsman: Do you think so.
Gardner: I wouldn’t be surprised with the growth that’s occurring up north. There’s going to be a lot of them that…
Neuzil: Will that be next year.
Gardner: They’re going to be making the counts this summer.
Thompson: But we wouldn’t get them right away.
Gardner: Right, it will be a year before we get those.
Hackathorn: Rough estimates from talking to some people that the cost is going to go up maybe $.05 per gallon at the max this year.
Stutsman: .05$ a gallon?
Gardner: Which is approximately 10%. We were paying about 49.5 cents per gallon.
Lehman: You haven’t really built that in.
Gardner: No.
Stutsman: Wow.
Thompson: This is the only plan that we can come up with… I mean, this is the best plan that we can come up with?
Neuzil: Products wise.
Thompson: We know it’s not, it’s not what people would like to have.
Gardner: Right, it’s not.
Stutsman: Well, no. Because I was going to ask you, have the complaints gone down accordingly? You know as far as, I know people still complain even though we do put the calcium chloride on. It’s not a dust free surface.
Gardner: I don’t know that the number of complaints have gone down. I think it’s easier to explain now what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. I think now we’ve got a legitimate explanation, where as before it was a little difficult at times to explain why one road was getting treatment and another one wasn’t.
Thompson: Are there any questions?
Stutsman: Well, so if you’re talking about a 10% increase on that $175,000 then?
Gardner: That’s a possibility. That’s what some of the suppliers are saying would be the outside…
Stutsman: Wow.
Hackathorn: Yes, that’s the max increase.
Thompson: What did we spend this year?
Gardner: I don’t have that in front of me. FY 01 was about $182,000.
Stutsman: So we’re going to easy reach what we spent in…
Gardner: I’m fairly certain to see… We won’t know what we’ve spent this year because we’ll get our first treatment this year out of the FY02 budget. We treat twice, once in May and once in September. Out of this year’s budget we’ve only gotten one treatment done, so our second treatment will be out of the quote we get this spring.
Neuzil: So whatever the amount of money that you’re quoting, you’re living within you budget right? I mean even if you add these other things or not?
Gardner: So far.
Stutsman: So are we buying salt ahead? Don’t need any do we? It’s cheap now isn’t it?
Hackathorn: We paid $10 a ton more this year then we did this year because there was a shortage.
Stutsman: But this year, wouldn’t there be a glut of it around?
Hackathorn: I hope so, I hope the price goes down by next fall and hopefully I don’t need to purchase any right away in the fall.
Neuzil: I think we saved some money so far on the weather.
Thompson: Is there further discussion on the calcium chloride program. Any other business from the County Engineer?
Gardner: I don’t believe so.
Stutsman: So there isn’t any interest on the Board to take on of these roads out or make any adjustments to it.
Harney: I don’t think at this time. When we run into real problems with that is people became accustomed to those chip sealed roads and they’ve been allowed to go back into gravel. I certainly understand where they get the complaints from the dust once they’ve gone back. It’s hard to take away when it’s already been there. I think at this point, unless we run into budget problems, I’d like to see us continue those particular areas.
Stutsman: How many years ago was that reverted, those oil roads?
Gardner: Most of them, the Board actually took action on it in the mid-70’s.
Stutsman: I still hear people… That took a lot of political will for the Board to do that. Because that really was…
Gardner: A lot of them, just instead of going in and tearing them up they were allowed to just… We tore them up as they deteriorated to a point where they couldn’t be maintained. They haven’t all been reverted actually back to rock that long, but probably in the early `90s was probably the last time we did any actual tear up.
Hackathorn: Yes, probably up on Amana Road and that would have been mid-`90s.
Lehman: That was a policy change due to budget restraints, the cost of oil products at that time.
Hackathorn: We did have some oil roads in certain parts of the County that were only 30 or 40 cars a day on them.
Lehman: That’s what we’ve done with out traffic counts now, trying to justify where calcium chloride should be and also our 5-Year Road Plan.
Stutsman: It’s interesting. That’s what they’re trying to do with the change in the Road Use Tax Fund. Boy, it’s the small rural Counties that are really going to get hit with that change. It’s not going to happen this year at least, but we came out very well on it, because on our increased population. We actually are going to gain more dollars, but it really is pretty painful for the small rural Counties that are going to loose millions of dollars.
Thompson: Thank you.
Gardner: Thank you.
Hackathorn: Thanks.
Thompson: Next is business from the Planning and Zoning Department. Discussion action regarding the Planning and Zoning Department’s 2001 annual report. We have Mike Norris here, our intern from the Planning and Zoning Department, I’m sorry, from the University of Iowa’s Urban and Regional Planning Program.
Planning and Zoning Administrator Rick Dvorak: You have me here too. It’s been the Board’s policy since I’ve been here that you like to have end reports given to you on what we’ve been doing the previous year and what we plan on doing in the upcoming year. Because of the interest from our interns, they like to put information like this into their portfolios, Mike did undertake putting this document together. At this time I’d like to have Mike present this document to you. I do have additional copies for anyone who would like to have one.
Planning and Zoning Intern Mike Norris: On behalf of the Johnson County Planning and Zoning Department and Administrator Rick Dvorak, I’d like to take this opportunity to present the 2001 Annual Report. The purpose of this report is to detail and describe all the department’s activities for the calendar year 2001. The report contains activities such as building permits, housing starts, rezoning and platting applications, conditional use permits, Board of Adjustment request, miscellaneous applications and permits. It also addresses 2001 Planning and Zoning activities and our upcoming planning projects. In 2001 we issued 265 building permits. This represents 79 fewer permits then were issued in 2000. This also represents the first decline in building permits issued in 3 years. Of the 265 permits issued, 82 permits were issued for single family homes. This represents the majority use of the issued building permits. In 2001 we received 18 total requests for rezoning. This represents 19 fewer applications then in year 2000. Of these 18 requests 16 were for requests for rezoning for agricultural land. Of these 16 only 4 were approved for a total of 22 acres. As a comparison in 1998 there were 250 acres of agricultural land rezoned. This is proof that the Land Use Plan is working and that the Board of Supervisors have committed to implement the plan. 35 subdivisions were platted in 2001 totaling 459 acres, this represents 200 acres less then in 2000. Annexations from the County into other incorporated areas in Johnson County totaled 419 acres, 392 of which were agricultural land. However this number does not include the Tiffin annexation total. Planning activities in 2001 included long range planning projects, fringe area agreements, sensitive areas and clustered subdivision ordinances. Under long range planning, staff primarily worked on the North Corridor project. This is near completion and should be presented to the Board in the spring of 2002. Work also continued on fringe area agreements. An agreement was initiated with Lone Tree in 2001 and the Tiffin Fringe Area Agreement was also revised in 2001. Work also continued on the Sensitive Areas and Clustered Subdivision ordinance. The Clustered Subdivision ordinance is near completion and work is continuing into 2002 on the Sensitive Areas ordinance. This brings us to planning projects for 2002. This includes our economic development plan, fringe area agreements and the North Corridor Plan. The economic development plan is currently underway and a draft should be ready in Fall 2002. Work is also continuing on fringe area agreements and an agreement has been initiated with Lone Tree, one should start with Shueyville soon, and another one has been started with Hills. For the North Corridor plan, this is scheduled for review and it should be ready for presentation in front of the Board in Spring of 2002. That pretty much sums up the annual report for the department and I’d like to open things up for questions.
Stutsman: I was going to ask why wasn’t the Tiffin annexation included?
Dvorak: We were not notified until actually yesterday that the final… There’s a process where they have to notify the communities. Their approval I think was in September, but they never got around… Iowa Development Board did not get around to notifying us and other representatives until I think it was yesterday, so it has not been included.
Stutsman: So that will show up next year, in next year’s report.
Dvorak: That will show up next year.
Thompson: That’s a nice report.
Norris: Thank you.
Harney: I’d compliment you and your staff on this, it was well put together. It’s a real nice document.
Dvorak: Thank you. This will be on the web site today.
Stutsman: Good. I guess I was looking at this Appendix B, I guess I feel that the Land Use Plan is working. We have rezoned 459 acres… Am I reading this right? But we did plat that many subdivisions?
Dvorak: Right.
Stutsman: That tells me that we haven’t stopped growth and development in the rural areas, it’s just that now we’re doing a better job of managing it. You know I, I think a good example of that is Wescott Heights. There was some 78 acres there that is being used for houses now, which I think is where housing in the rural areas should be. So I think it’s good, that we can look at this and see that we are doing a good job.
Dvorak: I think the vision of the Land Use Plan when we worked on it for 2 to 3 years was not to stop development, but to direct it into areas that we had better roads systems, land that was currently already zoned, and I think you’ve accomplished that. By this activity you can see, we still have a lot of new lots out there, but we still haven’t rezoned a lot of areas. We’re going to be getting additional applications in on rezoning of areas that you’ve improved the roads, such as Prairie Du Chien, Mehaffey Bridge road, 180th street will start showing up after those roads are improved. So I think at least the vision of the Board at that time I think was do what I think is being accomplished at this time.
Neuzil: I think the only other point though is, as I’ve said before, our Land Use Plan hasn’t stopped development, but it’s certainly slowed it. But the whole other end was that you would have less services, I haven’t seen that at all in our County government, so
I don’t know if it’s working or not.
Thompson: The thing that shows me that it’s working is the large subdivisions that we platted were already zoned residential, so that’s a sign that we’re filling in the areas, like you said that we have the infrastructure on them already. That was certainly part of the plan. It’s to manage growth, not to stop or promote it.
Dvorak: That’s the way we view it.
Thompson: Does the Board have any other questions (inaudible).
Dvorak: Tell Mike to put this in his portfolio.
Stutsman: Yes.
Thompson: We’ll give you a good grade.
Neuzil: Nice job.
Dvorak: Thank you very much.
Thompson: Any other business from Planning and Zoning?
BUDGET COORDINATOR JEFF HORNE: MONTHLY REPORT FOR JANUARY, 2002
Thompson: Next is business from Jeff Horne regarding the monthly report from January 2002.
Budget Coordinator Jeff Horne: You didn’t get one in your packets?
Stutsman: It’s in the packet.
Horne: Sorry. We made it through 7 months of Fiscal Year 2002 and expenditures and revenues should be about 58% of budget. Most of the departments are still looking pretty good. They’re a little bit under revenues, obviously, as we’ve been talking about. I’m going to talk about some of the departments that have items of note. The Public Health Department is running well ahead of revenues at 70%, and expenditures at 66%. I’ve talked with Ralph about this. He assures me that all of the expenditures will be accounted for with the revenue in the budget amendment and that they will be revenue neutral or revenue positive. The Medical Examiners Office continues to be a concern, having expended 64% of their budget year to date at the end of January. They have spent 107% on the line item for autopsies and 76% of the line item for medical examiner fees. Those are the major 2 expenses within that department. The program is continuing to evolve. The Death Field Investigators have started working and we should see, hopefully, some effect in the fees to the Medical Examiner. Dr. White’s time should not be minimized and these people should be able to handle a lot of those cases at a cheaper cost than we would have to pay Dr. White to handle them. But, also, on the flip side of this, revenues have also risen and they’ve collected 84% of their budget year to date in the revenues already. So, it looks like at least that is a positive aspect of this.
Stutsman: Do you think they will have to have a budget amendment?
Horne: I think it’s a possibility. They are not a typical department. We don’t have as much day-to-day contact with them. We deal with Jeff Gaulthier from the University, as the administrative contact often. Apparently the Field Investigator is going to take over a lot of the administration of the department from what I understand.
Stutsman: If they go over budget, we’re just so tight this year and next year as far as reserves, can we tell them not to do so many autopsies? Do we have any…
Horne: I don’t think we really can. I really don’t.
Thompson: They’ll have that excess revenue that we could budget back in.
Lehman: Possibly, but a 2% increase in revenues doesn’t equal 2% in expenses because they are not dollar for dollar.
Horne: They’re not dollar for dollar.
Lehman: It may help some.
Horne: It will help offset it some. There is no doubt about it. That is positive. But, I don’t know if it will make it through or not.
Neuzil: What have we done for 03 in that budget amendment? Did we prepare for that?
Horne: We used autopsies, we didn’t prepare for that. This has been a tough roof to budget because we don’t know if the University plan is evolving still. The budgets we were using were best estimates at the time.
Stutsman: There is a lot about front costs, too, for training.
Horne: That’s right. That will go down in the future years. I think we’ve got the autopsies, I think, in next year’s budget we’ll have a better handle on it. I’d like to think we increased that more than they even anticipated. SEATS continues to stay within their budget. But, they have expended 97% of the line item for motor vehicle maintenance. This is being made largely possible because fuel costs have gone… they’ve only expended 30% of their fuel costs. That’s basically saved them from being over budget at this point. Hopefully, she’ll be able to hold that together. I know Lisa is leaving pretty soon, so that is something we might have to watch more carefully up here. I’m not sure if there is going to be an Interim Director we will be dealing with, but start working with them and that situation as soon as possible. The Physical Plant continues to run over budget due mainly to hiring expenses for the operation of the County’s 3 main buildings, the Administration Building, the Courthouse and the Jail. That’s just slightly over budget, just a couple percent. Mark, when we get to the budget amendments, I think we talked with him before about some of the Courthouse costs possibly being used in the Physical Plant budget this year. So, we might want to revisit that.
Harney: As a note on that jail issue. I think we brought up where there wasn’t enough sufficient exercise space. The jail inspector has come back and advised the Sheriff’s Department that the only time they would have to give that any attention or do a change is if we do some remodeling in there. Then we would have to upgrade that. So, we are all right at this point.
Stutsman: Good.
Thompson: Very good, yes.
Horne: The Jail continues to be the biggest problem for us. We seem to be literally pouring more expenses into the Jail to keep it running than there are to our other 2 main County buildings, one of which is 100 years old. Juvenile Justice is running over budget. It should be it’s 10% over in its expenses. I tried to contact Brandon for that and he has not contacted me. But, he has not told me that he is going to be requesting a budget amendment or anything. So, the soonest I can talk to him I will let you know what the situation is there.
Stutsman: Usually these months are the slower months as far as kids going into detention aren’t they?
Thompson: At the beginning of January it picks up and it will be high in April.
Stutsman: I was thinking now it should be lower.
Horne: Yes. It’s a very conscientious budget. I don’t know if he is even here right now or what. I just sent him an email a couple of days ago and asked him if he needed an amendment or what was the situation there. Court Services, the Court Services budget is running about 8% over budget. It’s at 66% of it’s year to day expenditures. Much of the expense is from the Memmer Trial in the fall. The County Attorney has indicated to me that he is going to try to live within this budget for the rest of the Fiscal Year. So, he thinks he can get by without an amendment at this point. MH/DD, Department 46, Director Sweet has indicated she feels that it’s possible that the MH/DD fund balance could be depleted substantially. So, she requested with you last week to have the waiting list instituted for non-mandated services. She based this on an accrual assessment. But, in the current year’s cash spending, we are only at 49% of budget. So, we are under budget with the cash.
Thompson: Where are we on revenues?
Horne: We are under on revenues. So, it’s roughly, approximating. Veteran Affairs, for the 2nd straight month, Veteran Affairs is on target with its expenditures. Although the line item for client rent assistance is continue to run over, the smaller line items continue to offset this. So, Leo is staying within his budget and doing a good job. He is aware of the situation and I think he is trying to address that. Notes, departments were notified of the 1% reduction in this year’s budget in one of my email memos. I will be sending out a reminder again within the next week, reminding them that is going to happen and then try to get to them the amounts of what that 1% would be for their individual departments. The County budget for Fiscal Year 2003 is nearly complete. We are planning on tentatively right now, we haven’t set it yet, having a public hearing on March 11th, at 5:30 p.m., which the Board will be setting tomorrow. I’ll be carefully continuing to monitor the State’s budget situation this year to see if we get any more cuts within Fiscal Year 2002, which is entirely possible still, and see if we have to take any additional action with our balances. I’m hoping we won’t have to. Our main areas of concern, of course, are roads and mental health. With that, any questions?
Thompson: Thank you.
Horne: Thank you.