DISCUSSION: IMPROVEMENT TO BUDGETING PROCESS
Stutsman: Yes, thanks Lynnette. OK, anything else then from the Auditor's Office? Discussion regarding improvement to the budgeting process. I put this on, we had our department head meeting last week where we discussed or introduced the performance-based budgeting. I think we need to make some decisions on the Board level where we want to go with this. We've got another meeting scheduled with the department heads for the 23rd where we're going to continue this discussion. I wanted to bring up again whether we want to continue looking at doing this in-house, whether we want to pursue hiring a consultant to take us through this process and just exactly where the Board wants to go with this. I felt our meeting last Tuesday was good. I think reception was pretty positive from department heads as to what we wanted to do. It seems like every time I'm exposed to this performance-based budgeting, it seems like it gets more and more complicated. I just wonder about our abilities to keep it on task by doing it in-house.
Jordahl: Sally and I have been studying this and bringing the idea forward as part of our assignment with the strategic goals of the Board and in trying to do a good job of that you have to look forward here, well OK on October 8, we have a department heads meeting coming up, where we're going to do something about working with, focusing this in. In order to do a good job of that, Sally and I are going to have to prepare for that meeting in a very serious way. We're going to have to spend some time, some hours, and multiple hours figuring out how we're going to structure that, what the role, relative roles of the Auditor, and ourselves and the department heads, what kind of literature we may want to pass out in advance, some kind of worksheet or something that we'll have to cook up, is there a computer program somewhere that we want to be looking out for this? There's a lot of fairly intertwined and complicated questions that need to get answered to keep this ball rolling. While I suppose that we could do that, it's going to be a really big time commitment for us, not just for that meeting, but for the one coming up for the strategic planning session in November on the 1st when we have the department heads again together... It's kind of like this every 2 week thing. It's the budget for next year, reports are going to have to be filed if we want to get anything done for this year, it's going to have to start happening now. If we're going to do this in-house between ourselves and the Auditor, this is going to have to become the biggest thing on the plate for the next couple of months at least. I'm not sure if that's the appropriate use of our time.
Stutsman: Well and not only time is one thing but expertise is something else. I think when we start looking at putting this in place and putting it in place so that a successful, we're talking about guiding department heads through a process of developing mission statements, objectives, goals, inputs, outputs. It's a pretty sophisticated process. I don't want to scare people that we're expecting a lot, but I don't know if I have that expertise or if I have the time to develop that kind of expertise. I really worry that if we don't do this right to begin with that it will just be a fiasco and not accomplish anything. Then once you introduce something and it's not introduced correctly or well, then it takes that much more energy to re-group and produce a positive product. I just think time is better spent up front to do it well initially and get it rolling than try to re-group later on when there's a momentum loss.
Lacina: I agree. It's a little bit like the salary survey. We could have conducted that ourselves, but the time spent and if we missed it or didn't go back and do the job descriptions, it could have been flawed and we could have made a big step in the wrong direction. In visiting a little bit with the sups and Lumir and I talked about this yesterday at the ground breaking... If you don't establish the foundation correctly, then everything you build on it is going to be shaky. I think to start off with, a consultant or an advisor comes in, they can look at the information we have and basically the raw data is there through our budgeting process. To the degree that if we go out and establish new forms and that, it may not be needed because through our claims process and through our budgeting process we have a tremendous amount of information. What we need is an ability or better tools to be able to analyze those numbers. A consultant will be able to come in and say, well...here are some simple ratios you can do right now. I think you're right. Time-wise, the investment for that individual to get it set up right is going to be very minimal in regards to the returns. Time wise it will happen faster, the numbers will be more useable, and I really don't see any negatives to the going out with the consultant. If we try to do it again, I think we all have a perception of the direction we could go, but it would take us a lot longer and in the long run I think we'd probably make some mistakes the consultant could keep us out of. That's kind of the sense from... When you went to the other Counties, Jonathan, and Sally, is that the sense you got from Scott and Linn? I'm assuming they didn't... Their system evolved, but with the help of outside consultants?
Bolkcom: I thought they didn't... Didn't Linn not have a consultant?
Jordahl: Linn developed theirs over time with some staff changes, bringing a budget person out of the Auditor's Office and into the Supervisor's Office and they sort of grew...
Stutsman: But it wasn't the Supervisors that was shepherding the process along, it was a specific staff person.
Jordahl: No, it was the budget director and other staff people, the Auditor, some cooperation existed. Various departmental budget people too working together. In Scott County, they did bring in a consultant. The consultant laid the deal on the table to them that it wouldn't cost them anything, there was no fee at all for the consultant until the consultant could demonstrate between one year's budget and the next, that more than that fee had already been saved through the efficiencies that the consultant recommended. So they did bring in a consultant. I think both, if you talked to Linn County as well, their situation is different. They had an evolving situation that they were able to develop, and with a particular person in place who might be characterized as kind of a consultant on staff and were able to do that. But I think the recommendation from Linn as well as from Scott was to get somebody to come in and help make this happen right the first time as you suggested. In both cases though, there was a notion of evolution, that it would be a process of 2 or 3 years at least to implement, because you'd have to get people used to the idea and then you'd have to begin to develop the measures and have those refined through a process of departmental discussion, so that they would accurately reflect what the department was doing and be useful measures. So that over a period of 2 or 3 years they had implemented the system. One of the things I think that makes it important to look outside, whether for a consultant or for a computer program at least is the question of getting the form right. Are we going to have to re-invent the wheel? A consultant would be able to help with that, what kind of a system software do we need.
Lacina: Even at a higher level, the University when Mary Sue Coleman came in, one of the things that she was really emphasizing was benchmarking, where you are now and then setting goals and where your next step would be. So I agree, this is going to be an ongoing evolutionary thing, but in order for us to get into that first step and to do it fairly quickly and by quickly I mean a couple of years, I think that consultant's going to be important. It's like doing your own books. A CPA can come in and really get things moving quickly. Many times if you get bogged down in the numbers you can go the wrong direction and miss some major point which is so easy to correct and do. So given the presentation that you have to start working on, what do you recommend to us?
Jordahl: Well I...
Bolkcom: Can we speak against it before we get ready to hire?
Stutsman: Sure.
Jordahl: Well I was going to...
Lacina: See I don't know what to speak against until I hear.
Jordahl: As for my recommendation to I would suggest that we, we recently went shopping for a car and didn't buy one. We looked and it was too expensive so we didn't buy one. I think that in the same way here we recognize there's a need here, but we don't know what the price tag is. In Scott's case, there was no price tag until it was clear that they weren't actually having to tax for this, that they were able to make savings that went beyond what the cost of the consultant was. So I think our first question is what's the price tag and we need to send out an RFP and find that out. We don't have to then hire somebody...
Bolkcom: Well we don't even, it's not even clear to me that we know what we want, in terms of writing an RFP to say we want you to do X, Y, and Z for us, it isn't clear to me at all what the RFP would even say for starters. So we'd want somebody go give us a price on something, and I guess I'm unclear about what the 5 or 10 things we'd want somebody to do are. We could talk about benchmarking and developing performance measures. I think that our staff, our departmental staff are in a much better position to determine those things.
Stutsman: I'm not saying that this would be done for them. The consultant would work with them in developing those things.
Bolkcom: I guess I'd say to the proponents of a survey or having hired somebody that we need to see a little bit more descriptive list of what we're hiring somebody to do as opposed to we want to do performance-based budgeting, we think somebody can tell us how to do it better than we can figure it out for ourselves, and just kind of has a blank sheet and kind of... I want more details. That would be a specific point about the RFP. I have more general concerns about this. I don't know if this is the time...
Stutsman: Sure.
Bolkcom: OK. I think the real key issue is our own staffing. Who is going... Whether we have a consultant or whether we have an internal process, who is going to shepherd this thing along? Is it going to be Sally and Jonathan who have put in a ton of time so far getting us to this point? Are they going to oversee this? Or are we going to have in our new administrative assistant person, Kim's former position, a person that's going to be doing more budgeting? I think that's a key question that has to be answered. The other thing I think is that while we all want to move ahead as quickly as possible, we do exist in a certain environment that we have to bring people along. I guess I continue to be concerned about the pace in which we're moving. I know people want to get going on this and get this thing up and running and start right and don't... So that whatever we do at the beginning we can build on a successful model. I guess I want to make sure we do it at a rate of speed in which we bring people along in a positive manner. We often find out when we don't do that, people come to us and say we're not on board or you're going to fast. I think this is one of those things. Some of the feedback I've gotten since the meeting it's been mostly good, but I think there's a little bit of concern about... I thought we did a good job in presenting it, but no matter how good of a job we do, people are kind of anxious about it and wondering what's really the agenda of the Board here and that kind of thing. I just think we want to all work together, we want them to develop information measures and monitoring that help them understand what their doing and do it better. If it does that, then it will meet our goals too. In terms of the actual process of doing performance-based budgeting, I don't think it's rocket science. I think it is something that we could figure out on our own. You guys have visited other places that have done it, developing performance measures, doing consumer surveys about how people like the services we provide. I don't think any of that's real difficult to do. Having a good survey is important to have. Then finally, if we're going, there's going to be a cost to do this internally to our departments to gather data, maybe in some cases it's being gathered, it might not be being compiled in a way and gathering more data there's a cost. The Board's commitment to basically spend time with the information once it's collected. That's I think some of us have heard that concern from department heads. If we do collect this, the Board has to have a commitment to use the information to make decisions. I think the Board is committed to that, we're moving on towards this, I guess I feel the Board is committed to that, but I don't want to develop a system that... New Supervisors might come along and say we don't care about this, in the future, and there's not much we can do about that, but...
Lacina: Well to your first point, I think, my assumption was that since Sally and Jonathan had done the research, traveled to the other counties and are learning in this learning curve area, that they would continue because for... Use myself as an example. For me to step into it right now, I don't have the background that you have learned from Dawn and that, so I'm assuming you guys have done the work and kind of have a vision for where we're at. My perception of the product is something not a lot different than what Iowa City now does with their 5 year forward forecasting on the budget. So that we can seize and benchmark things where we're at today and in time we'll see a finished project where everyone can look down the road and do some forecasting so we kind of have an idea of where our taxes are going to go and make some adjustments. Again, I think the expertise to get this set up right is very important. I think you're going at it correctly, you're moving slow, you've talked to the departments about it, the flip side of that is if we don't do it, we're having a little dispute right now with the City about the records with SEATS. I think that's going to get worse and especially if the Feds come in and apply this change in the accounting procedures we're going to be forced to do it quickly and then I think that's where we have the greater chance of making errors. So one of the things that needs to be done is write all 5 Supervisors in time need to find out exactly what the finished product will look like. But we're a long ways away from that. I think that's way, way down the road. You have a valid point at some point, but we just need to keep this moving right now, in my view.
Jordahl: The Auditor is an interesting feature of this discussion. Joe raises the question of Kim's replacement and what role that person may have in budgeting. The same question needs to be raised with regard to Tom Slockett and his office. We've had Tom here and we've talked about how he's looked into this and he's studied I think more than Sally and I have on it and is in favor or it as I can see. How do we see Tom's role relative to a consultant? That's part of this discussion and I'm not sure what the answer to that is. Do we... I think I've heard different things from him about that.
Stutsman: Well maybe what we do is issue an RFP and then Tom is welcome to submit an RFP too.
Jordahl: Suggest that he be involved in that process. Yes.
Stutsman: Right, and see exactly how he would work through this process.
Jordahl: How he would propose to proceed.
Lacina: He'll be a huge player in this. There's the raw data and when Lynnette comes up and gives us the reviews and that, they obviously can do a lot of the mathematical or statistical work in it. But the consultant can set it up so that we're better able to understand and apply these across the Board.
Stutsman: Right. I think more than anything, just set up a time schedule and say that this is what you need to accomplish this year. I worry about our workloads and that we have the best intentions and then you get in the thick of things and all of a sudden 3 months have gone by and oh yes, we were going to have those performance indicators in place and we don't have them in place. I think somebody from the outside who this is their only task, their specific duties could make sure that we stay on track with these things.
Lacina: From the explanation you've given us. One scenario would be to go out and get a consultant, that would be similar to Scott. The other scenario would be to hire a consultant which would replace Kim's position and have onboard with direction to do that.
Jordahl: Yes.
Lacina: But then we still are missing an individual to pick up some of the work load within the office. Because Kim did a lot of other things other than budgeting. Everything from answering phones to...
Jordahl: Well and we've talked about staffing in another context and I'm in favor of getting some more support out there to get the phone answering handled. Sally's also raised alternative ways of handling the phones. You look into voice mail and other ways of reducing the work load out in that nature out in the office. So the question of what that position does is kind of a little bit confusing because some of it can be answered technologically.
Lacina: Well and maybe the consultant we could get by with help in terms of operation of the office and the consultant in time could make a recommendation as to job description or whatever for this function if it helps us do the analysis.
Jordahl: That's true.
Stutsman: Well it sounds like there are 3 straw poll votes to go ahead with looking into an RFP. Would it be OK if Jonathan and I drew up an RFP and brought it to the Board and go from there or what are you thinking Steve?
Lacina: Well I'm just thinking of trying to help you. I think if you sat down with Lynette or Tom... You know best on that. I support the idea of...
Jordahl: Well yes, I'd have to agree with that.
Lacina: (Inaudible) going to accept it. I'm saying...
Stutsman: No, and we don't know how much this is going to cost, if we're talking 50, 60, 70 thousand dollars.
Bolkcom: That's right.
Jordahl: That's what we want to try and find out.
Stutsman: We'll regroup here, but...
Duffy: Sally, I would like to say a few comments. Human services is what percent of our budget? About 46?
Bolkcom: 42.
Duffy: How about Mental Health/Mental Retardation? That's about 9 million isn't it?
Bolkcom: It's about 7 1/2, it's the...
Duffy: Well it's close...
Bolkcom: Human Services...
Duffy: ...to 9 million, so when we got revenues from the State to help with this cost of Mental Health and we met in this room over here that some of our folks eat dinner and weigh yourself, bicycle, and all that, that room, what did we decide to do? We had a consultant firm out of Des Moines, a good one. So we decided we could do it ourselves, we'll save the taxpayers money, and the working group, your on it Joe, and you Sally, on one of the largest tax items that we have in the whole County, and now all I hear is consultants, consultants, consultants. I've been doing a little figuring up and so far I think some of these things that we're going to do is going to cost something like 135 to 140 thousand dollars when you figure them all up? You're going to... Even the taxpayers with their houses evaluated for more and other property. There are things that we used to do... Maybe I'm old fashioned, I'm a senior Supervisor on this committee, but what I see more and more of, consultants are expensive and if you do it this one, then the next one, here comes another one. What you say Sally is right. The Supervisors do a lot of things, we're on all these committees and before, sure we should be on some of them, but we should spend more time with things like this, more time with our County workers, so anyway, I just thought I'd throw that in. So good luck, I guess we'll find out, but just look at the computer committee. There's a committee, if we had hired those people, they've done a wonderful job. There are people out there that can handle this too, but I see a collision course when budget time...
Bolkcom: Good point.
Lacina: Well going back to one of the points that Jonathan made though, in the example of Scott County, if the consultant can come in and we can say fine, save us $100,000 this year, that will be your fee, then the next year and every year thereafter, that money's back in our bank. It's a one time expenditure to save hundreds of thousands in the future.
Stutsman: To get the system set up and...
Lacina: I'm frankly saying that I'm hearing that we're all saying, we're not spending any 100 thousand dollars. I'm assuming the number for this RFP is going to be very conservative in terms of the 100 grand.
Bolkcom: One of the guys that was here said 5 years at 6 figures. A 5 year proposal was 100 grand.
Lacina: Well what's the savings?
Bolkcom: They'll tell us a lot probably. I think the savings will be things that we as a Board decide to cut. We set the budget, we tell people what they can spend or not, a consultant doesn't tell them that, we do. So if some consultant comes in and says I think he should spend less here, then we have to make a decision to spend less here. There might be some obvious things, I don't know that there's a lot of fat out there that we don't see. We pay fairly close attention to this. If there's 100 thousand sitting out there that we're blowing, I'd be interested in knowing what it is.
Jordahl: Well in the example of Scott, I can't recall exactly what the issue was, but I recall that what the consultant was able to do coming in was to identify things that were not of that nature, that did not involve cutting departmental budgets, but it in fact involved different ways of handling money that talked about... For example, the way money's being invested. It's invested at a higher rate of return, and if you're investing a substantial amount of money, results in a substantial change in the County budget. There were other matters of efficiency, they were managing 2 different bookkeeping systems where it could be done with one. So you had twice as many staff doing things that you needed, able to free people up to do other things instead of expanding salary lines or adding more people, they were able to combine functions, so there were things that did not involve cutting departmental budget lines, but involved efficiencies or wiser ways of managing money. As Steve was suggesting a CPA coming in and saying well gee you're doing this, but you could be doing that. Look, you save $100,000.
Bolkcom: Well that's a different study though. If we're going to have people come in and look over different departmental operations and say you've got 2 people doing what one person can do, that's different it seems to me than helping us set up a process to do performance-based budgeting. In terms of investments, I couldn't agree more. We know we could be doing better on investments. We don't need to pay somebody to come in and tell us how to do that.
Jordahl: Well I think my example is as I said I don't remember what the issue was. I'm pulling things out of the air here. But I remember being impressed that what was done, and I've got notes on this, I just have to go dig it out, that what was done was the kind of thing that you could say this person has sort of in their back pocket. That they come in as a consultant. They know they can make this offer, I'll save you $100,000 the first year and that's my fee. If I don't do it, then you don't have to pay me. They'll know that they've got this couple 3 or 4 tricks that work on County budgets that people aren't doing now, that they can implement for you, and that will continue as Steve said to make you money in savings throughout all the coming years because you're doing things in a wiser way that apparently Scott wasn't seeing and we probably aren't now seeing. Gee, if it worked for Scott. And Charlie's going to say well their in debt. Well now that's the choice that the Board made over there. The Board chose to go into debt.
Bolkcom: I think Charlie's best point here is that there are things we ought to hire consultants for and there are things we shouldn't and things that we can do on our own we should save the money. I think he's saying we can do this on our own. We did it with the computer needs thing, we did it with the managed care thing. In the managed care thing, there was a lot on the line. It was 40% of the budget. We said we can write this plan and I think we did a pretty good job of it. It took a lot of time.
Stutsman: Yes, I think we did to, and we had the expertise in house to do that. We had a great track record on providing cost-effective services with our Mental Health budget, and I didn't see any way that a consultant could improve on that. I'm not convinced with this process that we have the expertise in house to do this.
Bolkcom: Well I think both the computer need and the managed care plan it was in house and out of house. It wasn't just in-house in either of those cases. We had people working on it, but there was a lot of input from a lot of different community players. I think you could do the same thing with this performance budgeting thing. We could have a... God forbid a committee to work on it. I don't know. I'm feeling like, I'd rather spend money on other consulting issues than this one.
Lacina: Keep in mind if...
Bolkcom: We're going to pay, hire consultants.
Lacina: ...if, using Joe's example, $100,000 over 5 years. Think about a 33 million dollar budget over 5 years the amount of money we're dealing with. It could be a very, very small part of 1% that we're investing and doing more efficiently. I just think that this is one that we need to turn over to professionals. We did have a committee that looked our Informational Services situation, but there were politics involved and this was an excellent way of getting it out of politics and to look at it from a neutral perspective to see what we needed. We had expertise in house, but this, again was a way of looking at it objectively. I think this is also going to put it on a professional basis and they're going to come in and they're not going to be carrying any history or anything and just come in and say well, here are some tools you can use. Again if we can come up with something that is going to save us money over time, we're dealing with a huge budget. So, what do you recommend then?
Duffy: I would like to add something. Saving all this money, and you've heard me say this before, an ISAC meeting is coming up again. That Supervisors from other counties have seem to have all these things are in debt. Then we start talking about Johnson County, how do you do it, how do you keep people out of debt? Saving all this money is about like, I've seen some suits that I wouldn't mind having one that was on sale half price, $300 a piece, regular $500, so I should have bought 2 of them for $600 and then I'd have saved $400. There needs to be more research on this thing.
Lacina: Charlie, that analogy though, it's like someone that's doing their books in the old ledger, on paper, they're not in debt. Saying well this justifies not buying a computer because somebody that bought a computer is in debt. Some of it's germane, some of it not. As Jonathan has said, some of the Counties have decided that they want to finance buildings or made that decision. I'm not for putting this County in debt. I think that a good bookkeeping system and good budgeting process will make sure that we don't go into debt. Because we know that as we move down the road and we transition people from social support into the work place, some of them it's not going to work. So they're going to come back to us, it's going to cost either through the jail or through domestic violence or job training or we're going to see that expense in some other area. I want to be able to recognize that in our ratios. What's our customer base and where are we growing and do we have adequate people to take care of licensing the new confidentiality law that the State's passing for licensing is going to require additional help. Maybe that's something we look at for cross-training. Can we pull employees during the last 3 days of the month over to help them. Right now, I don't know, I don't know what our staffing ratios are. So those are some of the tools I think we can use in the long term and I'm not hearing anybody saying, anybody want to go in debt? I don't.
Duffy: That's the way your headed.
Stutsman: Oh, no.
Lacina: Oh no, I don't think so.
Duffy: I would say again we're spending too much time on other things and this Board could take care of things that now we're asking consultants to do and you're closer to the (inaudible).
Stutsman: Charlie do you feel you have the ability to sit down with department heads and go through a strategic planning process, setting up a mission statement, setting up goals? If you do, I'm more than happy...
Duffy: I'm not so sure you need a mission statement...
Stutsman: Well that's... It all ties together, it's a complicated process.
Duffy: But...
Stutsman: But you can't set up performance indicators and benchmarking unless you first of all know what you're all about. That's the first step.
Duffy: I'd say Sally that we're doing... If the voters really knew everything that we were doing, like Rick and R.J., they get calls at home, they go... The same way with Supervisors, but I think we should re-evaluate some of the things we do, and then handle more of the things like the... We should be evaluated ourselves, see if there are some things we can cut out, we can't, it's absolutely a lot of work and you being Chair, I know that it's tremendous pressure on you signing everything that goes through here, but still some of these things, all I hear now is consultants, consultants, and usually the ones that have consultants are in debt and paying interest. As far as the money... Well we probably shouldn't, that's not on the agenda, but I think we do a good job of investing money, the Treasurer's Office does it, invested in people that have businesses in this County. I remember what happened in that get rich thing was...
Lacina: Welch.
Duffy: Yes, Welch I guess it was. A lot of the money in Iowa ended up in California to collect a larger percent of interest, well they tried that a couple of times down here in the Treasurers' Office. They didn't get that far. So they know about the money, invested in the local banks, the local banks are paying taxes. So get rich fast, that doesn't work either.
Stutsman: We need to move along so...
Jordahl: May I raise one more issue related to this?
Stutsman: OK.
Jordahl: Part of the discussion the last couple of exchanges about strategic planning and asking Charlie about how that might be done... We are in a process with Tim Shields now, we've got a meeting set up on the first of November to sit down with the department heads and do joint strategic planning. My question is I don't know where that's going in terms of what the plan was for doing that and how that relates to budgeting and how that relates to any subsequent arrangements we may or may not have with Tim Shields. I think it would be perfectly appropriate to have him involved with...
Stutsman: Why don't I call Tim and ask him...
Jordahl: ...this process...
Stutsman: ...where we're going with that, what he had in mind meeting with the department heads.
Jordahl: Because I would like, I think we need, we've got a department heads meeting coming up on the, is it the 8th? So a week from tomorrow to do some budget work and then we've got the department heads meeting on the 3rd of November to do strategic planning as we're saying here, strategic planning and budgeting ideally are very, very closely linked, that is a department articulates it's main purposes and main functions that those ideally would be areas where they could reflect in their budget how money is being used and where the needs are so we can project needs and plan to meet them adequately. It all has to be woven together and so if we're going to have someone else come in, we would need to have Tim talk to them or maybe we need to have them doing a strategic planning process, I don't know. The strategic planning issue, this piece of the budget process has got to be buttoned up pretty quickly.
Stutsman: Yes, right.
Bolkcom: I would hope that our strategic planning session on November 3rd with Tim Shields and department heads is not so structured that it doesn't provide an opportunity to talk about what department heads want to talk to us about. So that it doesn't be solely confined and I don't know if you're saying this, to budget issues. We're meeting with department heads in a couple of weeks to continue discussion about performance-based budgeting. I would hope that we could come to that meeting with some sense of what you two think this RFP's going to look like and get some feedback from department heads who know some things about this as well if we're going to try and fashion an RFP and also have some conversation about a consultant with department heads.
Stutsman: All right, why don't Jonathan and I work on that RFP and then bring it back to the Board and then review it with the department heads.
Jordahl: Well my question is whether we need to have a long discussion about the RFP. I think when you're going to talk to a consultant are we going to say well we want some of performance-based budgeting but not all of it? I don't understand the idea of being confused about this. When we had a discussion in the geographical information system subcommittee a couple of weeks ago, it was around the issue of sending out a request for proposals. We boiled it down from 3 pages with multiple points of detail to about a paragraph and a half allowing that the consultants probably knew what it was that the geographical information systems was and had worked with counties before and we're going to probably know what the questions were. We were going to, just as you're saying, we don't want to go to the department heads meeting with too much of a fixed agenda that we will want people to discuss only these limited things that actually we want performance-based budgeting. We want the department heads feedback and we want the geographical information systems package for the County and we want it to be appropriate for our needs. That's something that's going to be worked out as a consultant goes and visits with the various departments and sees what actually the situation is. So I'm not sure that we need to have a week delay for the department heads meeting and then another week until we can vote on what the request for proposals is. I drafted one a week or so ago that was very simple in that way, I don't know if you have a copy of that with you today.
Stutsman: No, I don't have it with me.
Bolkcom: I'd like to see it.
Stutsman: Yes, you and I will get together and look...
Jordahl: I would suggest that we put it on the agenda for Thursday to talk about the RFP. We don't necessarily have to decide on it and send it out but I want to at least have it on the table.
Stutsman: Does that sound OK?
Lacina: So you'll have a draft for us?
Jordahl: Yes.
Stutsman: On Thursday, OK.
Bolkcom: As a discussion point under informal?
Stutsman: Uh-huh.
Bolkcom: Is that what you're talking about?
Stutsman: Right, Karen you have... Right. OK.
Jordahl: And possible action. If people are satisfied that it's ready to go, I wouldn't want to be hampered, not be able to vote on it.
Lacina: I'd rather put it on Tuesday then so that we give the public a chance if somebody wants to comment to put it on Thursday is going to be preconceived...
Stutsman: Let's do it for Thursday, or for Tuesday, I'm sorry.
Lacina: I think that would give you more time as well...
Stutsman: To set it...
Lacina: Then we can have a chance to look at it and make suggestions for a change if that would be OK.
Stutsman: OK, let's do that, next Tuesday then?
Lacina: Thank you.
DISCUSSION: JOINT MEETINGS WITH SUPERVISORS FROM OTHER COUNTIES
Stutsman: OK, thank you. Let's see, discussion regarding joint meeting with Muscatine and Washington County Supervisors. I put this on, we have a meeting scheduled with the Supervisors from Muscatine and Washington County for October 16, at 11:30. This is a regularly scheduled meeting and I guess I wanted to know how the Supervisors... What we wanted to put on the agenda if we want to meet with them. I talked to Lumir yesterday about meeting with Linn County Supervisors. Maybe our time would be better spent with Linn County at this point. Are there any particular issues between Muscatine and Washington that we need to talk about?
Lacina: We need an update on the status of the run-around on the bridge down there, on the county line road.
Stutsman: OK.
Lacina: The 2nd thing is we probably need to check with our Engineer. There was some discussion with Washington County on the road agreements. Apparently we had mutual agreements on some of the roads and there was a question of some of it may have been lost and see if they've found those. Those are the only 2 issues that I can think of just off hand that we had that we're really still burning with Muscatine or Washington.
Jordahl: Well you suggested a few minutes ago that I call Rod to find out some information. I think this is the kind of thing that we could maybe do over the telephone to find out this information and not have all of us go and take that time out and spend the money for lunch and take other Supervisors time as well. I think that we have a number of issues that are on the front burner with Linn County that we could well address if we want to have a meeting.
Lacina: I don't care how you handle it. The question was asked what are the issues, and those 2 are on the table and I'm trying to think if there's any more right now, I can't think of any.
Duffy: We could probably ask Linn County when they could meet with us?
Stutsman: Well I talked...
Duffy: Did you talk to them yesterday?
Stutsman: Well Lumir, and he said they meet Monday, Tuesday, and is it Wednesday morning? So any of those days in the afternoons would be good. So maybe we could kind of look at calendars and why don't I give Jim Houser a call, the Chair of the Linn County Board and get some dates and maybe I can bring those back Thursday and then decide on a time to meet with Linn County Supervisors. Do we want to reschedule this meeting then for the 16th with the Muscatine and Washington, do you want to think about it for a week?
Duffy: I think like Jonathan said we could probably find out the information right over the telephone. If something is going wrong with that run-around down there at county line road at Lone Tree, then we can probably get together, but...
Stutsman: Why don't when Carol gets back, I'll have Carol call down there because we were hosts for this time weren't we? If I remember correctly? I think it was our...
Lacina: I think if we asked them if there are some issues.
Stutsman: Yes, and that's what I thought, she could touch base with both of them and if there's nothing that's real demanding, maybe we could just put it off and meet with them in January or February.
Lacina: We don't want them to get the perception that we're pulling the plug on them, but again their time is valuable as well. You can work that out.
Stutsman: All right, why don't I follow up on that.
Jordahl: That's a good point though, Steve, can't you see, whether we have agenda items or not...
Stutsman: OK. Then I'll get back on Thursday with Linn County Supervisors. Any reports? Charlie do you have a report?