MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
DECEMBER 9, 10, AND 11, 1997
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Clifton Gunderson Representatives Walt Kelly and Tom Goedken: Performance Based Budgeting Proposal
Assistant Planning and Zoning Administrator R.J. Moore: Proposals for Tax Impact Statement Study
Discussion: Appointments to Boards and Commissions
Discussion: Space Needs for New Staff
Executive Session: Interviews for the Human Resource Administrator Position
Work Session with State Legislators on Legislative Issues
Board of Supervisors: Juvenile Detention Costs
Board of Supervisors: Iowa Communication Network (ICN)
Treasurer Cletus Redlinger: Preparation of Tax Bills Under Tax Bill 726
Director of Public Health Graham Dameron: Funding for Public Health Nursing and Food Safety
County Assessor Jerry Musser: Agricultural Land Classification
Interim SEATS Director Burnell Chadek: State Transit Assistance and Capital Expenditure Funding
Human Services Area Administrator Cheryl Whitney: Decategorization
Board of Supervisors: Utility Property Tax
JCCOG Human Services Coordinator Linda Severson: Children at Home Pilot Project
Representative Richard Myers: Possible Upcoming Legislation on Property Taxes and Impact Fees
Executive Session: Review of Interviews for the Human Resource Administrator Position
Report (Duffy): Senior Dining Needing Applicants
Report (Jordahl): Interviewing Candidates for the Human Resource Position
Chairperson Stutsman called the Johnson County Board of
Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration
Building at 9:03 a.m. Members present were: Joseph Bolkcom,
Charles Duffy, Stephen Lacina, and Sally Stutsman. Jonathan
Jordahl arrived at 9:06 a.m.
Stutsman: Review of the formal minutes for December 4,
any addition or corrections. If not we'll put those on for
Thursday.
Clifton Gunderson representatives Walt Kelly and Tom Goedken: Performance based budgeting proposal
Stutsman: Business from Tom Goedken and Walt Kelly, representatives of Clifton Gunderson to talk about performance based budgeting. Good morning. If both of you would like to come up to the table and have a chance to visit with you a little bit about performance based budgeting. A little background, I think Jonathan, probably, had been in touch with Tom concerning Clifton Gunderson and their services as far as performance based budgeting. So we have both Tom and Walt with us this morning to kind of give us an overview about their services and how it may or may not fit into our needs as we go through and proceed with performance based budgeting. So I'll just turn it over to you, Walt and Tom. OK. I was going to say maybe we need to introduce ourselves. So Walt if you want to introduce yourself and then we'll...
Kelly: Sure, my name is Walter Kelly, I'm a member at Clifton Gunderson and Company. I'm resident in our Indianapolis office. I'll talk about it in a little bit when we go through. I've provided for you some information about myself and some of the people that we would propose to be of assistance. I'm an elected official as well in my community, I live in a suburban community of Indianapolis and have been the Chief Executive of the community for 18 years now. I'm a past president of my State League of Cities, past board of directors with the National League of Cities, have been a member of GASB, which is an oversight group for the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, so I spend all my time in the public sector, a lot of operating type activities and primarily consult with communities, both in my state and other states. Tom asked me if I would come over and talk with you this morning about performance budgeting and that's why I'm here.
Goedken: My name is Tom Goedken, I'm a resident of rural Johnson County out north of town. I'm a manager in the Iowa City Office of Clifton Gunderson. My background is I've been a CPA for over 16 years. I've done and spoken on activity based costing as well as activity based budgeting. In a past life I have put together budgets for smaller companies and manufacturing companies that I've worked for. Jonathan gave me a call, we talked about performance based budgeting, that you had an interest in doing that. It is kind of a leading edge type of thing for governments to be looking at. I checked with our firm, discussed it with Walt and, like Walt said, he agreed to come over. We've had a conversation or 2 with Jonathan and Sally, they had some questions and they thought it might be beneficial for us to show up and just informally talk about performance based budgeting, so thank you for inviting us.
Stutsman: Charlie do you want to introduce yourself and we'll just go...
Duffy: Yes, Charlie Duffy, one of the Supervisors.
Lacina: Steve Lacina, one of the Supervisors.
Stutsman: You know me, Sally Stutsman.
Jordahl: Hi, Jonathan Jordahl, thanks for coming.
Kelly: Good morning.
Bolkcom: Good morning. Joe Bolkcom.
Stutsman: And Carol Peters is our Administrative Assistant and Mark Kistler is with the Auditor's Office.
Kelly: Great. I don't know, I guess I should have looked closer at the agenda. I don't know how much time, but it might take probably 20 minutes to a half hour anyway to go through this, but it's at your pleasure.
Stutsman: We put aside 45 minutes so you're...
Kelly: Great. What I tried to do in a short amount of time yesterday was put together and it's called a presentation because I will be speaking through the document that's in front of you, because I thought that would be easier than, it may look a lot like a proposal, we almost called it a proposal, but as I said it's really more my speaking notes as we go through it. I guess part of the reason I'm here, I need to be quite honest with you as I'm excited as our firm is excited about something that you're talking about and considering. While it's a concept that as late as... There's a lot of names for performance budgeting, and it's been called a lot of things over the years. I've been at this for 27 years now and sometimes they used to call them zero based budgeting, sometimes they called it program budgeting, sometimes they called it popular reporting back in 1991, there were articles about how do you better link with citizenry and business people. How do you better show accountability. Back in '96, another government finance review, trade journal type document talked about activity based management performance measurement, some other documents that are out and available. Things like the use of performance measures in City and County budgets, and this was the 2nd document of another one. It's a concept that says is there a different way of maybe looking and coveting with the citizens and businesses as to how you allocate resources. I was just at a national meeting this past week where an official, I believe was from Kansas, made the comment that it all starts, resides and ends in the budget. He said if you're a new official, the first thing you better do is better understand how budgets are prepared, because that really provides the authority and a lot of times, demonstrates what the direction and what the values of a particular community are. I've looked at, yesterday I had an opportunity to look at your existing budget document and I'll talk a little bit about that too as well. If you will allow me, I'd like to start to go through and if you would turn to page 1. First of all, Clifton and Gunderson, our firm, our largest concentrations if I can tell you a little bit about us. Our largest concentration of clients are in the state and local government area. As a firm, we don't say that we just specialize in that, but that is an area that if you were to take all of our clients and add up our fees from our state and local government clients, we would find that would have a greater segment of our practice than anything else. We have as you see in the back we talk a little bit about our Iowa office and we have 5 offices in the State of Iowa and we have one right here, not very far down the street, which I visited yesterday. The team we've selected and again there will be more in the back of your document you can read at your leisure. Gary Carlson is our local member in charge and we're structured such that we're a membership. We used to be a partnership and with the limited liability type corporation acts and things what we've done as almost all the other public accounting firms have converted to if you're a corporation, you can't be a partner so we have to call ourselves members now. So it gets a little confusing, the members in charge of the office, it sounds a little bit better to be a MIC I guess, but I'm not sure, I'm just a member so sometimes it has a different ring to it, but nonetheless, Gary is committed to being of service and in fact bringing me over here at our cost is a demonstration at least to me that he's very interested in seeing what he can do towards helping you. I provide support to all of our offices on really the operational, more leading edge type things that our firm does for a particular government. That's what I do. Tom here with his activity based costing management involvement here locally, I think he'll be able to provide a lot of business acumen if you will to the process with some leadership that I can provide him and the County if you so choose. Ann Fletcher in our office, we're proud of her, in our Iowa office. She's a gold medal winner of the CPA exam, and has been involved in county audits. So she knows... I find a lot of times with young people when you get them involved, sometimes they didn't have a very sound civics class when they were growing up so it helps when they've walked the land a little bit when you're trying to be of advice to others. Now with respect to performance measures, what it's all about quite simply is accountability. The effective, that's on page 1, and efficient delivery of services, communicated consistently within the County Government, as it relates to you and externally in a comprehensible manner. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has determined that's the paramount objective of external financial reporting. The accountability. Again kind of emerging art is activity based costing, and activity based management. Now when I said a lot of these terms have reappeared over the years in just different words, the bottom line is you're trying to allocate costs to your resources and try to match them up. So you can have activity based costing, there was functional costing, zero based costing, how do you allocate costs. The bottom line is you're trying to determine for a service delivery what does it cost you to provide that service. Then with activity based management, it talks about a continuous improvement process and I think what's happening is that philosophy says that really, yes we can do things a certain way, but maybe there are constant ways to improve and enhance that service delivery. Are there other ways of providing that same service and a reassessment of the service process. Now under performance measures as, and these are rather simplistic, but I'm trying to do an overview. Clearly, the County only does things because there's a purpose for it. There was a reason for it. There was either a statute or a local requirement, or there was a need in a community and a community being defined as the County. So because of that, you're providing some service. You're not providing a service... I often tell my own fire department, I said we aren't in the fire business to see how many fire trucks we have. Nobody cares how many fire trucks we have, nobody cares how many firemen we have. What they care about is that if a fire bell goes off or that there is a fire in their house, somebody's there in about 4 minutes. That's what they care about. You could have 100 fire trucks, you could have one, but how you get there. What the other citizens, who don't have that fire, care about is seeing well what does it cost us to have somebody there in 4 minutes. You could probably have someone there instantaneously if we put a fire truck next to every house, but it would cost us too much money to do that. So instead what we have to do is make choices and determine priorities and determine what makes the most sense to deliver that service. Again a different focus than what has traditionally happened. Not just in Iowa, but throughout this country what has tended to evolve is it's a process of what did we do before, we must have been doing a lot of things right. What are the changes? Do we need more things, do we need less things? Input measures, all that is quickly is how many resources does it take in terms of hours of personnel strength, if it's hours. If it's salt, as a measure, how much salt do we need to salt the roads to be able to make sure they're passable and things of that nature. Output measures describes activities undertaken in carrying out the program. In other words, what are we generating. A number of arrests, for example for a sheriff, that would be an output measure. How many hours of patrol would be an input, how many arrests we make would be an output. But we're probably not in the business to just decide how many arrests we can make. That would be a statistic. What we're really in the business is hopefully in the public safety arena is that we're trying to reduce accidents, trying to reduce either damage to the property or damage to the individual. Either in the form of crime or in property. So what we're really looking at are outcome measures if you will. How do we determine the quality of that, effectiveness measures. A lot of times they're in the form of citizen surveys and things like that because that's how you determine if it's effective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What is the citizen's group, what is an individual. A lot of times communities in the various levels of local government will have like a phone log for everybody that calls in. So how quickly do we respond to it. It doesn't necessarily mean you respond in a way that satisfies everyone, but is the mission to ensure that if someone calls, somebody will get back to them within x amount of time. When you have a County Attorney, are you in the business saying well how many cases do they try, or your issue is when we probably have a county attorney, I would guess for a couple of reasons, and we're talking about him since he's not here, do you have, are you wanting, when there is a legal question, how quickly that question is resolved for you. Then you can move on with the issue. 90% of most lawsuits are always negotiated and settled and they're not really tried so what you're really talking about is how much elapsed time do you have in that process and what is the final, versus the prayer, versus the final payment in that process. What are those relationships. That's how you would tend to measure the effectiveness of that process. Because you're really not in the business to say well we've got to have one and we should just pay one. What you want to say is well why do we have one, it's to do these kinds of things and if we're to do these kinds of things then how do we monitor that. I'm not picking on the County Attorney, just using an example to do through all the different processes. Examples. I mentioned this was an outgrowth and in the back, I'll talk about this in a little bit when we get through this. In the back, there are all kinds of different examples of measures. Average monthly documents microfiche for welfare administration. Number of days to process a ward, number of days to process financial assistance applications. Percent of appeals filed within 60 days. Percent of calls answered. What the government finance officers did was through cities and counties gather a lot of what would be some of these measures that might be or may not be applicable in your particular jurisdiction. I also brought with me, just for illustrative purposes, the City of Indianapolis a few years ago went through what they called a popular budget. Remember I held up something that said back in ‘91, there were some documents. Well Indianapolis did somewhat similar to what Oregon has done with their benchmarks and there was some other research that's come out where for each policy goal was grouped by 5 to 7 areas of external outcomes. For that then there were numbers of measures for each one of those. So what you had is maybe 3 or 4 hundred different performance measures. When I looked at that, I told the Mayor, I said, Mayor this just isn't going to work. I said this is great, it's a nice first step, but we probably need to refine this process. Because I said the citizens are going to get lost in all this detail and minutia that it's going to be really hard for them to really understand. So, if you're calling this a popular document, it's probably not going to have the comprehensible readership that you were hoping that it would have. It will tend to be more the accountant types that would read that much detail. Nonetheless, it was a step forward because it was trying to do in performance measures. So a lot of times, 2 things happen when you go through a performance based budgeting process. You either get way too much detail and then as you mature in the process you start saying well we don't even have the operating systems to gather all this operating data. We're not going to allocate the resources for it and we wouldn't change our decision-making process anyway based on that statistic. So then the statistician data tends to go away and you really hone in on the key critical data. Or the other approach is like I did in my little community of Fishers. I said there can't be more than 5 things you do to a particular functional area, whether it be our public works that does snow removal or something, our police department that does traffic and DARE drugs and investigations and incarceration, and those kinds of things. It can't be more than 5 things you really... Give me your 5 things that you do and for those 5 things, which would be the functional areas then let's try to make sure we know of 2 or 3 things that you think you're going to get accomplished. I said I really think I can communicate that to the citizenry and covenant that. Different kinds of approach. So for example... So we did things like instead of the much thicker document, you do the things like where you say, well here's our 3 functions. You allocate your dollars to either personnel costs, your supplies and those kinds of things. Then you put 3 or 4 key goals and some performance measures, like we're going to get the snow plowed within 24 hours for 80% of our thoroughfares. Whatever our goal or objective. Because again, we could have a snowplow truck sitting on every street at the ready, but that would cost us a lot of money. So we have to try to decide what is our community's resource allocation process. The City of Philadelphia, I found this just this past week, just excellent I thought document, it is a more mature document in approach, but it also, it has a 2 or 3 page for each functional area. When I went through your budget, you had several that would lend itself to that, which kind of for each one of those functions, whether it be the Auditor's Office or the Supervisors, or the Roads or whatever. It says here's our mission and about a paragraph or 2 at best. Typically mission statements need to be about a sentence. But from an overall mission, if it helps the community better understand why we even have this besides statutorily if that's the case, some key measurement of activity or success and then a reporting on that of those key measurements. Then major accomplishments. You get that accomplished in a couple of pages. Focusing that budget process on that kind of information. This leads me to Johnson County. For any kind of change in a budgetary process, let's call it what it is. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is the budget. This is what's important. This is the authority to spend. This is the authority to be of service. You can have a lot of great ideas, but if you don't have any cash to do it, then those ideas sometimes don't get accomplished. So it's important to people. The Supervisors, the elected officials have to work hand in glove, I would suggest in trying to accomplish this process. You have to be committed to trying to say let's, can we look at the budgeting process in a different way? You have a County Auditor that has generated substantial information for you and I believe a lot of it as I looked at it yesterday could be very helpful. You have information in there already that has some of those, some of the outcome measures, may not be the ones you ultimately decide on, but a lot of statistics are gathered, there's already a brief blurb, if I and pardon my slang, but there's a paragraph or something in there that talks about here's what we're trying to accomplish for each one of these functions. It has some historical dollar information, but as the Mayor found out when he had me try to help him look at his popular budget, I said this is too thick. So I was trying to convince him to make it thinner, he said, well I'm more concerned that we've got any systems that even support this information. He said when it's crafted, there are assumptions and things that people have in their head or on scrap sheets of paper and things, but he says how do we ever check to see if any of those assumptions bear fruit? He said how do you determine for example what was the snow last night, who gathers that? Was it the 2 inch snow that we said and how many snows were in our estimate when we said we've allocated 2 million dollars for snow removal, you must have contemplated so many snows, so many average depth, or how many blizzards, there weren't many blizzards. How do you relate that back. Because how could you measure how you performed? You could be way under budget, it could have been you had a great act of God and didn't have much snow. Did that mean you performed well or are you just lucky. Or you could have a terrible situation as far as snow and how does that relate to measuring or monitoring performance? Your fiscal planning, your documents, your financial statements, the document that says that your legal level of control is by the 12 major classes of expenditure of service area. That says what you're concerned about. It looked like maybe functions if you will. Your current budget process gives you the prior year, the current year with a re-estimate of the current year, and then a future year. However, it's about a 2 1/2 inch thick notebook in a lot of detail. Detail like that is, from my professional opinion is necessary at the department level, or the people who are at the worksheet level gathering data. But traditionally you don't bind those in a book and make them available to the mass group of people to communicate information because there's just so much information. There's divisions in there, I saw some with $30.00, which I was going to ask you and not critically, just in a teasing way, saying are you to that degree of precision that $30.00 one way or another, maybe you are. But when you make that degree of detail in your presentation to the public, your coveting and communicating that materiality is at those degrees of detail. I think what you're, at least what I heard and what we were looking at is maybe a different look at how you go about your budgeting process. That would be a performance measurement process. Our plan would be that Clifton Gunderson could be a player/coach for you. Usually a player/coach doesn't play much, but occasionally gets in the game, but is a sage, and sometimes has to roll up their sleeves and help out. Somebody gets in foul trouble, the last one off the bench. Those kinds of things. Support versus prime. We can do both and have, but as you'll see a little bit later here, we really think that works best. We see the Board of Supervisors developing goals and policies upon adoption of your strategic plan and mission statement. Broad in scope. What's going to be your policy. In other words your focus, your meetings, deliberating on what is, what is a proper balance. You have a healthy one now. Those kinds of, your fund balances, and things like that. What is your policy on hiring people versus working them a little extra. What are the fiscal ramifications of those kinds of cost configurations. Also looking at it from a standpoint of fluctuating revenues. What's your policy on those kinds of activities. Looking at more broader I guess what I'm trying, and I can give you more detail if you wish. Your elected officials and department heads would get much more into the detail estimates and policies... To implement those policies. In other words, what would they need to achieve in order to achieve your broader goals? The Auditor would continue to assemble, provide oversight of the detail, monitor that detail compliance and ensure integrity of the developed documents. The Auditor is your fiscal person. Then once that was done, the Supervisors would assess past performance reviews and develop and compare that with the fiscal plans. Your focus would not be on as much of the detail or your 2 1/2 inch thick book, but you would be looking for that coalescence assembled into what are we trying to accomplish and then how do we measure that accomplishment in monitoring that. The timing, to add on, that would facilitate and enable then the County to be able to develop a covenant if you will with your community that says here's what you can expect from us. This is what we're trying to accomplish and here's what you can measure us with. It's real hard to do that with a lot of detail. It's a lot easier if you're able to assemble and reshape and focus your financial information. We think it's something that obviously we think you should do now. Your timing is perfect if your annual year end is June 30th because it's probably about a 180 day process by the time you would have one put together. I've tried to give you some ideas in here as to the timing and what would occur in the first 60 days, what would occur between the 60 and 75 days of getting started. This would be at your flexibility depending on how hard you wish to work at it, how quickly you could build consensus. That could be shortened, if it took longer, then that would make it more difficult. As I would tell you, most of these pioneering efforts, the first one a lot of times there are some blanks in some of the sections. It says we know this is important for us to measure, we just don't have the historical data. Well you get started in this process of forging that template if you will, so that then by the time you get to the next year, that's done. We've tried to give you an idea of our fee structure and what we think some fees might be for this kind of a project. We don't recommend the maximum assistance level that I'll put in there to begin with. That may seem odd. You say, gee, Walt, I thought you were in the business to make money and you'd want the most fees you can. Really it can be done, but it's much more difficult, because it usually doesn't have the buy-in of the community as well. It becomes a shelf document because if the community doesn't participate in it, then it's harder to take, feel like it's your project and it's your work product. We're just here to serve you. We're not here to get accolades for the product. It's your product. So that's where again where we saw as a player/coach. We see us as providing under the 2nd step, giving you guidance. Also to help gather some of the data. Because quite frankly, some of this data you would say, well you just seem to know how to do this, why don't, can you gather that. We can get some of this stuff, but can you gather some of this other stuff? It's working with you, what we would envision is if we were retained, we would develop a very specific and very detailed work plan with you and would identify exactly what we're to do and what you want to do and we can make that as flexible as you would like. I also put a limited assistance and it could be even less. I've got some clients that hire me to just read their end document. They said, Walt, just read it. We think we know how to do all of these kinds of stuff, not in performance budget, in some other annual reporting. We just like the comfort of knowing you've looked at it and if you spy anything, let us know. I think that costs them about 3 or 4 hundred dollars. We're willing to do whatever it is that... What level you would like to see involved. Following that section I have an overview of our firm, an overview of our office. A section about our people that we think might be of help. Let me give you just, and I'll open it for any questions, a quick close. I didn't mention, but I'm also the National League of Cities representative to a National Advisory Council on State and Local Budgeting. We have developed a compendium of the best practices of budgeting. This is happening across this country. It's not setting a plow, like the Governmental Accounting Standards Board tried to do with service efforts and accomplishments that said these are what you should do. Instead what this is attempting to do and we had the Council of State Governments, the GFOA, the National Association of Counties, school business officials, Conference of Mayor's, League of Cities, and we've spent 2 years trying to formulate what are some broad principles that should be included in a budget process, what are the elements of a budget that are necessary, and what are the practices that are critical. We've accumulated examples for each one of these practices, so it can be something that communities, community being defined as City/County, whatever can use to address. Again that kind of outlines the process that I'm talking about, that there are different levels within every organization that would participate all critical, all needed, but we have different roles in forming that bond with the community. If that's the will. If it's not the will to form the bond with the community and how you communicate and enhance the communication, then a lot of what I'm telling you would probably fall on deaf ears, I guess, but if you're trying to look at your performance, look at how you are achieving your goals and how you are meeting your communities expectations, then performance budgeting is a new way that really is I think, gaining a lot of steam. Thank you.
Stutsman: Thank you. Questions? Comments?
Lacina: I did put together some comparisons of Johnson County after our discussion in relation to other counties in terms of our population size, ranking of our tax rates, and evaluations against Scott, Linn, and the other counties. Some information that the State had given us in the past in our audits as well as Bailey audit firm. I will give you a copy of that. It gives a graphic display, showing that we have no debt load in comparison to other counties. From that aspect, we look pretty good. In just speaking for myself, what I would see your role to be would be the driver to move us forward. Because I don't think any of us have the experience in GASB or those types of accounting procedures. You obviously in that professional field do. So you could help us sit down, and we tend to do a push type of budget, where we look at the last 5 years, and then determine what we do next year, as opposed to Iowa City that does a 5 year visioning to the future. They start building, and obviously make changes as they go, but they're looking down the road and I think that's kind of where we're headed. To start setting money aside if we have space needs or major expenditures, to start these, increasing our capital expenditure funds. So the budget would be changed in terms of internal and external benchmarking and ratios. We'd compare ourselves against other counties, other similar enterprises. Perhaps even going out like the airline industry and looking at customers served or types of ratios and looking at staffing ratios.
Kelly: Right.
Lacina: So we'd go out and compare with other counties, but we'd also then look at enterprise and then just to be able to have better control of the numbers. Right now you saw the book we have and like you said as the public looks at it, and at times as we look at it, the numbers start to swim. So if we have some standard ratios that we can look at, we can compare across the board County offices to other county offices and kind of get a better idea of what our efficiency is. What is our cost per hour of providing some level of service to the community. This is something which I'll give you a copy of too, that gives you some comparisons to what we're doing now on the external side.
Kelly: Thank you.
Stutsman: If you were hired by the County, Walt, would you be the lead person or would it be Tom? To work with us.
Kelly: We would clearly try to figure out what was in your best interest. Let me explain what that means. If you're asking for some of the technical guidance and some of the driving, saying how would we set this up and what should we be gathering and does this make sense in your experience from other communities and how you've seen other budgets put together, not just performance budgets things like that, would be unfair to expect Tom to be able to provide that. That's not his level of expertise for this team. That's what they brought me for. That's what I would provide for you. If it was in me helping you and meet and discussing in a public forum and things like that, if you had questions, technical questions of that nature, that's what I could provide. If it got to the point where it said how about some cost analysis or gathering some of the statistics, or looking at some of the statistics and coming to some business decision-making process, then I think Tom's activity based costing and activity based management experience is quite helpful. You save some dollars in having Tom do that, plus he's across the street. Wherever I'm located, it doesn't take me that long to get here. But we need to make sure you're only paying for that expertise when your requirements demand that expertise. I'll come whenever you want me to be here. Quite frankly this is what I do. I go all over the country. So if it's something you need, or I've had some clients that have said Walt, we'd just assume, we'd just like you to show up and be here, I come. That's how... Others would say, Walt, why do you need to... can't someone else do this, it's at a different rate? We say sure. If you get into a situation to where you're saying this looks like it's more staff data gathering, don't you have some staff that can do this, I'm sorry, we just don't have people on board and this looks like somebody has to gather this information that's at least familiar with governments, that's why we listed Ann in the particular plan. Gary is not there for that reason. Gary's there because we have an investment in this community that's why we have an office here. We are committed to this community. So Gary is there to make sure that if any of your demands, any semblance like if somebody's not responding or there's anything that he feels uneasy about from our investment in the community, then he yanks our chain to make sure we understand, not just how important this is to our Iowa City practice. That's why he's there. So more often than not, driving it, setting it up, monitoring and making sure I don't have to physically be on-site to see some of your work product. I thought it was important enough for us to propose, but I needed to come over and meet the people I might be doing business with, give you a chance to meet with me to see who we are, and to also see the lay of the land. I've learned a lot just in the last day that I probably couldn't have learned had I not taken the time to read through the budget documents and to see some of what your values are, reading the local newspaper, kind of see what comes through. That's what you do when you get a better understanding. But I don't have to physically be here every day with the communication capabilities we have anymore, lots of information can be transferred back and forth, but you still will probably want to have visits every once in a while I would think . Long answer, but I hope they're thorough.
Lacina: But you could also offer a service if we wanted to do a cost-benefit analysis of a particular project.
Kelly: Absolutely.
Lacina: A GPS system or something, Tom and Ann could come in.
Kelly: Absolutely.
Lacina: And give us specifics as well as look at the entire budget.
Kelly: Absolutely. I didn't give you my detailed resume, but if I did and if it would be helpful, if you just read the types of things that I do and our firm does, and I gave you a brief thing in there about some of the things our firm does. Sometimes you don't think a CPA firm does all of these kinds of things and is involved in local government as we really are. A lot of that's portable or transportable if you will from me or from our different offices that do some of that to our individual practitioners in the locale. So obviously we save expenses if we're able to have local people provide the service with guidance. But again, we're committing to you that you will have the benefit of my services at whatever degree of level that you would like to have.
Lacina: Well help me, but I think that as mentors we kind of look to Linn County right now and to Iowa City as examples of budgets that some day we would like to somewhat emulate. But those might be things you would take a quick look at. I think those are the 2 that pop into my mind as examples.
Stutsman: Well and Scott County too.
Lacina: And Scott, that's true, yes.
Stutsman: One that we looked at.
Jordahl: Clarity, the ability for people to come in here for a budget hearing and be interested in a topic and be able to make sense out of the answer. As you said that 2 1/2 inch thick book. Well the answer is in there somewhere. But it's pretty interesting to try and pull it out. The department heads do come in and we talk about these things during the budget process. My concern right now is as you talk about the timing being perfect now, there's this thing on page 4 that says within the first 60 days strategic planning and mission statement adopted, assess County needs, priorities, challenges, and opportunities. During those same 60 days, we're sitting down with that 2 1/2 inch thick book going through line by line the way we always have. That's the way we're going to do it this year. It's in process. That's a pretty time-consuming process. So what I'm trying to envision is how this time table is met. We have been doing strategic planning, but we haven't yet to my knowledge anyway, laid out an end date and said OK, 2 months from January 1st, we're going to be done and we're going to have departmental things worked out and we're going to be ready to go with this. To try and ride herd on that during the time which we're also piecing through the budget. That's my concern. Can we do that task. That getting started part, that seems aggressive. It's ideal, but is it possible?
Kelly: I guess from my opinion, if you choose an option that requires us to not do limited, but to do the middle if you will, where I said we're like a player/coach. Then I think it is possible if you're willing and committed to spend just a little bit of time in the policy and goal setting. You might find as you're going through that detailed line item by line item, you might start to develop a slightly different focus and a slightly different set of questions to that degree of detail, knowing that at the same time, you're really trying to forge a different kind of document. It is a change. It is a change in your culture because you're changing from focusing on each individual component of supply. I'm not so sure even at that, sometimes it makes it difficult, I would think, having served in the executive branches as well on a budget process, the staff says well, how do you know more about what I need to do for my particular department and not spend it at that last year and the year before that and the year before that. We've always spent this amount of money. So what I've tended to do is change the focus and the discussion somewhat, saying well let's understand again why is it that... you've got to decide your needs, but what are we trying to accomplish with those needs and how does that relate. How does that solve how much salt you have, how does that relate to what we're trying to do with the snow removal. Do you have it set for the 50 snows, or do we think we're only going to have maybe, maybe we can only afford 30 snows. So how much salt do you need for the 30 snows if we agree on these assumptions. Let's focus at the executive branch on those policy issues and those assumptions that we're going to focus in on. Then once that's done, then require our departments and our elected officials and ourselves that based with those policies, then here's what the resources that we need. Again yes, I would be unfair to suggest that somebody could do 2 things in the same amount of time that they could do one thing. Because that's just not humanly possible. If I was totally efficient and I spent 8 hours doing something, if I did any other task, it would have to take a minute more or an hour more or something more. Or I have to re-focus on how I look at that or have a consultant help us. Maybe I can shape some of those questions that would short cut for you. Again I can't set your policies. That's your values. But I might be able, by looking at some of your documents and talking to you for just a short period of time, get a better flavor for your values. Then help shape questions to you and inquiries and data gathering assembly process that will help at the same time to gather this information. That's the player/coach side of it. The bottom line is, and I don't want there to be any confusion. Any consultant, any advisor that says I can just write it for you and it's done, I'll tell you where it ends up, it sits on a shelf and nobody ever uses it because it's the consultants values, not your values. I see it as trying to cull out of you your values in a way that helps you reshape your thought process, your thinking process, your decision-making process for the community resource allocation and priorities. That's what's happening. So yes, I think it can be done, and I think it can always be done tomorrow and then tomorrow gets here and then it gets to be the next year, and at some point you have to make the decision we're going to, if you're going to do that, that we're going to embark on this and we're going to make a change. When you make that decision, then that makes it a little more troublesome period and you may not have the perfect mouse trap that first time, but you will have forged that template and started to shape it so that it can be refined, honed, a sharp edge if you will so that then the next year now you've got a great jump start on that next process because you've done a lot of that walking through the deep snow and the next guy sees some footprints they can step through.
Jordahl: As a pulling together of the questions that we may have during the budget process normally, I see this as a very useful step to be taking. To say, OK, we are going to be proceeding to performance based budgeting. Part of that is paying attention in a different way while we're going through this budget process now.
Kelly: Right.
Jordahl: The apprehension I have about that, and I'm sure the apprehension the department heads have as well, is that what we would be doing is creating homework for them. Saying, OK, now you're already stretched to the max with your staff. What we want you to do is keep track of a bunch of things that you're not keeping track of now, too. Much as a question I asked a minute ago. How do we do strategic planning and the budget process at the same time. Now we're going to say how do we be a department and keep track of all these new performance measures. I think the idea of apprehension about loading people up with additional work through this process is a very real concern and I wonder if it's possible to separate the 2 to begin to talk about the strategic planning maybe and useful ways of clarifying things, clarifying what measures might look like without necessarily making assignments during the budget process. Say, OK, now you've worked with this, you're struggling with this, we want you to struggle with some more stuff, too. That's, I think there are going to be brakes going on about that.
Lacina: Jonathan's got a real good point there. If this becomes so burdensome that people are carrying pieces of paper around monitoring every phone call and how many seconds it takes to walk from the copier, that's not productive, that's what we all term this governmental red tape thing. On the other hand, about 6 years ago, the Treasurer took a look at a couple of other treasurers in other counties and discovered his mailing expense was high. So we went over and borrowed a system from Cedar County, standardized our envelopes, made some changes in postage and that and ended up saving about $17,000 a year. So I think the Auditor's Office really does a fantastic job of the data collection, as you saw it, the numbers.
Kelly: Right.
Lacina: Our 8 hours then I think instead of going through that line item by line item needs to look at ratios and comparisons to really get us more into the decision-making. Jonathan's point is very good. We don't want to go down to the departments and... To start off with for sure, I think we want to start off with the existing numbers we have, we need to look at some very simple ratios that will help us. Now maybe in time we'll decide, yes, we need to do a greyhound time study on something. But that's way down the road.
Kelly: This is not a time and motion approach. I guess I would... Every situation can be different, so I'm not going to suggest my situation is an example of everybody's situation. But I can remember my public works director for the first couple of years that we were doing this, his apprehension as he kept going through this. When he was... first year, it was more work, second year that it was well I'm not sure what you're going to do with this data, and how does this impact my life and what are you doing to me differently. Finally by the 3rd year of going through this process, he came to us and he said I really like this better because now you're not beating me up on all these individual items and asking me about these things. He said quite frankly I didn't think you guys knew how to relate to... Me talking, this is my public works. I wasn't sure you guys knew how to judge whether or not I told you what was right, not right, I didn't know where you picked your questions or what you were looking at. He said now I know we're looking at what are we trying to accomplish and he felt a lot better of saying yes, this is what I want to do. I feel proud that I'm accomplishing these tasks. This is what I wanted you to ask me as the parameters of how do I accomplish that task. A fire prevention versus fire suppression. If you just focus on we've got to have fire trucks, we've got to have firemen to put out the fires and never spend the resources to look it would be cheaper if we enhanced the educational process and didn't have the fire in the first place, because of different types of things. It was reshaping that process and that thinking and starting to allocate more of our resources to educating and the suppression, I mean the prevention activities than the actual suppression. We still needed to be able to get there in an x amount of time, but there are some trade-offs in there because maybe we get there in 4 minutes and 20 seconds instead of 4 minutes, but we only have half as many incidents of fires in the first place. What's the ultimate property damage, what's the ultimate situation? It's just a different way from your perspective of looking at your responsibility with respect to fiscal matters.
Stutsman: A couple more comments and we're going to have to move on. Any other comments or...
Lacina: I guess just a question. That is in the event that we decide to proceed, you sort of have some things laid out, but what do you see as step 1, 2, and 3? Just really simple.
Kelly: I really think the addressing what it is you're trying to accomplish. I think that's where I would see us helping from the documents you have. I think you've got a lot of information in each one of those functional areas that would help. Then starting to give you some ideas to mull over as to some of the types of measures that you might be looking at and how just the framework of your new budget process might be structured, the template if you will. I think that being something very early on that... These days are not cast in stone. I had at best I think I had about 10 hours yesterday to look at some things and I tried to dovetail it with your budget period. I would suggest that you have a legal requirement to have a document done by a certain time. I would also tell you sometimes there's slippage. It's not good to have slippage in the revised type things, because you should have a budget done before you start. You should have your covenants done before the year starts. But when you're trying to make a change, I think sometimes you've got to look at the different evils that you have and try to decide, what are we, what's our... What are we really trying to accomplish. If you were to have slippage, it's important that you meet your legal requirements, but it's also important that you come with your new reshaping before it's too far into the next year. I tried to structure this so that you would have it all done in time for when you start your next fiscal year. If you need more time, you will be the one that would decide. I think the first couple of things is that you would get us involved and I gave you lots, I gave you several options. You could also just get us involved and say, we want Walt to work with us, as to setting this up and getting us started and working with us and we'll tell him what that timeline is. But there's also something to be said for a budget process in and of itself. Is one of your tasks... So maybe one of your measurements is how much time, how do you involve the community? How much time do you spend with the community? How much time do you make the community spend with you as you reach closure? Is it good for it to take 6 months? Should it take 30 days? Should it take a year? What is that process, if you will. Because budgeting is one of the acts that you do. So one of your measurements we'd have to sit down, I would suggest, is we would look at what is that process and what do you hope to accomplish and what is your covenant to the community so their expectation level as it's that budget time, what is your deliverable to the community?
Lacina: Well just brainstorming. Let's say that you got the Linn's budget, Scott's budget, Iowa City's budget, I'll give you the comparisons with the State and you could see our audit. Would it be realistic and again I'm not proposing this, I'm just brainstorming. That if we allocate, say, $500 for you to help us establish the mission statement and somewhat vision. Then we would go to Tom, since local would really have the grasp of the nitty-gritty, and work with him through this budget cycle as an educational standpoint just everybody getting up to speed, allocate us, I don't know, 3 to 5 hundred dollars for that?
Bolkcom: I don't understand why we, I appreciate your proposal this morning, it's very well informed, but in terms of establishing a goal, it seems to me that the leadership of Johnson County, meaning our other elected officials and department heads, ought to determine what our goals are going to be for how we provide services. I think that would be the starting point of trying to develop a County mission statement or departmental mission statements, rather than ask somebody from the outside to come in, who would have to interview everybody and figure out what our needs and aspirations were. So my sense in general is that we've got the cart before the horse here in how we're proceeding. I think we, as Walt said, pay for the expertise when you need that expertise. They obviously have the ability to help us out here, but I see this process beginning at the department head level and elected official level where we develop the buy-in and develop the mission statement and the goals. Because if we have the consultants do this for us, it will sit on a shelf. If we do not have people down in the department head level that see this information, see the value of this information, and want to use this information to do better in the future. I think we need to structure a process that gets us to that, as opposed to getting people that are experts in it come in and kind of shepherd us through it. There may be a day when we need that kind of help, but I see that as something we'll recognize at the point it hits. Again, pay for the expertise when we need it. I think we've got a lot of internal expertise that can move us along. In terms of the time frame, I thought a couple things. In terms of our own strategic planning, that we're involved with that, we weren't able to meet last week, but we've got a meeting coming up that we are just going to try and lay out some of the time frame and try and prioritize our workload. This would be one of those issues that needs to be prioritized. It was also indicated last week at the department head meeting that we were putting this on hold. So we weren't going to be working on this. So when we talk about trying to do it in the next 60 days, I'm perplexed by it. I guess I need more clarity on that issue.
Stutsman: I guess I thought we were putting it on hold for this budget go-around.
Bolkcom: I see.
Stutsman: We weren't going to do anything for this budget go-around, but I worry that we put it on hold indefinitely, you know that we keep saying let's just wait, let's just wait, and I want to make sure that we keep this in the forefront and we keep moving towards performance based budgeting, or else it will just lose interest. The other thing, too... I didn't get the sense that you were going to do the strategic plan. I felt that you would work with the department heads and elected officials...
Kelly: Correct. Correct.
Stutsman: ...to work us through that process, that we would use you as a consultant or as an expert to do that. You're not going to say this is what I determine is your strategic...
Kelly: Correct. You're absolutely right. That's where, not argumentative, just for clarity. In answer to your question a moment ago. I really think if you're going to move forward, you need to get your consultant involved, just as you just outlined Sally, to work with you and ensure the process move forward. Part of the educational process. Not just with yourself, but with your department heads to help alleviate some of those fears as you go through that process. That may mean more of my involvement early on with you at different key strategic times in that process. But you're right. It's not me determining your strategic plan It's me working with you as a process as to how you reach that closure.
Lacina: Something else you touched on what was earlier was the idea of who our customer is. I think that if industry went down into a plant and developed a budget, it would look much different than if they look at corporate leadership or the customer. As we try to serve the public who is really our customer, we definitely need input from the department heads, but the ratios and everything and the efficient use of the tax dollars, that we really need to be sensitive to the taxpayer out there. To me in dropping the amount for now, I think if we set a goal with your assistance having some form of vision by mid-January, we have to certify by March 15th, but this budget go-around would kind of be an educational process for Tom and Ann and you to sit down and see what we're doing now, the information gathering. Then maybe next year we start with some initial ratios. But at least we're moving forward instead of putting it off.
Bolkcom: So tell me how this squares with what we told department heads last week that we were not going to begin on this immediately. I mean January 15th is 3 or 4 weeks away. The proposal actually says they're going to start on or around, within 60 days of December 31st. So I just think we do not have the support we need at the department head level to implement this. I guess I don't... We've got 10 other things that we need to be working on. I don't understand what the rush is on this in terms of getting that buy-in. I think it's absolutely critical to being effective with this. I don't want to start and have it not go well and we run away from it.
Stutsman: Well, I...
Bolkcom: So tell me how we... We said at the department head meeting last week, we weren't proceeding with this, and how having a consultant come on in mid-January is not proceeding with this.
Lacina: Well what I heard concern from the department heads, as Jonathan brought up, they don't want to have to carry a little notebook around in their pocket going, OK I walked from here to there and this and that. What the difference is, is instead of going down and saying to the department heads give us these ratios, give us this information, the difference is we're sitting down looking at what we have right now, are we collecting the data adequately, are we doing a good job, talk to them about what they would like as performance measures. But this budget cycle, right, we're not going to be using performance based budgeting in this budget cycle. We're just starting the learning curve. We've got a long way to go. My objective would be to have something in place by our fiscal 2000 year. I think it's going to take us that long to get up to... to do it right.
Stutsman: I guess that's what I...
Kelly: I looked at your notebook and I started to say, well you had some statistics gathered. I thought well maybe they've already, maybe those are the statistics. If they think it's important enough to put it in the detail book, they must be trying to accomplish something along those statistics. That must be meaningful information that says number of cases addressed. I forget now off the top of my head, but there was one of the departments that we'll say for example, it may not have been the case, but number of arrests. I thought well, they must have part of their mission is, that's important. That's an outcome. Because it's critical to them to say look we're working hard, because look how many arrests are being made. I thought well what are some of the others. You may have enough of those statistics that says, we'll start to shape this template to get back in saying, in my understanding in effect validating if you will what some of that's already being gathered, then to throw out some additional ideas that says to tweak that a little bit. So is that what you're really trying to accomplish, it may be. Or, maybe there're some things that say well would this be a meaningful number as well. It may not be. But I saw some statistics through there. What I saw could also be helpful if it would help facilitate this. It's taking that in depth book, looking at as you said a couple of your other counties who have started down some of this path, and shaping some of your information with some of that to start to say does this sort of look like a template that might help alleviate some of those fears.
Lacina: Sally's Juvenile Crime Prevention Committee is sort of doing this. They're looking at the investment on prevention and it is showing a reduction in some juvenile crime. That's what we need to know. If we have this cost, what is the benefit and if prevention is working, that's much cheaper than incarcerating those kids. So, some of the departments are moving to it by themselves.
Stutsman: Uh-huh.
Bolkcom: That's right and the Sheriff's budget has presented some background material. Had a whole bunch of new information that he hasn't given us before about performance measures. Just by us talking about the need to do it.
Stutsman: Exactly.
Bolkcom: It raises the question, what's our ability to do this inside.
Stutsman: Well who's going to do it, Joe, you keep saying we have the inside ability to do it. I guess I...
Bolkcom: I say we get our department heads together and figure out how to do it. They're doing it now. I think, then there's the cost involved here as well that we haven't talked about and where that money comes from.
Stutsman: Right.
Duffy: Sally, we are running over in time. I have a 12:00 and a 6:00 tonight. They gave a good presentation, but I'm glad you got on the bandwagon Joe, because you have changed positions when this thing had started...
Bolkcom: Well let me...
Duffy: ... Because I said to have the elected officials and department heads right at the start and now I think it's a political decision and I'm not going to sit here and listen to this, so it's not on the agenda really.
Bolkcom: I'm totally for performance based budgeting. You know that, Charlie.
Duffy: Oh, yes.
Bolkcom: I just... There's different ways to get to it. I think the way we get to it and the best way in the long run is ensuring that our department heads and other elected officials are on board with it from the first step. I'm saying, my sense of it in talking with department heads and Sally's announcement last week was really in reflection to kind of some feedback we've gotten, is that we've put this on hold...
Stutsman: I guess I'm...
Bolkcom: ... and then a week later we're getting ready to hire a consultant. I'm having trouble squaring that. So I'm for doing it, I'm for doing it in a little bit different way and a little bit different time frame.
Stutsman: Joe, I don't think we're that far off base. What I, and I'm sorry I didn't make it clear at the department head or that you, that you just didn't understand what I said. I said for this budget go-around. We are having, the budgets are done basically from the department heads. There's no point in going back through those budgets and coming up with performance based budgeting bench marks or whatever. We're having the... we're proceeding with the process as we've done for umpteen years.
Bolkcom: Right.
Stutsman: My idea is that they can start being involved with this right now, in working towards next year so that next year when we come to January and when they start putting their budgets together in September, we've got these things in place. I don't think by holding off until March, until April, until June, that we can do that. I want this to be a slow, gradual process. This is where we start, is we start now.
Bolkcom: That's clear to me, but that was not, you did not describe it that way last week. I think we need a memo or something...
Stutsman: I'll send a memo, OK.
Bolkcom: ... because I think there's confusion out there about this. It's not good.
Lacina: I think if you make a couple of phone calls, you can tell if the department's perceived it... I don't think they perceived it that way. But getting back to action, would it be prudent to have Walt generate a proposal for us, get Linn and Scott's budgets and then come back.
Bolkcom: We've got one.
Lacina: I'd like to set a date by which we start taking some action. Because if we put this off, we'll just put it off forever.
Stutsman: Well we need to...
Bolkcom: We've got a proposal right here.
Stutsman: ...keep discussing.
Lacina: Well, but I don't think it's...
Jordahl: No place to sign it...
Lacina: We're seeing an hourly rate, but for budgeting...
Bolkcom: You're looking for a contract.
Lacina: Well I'm looking for that cost-benefit analysis stuff, too.
Jordahl: Can I chirp in here?
Stutsman: Well, we're going to have to move on Jonathan, so quickly...
Jordahl: I just want to wrap this up with the notion that we have been doing strategic planning. Not exactly in-house. We've had a consultant helping us with strategic planning. That process is ongoing, it has begun to involve the department heads, I think it's a very healthy process. So we can continue that. I think what's needed in that process is that we set some sort of a time frame on it that we will have departmental mission statements. We will have a County mission statement by some time certain. Involve the departments in that process. Focus it in such a way that we come up with performance areas within that strategic plan, that can then correlate to the budget process. I think that's the missing piece, is the specific time table, pieces are the specific time table, the involvement of the departments, and some focus on what those major performance goals are within the departments, to achieve their mission. That process does not necessarily have to involve performance based budgeting and a consultant in the same way that this process has outlined here. We can continue to do that with Tim Shields I think. Maybe with some communication with these consultants about how that begins to focus on budgeting issues. That's a way of moving forward while continuing a current process without necessarily saying this is a performance based budgeting process.
Bolkcom: I agree with all that.
Lacina: I'll support page 4, which basically sets up a time table, realizing that we may not meet the 6 month objective, but at least we've got a start. If we discover we need something different, we've got some flexibility to change.
Bolkcom: I think that we should hold a discussion when we meet at the strategic planning meeting next week and define what our workload is for next year, because we've got about 10 projects on the burner and we need to fit this one into that schedule, including the human resource person, the comprehensive plan, we've got a budget to start on that's going to take a couple of months, SEATS director, SEATS contract, a variety of things. I think we ought to look at that agenda and see what the priorities are.
Jordahl: To hear what Joe's saying, I think it would be interesting to see you propose not a 6 months implementation plan, but a year and 6 month implementation plan. Not to say that's definitely what we want, but I think it would address the concerns maybe the department heads have about how fast we're moving on this, address the concerns that Joe has about whether we're consistent with some previous comments that may have been made. Just... I don't know how much work that would be, but I think that's part of the idea here. We don't necessarily want to shove people through this, we want to move through this in such a way that people understand and they begin to buy into the process.
Lacina: So it's a go, and we'll be flexible. I think Jonathan's right, build it out to how we're going to continue this. Because we want to show continuity. We don't want to jump in, do it for 6 months and bail out. We'll need your assistance for a couple of years to begin to get this thing...
Stutsman: Well I think we need to continue this discussion.
Bolkcom: Well, we're not making a commitment... Yes. We're not making a commitment necessarily this morning to this company, I assume.
Stutsman: Right. This is just more information and education. As you can tell, we need to...
Jordahl: I want to clarify what Steve just said. I don't mean another year beyond this, keeping this same timetable. I mean spread this timetable over a year and a half. What does that look like?
Stutsman: OK. Thank you very much.
Bolkcom: Thank you.
Lacina: Tom, here's our comparisons with other counties. Thanks for coming.
Stutsman: Does the Board want to take a break?
Bolkcom: No.
Stutsman: Or do you want to keep moving? OK, business from...
Lacina: Charlie and I may have to leave at 11:30, so...