MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
MARCH 13, 2003
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chairperson Harney called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 6:00 p.m. Members present were: Pat Harney, Mike Lehman, Terrence Neuzil, and Carol Thompson; absent: Sally Stutsman.
Harney: First item of business of the Informal Meeting is business from Ruben Arsate, Senior Building Inspector, referencing building recommendations from the Johnson County Building Code Study Committee.
Planning and Zoning Administrator Rick Dvorak: I think I’d like to bring the Board and the public up to date a little bit. I’d like to also invite Gary Werle who is the chairman of your Study Committee to come up to the table with us. I did want to acknowledge that there are a couple other members of the Study Committee back there, Jim Hackathorn and David Wright. Mike Wagner is here also. I’ll turn this over to Gary and Ruben, but I did want to preface this again, like I started saying, in that, the Board before we adopted the Building Code created a Study Committee of people from the rural area and from the trades. They made a recommendation to you to adopt the Codes which you chose to do. At that time the Board told us charged the Study Committee to come back within 2 years with a recommendation in how things were working and amendments that they’d like to see the Board look at. I think with that then I’ll turn this over to Ruben and Gary. That’s why we’re here tonight.
Senior Building Inspector Ruben Arsate: How shall we start this? Just tag team it?
Building Code Study Committee Chairperson Gary Werle: You go ahead and lead.
Arsate: OK.
Werle: I like Pat’s sweater.
Arsate: It’s very timely. As to the recommendations of the Building Code Study Committee that we adopt the 2000 International Building Code, 2000 International Residential Code, 2000 International Mechanical Code, 2000 Uniform Plumbing Code. Those are the Codes that we would like to recommend to be adopted by Johnson County. I’d like to add that surrounding communities have already moved in this direction and at this point we’re the only ones that are outside of the ring there. So that’s the recommendation.
Dvorak: You might also mention to the Board the fact that we are a part of the Metropolitan Area, including Cedar Rapids, and municipalities and as you started saying that they have already incorporated these ordinances in place. That’s been our plan since day one is to have a uniform code throughout the community so there isn’t UBC here and IBC here and something here. I did want to emphasize that; that that’s one of the main things the Board did recommend we do to change the code documents.
Harney: Has Coralville, Iowa City, and North Liberty adopted this?
Arsate: Correct.
Harney: And you say Cedar Rapids has as well?
Arsate: Cedar Rapids, Linn County, Marion. Yes.
Werle: Basically, we’re about 6 months behind everybody else, Pat. So when we met we just thought to get everybody on the same playing table it's time, which we originally wanted to look at 2 years ago after we formed the Committee and we put the codes in force. We’re coming back 2 years later to look at where we were; what we needed to do. It was the Committee’s recommendation that depending on the municipality be it Cedar Rapids, North Liberty, Iowa City, Coralville, we’re either 6 months or 12 months behind. So we made the recommendation to adopt the codes that are before you to bring everybody up on the same playing field. That way if you’re in Iowa City, if you’re in Johnson County, or if you’re in Linn County, everybody’s using the same codes.
Lehman: I might ask, Gary since you build in the municipalities as well as the County, what do the other municipalities use to educate builders that think there may be some changes or have been some so they’re not in violation as inspectors come out…
Werle: What’s happened over the last year and half, Mike, is the Greater Iowa City Homebuilders Association, working with the municipalities and their inspectors, we’ve put on programs that… We’ll have a breakfast with the various inspectors and then anybody that’s interested can participate. The code enforcement or the inspectors from wherever are able to come express what’s been happening the previous 6 months or 4 months, depending on when the breakfast takes place, and what can be expected in the next 6 months or 12 months. With the code groups or the enforcement agencies getting together to form the…
Arsate: EICBIG, Eastern Iowa Corridor Building Inspectors Committee.
Werle: Something like that.
Arsate: Wordy.
Werle: We’re getting closer. Before the spectrum was this wide and it’s coming down. I think we have a lot of collaboration between the various departments on trying to fine line a certain set of rules. It will never happen with everybody having their certain amendments to the codes, various codes, but we’re getting closer than what it was 5 years ago or even 3 years ago.
Lehman: You had mentioned amendments. Is that what most of the difficulty for now and the future may be with… Different entities are adopting different amendments or are they pretty standard also?
Arsate: It’s basically geographically, depending on the soil conditions. It’s things that are inherent to the locality. Sometimes it can be, say like, the frost footings, the depth of them, things like this. So it’s particular to the given area. That’s the kind of amendments they make to the codes.
Lehman: It looks like there might be one advantage to us being a little bit behind the rest of the pace. The contractors work everywhere in the County whether it be under a… But they are pretty well schooled by any application that Ruben and their staff may have to look at.
Arsate: Correct.
Werle: That’s a good point. When I say we’re playing catch up, we’re still going to be 6 months or 12 months behind the other agencies. So in essence that’s good for Ruben and Daryl and Nick and the guys. They aren’t having to educate everybody at the same time as they’re trying to put this program together. The Committee and the Homebuilders and I think the majority of everybody feels that in the last 2 years we’ve gained a lot of ground. I think if we can all think back 3 years ago, 4 years ago from where we started to where we are now I think the attitudes of everybody has greatly changed.
Lehman: Through this Association you feel that you and your staff are adequately prepared to implement these standardizations?
Arsate: Sure, that would be no problem at all to switch over to the International Codes now.
Lehman: This would take formal action?
Dvorak: No.
Assistant County Attorney Andy Chappell: The best way I think for the Board to proceed at this point is… You’re essentially being presented with a number of recommendations from the Building Committee, the informal committee you’d set up, and what really is being asked of you is whether you’re going to give staff direction to move forward on these sorts of things. I think it may be easier if you just went through all of them and then you can have a general discussion as to which ones you think you should direct staff to spend their time on. For instance, if you’re interested in ultimately pursuing adoption of the International Codes like the other municipalities then you would essentially direct tonight and you don’t need formal action to do that. But if you think that the vote may be close 4 months down the road when you actually get the documents then you may want to make sure you certainly talk it out. But you’re going to get some consensus to tell staff whether, go ahead and prepare the International Building Codes, go ahead and prepare and run through the Building Code Board of Appeals the local amendments that we would have to draft. These are all going to require quite a bit of work, well most of them are going to require quite a bit of work. Essentially we need direction, both the Planning and Zoning and, quite frankly, I need direction as to whether these are things you are interested in pursuing. No formal action tonight and probably for quite a while. It’s going to take a while to draft some of these things. But that’s essentially what we’re doing here. With one exception each one of these recommendations from the Building Code Study Committee would require changes to the Code that we’ve already adopted. So we’re going to have to run an official amendment through the Building Code Board of Appeals, which then would make a recommendation just like your Planning and Zoning Commission makes recommendations on Zoning matters. That recommendation would come to you and then be considered by you. Did I make it worse?
Neuzil: No.
Thompson: So let’s go through the rest of the Residential Remodeling Permits.
Arsate: OK, for the Residential Remodeling, many times we come in, we do all of the inspections, we do the final and we issue the CO, which is the Certificate of Occupancy. Then we leave and at that point in they come and they finish out the basement and at that point they’re not under any inspections because they’re not increasing the square footage and what have you. So we thought we’d address that and that literally takes a change in the Applicability of the Codes. That sentence where it says, the Uniform Building Codes… Section 2, says Applicability of Codes, the Uniform Building Code, National Electrical Code, Uniform Mechanical Code, and Uniform Plumbing Code, as adopted by Johnson County shall apply only to any new construction and additions where one changes or increases the square footage or volume of a structure and to remodeling of industrial and commercial structures. So if we change that verbiage there to where they wouldn’t have to increase the volume or the square footage then we would be covered by it and we would be able to address those inspections that are required under the remodeling.
Thompson: So there would be some things that would be not included?
Arsate: Yes. We never touch anything…
Thompson: For cosmetic things?
Arsate: Yes. None of that is a part of the inspections. You get new cabinets…
Thompson: Roof?
Arsate: A roof, only if you change something structural or go beyond 50% of the sheathing.
Neuzil: So what does this change? Give us some examples.
Arsate: If they come in and they give us a set of plans and they say that the basement is going to be unfinished. When they go to finish the basement out then they have to come in and get a permit and we inspect that.
Neuzil: And they currently don’t have to?
Arsate: Currently they don’t.
Werle: We currently don’t inspect remodeling. This would give you opportunity to look at remodeling in an existing building.
Arsate: Correct.
Thompson: If you tear out walls and put 2 rooms together or things like that, you would inspect that?
Arsate: Yes. We would be able to.
Neuzil: This expands this program.
Arsate: Somewhat, yes.
Thompson: That’d be one, I would think, Mike’s comment about how would people know that would be germane. How will people know that we changed? How will you notify people?
Arsate: Just like when we started the division, I literally put flyers out at Menards and Payless and things like that.
Neuzil: I know we’re not going to get into a giant discussion here tonight, but a lot of these things, I think, discourage from wanting to fix up their own home when they know that they have to have and pay fees. I just kind of want to give you my 2 cents. I don't know if that’s the message we want to send here or not. I mean I think that they’re some people out there that certainly are very capable of drywalling a wall.
Arsate: What we’re concerned with are the life safety issues and especially in electrical wiring. When a person comes in and they finish out their basement and they put in all their electrical service.
Neuzil: I just said a drywall.
Arsate: Not drywall, we don’t inspect drywall, no. It has to be a structural change.
Neuzil: OK.
Arsate: The electrical wiring would be the main thing that we’re concerned with there. The removal of load bearing walls, that type of situation. Cosmetic? No, no, we’re not after the cosmetic part of it at all. It’s just those aspects that actually endanger lives.
Neuzil: So why not just say electrical?
Arsate: Because then that would exclude the structural part, a load bearing wall for example.
Neuzil: OK.
Arsate: So what would happen there, if you’re going to be doing a remodeling job, we would encourage you to call us and you tell us what’s the scope of your job. At that point, then we make a determination, oh, you’re only going to drywall, no problem, have a good day. You’re going to finish out your entire basement, you’re going to put in some plumbing, you’re going to do electrical runs, now we have inspections.
Neuzil: And plumbing’s something that’s…
Arsate: Noxious gases into…
Neuzil: …life threatening.
Arsate: It can be, absolutely.
Neuzil: Sure. I’m just trying to let you know that I think there are people out there that would argue that everything is life threatening.
Arsate: Especially with LP gas. The running of LP gas into the basement something like that. It would be that type of situation that we would be looking into.
Neuzil: You believe that your current staff would continue to be able to handle what sounds to me to be a lot more jobs.
Arsate: All of this is contingent on increasing the staff at least by one individual and then at that point I’d like to leave the door open and say I think I can handle it with one more inspector and possibly we may have to add the staff later depending on how things work out.
Neuzil: That’s important to note too…
Arsate: Yes, absolutely.
Neuzil: …that we’re talking about more employees and a much bigger department.
Lehman: But our budget that we just approved does have another…
Thompson: Has one employee, yes.
Lehman: …employee. That was basically somewhat for catch up to make sure that people were waiting for inspections. You’re not estimating that this is going to be a large impact on the time required of your staff. If you have a commercial building it’s going to be major but if somebody is doing some remodeling inside that building, like you had talked, the basement, it’s probably not going to require the time that an original building would.
Arsate: No, no.
Neuzil: Let’s remember too that during the budgetary discussions, although, it’s pretty well known that I was on record against that additional staff person, but I think that the Board had determined that that additional staff person was to make up for time that wasn’t currently being conducted. In other words, we were getting behind with the current staff and the current proposals and now we’re talking about adding what seems to be a fairly significant amount of new projects. If the Board is considering that then we’re thinking more than potentially one because the argument was for one additional staff for work that’s already not being done.
Thompson: As I recall it, they were talking about having enough staff so that someone could always be in the office to answer questions.
Arsate: Correct. That would be me.
Thompson: That person could still…
Neuzil: Right, but I mean the argument again during the budgetary discussion was let’s make up for what we’re already doing. If that staff person’s making up for what we’re already doing this is a brand new amount of projects here. That means another staff person.
Lehman: That was my question. We’re not inspecting remodeling in residential, this is only commercial. Commercial is not near the volume that you would anticipate if we were going to try to do residential.
Arsate: At this point, I believe that one more person on the staff… Because we’re also doing some, we’ll say, revamping of staff’s workload and redistributing the work. So we’re approaching it differently in the office also. So at this point I believe that one more inspector would help and pretty much cover what…
Lehman: Could do both jobs. But Terrence was right, our contention of giving another employee was basically to make sure that people weren’t waiting for the current inspections that are being done.
Arsate: Correct. That will help a lot.
Lehman: I think what Terrence is saying…
Neuzil: What I’m saying is now you’re adding a whole other set of projects here and does that mean you actually need 2 staff members?
Arsate: I believe we can handle it at this point from what I understand and what I’ve seen…
Neuzil: OK. So then the argument of course would be then would that… If we don’t approve these things then are you going to have an extra staff person kind of just not doing something.
Arsate: No, no, no.
Werle: I think what’s going to happen is the person that they’ve asked for, the additional person, is to supplement their daily duties while the guys are in the field, somebody to answer the phone. The duties that they’re asking and what they’re talking about here are not going to be all remodeling projects. What they’re talking about is when the guys go out to inspect a brand new home and they’re being slapped in the face because they’re giving a final occupancy while the next framers or electricians or whatever are going downstairs; totally different people than from the construction permit and they’re remodeling or finishing out a basement or they’re finishing a garage that was never put on the original building permit. It’s just a fine line, gray area, that these people are finding out how to get around it and it seems to be happening more than what we’d like to see happen. We aren’t here to say, no, Terry, you can’t drywall your basement, we’re here saying that if you’re going to put electrical down there, if you’re going to put gas appliances, you’re going to put plumbing, you need to have a licensed person doing that. What’s happening is…
Neuzil: All I’m trying to say is, will Johnson County have the staff to be able to this?
Werle: We feel they will have the staff. There are some things that they will be able to… Right now we’re duplicating because of what we’re asking to do and by eliminating that…
Neuzil: I’m not just talking about this. There’s more on the list here. We’ve…
Werle: There’s more on the list, but we talked about it to great length and we think that the guys can handle it with one more person.
Neuzil: Because that argument certainly wasn’t there during the budgetary process.
Werle: Right. Again it is self-supporting, we hope, with the fees, that we are paying for that additional person. So it’s not an expense out of the General budget by any means.
Neuzil: It’s certainly an expense out of the taxpayers’ dollars, sure, sure it is.
Werle: In a sense, yes.
Neuzil: Yes, absolutely it is.
Thompson: There was some discussion during the budget hearings that this person would have time to do these extra things if we approve.
Neuzil: And if we didn’t approve them, then what?
Thompson: I don’t know. We didn’t discuss that, did we?
Neuzil: OK.
Thompson: What about the manufactured housing?
Neuzil: That’s probably the one that’s going to be more busy, right? It’d make you a little more busy.
Arsate: The manufactured housing?
Neuzil: Yes.
Arsate: There really aren’t that many trailers coming in. I can’t really give you an exact number.
Neuzil: No, I’m not saying that.
Arsate: But we’re concerned about are the trailers that have been going in out in the County and I can say we’ve probably had like 10 since we started. But there was just nothing in place to determine how they’re going to anchor the homes down. So we’re looking for a way to make it safer for the manufactured housing group or area.
Dvorak: I’d like just to jump in a little bit. I was of the opinion when we had those meetings that this was to be in all the manufactured housing parks, not just the 10 that we did out in the rural area.
Arsate: That’s correct. Yes, it would cover the rest of the parks also. But I can’t tell you the exact number of the…
Neuzil: No. Does Iowa City and Coralville… Well Coralville’s buying out theirs. Does Iowa City have for manufactured housing?
Arsate: Yes they do.
Neuzil: Trailers?
Arsate: Yes, they do inspections for them. Yes, for the foundations and for the electrical and the gas connections. Again, all the life safety issues.
Thompson: To me that’s a real safety issue. If we only had enough manpower to do one of the things, I’d rather do that one than the remodeling.
Lehman: You’re talking about just new?
Arsate: Correct, at this point we can’t go back.
Lehman: Not homes, but new locations, I guess, or new… The other ones would be grandfathered in and you’re not going to go back to an existing.
Arsate: No, no.
Neuzil: Obviously, the major…
Thompson: But it’s only if they add like a deck or…
Arsate: Yes, the deck, the accessory buildings.
Neuzil: We’re talking about a major… There’s one major area of course over by Colonial Lanes.
Arsate: Yes, correct.
Neuzil: Right. That’s still in the county that is.
Dvorak: I guess when we were talking I thought that the Study Committee was recommending is basic with the manufactured housing parks, primarily. That would be replacement of existing or new and then the guys would check the wiring and the plumbing and the tie downs, I think was the primary in the past. Number 2 is any additional decks. Number 3 was any structures exceeding 144 square feet. Is that what you remember too?
Arsate: Yes.
Dvorak: Again, I’m agreeing with you folks that may in itself be fairly time consuming. As you’re aware we have a lot of manufactured housing. We have 300 lots out at…
Neuzil: That’s the one I’m thinking of. Yes. The big one.
Dvorak: I think this all started with Pat. I think he was getting some calls and concerns and that’s why we threw it on the agenda for the Study Committee to even review. There were concerns about the safety of the manufactured houses being placed in these parks and probably out in private lots too.
Harney: Particularly after the storms we got a lot of questions about whether they are anchored down and if they were properly installed and things like that. To me a trailer is probably more important than a house because they’re all bolted down where a trailer sits on…
Werle: If you take a manufactured house and you put it on 20 acres of ground, we require a foundation, but we don’t require how that’s attached. So that’s where the Study Committee came up, that any manufactured homes, any new coming in, we would inspect to make sure the proper tie-downs, the foundations, as Rick said, exist. We would go to new housing to make sure the new houses are being tied down, the foundation system’s being implemented, the plumbing, the wiring and what not. In the existing courts, we wouldn’t be enforcing or looking, inspecting the homes that have been there a year, or 10 years, or 20 years. The only thing in the existing homes would be if they opted to build a new deck, add a deck, add an addition to the building, or a storage facility that is greater than 144 square feet. So the existing homes, there are a lot of them out there, we just wouldn’t have the manpower to go out and physically inspect and then require those people to make changes because some of the homes, they couldn’t make the change due to the date of the manufacture. So this would pertain only to an old home being moved out, a new home being brought in, foundations, tie-downs, plumbing, and electrical.
Harney: So you’re not going back and inspecting…
Arsate: No. We'd never be able to do that.
Werle: Just the new.
Neuzil: But there’s a lot of places where it’s… Please understand this dialogue is mostly to, not only play a bit of the devil’s advocate because I like to do that but I think more importantly it has to do with, if we’re going to have government, then let’s have government that does it right. We’ve had some complaints that people said, we’re not getting the work done quick enough, right now. That’s why the Board of Supervisors has decided to increase another person. My concern is, is that, how big are we going to get here. If you look at the size of Iowa City or the size of other entities when it comes to this particular division they have a lot more people than we have. Are we headed that way and if that’s the direction that a majority of this Board wants to head. Fine. I just don’t think that 3 and maybe one person sitting at phone is going to be enough right now and now we’re talking about expanding this program to a whole lot bigger level than I think that we can handle at this point. That’s all I’m trying to get at at this point. If we’re going to do it, let’s do it right and if you’re going to do it right, of course, that means a lot more staff.
Werle: Totally agree with that.
Arsate: Yes, I do.
Neuzil: OK.
Harney: Are there delays at this time when you get requests for inspections?
Arsate: No, no. We have a 4 hour lead time that we ask for footings and then we do also request 24 hours for any other type of inspection. But we’ve been meeting that, pretty much.
Lehman: Even when there’s 3 feet of frost in the ground? Makes things go a little slower.
Neuzil: There has been… That was, again, the argument during the budgetary discussion of why there was an extra person was because there was 10- or 20% of the time that we weren't getting there.
Arsate: During the height of the season, yes, in July and August, right in there, that’s… But I think regardless of the manpower, most building inspections departments or divisions…
Neuzil: Oh, yes. I mean you guys are doing a great job, but let’s face it, there’s 3 of you. That makes it extremely difficult and of course we have other staff that kind of step in. But you also have to take vacation and you get sick every once in a while and all those things. Again, when you’re talking about a whole county and having a building code division and only having 3 people in the staff and now adding on to this maybe 4… Potentially 4 of course with the new budget in July… Then talking about, what I consider to be a fairly significant amount… You may want to kind of take a step and say let’s phase this in a little slower than all at once because then I think those complaints could be a little higher, particularly during the peak season when everyone wants to build.
Harney: Back on number 5 you’re talking about Residential Remodeling Permits. Why aren’t we addressing commercial in that particular area as well?
Arsate: In commercial we do. We do.
Harney: You already do that one?
Arsate: This is just the residential.
Harney: So this is just adding it in to the…
Arsate: Yes, it’s just the residential that’s not part of it. All commercial and industrial remodeling, whatever goes on in that situation, we do inspect.
Thompson: You did say in the budget hearings that you thought the one additional person would help you to catch up your backlog and do remodeling and mobile home inspections.
Arsate: Those are only estimations at this point, I believe we’ll be OK with that, but like I said I would like to leave the door open with the possibility of not really knowing what’s going to happen here, that we possibly might have to add more staff.
Harney: I think that’s what Terrence is getting at. I don’t think we’re in a position to add any more staff. We gave you another one to catch up on right now and we have other departments that need help as well. I don’t think we’re in a position to start adding a lot of staff. If you can do this with the staff you have I guess I don’t really have a problem with it, but if we’re going to have to start adding staff, maybe we need to pick and choose.
Thompson: When we decide to phase it in I would recommend doing the housing parks first and then the remodeling.
Arsate: So be it. That’d be fine with me.
Werle: I think a lot, if I’m remembering right from the review committee’s meetings, a lot of the time the down time is in the plan review and getting the permits and what not taken care of, the actual paperwork. By adopting or by adding this position or this person in the office, we will eliminate a lot of paperwork time for these guys because they’re probably about as graceful on a computer as me and it takes a lot longer time to do it, Carol. I think that person that we’re looking at is more an office staff to give Ruben, Nick, Daryl, the time to review the plans so that aren’t answering the phones and answering the questions and doing the paperwork for the permitting.
Neuzil: But that’s not what was requested. We didn’t budget for a clerical…
Thompson: We approved another inspector.
Neuzil: We approved a building inspector equal to the others.
Werle: So the budget wasn’t for an actual assistant, then?
Neuzil: It was for an assistant building inspector.
Lehman: The bottom line was that there was going to be one person in there that could answer the questions, no matter who it might be in a rotational basis, that someone with knowledge would be able to answer the phone rather than have to take a phone number and a message and get back to someone later and that was causing a time delay. It was to get an extra person that was knowledgeable and they might not be the one… The new person may not be the one sitting by the phone. On a rotational basis any of the existing staff could do that.
Werle: OK, I’m sorry I thought we were going for an assistant at first and then an inspector, but I guess we’ve got the inspector so we don’t need the assistant. All right.
Harney: As I recall the conversation, when Ruben presented his ideas for an additional person, it was to add an inspector which would free up time for Ruben to be in the office and answer questions and get caught up on his blueprint reviews.
Arsate: Correct. I’d like to add also that we’ve also moved along here in these 2 years, 2 months, and 13 days, but who’s counting, that Daryl is helping me do plan reviews also now so we’re better off now also. So that new person coming in, doing inspections, is going to have to take care of the inspections part where Daryl will also be helping me doing the plan reviews where the real bog-down is. That’s how that all works out there. Just shifting and shuffling.
Neuzil: We understand there is a need and that’s why the Board of Supervisors decided to make this kind of expenditure in July 1st. Again, it comes back to, if you’re going to be busy doing all those things, then are you ready for a brand new slate of things too or, again, do you want to kind of see how things go… July, you’re going to have to hire somebody, August, September, when this Board, as Andy pointed out, this might be a year away yet from implementation or at least a phase-in of some sort. But there’s obviously a need, it’s the question of can our County afford to have more and more and more staff to do it.
Arsate: I believe we'll cover our own costs with what we’re bringing so that’s what I would say to that.
Neuzil: Right. Again, I would argue that fees and taxes both come out of people’s wallets.
Thompson: So what about this plumbing exam, who would administer that?
Arsate: Daryl is our plumbing inspector and what he would do here is write up a homeowner’s exam so that a homeowner could do his own plumbing or her plumbing. Nick already has done that in the electrical area, that way the homeowner can do their own electrical work. They come in, they take this exam, they have to pass it with 75% or better. They give them the books and we give them the exam, let them look it up, just want to make sure that they’re competent in what they’re doing and they know where to find the answers if they don’t know what they’re doing. Once again trying to make it, I guess, citizen-friendly. If you can do the work, do the work. It’s OK. We just don’t want you doing the work if you don’t know what you’re doing and endangering yourself and your family and others.
Lehman: That was one of the biggest questions we had in the original building code is that people, they want to do their own work, and the answer was, you can do your own work, just make sure your qualified and this is a step to do that. You can be your own general contractor, you can be your own electrician, but I think as things went on here people, you know, I can do my own work and I am qualified or I will become qualified. It doesn’t really… (inaudible).
Neuzil: Then you have to pay that fee.
Thompson: Will that make further in roads on the time?
Arsate: No because those jobs are still going through regardless. Because when they come in and they want to do their own plumbing or their own electrical, that job still goes on regardless of whether they get to do it or…
Lehman: Either you have to get qualified yourself or you hire someone that is already qualified. So the work was going to get done it just depended if you wanted to take time to get qualified yourself (inaudible) work is done. But it’s going to get inspected no matter who did it.
Arsate: Correct.
Dvorak: One thing too that I ran across is that, a guy does his own plumbing, thinks he knows what he is doing so he calls for a plumbing inspection and he did everything wrong. Would you rather have him know up front and take the test or have him tear it all out and start all over again? I think that was one of the criticisms we were running into. Because we’re not teachers, we’ve talked about this a lot, we’re not teachers. You only give us so much time to go out and help the public. They have to assume some responsibility. If it costs them $1,000 to tear out a plumbing system, they’re very unhappy so they call up and they complain. But if they would have known how to do it right in the first place then they wouldn’t have to tear it out. I think that was some of the concerns that we were getting that precipitated us even brining this to you, or the Study Committee, bringing it to you. Why have to do it twice?
Harney: Then the last one is review of local amendments and possible changes.
Arsate: Yes, again if we were to go and adopt the International Codes then, I just wanted to mention, that we would have to review the local amendments and bring them up to par to match and mesh in with what we’re adopting. That would be done by staff.
Neuzil: Does the International Codes mean more work. What’s the difference between the codes we have now and the International Codes?
Arsate: We used to have the Southern Building Codes, we used to have the Uniform Building Codes, so all the different geographical areas in the United States had their own codes and that caused…
Neuzil: We don’t want to do anything that the South does.
Arsate: OK. So what it was is just to get a common code across the country…
Neuzil: That seems to make sense.
Arsate: …so that if you’re bidding a job, you live here and you bid a job you come in and you’re pretty much in line with the same construction practices, the types of materials and all that, is pretty much the same.
Neuzil: So that’s not really a whole lot of extra staff work as far as new codes. These just make sure everyone is on the same page.
Arsate: Materials, increments, things like that.
Neuzil: That makes sense.
Dvorak: Actually their training has been in that direction, for what the last year?
Arsate: Almost from the beginning because the Uniform Building Codes are being phased out and there were no classes in that area or very few. So we had to go International anyway.
Neuzil: It’s obviously tedious work to have to go back through our policy and change those line item by line item, but it seems like that makes a whole lot of sense and not a whole lot of extra staff time in your department. We have staff time in other departments to do that.
Arsate: Sure, yes.
Thompson: So what are we looking for tonight, consensus to ask Andy to proceed on this work?
Dvorak: What was your consensus? I didn’t hear the group on the major questions as far as Remodeling, Manufactured Housing and Home Plumbing.
Thompson: I’d be in favor.
Lehman: I’d be in favor of advancing, but I think I have concerns for phasing it in like Carol and Terrence had mentioned. We want to make sure that we can handle this.
Neuzil: It seems like we could give Andy direction immediately to say, yes we want to start moving towards International Codes. Start changing whatever policies need to be changed to the updates. I still think though that the Board of Supervisors should allow first and foremost… I would hate to see the Board say, July 1 we’re going to implement all these new things when July 1 you don’t even have your 4th person in that office yet and a person that you’re going to have to obviously train. I would think that the Board should have some patience on making sure that staff feels comfortable being able to handle a brand new workload before they would come back and say OK, we’re ready to do this.
Dvorak: So I’m hearing basically at this point in time initially just to pursue the top 4.
Thompson: And probably the exam.
Dvorak: And the exam. Is that a consensus?
Neuzil: I don't have the list.
Harney: I see merit in all of this and I want to see… The Uniform Code that’s not a big deal that’s just standardizing what’s good in Cedar Rapids is good in Iowa City is good in Lone Tree. It standardizes the Code and that’s just adopting the Code and rewriting your regulations to match that with whatever variances you have on that. The other areas, I think there’s a need for those and I think it’s going to take, as Andy said it’s going to take him some time to develop those and I wouldn’t mind having him look at those and put them out maybe January or even later if you wanted to, but at least get the Codes updated and go from there.
Thompson: That will give time to get the staff hired and trained.
Neuzil: Yes; that makes sense.
Thompson: Yes; that makes sense to me.
Harney: You understand?
Werle: I think it’s a given that items one, 2, and 3 have to be adopted by the County because there are no future UBC Code enforcements. So one, 2, and 3 are a given it has to be done.
Harney: And 4 would go along with it.
Werle: And 4 would play suite because… Yes. It would have to go to. But 3 is given for sure, 4 we would appreciate following the fact, but the rest… The other ones may be a gradual adoption after the players are on board, the 4th person. But the exam, like Carol said, pursue that right away because that really costs us nothing as far as time, money, what not. It might keep some of the citizens a little happier if they can take the test now instead of waiting until January.
Neuzil: Yes; that makes sense.
Harney: As long as you adopt the… I guess what I’m thinking is if you’re not going to inspect it why would you have the Homeowners Exam?
Thompson: We do inspect it.
Werle: It would still be inspected.
Neuzil: It would be inspected.
Werle: Yes. It just gives them the availability to study the book, take the test.
Thompson: And not do it wrong and have to do it over.
Werle: Right, right.
Thompson: Well thank you.
Neuzil: Yes, thank you very much.
Arsate: Thank you.
Thompson: You’ve done a good job here.
Chappell: What I will do then based on what I’ve heard is work with staff and we’ll try to get some changes written in and then we would have to do new local amendments to account for the International and then the 2000 Uniform Plumbing Code and the International Codes. We’ll send those through once we get them drafted, through the Building Code Board of Appeals, who will then hopefully make a recommendation to this Board to adopt them. That will be probably the… That will take the longest time because we’ve got some… I think we’ve got somewhere around 30 some pages of local amendments now. So we probably have a comparable amount. I haven’t, to be honest, invested any time on it, not knowing whether we were going to be going in that direction anyway. The Homeowners Plumbing Exam will probably also take a amendment, I believe, to our local amendments, but that will be much less significant. To be honest, I’ll probably take a look at that first because it probably won’t take near as much time. Then, based on what I’m hearing, after we get those things taken care of and squared away and seek either approval or denial then maybe we can talk about some of these other issues again. Is that consensus to the direction we should go?
Harney: Yes. Thank you.
Lehman: Do you want to take a minute to introduce your staff? Maybe they’d rather remain anonymous.
Arsate: Sure. There’s Daryl Carson, he does our plumbing and framing, and then we have Nick Sitzman, he does electrical and mechanical.
Lehman: They’ve been with us a little over 2 years?
Arsate: Yes, 2 years, 2 months, and 13 days. Also I’d like to mention that we are working with the EICBIG group, Eastern Iowa Corridor, to standardize our plumbing and electrical test and again the same playing field for as many as possible.
Lehman: OK. I appreciate the fact that the Homebuilders and those organizations are doing the educational process for us to kind of alleviate some of the down time for us and stuff too, that people are aware of it they’re pretty much schooled in this stuff when it gets to county level.
Werle: It’s been an experience, a very good one though.
Neuzil: And your volunteering.
Werle: Yes, yes, you bet.
Dvorak: In closing I wanted to say, in the 2 years he’s been here, we’ve never had an appeal registered with our Board of Appeals. Which I think is very important to implementation of the building codes and the inspectors themselves trying to work with the applicants in trying to resolve issues and not going through the difficulties of trying to get appeals because appeals are not good. I’ve always been a firm believer that if you get too many appeals on something there’s something wrong with an ordinance. Right now it seems things are working quite well.
Neuzil: Knock on wood.
Lehman: I’d like to thank the individuals on the Committee, the time they’ve taken too. Most of them have been with us on the original start here 2 years ago and have stuck with it here and helped us get this policy and process going.
Harney: Thank you.
Werle: Thank you.
Neuzil: Thanks, Ruben.
IOWA CITY COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT YOUTH AND FAMILY DEVELOPMENT COORDINATOR JOAN VANDENBERG: HILLS 21ST CENTURY LEARNING GRANT
Harney: Next item is business from the County Attorney.
Chappell: We don’t have any business.
Harney: Nothing? OK. Next item is Business from the Board of Supervisors and the first is discussion on the Hills 21st Century Learning Grant.
Thompson: Joan’s waited a long time.
Harney: Yes. Joan VandenBerg. I apologize for you having wait that length of time.
Iowa City Community School District Youth and Family Development Coordinator Joan VandenBerg: You’ve seen a lot of me this week.
Thompson: Now you know more about building codes then you ever wanted.
VandenBerg: I know so much about building codes. That’s good. It’s useful.
Neuzil: I was going to say the school district’s got a few buildings to work on if you want to…
VandenBerg: Thankfully that’s not in my job description. Just about everything else is, but not that. Well I’m back. I was here last week to talk with you all about our Hills 21st Century Learning Center proposal that we’re submitting to the Iowa Department of Education for $150,000. As I mentioned, this is a very competitive grant and having a local contribution from the County would greatly strengthen that proposal. So I got this since last week, that you all were supportive but trying to figure out how you might be able to do that. So I guess I’m just here again today to touch base with where you’re at.
Neuzil: Joan, I think you might have noticed in this particular discussion, I’ve been silent. My wife teaches down there. I just feel a little uncomfortable about participating. Thank you to the County Attorney for guidance in this, but I’ve kind of given this some thought and because my wife teaches there and actually participates in the summer program, kind of does both. Even though we know that Hills 21st Century Learning Grant does get some funding from the County, I do of course support the budget. But, I think when this is just separate like this and because Jill works at Hills, I think I’m going to kind of abstain for the time being here.
VandenBerg: Sure, that makes sense. Thanks.
Neuzil: All right.
Harney: I do have a question on that Joan, are the teachers paid out of these funds for this Century Learning Grant?
VandenBerg: After their contract time, so they’re on contract to work from 8:00 to 3:45 and then they teach on the grant anywhere from 3:45 to maybe 5:00. Then during the summer teachers ordinarily have off and that’s extra hours that they would work. So it’s kind of…
Harney: And they’re paid on the grant?
VandenBerg: Yes. So that’s over and above.
Thompson: But that’s not instructional time; that’s enrichment time.
VandenBerg: Some of it is instructional too. It’s focusing on academic skills so some of it’s more enrichment more fun activities and some is a little more intense. But it’s after school and it has to be fun or the kids won’t come because they don’t have to be there. But is over and above their salary.
Thompson: We talked about funding this from Fund 45 for next year’s budget. I’ve been thinking that since we’re more than half-way through the year and it’s apparent that there’ll be money unspent in that budget this year, it might be good to make the payment from Fund 45 this year. I think we can use the Decat line item to do that.
Lehman: Would it call for a budget amendment?
Thompson: No.
Lehman: Same service area.
Thompson: It would be in the same budget, but it would probably overspend that line item, but there would be other money to compensate.
Lehman: Refresh us again, the timetable on this. If you apply for it, you're going to assume…
VandenBerg: We’ll find out May 15th if we will receive the grant and then the start date is July 1st for the new grant.
Thompson: So you’d have the money in June instead of in July.
VandenBerg: We’ll take the money whenever you want to give it to us.
Thompson: Is anyone else putting in money?
VandenBerg: Well, I talked with my supervisor as well. So in talking about if the more locally to leverage, the more we could, so I think the district could kick in some money as well. Again, it just looks like we have real commitment when the district and the County is saying, yes this is an important collaboration and we want to work together to have this program go.
Lehman: We’ve basically given Joan the message that we’re willing to at least consider it. If we’re not, you're wasting your time by even applying.
VandenBerg: I’ve learned a lot about building codes though.
Lehman: We did send the message that we’re definitely interested. We haven’t red flagged this that we’re not interested in pursuing it. So maybe a timing issue in checking funds to see what is available to use from a unused source.
Harney: Is that something that you would do like we did some of the others, where they’re asking for a grant and they get the grant, we include it and if not, we don’t or is this something that we just give them as a…
Thompson: Will you know by June if you’re going to get it?
VandenBerg: Yes.
Lehman: May 15th.
VandenBerg: May 15th we’ll know. That’s the timeline.
Thompson: I guess for this thing if they don’t get the grant, they’ll need it more than ever to keep that center open.
VandenBerg: Well yes, and that’s true. I mean if we don’t get the grant then we’d move from the kind of Cadillac program to the Pinto Wagon, where we’d have the…
Thompson: What you had before.
VandenBerg: Right. If we have at least a half time, three quarter time person that can coordinate volunteers. We have a lot of people willing to help and it wouldn’t be serving as many kids. We wouldn’t have probably quite the rigorous educational component, but it would at least have something after school, which we’re really interested in maintaining what we can.
Harney: Like Terrence said, this is one I can have discussion on, but I probably can’t vote on because I have a daughter who has taught in that program through the summer months, so it’s going to be up to the other 3.
Lehman: Do we have a quorum yet?
Harney: It’s a good program, but I don’t know if she would be teaching the following year, so this wouldn’t be…
VandenBerg: It’s a small town.
Neuzil: Like I said, we vote for the budget. We know that this particular grant gets money out of the County, so it’s not like there hasn’t been a precedent set. Thanks to the County Attorney for guidance in this, but since it’s such a direct situation here. It’s just this vote.
VandenBerg: Right. You could directly benefit.
Neuzil: But all the Board members are anticipated to be present at it’s April 3rd meeting. Is that right? So maybe that would be a better time, working with Mike Sullivan to place this on for formal discussion.
VandenBerg: Do you have a formal meeting before April 3rd or no?
Thompson: But there won’t be enough of us here who can vote.
Neuzil: You need a majority.
VandenBerg: Because my only problem is the grant is due April 4th.
Lehman: So you won’t be here the 27th. You’re a former school teacher, but that doesn’t really do it.
Thompson: I never taught in that school.
Neuzil: I think that Sally would want to be part of the discussion too.
VandenBerg: I’m just trying to think through logistically how I get the grant to Des Moines on the 4th. I guess I could always drive it there.
Thompson: People have done that before. You can’t do an electronic transfer?
Chappell: A couple options would be, the 3rd is a morning meeting, which does give you a little more time than if it were an evening meeting. So I don’t know. I haven’t over-nighted anything in awhile, but that’s an option you could consider. You certainly do have plenty of time to set, I don’t have any idea what the Board’s schedule is like, but this is something you could certainly set up a special meeting for. A one item formal meeting to set your agenda, this could be the only thing on there if that’s the way you wanted to do it to meet the deadline.
Thompson: We could do it on the second, because we have a meeting that day anyway. We have our evaluation meeting.
Chappell: As long as you make sure you get your agenda out 24 hours before and everything else. Just a couple options as far as your timing goes.
Lehman: Does that work with Mike Sullivan on that.
Executive Assistant Mike Sullivan: I know what I need to do. That’s fine. If you want to put it on the 2nd, just let me know and I’ll make sure that that’s a formal meeting with that one item on the agenda. We’ll do that at 9:00 a.m. and then you can adjourn that meeting and move into your work session.
Neuzil: We have employee evals.
Harney: That will work then.
VandenBerg: OK.
Harney: Thank you Joan.
VandenBerg: Great. Thank you.
Sullivan: We’ll do that then.
DISCUSSION: IOWA EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT GRANT FOR GPS EQUIPMENT AGREEMENT AMENDMENT
Harney: Next item is the Iowa Emergency Management Grant for GPS equipment agreement amendment. Is anyone going to be here to cover that or is that…
Sullivan: No, Rick Havel attached an executive summary to your agenda. I can certainly go over it if you want me to.
Harney: Yes, why don’t you do that.
Sullivan: All right. Rick couldn’t be here tonight. What this is, it’s an existing agreement that the County entered into on April 10th, 2002 with the Iowa Emergency Management Division. What it is, is access to grant money to purchase global positioning system equipment. It’s a 50/50 grant. In that agreement the cost of the equipment initially at the time of the grant approval was $4,857. Since April 10th of 2002 that equipment has been upgraded, so there’s an additional cost for that upgrade of $1,000, which brings the current price to $5,857. So on a 50/50 grant, the County is being asked to pay an additional $500 towards that. Iowa Emergency Management Division is going to pay the other $500 towards that. A budget amendment isn’t required. I met with Jeff Horne about this. There is money and sufficient funds in the GIS budget now, so it can be using that fund to pay the $500. What Rick Havel was asking tonight was for the Board to consider approval of the amendment to this agreement between the County and the Iowa Emergency Management Division that would allow this additional allocation of $500 so they can purchase the GPS systems equipment.
Thompson: So that’d be on for the 27th.
Harney: So really all they’re doing is changing the agreement. It’s not…and the funds are already in the…
Sullivan: There’s no additional tax askings here. There’s no amendment needed. The money’s there. We just need to amend the dollar amount in the current agreement to satisfy the grant application.
Harney: Is there consensus to have him go ahead and do that and then bring it back for formal. OK.
Sullivan: I’ll move it to the 27th for the Board.
Harney: Fine.
Harney: The next item is reports and inquiries. Do you want to start Terry?
Neuzil: Sure. Another incredibly busy week here on the Johnson County Board of Supervisors. Let’s see. What’s some of the things? Pat Harney and I, we had an opportunity to go to Solon and attended a Solon Schools presentation, kind of a governmental meeting that included our Iowa Legislators along with County Government, along with the City of Solon and their government and the Solon Community School District. The primary area was to learn about the needs of the Solon Community School District and the impact that the Iowa Legislature has, but County issues also included the impact of TIFs and how they do affect both County and School Districts. Also discussed a little bit about the sales tax and a particular piece of legislation that’s out there right now amongst our Iowa Legislators. That is those particular counties who do not have an extra penny on their sales tax. Anyway, the sales tax issue is kind of out there in the Iowa Legislature. It basically says that those particular counties who do not have an extra penny on their sales tax, you would have to contribute… The State would increase the penny and then you would have to contribute and share that penny with everybody in the State for school infrastructure. However, those particular counties who already have a sales tax, would not have to participate and would be able to keep their penny in their own community until the year probably 2014. Obviously it means those particular counties that do not have an extra penny on their sales tax in their County would be, in my opinion, penalized. So that discussion was brought about as well. Some of the other things happening throughout the weekend, I had an opportunity to attend of course a couple nice fundraisers, but also I had a chance to go to the Eagle’s Lodge. They had a particular program there and an appreciation dinner for emergency responders. It was really nice that the Eagles allowed me the opportunity to give a presentation and quite frankly, a thank you to all the different entities from the Sheriff’s Department to the Ambulance Department to the of course all the different police departments, fire departments and so on and so forth. Again, a very special thank you. The Eagles also presented emergency responders with a check for $3,000. So that was a nice event as well. Some other things, out and about. Always have a fun opportunity…one of the neat things of working in Johnson County Government is we get an opportunity to have our Information Services provide us computer classes. I always try to take advantage of that. I, over the years, have had the opportunity to take a number of classes at Kirkwood Community College and it’s always nice to have an employer who cares about technology and actually allows the employees to actually come in and learn about more of those techniques. We had an Executive meeting in regards to a union negotiation and then of course our budget hearing was held on Monday. So we had that budget hearing to the public. So that was a very good meeting and such. We of course had the MH/DD Planning Council meeting and that seems to be about enough for me to talk about. We’ll send it over to one of our other fine Supervisors.
Harney: Mike?
Lehman: Carol and I met with the FinCore group. The results of that of that was the recommendation we heard tonight to recommend pursuing a contract with Gems for our financial software. On Tuesday, Terrence and I, as mentors to Elaine Sweet in the Mental Health/Developmental Disabilities, met with her on Tuesday afternoon and discussed some of the items that she has been working on. Then the Planning Council, the rest of the members, along with the Planning Council, it’s an advisory group to the Board of Supervisors on issues dealt with mental health. Attended a jail taskforce. There’s one meeting left on that and things are starting to come together. I think it’s one of those deals where everyone works better under pressure when it’s crunch time. There’s been a lot of compromise, trying to come up with recommendations too. It’s interesting to hear discussion. The realization not everyone is going to get what they would like to see, but they’re willing to get a portion of that and do some compromising. I really appreciate the respect that group has had for each other because there were a lot of differing opinions on that when they first got put together. It’s really nice to see that community effort come together. Also along that line, Pat Harney and I had a chance to visit the alternative jail site in Scott County this morning along with Captain Wagner of the Sheriff’s Department here and Dave Kempf, our Facilities Director. Interesting to see it. You talk about a pole building and stuff, but it’s more than that. They did purchase that in 1992.
Harney: It’s 10 years old, beyond 10
Lehman: For 1.6 million dollars. That was the turnkey set up for them, so it wasn’t a freebie by any means. It’s interesting to know that their Sheriff’s Department is housed in the Courthouse and they have their regular Jail and they have this facility here. I asked them about the paperwork and stuff. They said they wore out a few fax machines just trying to keep paperwork back and forth to make sure that approvals for release or transfers. But it was interesting to actually see the bricks and mortar. I wanted to see, they have the pod system. They have even different levels of classifications there were there was an officer actually sitting in a room with the people in the bunk beds and tables and that type of thing. They are doing some further remodeling in the building to give them some more space for storage and programming. I believe their programming is done by churches right now I think. People have come in and talked. They have their own laundry there. They have the food, it’s brought in from other facilities, but the inmates pretty well serve themselves; take care of the trays and dirty dishes and things like that. Part of this facility also has storage for the jail and the other portion of the building stores many things for the rest of the County such as office furniture that’s brought in and assembled, they store the Auditor’s voting equipment and also stored evidence for the Sheriff’s Department and County Attorney. So it was real enlightening to see that. We’re going to get a chance to see what Muscatine has too. It’s just an option that the Taskforce has been mentioning and things like that. I think once you see it and you know what people are talking about, you here them refer to it, but you almost have to see what… They admitted that it wasn’t what they wanted originally. It’s not what they want to end up with, but they were in the same situation that we were, that they had a bond issue fail. It was kind of a stop gap thing for them. It’s not what they’d like to see for the best ideal situation, but they felt it was something the community did support and that’s what they’re going with. So it’s really interesting. So I congratulate the Regina girls on their first round victory at State basketball tournaments Terrence helped cover. They’ll be playing at 2:00 tomorrow afternoon in the semi-finals.
Neuzil: We’ll be in Des Moines.
Lehman: Go Regals.
Harney: Carol?
Thompson: On Thursday night I attended a panel at the League of Woman Voters on economic development, so it was the first prime time airing of our draft economic development plan. They gave good feedback. Positive feedback, both on the fact that we were thinking about enacting this and also on the content on it, so that was nice. On Friday, I attended the School Attendance Taskforce. This is a group of citizens who volunteer to serve as mediators for truancy cases that the school refers to the County Attorney's Office. Historically about half of the kids have improved their attendance as a result of the mediation and the results that we got on Friday, that’s continuing. So that’s a good sign. I’m on the Foundation Board for the Iowa Juvenile Home at Toledo and at the meeting they mentioned that there’s now a bill that will allow them to receive school funding. Historically this facility has not ever received any school funding. The State has paid for the school there. If the bill passes, it’s House File 335, that would mean that they would get regular school funding passed through by the school district that sends the child there. That would mean that probably the part of the bill the County has to pay will go down. So if you're talking to legislators, we’d want to lobby for that. Then this afternoon Terrence and I met with Lora for our regular meeting.
Harney: Thank you. As Terrence mentioned the legislative forum up in Solon Schools. A lot of good information. I was really impressed, all of the legislators were there. Dick Myers, Representative Mary Mascher, Roe Foege, Vicki Lensing, Senator Bob Dvorsky, and Joe Bolkcom were also there so they had a good group there for input. This week Sally and I met with the Ambulance Director, Steve Spenler. Did our monthly meeting. Went over the issues that he has at the Ambulance Service. It’s going really smoothly. I’m impressed with the service and the ways it’s coming since the change of directors. Another thing I did this week, is I met with DOT officials and Cedar Rapids Planning & Zoning staff, our Planning & Zoning staff and Secondary Roads Engineer, Mike Gardner. We had discussion about the North Corridor and the 28E agreement and fringe area agreements with Cedar Rapids and the other small communities around the area. One of the topics in that particular area was the 965 issue on exchange of a manager to take care of that particular road. There’s no decisions made on that and there will be a report coming back to the Board. It’s still wide open. They would take it if we would allow them, but we do have some input if we want to allow them to take care of that particular road. It becomes an issue of who allows who access points and things like that. We’ll be doing more discussion on that as a Board. I attended an Iowa City Chamber Committee meeting. They gave an update on the development in the downtown Iowa City and plans for the new hotel complex as well as the Amoco sight. It was real enlightening. The actual insight in the things that are going on in downtown Iowa City. He’s got positive outlook for the revitalization of downtown. So it was real interesting and enlightening. Chamber Ag meeting, I attended that this week. The Fair for the 4H Fair is going to be July 21st through the 24th and on Sunday July 6th, there’s going to be a pancake breakfast again for a fundraiser for the 4H youth to help with their projects at the fairgrounds. They started that last year and they’ll be doing that again this year. So that would be a good one to go to. I’m going to elaborate a little bit on what Mike had said about the tour of the Scott County Jail Annex. There’s a lot of things going down there. They’ve done well with an old manufacturing plant that they’ve converted and did a lot of concrete work in for walls and things like that. They’ve just really utilized the space in there. The Sheriff’s Department actually works out of that facility where the Sheriff himself and his offices are in the Courthouse in Scott County. It’s really not what I expected. They said that they actually had it for the low risk individuals and they found that they were not able to keep it full with low risk individuals, so they’ve actually stepped that up and it’s medium to low risk and some of high risk people are there. They found that they were not able to maintain having females in the particular facility as well. It was not working out well, so all the females have been moved back to their facility in the downtown jail. So there’s a lot of drawbacks on that. It’s worth it if any other Board members get a chance to go down and see that, it’s worth the time. It would actually be worth the Jail Committee going down and taking a look at that because it’s really insightful. It’s really not what you’d expect when you here about the alternatives in a pole building. That doesn’t work that way. There’s still a lot of security and as Mike said, there’s no real programming or places for activities down there. Their exercise facility is outside, just walls with a chain link fence over the top. So it’s a lot to be desired. As they said, they would like to have a better facility. This was planned to go for 5-years and it’s gone over 10 now and they still have to maintain that in the future. Tomorrow morning is the Chamber Ag breakfast at Montgomery Hall. Mark Heckman’s going to be giving a presentation so if anyone has the time to go down to that, it starts at 7:00 a.m. The next is inquiries and reports from the public. It looks like…anyone out there have anything to say?
Adjourned at 7:45 p.m.
/s/Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor
By Casie Parkins, Recording Secretary