MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
OCTOBER 14 AND 16, 1997
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chairperson Stutsman called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 9:00 a.m. Members present were: Joseph Bolkcom, Charles Duffy, Jonathan Jordahl, Stephen Lacina, and Sally Stutsman.
REVIEW OF FORMAL MINUTES AND CANVASS OF VOTES FOR THE IOWA CITY PRIMARY ELECTION
Stutsman: Review of formal minutes for the canvass of votes for the Iowa City Primary election on October 9th and the formal minutes for October 9th. Are there any comments? OK. We'll put those on then for Thursday.
JOHNSON COUNTY COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENTS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR JEFF DAVIDSON: TRANSPORTATION PLAN
Stutsman: Business from Jeff Davidson, Executive Director for Johnson County Council of Governments and this is regarding the transportation plan.
JCCOG Executive Director Jeff Davidson: Good morning.
Stutsman: Good morning Jeff.
Davidson: Sally thought it would be a good idea, I think you all received the memorandum that I sent you, oh 3 weeks ago was it by now maybe, about sort of where we were with this. Sally thought it would be a good idea, and I agree, to just kind of bring you up to speed and answer any questions you have about what's going on. A little bit of just very brief history here, this was something that you all asked JCCOG to coordinate. When I say coordinate, these 3 fellows sitting behind me are sort of taking the team approach with us on this project and certainly they are critical to the eventual success of it. You asked us to take a look at maybe developing a system for you all to have some better information for dealing with the development and the subdivision issues that you are, it seems like, constantly faced with, and the transportation, or maybe more specifically road issues that come out of those. You asked us to focus on the North Corridor since that's probably logically where most of these issues are occurring. That's the area of the county where you all have said residential development should be focused and so a lot of the development issues come out of that area. The desire as we understood it was that you have an issue come up and you have people, with respect to the road, saying this road is inadequate no further development should be allowed; others saying there is nothing wrong with that road, additional development should be allowed. You're faced with a real quandary, because you've got these competing forces. You have to make, of course, your own decisions about the project. I think the desire was to have a little bit better information to assist you in making those decisions. So that's what we're working towards here. We had hoped to develop a system that was going to be a relatively streamlined way of dealing with this where the 4 classifications of road, being paved, chip sealed, gravel and dirt, that we would have a system for each classification of road and we would deal with a development project on a particular type of road consistently. Well, the 4 of us met, oh by now it's been a couple of months ago, and decided that that type of approach was probably going to be a little simplistic. I mean it sounds great because it would be simplistic, but unfortunately you know we want to have something that when we get done here is legally defensible, because you certainly could end up in court with some of this. We feel like it is possible to develop a very legally defensible way of doing this. So we took a step back and decided to take a little bit more detailed approach in basically looking at each road individually. Now this is going to take a little bit more time, but Mike indicated to us that for example dealing with a gravel road, if you're dealing with a gravel road with the vertical curve like Green Castle Road has just north of the Amana Road, you're going to look at that differently than a nice, flat well-drained gravel road somewhere else. The way that you would evaluate a development project adjacent to each of those 2 roads would be different. So we can't handle all gravel roads the same way. We have to look at each individual one and say what's the situation here? When I say take a look at each individually, what's traffic volume doing? What's traffic speed doing? What's the accident rate? What's the horizontal and vertical geometry of the road. We need to have all that information, so that we can determine that adequacy of the road to support further development or not. OK, this once again all related back to you having information to make decisions about development projects. What R.J. and Rick did is provide a list of 18 roads that they feel in the North Corridor are the ones most logical to have issues with development projects occur. We've selected 4 of those. Those being Sugar Bottom Road, which is a chip seal surface, Seneca, Blain Cemetery, and Greencastle, all in the same area, just south of Swisher. We're going to do a pilot. We are in the process of doing, I should say, a pilot project for those 4 roads to see how this will work. We have been collecting information, the information that I just listed a second ago, about those roads in order to provide this analysis of is the road adequate to support further development or not? We are going to put that together in a report for you. That's kind of step one of the process. Step 2 of the process is then determining, OK if we're going to determine that these roads are inadequate to support further development or at some point in the future we can draw a line and say really past this point we feel it's going to be inadequate to support further development, then what has to done to upgrade the road? Just recently I in research for this discovered a policy that the Vermont Department of Transportation has called a Level of Improvement Policy. It's a really interesting concept and I think one that we're going to bring back to you for use here. The essence of it is, OK we've got something identified as a problem, too many subdivisions on Sugar Bottom Road. OK that's our problem. How do we deal... What's needed for Sugar Bottom Road? OK, now this is where the 5 of you become very important, because a decision needs to be made, are we going to try and encourage development on Sugar Bottom Road or not? Because that will be very important for determining this what is the level of improvement that we want to have for Sugar Bottom Road? What's appropriate? I would volunteer to you that it's not necessarily in all cases appropriate to improve a road just to make cars go faster. Frequently that's what road improvements do. You lower the hills, you straighten it, and what it does is it allows motor vehicles to go faster. That's not always the most appropriate thing. I think certainly in the case of Sugar Bottom Road it would not necessarily be the most important thing. For one thing, I'm not so sure the County wants to make that level of investment for something like Sugar Bottom road. Secondly, if we're trying to preserve the character of these North Corridor areas, that's not going to do it. That's going to change the character of it. The other day I was out taking a ride and I turned on to Sugar Bottom Road from Mehaffey Bridge Road and road it to Newport Road, and I counted as I was going along. I met one piece of farm machinery, 10 motor vehicles, 3 pedestrians, and 3 bicyclists in the course of riding that segment. I think that's probably, it was about dusk, it was one of the nice warm days last weekend, and I think probably that mix of vehicles is typical for Sugar Bottom Road. I think it illustrates that we need to come up with some kind of a policy, when I say we, the 4 of us need to develop something for your consideration, then you to decide, this is what we want to do to Sugar Bottom Road. The other 3 roads I name, Blain Cemetery, Seneca Road and Green Castle. Similarly, even though they're gravel roads we need to figure out a program for dealing with those so that either they can or will not support further development. Of course, the determination that we're maxed out and that we really don't want to have any additional development on these roads is an option that you have. This is kind of where we're heading with this and I guess we're interested in knowing if this is what you feel... I mean the 4 of us feel that this really logically comes out of your comprehensive planning process. When I say that, I don't mean just the new one that you're considering, but even you're existing Comprehensive Plan. I think having something like this to assist you with the development projects comes very logically out of that. Do you think that ultimately the information that we're going to end up with here is something that is going to help you in your decision making?
Lacina: I would think you would want to include the Sheriff. In some situations, as you said, in order to maintain the ambiance of the area similar to what they have out east in some major developed areas, but where they kept woods and in some cases where the trees almost enclose the roads, they just lowered speed limits. Or some types of measures, combinations of improvement and speed limit. So again, I think the Sheriff should be involved in this as well.
Davidson: OK. The County Attorney's Office is also going to need to be involved when we get to this point of establishing, you know, this is our basis for determining if there should or should not be additional development, or that there shouldn't be additional development until some reconstruction or maintenance of a road occurs. That's something that we need to make sure that the legal folks with us. Something that we've found is that when roads are reconstructed in response to development, that happens all the time, a lot of times the motivation is not, unfortunately, always safety driven, but it's driven by the threat of litigation. Sometimes you end up with improvement projects that probably go far beyond what they need to, both in expense and in impact, because of the threat of litigation and the have you used standards that the Federal Government... Typically the Federal Government are the ones people hang their hat on. I think it's possible for us to come up with some much more sensible solutions for improving some of these facilities. Improving slash maintaining. When I say improving I don't mean tear out the road and put a new one in, but just figuring out how you can, for example, take a chip seal road and do an asphalt overlay on it and some pavement markings and some signage, and make it safer. OK. Maybe it doesn't necessarily 100% adhere to federal design standards. Those are the kind of things that Mike will be very critical in helping us to develop the proposals that we bring back to you. Mike is the one, of course, who is in charge of maintaining it and he's the one who has got to be comfortable with that kind of thing. A good example of this is to take a look at Local Road and what was done with the portion of Local Road between Iowa City and I-80 compared to what was done with it between I-80 and West Branch. A very different strategy for dealing with that road. The complete reconstruction and adherence to federal design standards was done with the part between Iowa City and I-80. I think given the truck route, industrial development angle that that supports, was appropriate. But it would have been very inappropriate to use those same design standards for the portion from I-80 to West Branch. Much lower volume. The character of the road is much different and probably the overlay, pavement marking, signage strategy keeping the vertical alignment for that portion was appropriate. Those are the kinds of questions that we're going to get into when we start dealing with these County secondary roads. As I say, Mike will have a lot of input to that.
Jordahl: The question of what drives what, you know which decision or which policy is important for the other, is tangled here in that we have a situation on Sugar Bottom where we already had a zoned property. So your legal question of whether that's allow to develop. If we were to say, the road is not fit to support any more development, it's at capacity, then what happens with legal implications of that? That is sort of asking the road to drive the decision. You're saying, I think if I'm hearing you correctly, that we should be responsible for setting out our vision of where we want develop to go and then provide the roads that will allow that to happen. Sort of putting the ball back in our court, saying well we're not going to decide for you by saying the road is full, what's going to happen, but you're going to have to decide yourselves what's going to happen. Then the road will have to follow suit in some way. I'm hearing that the creative part of this is not so much resolving the question of Sugar Bottom Road as looking at options for how roads can be improved. Now Mike, is there some play in here? We've talked about this before, that if we go in and improve Sugar Bottom at all it has to be brought up to State standards. I'm not sure about National standards, however that works. But that it would have to be massively improved at an expense that we could hardly bear. Is there middle ground?
County Engineer Mike Gardner: Yes. There is, I mean you can do it to different design speeds. For any State or Federal funding you would definitely have to meet these standards. You could maybe get design exceptions. Work with them to get some of their design standard based upon design exception.
Davidson: That's a very important consideration. Many people are under the impression, and it's a mistaken impression, that State government is required to adhere to Federal Design Standards. They are not. It is written into federal law that the State has the right to waive any Federal Design Standard that they want, but they have to decide to do it and they hate to do that. They hate to do it, but they can do it. I think this is something that maybe we and the localities need to push them on a little bit. It has been done and it can be done, but they really don't like to do it because, once again, this threat of litigation is frequently what drives them to not do it.
Lacina: An example would be West Branch Road. They want to desperately dump that back onto the County and I think Doug had figured one time it would be about 3 million dollars for us to go in and lay the banks back to the required slopes and then taking out some houses and the like. The State opted to non-concrete pave that surface and did not follow those standards. Now the other side of it is we did reconstruction on a snow trap in the east part of the County and then a one car accident occurred in which we paid in excess of $100,000. So the question is how much risk do you want to accept, because you can construct knowingly at any standard, but in the event that there is an accident there you are going to be hard pressed to defend yourself in a court case. In some cases whether the individual is drunk or not didn't appear to have an effect, it was our road and we had done some work on it and we paid the check.
Davidson: That's something we definitely have to remain aware of.
Stutsman: When do you plan to have these 4 road pilots completed?
Davidson: We have been collecting information, in fact just got the traffic count data which measures speed and volume, this last week. We've kind of a little bit been waiting for Mike to get some of his projects wrapped up here in the fall so that in the winter is when we want to do the phase of looking at the data, accident rate, speed, volume, etc. Then determining what type of strategy to upgrade the road is necessary. We will be working with Mike with that. We would hope by maybe the end of the year. The end of the calendar year we'll be able to come back to you or else right after the first of the year. Have something in place so that, you know, when stuff starts happening again in the spring we'll be ready to... Then, of course, if you feel that what we've come up with is a successful way of doing it we want to get going on the other roads as well. You know, looking at some of the data that we've collected already, it's very interesting. We sorted every North Corridor road from the lowest volume dirt road to the highest volume paved road and it's real interesting to see. I mean you have gravel roads with much higher traffic volumes than seal coat roads. You've got some seal coat roads, Sandy Beach Road is the highest volume seal coat road in the County and it's got 1800 vehicles a day on it. I mean that's a lot of traffic volume for a seal coat road. Similarly, you've got paved roads with under 500 vehicles on them. So I think that kind of information is very helpful for you making your future decisions on how to make investment in improvements. Certainly you need to take those kinds of things into consideration when you're making those decisions.
Jordahl: Yes that's very interesting.
Duffy: Yes on Prairie du Chien Road, we talked about this before, I talked to you yesterday. The folks who live out there, for the people who don't know it have this suggested speed, but actually by law they can go 55 mph. So whenever I go on that road I go the suggested speed and I don't see anything dangerous about it. That has to be kept in mind. Also if in land use plans the better the road the more the development, this thing could get a little hairy. It isn't the road alone, but I think speed does have a lot to do with it. You mentioned gravel roads. I personally think they are all too fast, 55 mph. I think every gravel road in Johnson County should be 45 miles an hour. It would help.
Davidson: Of course that's set by State law, as we well know.
Duffy: Yes but we can change that.
Davidson: Uh-huh, you can change it, but if they're not posted differently, as Charlie says, they are automatically 55 by State law.
Duffy: These suggested speed limits have people confused. Some of them think it is a law, but it isn't. But I think that's... The people that live out there, I think will tell you that. That there is just, like you say, that there could be people jogging. I've heard of people pulling baby strollers down Prairie du Chien Road and here comes a motorcycle and cars, a tractor too. But still it's there if they want to use it, but they don't have to.
Stutsman: This seems like a good start and I appreciate the update and letting us know how you guys are going approach it and things. Are there any other comments?
Lacina: The only other thing I can think to add would be to take a look at Iowa City and Coralville in terms of expansion plans on roads. If 1st Avenue is extended or Scott Boulevard, it could change the traffic pattern on a couple of roads. Not what you're looking at as far as Sugar Bottom and that, but if we're doing the evaluation, a snap shot in time of what we have now versus a possible traffic pattern if Coralville or the mall makes a significant impact, and just probably pick up the phone and talk to their engineers and we can get a sense... Well and you have a sense for that with JCCOG.
Davidson: Yes and certainly in the west area of the community. As you've heard me say before, Coral Ridge Mall will have the most significant impact on traffic patterns in this community ever in the history of this community. So we have to take a real careful look at that. Maybe you saw in the paper, Tiffin has contacted JCCOG about helping them deal with some existing problems and then certainly they are concerned about that.
Stutsman: We have received a letter from Tiffin too saying that they're concerned. That's being circulated.
Lacina: Good job.
Jordahl: Jeff, the traffic counts can be done, you know segment by segment. How complex is that data right now? Do you have like one Sugar Bottom number that you could give us.
Davidson: I tell you it's very complex Jonathan. We've got some machines, the County has some and JCCOG has some so we kind of can do a team approach here, that measure speed, they measure volume, they measure type of vehicle, and with some fairly decent accuracy. So we can get some very good information. Now it takes about a week long process to do one road and we're getting into the where we just about have to stop. That's why those 4 roads, we've got those all collected. That's in the bank, but to start any more we'll probably have to wait until spring because the snow plows and them do not get along. But it gives us the ability Jonathan to collect very good information. We can augment that with the accident information and some other stuff and I think have some very good baseline information to go from.. Which is really necessary.
Jordahl: To put my question in a simple form, could you give a number for each of these roads as to what the traffic count is? Or is that a very complex number?
Davidson: Oh no, we can absolutely do that. I don't have that with me Jonathan, but I can get that to you. For the 4 roads we are starting on I can get that to you. Then, of course, it's interesting to compare it to 94 data and see what the terms are.
Jordahl: The speed data, if you're going to transmit that line, I'd like to know the average speed data too.
Davidson: Right. We can get that to you.
Bolkcom: OK. I've got a couple of questions just related to we're doing 4 roads and this is really the beginning of a Transportation Management Plan that we see as really essential to figuring out how development is going to occur countywide. For roads we have some sense of by the first of the year, can you give us any sense on when we might be able to accomplish a more comprehensive view. I guess I'm looking at the 5... we have a 5 year Road Plan and it defines how we spend our money across the County. I guess I see this work on this plan being directly related to how we allocate our resources. But, only looking at 4 roads, against all of those that need resources, I guess at what point will we have a more comprehensive view and does the Board need to consider getting more staff assistance to accelerate this process.
Davidson: That's a very good question Joe and one that we'll be able to answer better after we get through these first 4 roads. Certainly, to do what we're doing for every road in the County would be an exhaustive task. I'm not so sure when that's necessary. Concentrating on those roads that have been and we know are going to continue to be issues is really the way to approach it. If it gets to where you feel like you're having to wait on us for you're decision making, because we can't get this information to you fast enough, then yes, maybe then you would want to consider devoting some additional resources to it to get the information faster.
Jordahl: To follow on that question, what we sort of asked for, I think in the first place was something like what R.J. suggested in the Comprehensive Plan Update draft. That OK at this traffic count we need to go to dust control, at this traffic count we need to go to seal coat and so forth. Something that would be sort of a trip mechanism that you'd say all right, now we have to do something. Then we'd have similar implications for development or impact fees or something like that. Do you foresee coming out of this process, despite the individuality of different roads, that you might be coming up with some sort of a template that would say OK this is a flat well-drained gravel road, so it fits into class A and so forth. Or is this going to something that has to be done individually throughout the County.
Davidson: I guess the way we're approaching it right now Jonathan is that it's something that needs to be dealt with individually. Even the scenario you laid out of you reach a certain point you need dust alleviation. You reach a certain point, you need the chip seal. You know, even that is something that I think is a policy question for all of you. Mike informs me that in the 70s the County had 300 miles of chip sealed road and now you have 160. That's been a conscious, that's been something that you've deliberately done. Reduced the amount, because it's about $4,000 a mile a year to maintain a chip sealed road. That's very expensive and those resources might be better put towards a more permanent type surface, rather than continuing to just patch up and patch up and patch up a chip seal road. So you know, just automatically hitting points at which you determine that a higher level of maintenance is needed. You know, maybe, a penny wise and a pound foolish. I mean we really need to think a little more carefully about it so that your putting your resources where in the long run they are going to do the most good.
Stutsman: We have a full agenda this morning. Joe you had one more comment?
Bolkcom: No. I've covered it. Thank you Jeff.
Stutsman: Thank you Jeff.
Davidson: OK. Thanks.
Stutsman: That's a great update. I appreciate you coming in. R.J. or Rick or Mike, do you have any comments about what you guys are doing? OK. R.J. the request for proposals to conduct analysis of growth in Johnson County.
Moore: Yes, I first presented a draft of this proposal to you last Tuesday. Unfortunately, and I apologize again, I misplaced the most updated one and gave you an older draft. Since then, right after that meeting, I gave you the most current one. On page 2 under purpose, is where this was expanded. Otherwise the document is the same. But you had some concerns about the purpose statement said on the first draft that you received. So as you can hopefully see here on page 2 that the purpose statement had been expanded to be a little more comprehensive about trying to identify what we were seeking in return for the request for proposals for this study. I don't know if you've all had an opportunity to look at that, but... I've been looking, since last Tuesday, I've been looking at the request for proposals that come through the APA's magazine that I receive. At least from the one's that are published in the magazine, these are quite a bit more comprehensive, but I think the difference is that those are for advertisements and money's an issue for them as they advertise for the proposals. If you're interested then they probably send you something similar to this that outlines all the criteria and specifications that you're looking for and the procedures that the governmental entity, in this case Johnson County would request of any applicants that were making the request. On this purpose statement, I've expanded this out is to obtain proposals to assist Johnson County Department of Planning and Zoning in an assessment of economic environmental social costs of providing County services including but not limited to road construction and maintenance, schools, public safety, and emergency services. The proposed study seeks to determine the most effective and efficient types and patterns of developments which will provide a tax base sufficient to allow the County to provide these vital services. I think that is a fairly good description of what we want. We know through past studies and through experience that sprawl development normally doesn't pay for itself. In order to pay for providing wastewater and water, not counting just the roads, you need density levels to support that. They need to generate revenues to pay for themselves. In our case, we're unsure about that because of the County's policies in the past and present that we don't have rural water, rural wastewater, and we don't take subdivision roads. We do know there are still impacts on our abilities to provide those other services that we do perform, the ones that are mentioned there. So we feel like, what Jeff Davidson just presented to you in the road management plan and the Transportation Management Plan that knowing the results of this study will give the 5 of you plus our office more data and specifically identified results on what's actually taking place and help us make decisions in the future that will eliminate some of the negative impacts of the growth that's occurring in Johnson County. We feel what you have before you is a template. Most of these you don't go and re-invent the wheel. But what we've put together here is fairly standard and we feel it's fairly accurate and we'd like to proceed.
Jordahl: There's a general provision here R.J. for... It says including, but not limited to road construction and maintenance and so forth. I appreciate the including but not limited to, so that they can include whatever they think may be important. But I would like to see specifically mentioned water and wastewater. It's a particular, am I out of order here Sally?
Stutsman: No. No.
Jordahl: OK.
Stutsman: I was just thinking about...
Jordahl: Those are things that particularly in the North Corridor with the density of development that would be possible there given the large number of zoned acres that ought to be addressed in terms of the long term prospect for the sustainability of development in the area. I'd like to see that specifically outlined in an RFP.
Lacina: Well I think it's stated... I think under the social costs as well it will look at expenses not directly incurred to the County government in terms of possible additional increase of school buses and traffic for kids that go to schools and other governmental agencies. All those things will come into play in the total report that comes back to us, so I don't know that we need to... In fact I'm a little concerned that we get too detailed in spelling out exact areas, then they may be targeting those areas and omitting others that may be relevant to the costs.
Stutsman: But it seems like every time we've proposed an RFP, they've come back saying that they want specifics. That they want us to really point out exactly what we want.
Bolkcom: What do we see the process being in terms of that, in terms of submitting an RFP and say 3 or 4 people respond to it. My sense is in talking to the folks out of Madison that do this kind of fiscal impact analysis that they might want to come in and actually as you say, get the details nailed down so that when they begin their work, they know exactly what we're interested in. I guess what do we see the process being from here. It seems to me that...
Lacina: That would be more realistic to me for them to come in and say we've done this before, here are some general guidelines, here are suggestions, as opposed to us kind of going off... I think this isn't a bid. Since it is an RFP, it's amendable. At least it starts us in the process and then we can grow as needed.
Duffy: Well I've got a problem, did we say that some firm or people from Madison, Wisconsin?
Stutsman: Oh no, no, we're just, that was just an example of somebody that might respond to this.
Bolkcom: That was a company that was advertised in a national magazine.
Duffy: When you get into groundwater, it's... We talk about water out there in the North Corridor. It looks to me like it was a spoke in the wheel that was taken up for development. That's one way to control development. If you do water studies, that could be a very complex study, you'll probably start, you'll have to go back several years to see how many farmers there were, how many in the family, how many really worked in town, you have to find out there's large families. The mother and father work right on the farm, how much water that livestock would drink and things like that. But there's water out there and a lot of water and I don't think we have to spend a fortune on this. There are places you can get information that knows the water.
Stutsman: Well maybe it would be better, just for the initial RFP to keep it more general. Then I would assume that anybody that responded that we would take a serious look at their proposals. We would have them come in for an interview to discuss it.
Moore: As you follow through on page 3, you see that there rescheduled information... We would ask that we have an informational meeting, questions, clarifications on what we're looking for. Then it says changes in the RFP can occur. That's...
Lacina: To get us started I think what you've got is excellent. As we get the process started, then we can make additions or expansions and get started.
Moore: Yes, of course any proposal, we would expect you to stay involved with that proposal, with any of the proposals that come in and the selection process for that, you know the Supervisors would definitely be the body that would make the final decision on behalf of both the Supervisors and the Planning and Zoning Department.
Duffy: Do you think the Planning and Zoning Department could handle this in-house with maybe some extra help from some university students?
Moore: Part of the... I've contacted the University and I gave a presentation to one of their classes at the graduate program last week and mentioned this request. Again we propose submitting it as one of the who we'll submit it to... See if they're interested is a class next spring, a field problems class that would ... If they would take it, would cost us no more than a few hundred dollars. Peter Fisher is the instructor or professor that oversees that class. He has an economics background, well he's an economics expert so... Rick and I feel they would be a good source to do this for us and we'd be...
Duffy: (inaudible).
Moore: Yes, would be inexpensive.
Stutsman: We talk about the schools. Do we really want to... There again I'm getting more specific. But I don't know if... If we're going to give information to schools, maybe we can contact them for help in paying for this, if this is going to be information they can use?
Moore: Well...
Bolkcom: Not a bad idea.
Duffy: I don't know if we should ask them to pay for it.
Stutsman: Well it doesn't hurt to ask, Charlie. They can always say no. But I think it would be real relevant information to them as they're planning bus routes and additional schools and things.
Lacina: Some of their Tiger files as far as the demographics and population that they look at when they site schools and that may be relevant as well for general growth in the County.
Duffy: I think schools should be involved but...
Lacina: Well in fact they are at the University as well so...
Duffy: Yes.
Lacina: So that might be another good connection. It would just fall into place...
Moore: As you know, they do a lot of their own planning and what we do definitely impacts the school system. When they're under capacity, growth is great. They have the teaching staff and the facilities to handle that and they like to increase their student body to receive more revenues from the State. But once we push them to capacity or over, it's a whole new ball game for them, because now they've got big capital expenditures to meet the growth. So the impact, but the impacts on the Sheriff's Department and the Ambulance Service are all as great in their ability to perform their responsibilities for the County. I'm not sure about the distribution of paying for anything. Personally I feel I ought to do anything you ask, I'll search anything. I personally feel that this study is the County's responsibility. We need to determine what's going on. Not only... It's just part of this bigger picture that you've been involved in for the last couple of years as we move forward with a new vision and a new ideas on how we're going to grow. But again I personally and professionally feel that it's our responsibility to gather this data and determine where growth is going to go or not go and those impacts resulting from it. But as always... Rick and I...
Stutsman: Are there any, oh I'm sorry.
Moore: No, go ahead.
Stutsman: Are there any other changes or...
Moore: No, as you...
Stutsman: And our next step, are we ready to mail out.
Bolkcom: Well I think I'm ready to go. I had one question about process.
Stutsman: Uh-huh?
Bolkcom: About the informational meeting and I guess we're asking for people to submit proposals and I assume some bids at that point. I'm not sure they're going to be able to bid until after an informational meeting when they actually see the details of it. I would hope that the informational meeting would be in this room with the Board so we can define specifically. Because we were having some conversation about schools or not schools. I think townships might be interested in the fire protection issues as well to be added. At any rate, that the Board is involved in the meetings with the potential consultants.
Moore: I had hoped to do it on a if you would agree to this to do it on one of your Tuesdays at an informal meeting, to have the interviews come in, we'll do it during one of your informal meetings. So you can all 5 be here and listen to the proposals. Because I think you really want to and need to be actively involved as we go forward.
Duffy: Are we going to put this out for bids?
Stutsman: RFP's Charlie.
Lacina: RFP.
Bolkcom: RFP's.
Stutsman: Requests for proposals. We're just going to send this letter to companies that specialize in this kind of data collecting and just see if they're interested in doing it and then we'll find out how much it costs.
Duffy: I'm up for that. We've got a very fine university here, they had just said so.
Stutsman: Well R.J. said they'd be one of them that we'd send it to. There's nothing saying that we even have to go ahead with this Charlie. If the cost is exorbitant or if we don't get any response or the kind of response that we want, this is just kind of to test the waters to see if this is something we want to pursue.
Duffy: Well I might have a problem with somebody out of this county or another state coming in and telling us we've got too much of that now that crosses our desk about land use planning. I asked R.J. if you could do it in your office with some help from the University and you said you could.
Moore: Well we plan on presenting to the University, to the graduate program in planning this proposal as well as private consultants and Jeff's JCCOG, ECICOG, and some of the private consultants in our area and statewide as well. And we...
Lacina: You can't exclude anybody either.
Moore: No, no.
Lacina: If somebody decides out of Washington D.C. that they want to come in and shoot a proposal, well we have an obligation to listen to it to see if what they're proposing is going to work.
Moore: Right, but we've written into this that you as the Board of Supervisors have the right to refuse any and all bids. So you're not obligated to take the low bidder if... It could be way too high. I do think, I agree with Charlie that it might be I'm a little prejudiced because I'm a graduate of the University's program, but I think they can do it and do it well and do it very inexpensively for the County. But we'd like to just see what others have to say and what they could do. It is like you noted, Sally, they would come in with yes we can do this, this is what we can do for you, this is what you'll get out of it, this is the information we'll generate for you, and they should give us even at the first meeting an estimate of the cost of that. It probably won't tie it down until we get a little further into it after the first informational meeting, but...
Stutsman: Any other questions?
Jordahl: Yes, the cover sheet of this refers to this subtitle, the sustainability study. To me that is the nub of it. It's not just money, it's not just does it pay for itself, but is it sustainable in terms of an impact on society on the environment and a variety of factors. At the risk of repeating myself, to me the question of water, and we do have Silurian aquifer study under way right now. It seems to me that it's perfectly appropriate and important to state at the outset that the question of water supply, particularly in the North Corridor is a key part of sustainability as we look at development continuing there. What would be the costs if we had to go to some kind of municipal water supply in that area, due to development that could not be supplied from the aquifer. So I'd like to see, I may be the minority about that. If it doesn't happen today, then maybe I'll bring it up at the meetings where we talk about this, but to me the big piece of sustainability is the water.
Stutsman: Any other comments? OK, so if you want to go ahead and send this out or whatever the next step of the process is.
Moore: OK, well I think what I'll do is because of... We've got the time, set a date and time for the informational meeting and stuff, I'll start thinking about that, looking at your schedules and ours and start generating some dates and times for holding that. Fill in some of the blanks that are contingent on the approval. Before I do send it out, I'll make sure that the date and times are agreeable with the Board as well. Then hopefully within the next few weeks we'll be ready to send it out with your approval.
Stutsman: Good.
Bolkcom: One question, so the informational meeting will be an opportunity for all, anybody that's interested to come in and grill us about what we really want.
Moore: Yes.
Bolkcom: OK.
Moore: And us too. At that point I believe they'll be presenting some draft proposals as well and we'll be able to make sure we're going to get from the proposals, or from the study what we expect so yes.
Stutsman: OK, good.
Moore: OK, well thank you very much.
Stutsman: Thank you.
Bolkcom: Thanks.
Stutsman: Anything else from Planning and Zoning? OK.