Stutsman: Custodial studies, Cheryl? Services, I'm sorry.
Whitney: Yes, I agreed to put that on the agenda. Graham and I had talked about custodial services. The Board... I have kind of a unique situation in that we have an employee (inaudible). I think Pat, you also at the Courthouse have.
White: Well we get our service from the Physical Plant Department.
Whitney: Oh, OK, is that a contracted service then?
White: No, it's County employees under Pat Langenberg's Department.
Bolkcom: In this building we have contracted service.
Stutsman: Juvenile Probation has contracted...
Whitney: The problem I have is back up. Having one employee and certainly that person has a right to take vacation. He also (inaudible) when persons are sick and not able to be at work. We get into some real difficult situations with that. If he's not there for a couple of weeks, as many people as we have coming in that building, using the bathrooms, all those kinds of things, it can be kind of a difficult situation. I've tried to... I have talked to some of the agencies in town that do cleaning to see would they be available at times on an on-call basis. The cost for the that and the reliability of that is prohibitive really. So I don't know whether anybody has any options for us to consider in a future instance, but I'm sure... What happens is that our employees sometimes are having to take out trash, sometimes the supervisor goes down the line and takes out trash... Somebody takes care of the bathrooms, and you've got people who really need to be doing the job they are hired for, not the custodial kinds of things. So I guess I'm just looking for some help with solving the problem.
Stutsman: Anybody have any ideas or suggestions?
Bolkcom: Why don't we...
Stutsman: How about you, Bob? Do you have a suggestion?
Carpenter: Put it in the job description.
Stutsman: I was thinking you had community service people that... Maybe that wouldn't be such a good idea.
Whitney: Well that's the other thing is confidentiality...
Stutsman: Yes.
Whitney: ...issue before us. We try to keep things locked. We have had other persons, we've tried to have them only there during work time or only have them do a common area so I didn't have to worry about a child abuse report laying on someone's desk and it shouldn't be. So...
Jordahl: I assume we contract out with these services, because it's cheaper to do so?
Whitney: Now see we have an employee.
Jordahl: You have an employee...
Whitney: Right.
Jordahl: But we have a contractee for this building that Pat you supervise, some people who do...
Langenberg: The Courthouse and Sheriff's Office we have County employees for.
Jordahl: County employees doing that.
White: And then Cheryl's is in the Social Services collective bargaining contract.
Jordahl: All right.
White: It's a County employee, but it's in a...
Jordahl: It's like a story problem here, so... How many answers do we need to have to this? Can we have one problem or is there some reason this is 3 different problems?
Dameron: We have a problem with multi-faceted faces. We have multi-faceted solutions to the major problem of maintenance.
Jordahl: Yes, but would it be possible to have one solution to the major problem of maintenance or would that be economically prohibitive or why do we do it this way instead of all one way?
Stutsman: You're saying that we have just one contractor go to all the account...
Jordahl: Or have county staff do everything. I just... Why do we have 3 different kinds of solutions to one problem?
Whitney: We have 4 solutions.
Jordahl: All right, 4 solutions to one problem.
Whitney: I have an employee, Pat supervises some people, then you guys have a contracted here and...
White: Somebody's doing it at Ambulance, I don't know how they deal with it, but somebody must clean up at Secondary Roads...
Stutsman: Are you trying to tell us something, Mike?
Dameron: How do you do it, Mike?
Gardner: We have a part-time person that...
White: That's also the reason why, there are multiple reasons why you have different approaches. There are so many different work sites and you have different decision makers and custodial service is pretty consistently problematic. When problems arise, somebody's got to act on it quickly and company service breaks down, you can't take time to add an employee into the Physical Plant Department even if you wanted to. Pat has heard me make a pitch before to adding people into his department and providing service to some of these other locations.
Jordahl: Even if, as I hear Cheryl's problem. Maybe if we added like half a person to Pat's load to fill in where there were problems. To sort of fill in the gaps, even if we didn't transform the way services are provided County wide. Pat, it's your department we're talking about.
Langenberg: I've always thought that we should have never, I didn't like when we did this, when this was here, I was out-voted on this contracting this out.
Jordahl: You think you should have it all to your office.
Langenberg: I think that I have control. We have good personnel. The guy does a super job, plus your concern is, when he's sick or on vacation, they have back up, but it's not the same.
Redlinger: We've had some Pat that haven't been very good.
Langenberg: Oh, in the first 5 or 6 years here was less than satisfactory, that's department heads, they didn't want it and I said take your complaints to the Board. I made my pitch for it and I was voted down.
Jordahl: Now, Pat and Pat, you're saying that you wanted to add people...
White: He and I are on the same page on this. We've essentially been opposed to contracting out whenever we've got a chance to make that pitch. Again, this is not critical of Graham, he was left with just having to make do, but I was very concerned last winter with the snow removal over there which wasn't working real well. The County gets terrific performance out of it's Physical Plant Department. So...
Jordahl: So...
White: It's a big part of our loss...
Stutsman: Is this a discussion for Budget time? To start looking at...
Dameron: Well, I think we need some resolution and then to look at it from a budgetary stand point, I don't know that I'm going to be providing more funding or less funding for what I'm doing now. It seems like to me, right now, it's fairly expensive. I'm contracting out.
Jordahl: But how much would it cost... That's what I'm trying to get at here, is this question, is the reason this is not being done centrally through the Physical Plant Office because it would be more expensive to do it through the Physical Plant Office? Is that why we're not doing it that way?
Langenberg: It's always been done by different department heads since...
Stutsman: (Inaudible).
Dameron: My thought would be to put it under some sort of a central office like Pat's and to be responsible for the buildings. Now I know in some of the places, the Auditor is responsible because he's in charge of the Courthouse, custodial care of the Courthouse under the job descriptions I know, but...
White: Well it used to be the case here, too. When the Auditor was in the Courthouse, the Auditor hired custodians, that actually pre-dated the creation of the Physical Plant.
Jordahl: Maybe the Auditor could just basically hire the Physical Plant Department and discharge that responsibility in that way.
Stutsman: We...
White: I'm guessing we took the existing money that Graham is spending, we could hire a half time person in the Physical Plant Department, cover Graham, cover Juvenile Probation, and even give Cheryl some backup on her employees on vacation, get more stability, get more supervision, you get better security.
Stutsman: We're going to have to move on because we have several other things on the agenda that I want to get to so I wonder if we could do a committee thing, that maybe Pat and Cheryl and Graham and maybe Paul Roehs or Carol Thompson from Juvenile Probation sit down and maybe look at the cost and see if there might be an alternative?
Langenberg: Do you want Secondary Roads and others throughout?
Stutsman: Well SEATS too.
Langenberg: That's what I'm saying, if we're going to do it...
Bolkcom: Ambulance.
Stutsman: Pat, can I have you organize that committee?
Langenberg: Sure.
Stutsman: Contact people and then go from there? OK.
INFORMATION SERVICES DIRECTOR JEAN SCHULTZ: JOHNSON COUNTY WEB PAGE UPDATE
Stutsman: Web page update, Jean?
Bolkcom: I'll start. We're going to see a little demonstration if people would stand up and turn around on the County Web Page. We've been, over the course of the last few months, organizing a County web page, a number of you have been involved in that committee in assisting and doing that. The Information Services has put together a couple different things for us to look at today, kind of an example of what we're looking at as a web page and some of the kinds of information. There's a handout coming around that Jean is going to talk about that. It gives some information. There's a handout. The top page has information about what's currently on your page, kinds of information that are out there, you should review that. It also gives some more information about kinds of things that could be put out there, I'm looking at Rick's packet.
Stutsman: Joe, do you want the Board of Supervisors on that...
Bolkcom: That's all right. Suggestions on possible uses of County web pages, kinds of information that would be nice, and then finally, the committee has drafted a set of guidelines on how we see the Internet being used as well as some more specific guidelines of do's and don'ts of using the Internet, using the web page, and then finally some specific tips so Jean can answer questions on this, on how to format information. If you in your department have something specifically you'd like to have up, how to go about doing that. So, Jean, take it away.
Schultz: The committee has been meeting and one of the things that we've been trying to do is come up with a proposal for the County's home page so that when you first go into the County Web Site. The County is part of the Johnson County Community Network, and through the Johnson County Community Network that is meant so that anybody who wants to find out any information about Johnson County can go to one place from the Community Network in turn go to the University of Iowa, Iowa City School District, City of Iowa City, and so forth. So this was part of our master, we've gone through a number of different proposals and a number of different ideas and this is where we're at. The committee was kind of recommending proposing this and the idea was to come in here first and the departments are listed on the left. They can click on a particular department and go right to the information for that department or they can click here and find out different agendas for the different Board meetings, whether it's the Public Health meeting, the Board of Supervisors meeting or whatever. The advance calendar, that could be like different events, like the landfill thing that's coming up or open house in Ambulance, CPR training, those kinds of things. Different services or topics like there's a topics index right now, like trying to find out what office you go to, possibly the qualifications, deadlines, those kinds of things. County history is just some general County information about the Courthouse, about the County, that kind of thing. What's new, job openings, reports on the County, that could be like when the Recorder's Office Committee finishes, Computer Needs Report, those kinds of things. Search for sight, that would be an example would be they could enter a word and have it look up like homestead or homestead credit and that would list every place where that was from. Gun permit for example, if they didn't know where to go for that. More government sites that would be a link to federal sites that furnish information or State sites, how to look up Code and bills in the legislature, whatever. The feedback that we get, mail from people who are looking at the site, how they get maps or something like that. So we just wanted to show this, give you an idea of what we're thinking about. This will continually grow and change. Then what we were thinking of was when we first go into a department's pages, I'll show you in a second, what's currently out there, but when we go to a department page, we are trying to carryover somehow some kind of continuity, so when a person went to a department page, they would know this was part of Johnson County. An example of... (inaudible) for example of the County Attorney, and right now the right hand side is the way the County Attorney's current page looks like, on the left those again, that is similar to what they were before. The department index, agendas, (inaudible), the advance calendar, services, topics, and those... I'll show you...
Bolkcom: The committee has also talked about adding like the... In this example, the County Attorney have a picture of the County Attorney on that page, or various other elected officials and actually department heads, kind of personalize it a little bit more as well. Instead of a scale, we'd see a picture of Pat.
Schultz: By the way, we have this projector, if you have any software demos or a demo where you need to show for a meeting, this is County equipment and we have a check out procedure if you want to borrow it. Right now when you go to the County page, the first page for the County, this is what the first page looks like, it's a little harder to get to information. Has general County History Information first and then it does have a topic index and department index and an office location. Right now, for example, a comparison would be the proposal, this is what the County Attorney's first page looks like. So right now, from the County Attorney's page, you can go back to the original County page, but you can't get to the topic index or (inaudible) or event calendars or things like that. You can't get to some of the other information we've got, like a couple brochures. What we're trying to do is we're trying to encourage people to think of how they can use the web what information we can add out there. (Inaudible) like Planning and Zoning, you can go to (inaudible) various applications, (inaudible) applications, subdivisions, fee schedules, you can tell what the different fees are for the different services, we can go to the Planning and Zoning Commission minutes. You can see a copy of the Comprehensive Plan. I'm not sure how much detail you want me to show.
Bolkcom: No, that's good.
Stutsman: Yes.
Bolkcom: Does anybody have any questions? So we are really close to making the switch to the new format and it looks pretty good and will do a good job of representing us. I think what brings people to... What will bring people to our site is having some worthwhile information there for people to look at about what we do and about the kinds of things like minutes and reports and agendas and so we really encourage you to take a look at the handout that's been in the packet there about things that we'd like to see out there. We encourage each department to get involved with it.
Schultz: The information initially put out there was the script for the video that Jim Haverkamp had done. Every department had a chance to look at the information that was out there for their particular department. That's what we started from. Then if the departments had brochures and they had that they give out or just any other information.
Dameron: So when would this new format be on the Internet?
Bolkcom: Jean, when will the new format be ready? It's pretty much ready now, I think just, I mean the look is ready, I don't know how much...
Schultz: Yes, we just have to put the labels in there and some of it will take a little bit longer, like doing the feedback part, but...
Bolkcom: Great. In reviewing the information that we passed out as what's on the site right now, there are dates for corrections or additions to what's there, see Jean about that. I'd also like to thank the people on the committee that have worked on this over the course of the last few months, we've had meetings, kicking this around and coming up with some policies around it, and it looks real good and Jean's department has done a great job in coordinating it.
Schultz: One other thing I forgot to say is that sometimes you might think well this is not that important, but I have a meeting from other people from the Community Network last week and just in the month of September, there have been over 3,000 some hits on the pages just this month. People are looking at it.
Stutsman: That is terrific.
Bolkcom: 5 people, but... That's great.
Stutsman: Thank you, Jean, anything else on the web page?
Bolkcom: No.
Jordahl: Timeliness of information is one thing here. You could say well OK, we put information out there, there it is and walk away from it, but what makes this really attractive for people to come back to is the sense that they're getting up to the minute information so that they can find out about the agendas for upcoming meetings instead of it happened a year ago. That's better than getting old information. So it's advisable in web stuff, keep revisiting this, come back, I would say something like a monthly basis and look at it, because it's something that could change here to develop this. The possibility of being very elaborate here also exists and I don't want to make unnecessary work for the Information Services Department, there's a lot going on right now with implementation of the Computer Needs Study, but there is a possibility of actually linking this to programs that you use in your office to actually give people access to searching databases for example from the web page. So if you have ideas about how you might creatively use this to think perhaps reduce the workload of people in your office by making certain routine inquiries possible through the web, that possibility exists.
Schultz: One thing I didn't show is the Auditor's Office has done, they've put a lot of time and effort into it and they have done some really nice work. On the top of the sheet I highlighted, and that's the address if you want to go in and look at it, get familiar with the Internet, www.jccn.iowa-city.ia.us, that's the address to get to.
REPORTS (STUTSMAN): POSSIBLE COUNTY NAME BADGES; PROPOSED SEMINAR ON LETTER WRITING
Stutsman: Thanks again Jean and for all the work that the committee's done. One thing that I wanted to mention real quickly to department heads... The Board of Supervisors is looking into getting badges for all the Supervisors, just name badges, and when we were looking into this, we found that there is a $45 set up fee and then we thought well maybe other departments would be interested in getting badges for their employees, so I'm going to pass around a copy of the badge that we have kind of said that we're going to use for Supervisors. If any of you are interested in getting badges for your individual employees in your departments, it's a one time $45 set up fee, but each badge would cost $8.50. I don't know if there's any interest in having badges in the individual departments. But if there is, if you could get back to me and then we could just place one order or whatever.
Dameron: When do you want it back?
Stutsman: I guess ideally I'd like to have badges before the ISAC conference. You know we go to these meetings and nobody ever knows who we are, because we don't have some form of identification. But maybe within the next couple of weeks? Look it over.
Redlinger: We tried this once in our department and our people didn't like them.
Stutsman: They didn't like it?
Redlinger: No.
Stutsman: Oh, OK.
Redlinger: They were afraid of retribution by a mad customer or something, if they knew their name.
Stutsman: Well...
Jordahl: It could be first name only, though.
Redlinger: Well, there's ways of finding out what their last names are, I'm afraid.
Stutsman: Well, this is something to think about. If you're interested in having...
Jordahl: It's not a mandated thing.
Stutsman: Yes, badges, yes. Get back to us, pardon me?
Dvorak: Are these the little brass ones...
Stutsman: We haven't decided on a color or... If you could... The City has them now, they're gold with black lettering and they're real attractive. So...
?: Is there a pin on the back or...
Stutsman: We haven't decided that.
Jordahl: You could have your choice, probably, clips or pins, or different things.
Stutsman: If there's interest, let me know.
Jordahl: To me, it's a very important opportunity, like if I'm walking down the hall and somebody's walking through there and they kind of think, well does this person work here or not? They could know... A, they know I'm an employee because they see the badge and they think, OK, I could ask that person a question, but B, maybe they find out what kind of employee I am and they know that I can direct them to the department that actually can answer the question and ask me the question. There's sort of an accessibility, even just within the building to say nothing of being out in public, at conferences, at the County Fair or whatever. There's an accessibility question here that for me it's a real positive to have these.
Stutsman: We thought, we're doing the one time set up fee, if other departments are interested in hooking onto that, let us know. I also was approached by an individual who has a private business that she runs herself giving seminars on business writing. I didn't know if there was any interest from the departments to offer this to County employees Countywide. She does different seminars on letter writing, grammar and punctuation, those kinds of things. Are you interested in having her come and present to a department head meeting to see if there would be individual interest? Everybody feels pretty comfortable in their letter writing skills that they don't think there's any interest?
Dameron: The computer helps a lot.
Stutsman: Yes. Grammar, punctuation. OK. I just thought I'd bring that up, see if there's any interest. Any reports or updates from department heads? Appreciate the time that you people have committed to this department head meeting. Anything else?
PLANNING AND ZONING ADMINISTRATOR RICK DVORAK: UPCOMING GIS MEETING AT UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWA
Dvorak: Well.
Stutsman: Oh, I'm sorry, Rick.
Dvorak: I was going to say I think already passed out and most of you already got them... There's a real good GIS meeting coming up at the University of Northern Iowa. Jerry Musser is doing a presentation so...
Stutsman: Oh, great.
Dvorak: We all might want to see him in action. There's quite a few department heads going. That's the 5th and 6th? 6th and 7th.
Conger: Are you going to be able to go, Rick?
Dvorak: Yes. I don't think our court date's going to be rescheduled...
Stutsman: Anything else? OK, guess that takes care of it for this meeting, we'll see you on the 8th.
Adjourned department head meeting and recessed Board of Supervisors at 3:52 p.m.; reconvened on September 25, 1997 at 10:07 a.m. with Duffy and Lacina present; Stutsman not present.
Bolkcom: Inquiries and reports from the public. We wore them down, they're all gone. B, reports and inquiries from members of the Board of Supervisors. Charlie, do you have a report today?
Duffy: We had a deer meeting last night and came up with the idea that sharpshooting is the preferred method of lethal reduction of deer. Item B was if that isn't feasible we should have bow hunting implemented which was thrown out. Item C, trap and kill, I don't like the word kill, but that's the way it is because there's a lot of deer in Iowa City. Trap and kill would be used in areas where sharp shooting is not feasible. So when you have a high powered gun in Iowa City, there might be some places that you couldn't use it, but that was what we came up with and it's one of these no-win situations.
Lacina: Charlie on that as far as the animals that are destroyed then will that meat be donated so it won't be wasted?
Duffy: They got... I guess it was the Solon Locker said they would process it for $30 per animal and package them in 5 pound packages because there are people that like you and me, that really made the decision easier for me.
Lacina: But not to be sold, to go to charity.
Duffy: Yes. So then I went to an Emergency Management meeting last night and one of the big things was that Tom Hanson, Assistant Emergency Management Agency Director was just appointed as lead instructor for the State of Iowa. Tom will be teaching classes in Terrorism through the State. Tom has already made arrangements with the Sheriff's with 48 county deputy's. So this is really something that we have a half-time position for Tom and he is leading the State in these classes. So I really compliment Tom. One of the things that makes this county ahead of the rest of the counties and to have somebody that leads the State of Iowa, that's something else. We will have some exercises in November, one that's at West High that was postponed. I reported on this before, but the time to do that at one of these programs. It's multi-hazard safety programs for schools and things like that, there are a whole group of things there, but...
Jordahl: What day is that, Charlie?
Duffy: We've been out, we don't have an exact date yet, the reason why it was cancelled was they were working on the street. I'll let you know the exact date, but it would be very good to come to that meeting. Steve, you were there the last time.
Lacina: Yes.
Duffy: I guess that's about it.
Bolkcom: Thanks, Charlie. Steve, do you have a report?
REPORT (LACINA): ATTENDED IOWA CITY/JOHNSON COUNTY SEATS NEGOTIATIONS
Lacina: Just worked with the City yesterday on SEATS and we tried to stay focused just to the informational side and go over the 2 page document, which I'll apologize that I didn't make copies for everybody. I just assumed that it had gotten around, but it didn't, sorry.
Bolkcom: No problem, thanks for your work on that. Jonathan?
Jordahl: I attended the Hawkeye Area Community Action Program Planning Committee meeting last night, they are going to be going into a strategic planning process over the next couple of years. As part of the Board of Directors meeting tonight, that will come forward and I'm interested in being involved in that. The Networking Sub-Committee meets next Tuesday at 2:30 in the afternoon here to look at County information and technology use policies. If anybody's interested in that, it's been quite an interesting discussion about the possibility of people using things for personal purposes and so forth, so it's a fun policy debate. We have the comprehensive plan hearing coming up on the 1st of October and it's something we need to discuss because there's a conference on County Budgeting in Ames at that same time. I don't know if we want to in Sally's absence talk about rescheduling the comp plan meeting or what, but it's something we do need to talk about.
Lacina: I'm glad you brought that up. I think it's important for all of us to try to go to that if we can. Anytime we can get more tools to analyze the information better, I think the better off we are so...
Jordahl: Yes.
Lacina: Should we put that on for next Tuesday for discussion?
Jordahl: I think we should.
Lacina: It's a 2 day meeting and again we are in a complex budget and the State's going to be making some changes and hopefully we'll get some updates.
Jordahl: Yes, in that context, it's important to discuss that on Tuesday we had a department heads meeting and talked about 2 important County-wide projects that the Board of Supervisors is undertaking. One of them is the study of the salaries of County employees, particularly middle management, looking at basically non-bargaining unit employees. Isn't this what the survey is doing? To look at making some adjustments as we put aside a pot of money during the budget process to try to make the wages more competitive with what's paid in other places. People sometimes are hired away from us. So we've got a consultant hired to do that. It's Jerry Thompson, representing Jack Lipovac Associates. That salary survey is going to be starting shortly. The department heads were all present, it was a really good discussion. Sally and I have brought forward as representatives of the Board, one of our strategic goals is to improve the budgeting process. That's one of the reasons we think this budgeting conference in Ames on the 1st and 2nd is important enough to reschedule the Comprehensive Plan meeting for the idea that we're looking towards, it's called performance-based budgeting which is correlating, which is not now done in our budget process. Correlating the money that is spent with the service that is provided. So if we look at how many units, the Secondary Roads Director here, how many miles of black top road are paved for the dollars we spend on it. For example, be able to show this is the efficiency of the service provided. It probably would serve departments well in making their appeals for their funding during out budget process being able to show that last year, County Attorney's carry a caseload of what... I don't know what would be reasonable, Pat... 35...
White: 4,000.
Jordahl: 4,000 cases and the year before that was 3,000, we have no more County Attorneys, I'm just pulling these figures out of the air here, but there's been an increase. To be able to show exactly what the burden is and to talk about the efficiency of the delivery of services. So we're asking the department heads to suggest ways that these measures could be created specific to their departments. I think it's going to be a very good part of our ongoing strategic planning process which is going to go forward in 2 stages. Initially, we've got another department heads meeting scheduled for the 8th of October to begin hammering out what these measures would look like. Then we've got a joint strategic planning meeting with all the department heads on the 3rd of November, when we're going to be sitting down and sort of bringing together strategic planning and budgeting. So I'm real excited about that.
Bolkcom: Great, good report. Just a couple of brief things. I attended the Key Coalition Meeting last night. The Key Coalition is a coalition of disability groups, it's a state-wide coalition and Rick Shannon, who works for the Governor's DD Council was in town to present their legislative agenda for the coming year. I believe there's like 19 organizations working on that dealing with issues for people with disabilities. I've got some handouts on that if people are interested in it. Bill Gorman did a good job of organizing that. Jonathan reported on the department head meeting, I thought it was a good meeting this week talking about performance-based budgeting, and the like. Finally, the question of whether or not we're going to meet next week. Really I assume this is Wednesday and Thursday or is it Tuesday and Wednesday.
Jordahl: Wednesday and Thursday is what I have.
Bolkcom: So would we, I'm not sure...
Jordahl: 1st and 2nd of October.
Bolkcom: So we also would not want to have the comprehensive plan meeting, we would not want to meet Thursday morning.
Jordahl: Right.
Bolkcom: I'm not sure that...
Jordahl: We'd have to have formal and informal on the 30th and we could not decide to do that on the 30th because we'd already be having the formal meeting on the 30th.
Bolkcom: We'd have to decide that now and it's not on the agenda so I'm not sure we could do that.
White: Well you could put it on your Tuesday meeting, a formal meeting too, cancel or reschedule.
Bolkcom: I see. Who's planning on... Is everybody planning on going to that?
Duffy: So far, I guess.
Lacina: I'm not registered, but if we have to make changes, I guess I would like to.
Bolkcom: We've all, I don't know what the issues are with the comp plan, we've already advertised that with a mailing not that we couldn't figure out some way to do a press release and some other notification if people felt strongly about this budgeting, or we could come back.
Jordahl: Yes, we could drive back Wednesday night from Ames. We're on a real short...
Bolkcom: Maybe we...
Lacina: We'll have to see what we have... See if we can find... See if they're going to reschedule or if there's another similar conference that we can put on, we could hit.
Jordahl: Just leave the comp plan meeting where it is? What do you think Charlie?
Duffy: It's too bad we didn't bring this up before but... Maybe there is another seminar...
Bolkcom: Maybe we could try and give ISAC a call and see if there are going to be other seminars on the same topic this fall still.
Lacina: Yes. Good idea.
Jordahl: One thing we could do is we could reschedule the formal meeting from the 2nd to Tuesday, to next Tuesday the 30th and allow ourselves room to in fact make a round trip for the Comprehensive Plan meeting and go back to Ames for Thursday morning. It would be an extra round trip, but it would save a night in a hotel so the cost would actually be a wash.
Duffy: It's quite a ways (inaudible).
Jordahl: But it's a way of sticking to our comprehensive plan schedule and taking advantage of this conference if it turns out to be worthwhile.
Andy Small: If you do reschedule, I do have (Inaudible).
Jordahl: So that wouldn't be televised.
Lacina: It was a good idea, but it just didn't work this time. I think Joe's got a good idea, let's just call ISAC and see if they've got another one we could...
Jordahl: Yes, I think they do occur with some frequency.
Bolkcom: Thank you, report from the County Attorney?
White: No report other than just suggest that if you're going to take a break before you go into your executive session, you might just vote on that and reconvene in executive session rather than having everybody come back.
Bolkcom: Great, thank you for that suggestion. Do we have a motion to go into executive session for discussion of the Secondary Roads Employees contract?
Motion by Duffy, second by Jordahl, to enter Executive Session at 10:17 a.m. to discuss collective bargaining strategy for the Secondary Roads Department under section 20.17(3), Code of Iowa: "negotiating sessions, strategy meetings of public employees... shall be exempt from the provisions of chapter 21 (Official Meetings Open to the Public)." Roll call: aye: Bolkcom, Jordahl, Lacina, Duffy; absent: Stutsman.
Stutsman entered executive session at 10:53 a.m. Bolkcom left executive session at 11:00a.m.
Motion by Duffy, second by Lacina, to leave Executive Session at 11:06 a.m. Roll call: aye: Jordahl, Stutsman, Lacina, Duffy; absent: Bolkcom. Reconvened as informal meeting at 11:06 a.m.
Lacina: Pat these are public records, so we don't have to worry about these...
White: Right.
Lacina: Once we get into it, then it's different.
White: Right.
Stutsman: OK, is there anything else from the Board, any reports this morning?
White: You need to be sure the doors are open and I doubt that anybody else is waiting, because we made it clear when we went into executive session we were done.
Stutsman: OK. Charlie do you have a report?
Duffy: Already gave it.
Stutsman: Oh, the Board given all of their reports?
Lacina: We're pretty well done.
Stutsman: OK.
Lacina: Did you have a report for us Sally?
Stutsman: Yes I did, I went to the Chamber meeting this morning, so maybe I can just report on that. They had some interesting things they were talking about. One of the things that they were talking about is there was tentative agreement to go ahead with plans to hire a governmental affairs director. This would be a person that would be a person that would be part of the Chamber staff, but their salary I would understand would be paid for by the Home Builders and the Realtors and the purpose of this person would be to monitor meetings with the City Council, with the County Board of Supervisors and other governmental entities to keep the Chamber informed about where they're at on these different things that would affect the Chamber and the business community, it would also be with the legislature too, to monitor legislation. The reason John Becker brought this up is that the Home Builders and Realtors... There's lots that go on at City and Board of Supervisors meetings, for instance the Comp Plan, it's impractical to expect any one person to attend all of these meetings and keep up on all of the volumes of reports that are generated. So if they felt that they had one person on staff that could do that and then report back about the progress about what's being discussed and what's being formulated that it would be better to keep everybody informed. So I thought it sounded like a good step in the right direction as far as communication with the business community as well as the...
Lacina: Because that gives us a contact person that we could go to too if we had questions.
Stutsman: Right. I guess I spoke up too with the comp plan the meetings have just been incredible and it's impossible for anybody to monitor all of that stuff, but if there was one person that was their job to do that then they could certainly inform interested individuals and then they could let us know because I feel sometimes that we're not completely represented by all of the constituents in the community. I think that would really serve a valuable purpose.
Jordahl: You mentioned the comp plan. I should jump in at this point before you may go on to something else to mention that we discussed the possibility of rescheduling a meeting on the first because of the budget conference in Ames and we decided because of the short notice there would have to be to the public about attending that meeting that we would go ahead and hold the comp plan meeting on the first and do what attending we might do of the conference around it, but not reschedule the formal meeting on Thursday following.
Stutsman: OK. All right. Let's see I did give a Johnson County update. I talked about where we're at on the comp plan. I talked about the Community Self Sufficiency grant that we just sent the support letter for today and how that involved Chamber businesses. I talked also about where we're at with the HR person and the proposals for community based budgeting and for the salary survey and the countywide thing just to bring an update for what the County is doing. Let's see, there was also discussion about the Stepping Up Coalition and she is the Chamber's rep on that, and that's for (inaudible) on underage drinking and there is national interest in what we're doing here and she has been contacted by 20/20 and so she'll keep us informed if they're interested in doing a report on that from Iowa City. So I think that's about everything that we talked about this morning. Oh, I know, there was another initiative that John mentioned. He evidently attends a group of various chambers throughout the state and the chamber group from Cedar Rapids wanted to start an initiative where there would be some matching funds from the State from Economic Development to come back to local chambers to begin this partnership between welfare reform and businesses in the community. The Chamber group this morning did agree to support this in notion. There wasn't unanimous support and I think part of the hesitancy was that people just didn't understand what we're talking about. It made me realize how much more we need to do in communicating with business and Chamber about what welfare reform is, the part that businesses have to play in making welfare reform work. But I think this idea is a good idea because it would provide matching funds for a chamber like Iowa City to hire one person that would work closely with Human Services agencies to make transitions or businesses aware of hiring welfare recipients and trying to get those things in place. Because as was stated this morning welfare reform is not going to work unless businesses are part of it and so I think it's a good initiative and was glad that the Board agreed to support this proposal.
Lacina: Would that be something that we could support state-wide, all legislators?
Stutsman: That's what it... It's going to the governor...
Lacina: So it's not just Cedar Rapids, Iowa City?
Stutsman: No, no it's all of the chambers and I think they were initially talking about $400,000 being earmarked from economic development funds to be a part of this program.
Lacina: Do we want to support that do you think, draft a letter for us and sign it on behalf of the Board and have us all initial off and send it to them?
Stutsman: John Becker, that might be a real good idea, because I think...
Lacina: ...join governmental support as well as...
Stutsman: Right, and that we recognize it and really support business being at the table as well as everybody else when they're working on this.
Lacina: Government and private sector cooperation or something.
Stutsman: Right, right. I think that's a real good idea.
Jordahl: Might be more than initials. I'd write my whole name on that.
Stutsman: I'll call John and see if there is something that we could do to lend our support to that. So that's everything I wanted to report.
REPORT (DUFFY): UPCOMING TERRORISM CLASS FOR COUNTY EMPLOYEES
Duffy: Sally could I elaborate on one report I made with Emergency Management meeting last night and I said that Tom Hanson, you know he's our half-time person with Jim McGinley has been appointed lead instructor for the State of Iowa. Tom will be teaching classes in terrorism across the state.
Lacina: On terrorism?
Duffy: Terrorism. Yes.
Stutsman: Oh, no.
Lacina: How to prevent it as opposed to...
Duffy: We had quite a... We had classes for other things and I thought that was great and so Sheriff Carpenter consented to teach the class for our County deputies.
Lacina: I wonder if one of us shouldn't sit on that. We're representatives of this building.
Jordahl: You know I was talking to Pat Langenberg about that yesterday.
Lacina: Oh, he'd be a good one, just the whole facility. That's a good idea.
Duffy: But they're really working down there. So far the HAZMAT classes (inaudible) for 743 people and they've had 35 different exercises all over the County and that includes the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and there was quite a... I hope that these things don't happen, but I think that we're ready for most of the emergencies, but this one here is a big one. When you have the State top instructor...
Jordahl: What's the date there Charlie?
Duffy: Well that...
Jordahl: The terrorism deal?
Duffy: Well there really isn't any date, but we could find out.
Lacina: Is he going around the state doing this?
Duffy: Yes. But this one here is for us and this here is what they've been doing. Let's see that list for so far.
Jordahl: There probably is a date we just don't know what it is.
Stutsman: OK, I guess that takes care of everything for this morning so we are adjourned.
Adjourned at 11:14 a.m.
Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor
By Casie Parkins and Mindy McCleary, Recording Secretaries