Stutsman: Oh, OK. Business from Carol Thompson, Sixth Judicial Chief Juvenile Officer and Brandon Beaudry, Case Worker Supervisor. This is regarding juvenile detention costs. Good morning.
Bolkcom: Good morning.
Thompson: Good morning.
Beaudry: Good morning.
Thompson: Have you all met Brandon Beaudry?
Bolkcom: No.
Thompson: Brandon is the supervisor for the Johnson and Iowa County offices.
Bolkcom: Good morning.
Stutsman: So do you have an update for us?
Thompson: Yes, we have good news and bad news.
Stutsman: OK.
Thompson: The good news is that referrals to the Juvenile Court for Johnson County are down slightly, projected to the end of the year. The bad news is that the youth in the detention has been going up. I don't want to use the work skyrocketing, but that's the one that's in my mind. The first month we noticed a large increase we thought, well that's a blip and it will even out by the end of the year, but now it's been up for enough months consecutively that we need talk to you about it. So there won't be any surprises by the end of the year.
Lacina: This is court ordered and we have to...
Thompson: Yes.
Lacina: Carol, would you move that mike over just so we can pick you up a little better? Thanks.
Thompson: Sure, thanks. I'll pass these out, did you get one for yourself?
Beaudry: No.
Thompson: Brandon has done some studies about our usage and our...
Lacina: One impact is...
Thompson: Some factors that might be possible reasons for the increase and I'm going to pass these out.
Bolkcom: Thank you.
Lacina: As we negotiate with Linn County for that contract, I'm assuming you're going to be a player in that to help us...
Stutsman: Brandon, you've been working with Linn County in coming up with some kind of contract or whatever for detention?
Beaudry: Yes, I've been in touch with Mr. Vonk, head of the detention center there.
Stutsman: OK.
Beaudry: I've received some information from him and we'll be making some recommendations regarding how many beds that we would suggest that Johnson County purchase from Linn County.
Lacina: Is this the detention cost built into the Sheriff's budget? Or you're talking about what's out of this department.
Beaudry: It's not built into the Sheriff's budget, no. It's a separate line item in the County budget.
Bolkcom: Yes, it's juvenile detention budget. Carol, what did we budget this year for these costs?
Thompson: For detention?
Beaudry: $200,000 was budgeted for this fiscal year.
Bolkcom: OK, and you're projecting 260?
Beaudry: Yes.
Stutsman: If it goes at the current rate?
Beaudry: Yes.
Bolkcom: Wow.
Stutsman: Well...
Lacina: 30% increase.
Thompson: I can't believe there will be that big of an increase, but it is going to be more than the 200, I would guess.
Bolkcom: How's your budget in general doing at almost 6 months?
Thompson: It won't cover this much additional...
Bolkcom: OK.
Lacina: So I guess the solution is as we get closer into spring, we talk to Lynnette about a budget amendment, which will obviously have to take place if things continue.
Stutsman: We are meeting with the legislators this afternoon and this is one of the issues that the Board will talk to them about, getting more State funding for detention costs, to help defray what's happening at the County level.
Thompson: There's a... Something is going on in the State. Now this year they changed their policy to the amount that goes to defray detention expenses before they're billed back to you will be covered by a fine they're collecting on driver's licenses. The last I heard that money hadn't been coming in at a projected rate to accrue the amount of money that it would take to get the first million dollars, which was what was budgeted for detention. So that would mean that next year the costs that you pay for detention would be going up because the detentions won't be getting as much back from the State. So that's a good thing to talk to them about.
Stutsman: OK. So they didn't appropriate a specific amount, they're counting on the revenues from these fines to pay for that cost.
Thompson: Yes, in the past they appropriated. This year they went to the fines. This is an amount of money that's given, it's collected by the State or appropriated by the State and then it's given to the detention centers. They use that to put against their actual costs before they set the rate that they then bill to you.
Lacina: It's like a block grant then?
Thompson: Yes.
Beaudry: Through the first 3 months of the fiscal year, they'd only collected $62,000 for the entire State.
Stutsman: Out of a million? And the projection was a million?
Beaudry: The first...
Thompson: Oh the projection was like 3 million, it was way high.
Beaudry: Yes.
Stutsman: Oh my.
Beaudry: It has picked up since then, but the first 3 months indicated that they were very, very short in their projections of how much money would be taken in through this fine.
Thompson: The amounts over a million was what was going to be used for the runaway youth grants, among other things, but there's a lot of people waiting for help for runaways that are going to be surprised that there wasn't any left over.
Jordahl: In an earlier conversation that I've heard about this, there was mentioned the idea that well this law went into effect July 1st, and there hasn't been all that much time for people to get arrested, pay fines, and so forth, that there may be some lag time in this, but that the funding mechanism may catch up with itself in a year and a half or so. Is that, can you speak to that?
Thompson: It's not clear to me whether the law said that it would be collected on everyone who got their driver's license back beginning July 1st, or only on people who had the driver's license taken away after July 1st and then got it back later. I've gotten different answers on that, so I can't really tell you.
Beaudry: I had heard that the next month in the fiscal year, which would have been in this last month, their receipts were considerably in excess from what they had received before. So it may be that they are starting to pick up at a pace which more approximates what they had projected. I think it's still going to be far short of what they had projected. They thought they would get about 3 million. The first million, it is my understanding would go to defray detention costs. It does not appear they will even have that.
Stutsman: Why the increases, Carol?
Thompson: Well on Brandon's page that looks like this...
Stutsman: Uh-huh, OK.
Thompson: He's defined out some possibilities. We talk about this a lot at the office and we try to look at our practice to see if the influences what your costs are, and all of that. These are some factors that we think influence it. Also some points that you might want to consider when you talk with the legislators are the kids waiting for residential treatment beds, what Brandon listed in number 4 there. If a bed isn't available and a child has to wait and there's a danger they'll run away, they wait in detention and you pay the bill.
Stutsman: Didn't you say yesterday that there were 2 kids right now that have been in detention for what...
Beaudry: For over 30 days, these are Department of Human Services supervised children. They were de-certified by Merit, which is the managed care organization which certified or de-certifies children for substance and mental health care. Both of these children were in mental health care, they have significant mental health issues. They were de-certified and their placement at the Mental Health Institute was then terminated because of that de-certification. They are now waiting in detention centers for an appropriate bed, probably in one of the psychiatric medical institutes in the state, but they are all very full right now, so it's a long wait for those kids to get into an appropriate placement.
Stutsman: So because there isn't any place to put those kids, we are paying what, $150 a day to keep them in detention?
Beaudry: It's more than that, Sally, the cheapest rate for detention centers is $165 a day and the most expensive is approximately $200 a day.
Lacina: I would like you to draft that up with the numbers, leaving the name off, that I could pass that on to the legislators. I think they need to realize some of these things are shifting.
Stutsman: That's what they asked us to do. Get us facts and get us figures. These are great facts and figures that they need to realize that we are having to pay because of the legislation that they've put in place. It's just, and we've talked about this before, how the whole system is just backing up. Yet the bottom line is these kids aren't getting what they need. You know, they should not be in detention. They have to be, because there's no place else, and for safety for themselves and the community, that's the way they have to be.
Beaudry: That's precisely right. They're not receiving treatment in detention, they're just being housed there.
Lacina: And could, in fact, become victims if they are housed in with juveniles that may have a crime background. They could become victims in a very bad situation. As you said not get the care.
Stutsman: This is a perfect example of cost shifting. Somebody will send out a press release how much money is being saved on the State level, well it's maybe being saved at the State level, but we are picking it up, you know the County is picking it up.
Beaudry: I believe that's exactly true.
Lacina: Well, I don't see that we have a choice, I would ask that you draft up a couple of examples like that, that it would help us and then in the spring as we move forward, get more accurate numbers, we'll have to do the budget amendment because we don't have a choice on this.
Stutsman: Can you do that by 4:30 this afternoon Brandon?
Beaudry: I can contact the department and see how long those children have been in detention and get some accurate figures on that, yes.
Stutsman: OK. Even on those 2 cases, if we could just say, this is an example of what's happening today that we can say what kind of cost it's costing Johnson County.
Beaudry: I'd be happy to do that.
Jordahl: We've just.
Lacina: I would like to see an article for the Association Magazine covering a few of these points as well that we would all share saying some of this legislation we need to all work on.
Stutsman: Well and this detention was one of the ISAC priorities, that they want the legislature to deal with this year. So...
Jordahl: Wrapped into this is the question we've just been discussion in performance based budgeting I think. What does it cost per day to detain a juvenile. What is the trend... We project is what happened in the past, what we've got now, look at the line. I think that kind of information which is contained in these data isn't here with the cost per day, dollar items that would make this more accessible to the common mind like me that would say oh.
Duffy: Sally, you heard me say this before, Carol, but... And I ask in a case like this, are we gaining on the enemy? Of course the enemy is delinquency. Some are hard core delinquency and some are juveniles, as far as budgeting for this, it's not in the stationary budget, it's flexible one, I can't see how you can have a budget a year ahead in advance because you don't know how many of these juveniles are going to get into trouble. I compliment you the way that this was handled, but that's why I'm kind of a little tight lipped until these budgets are all in. Because the priority is a word that's used quite a bit, but I don't like priorities for people, but this is serious business here. I don't know where we're going to get the money to tell you the truth, it's a really good idea coming in. (Inaudible).
Lacina: Although on this we don't have a choice.
Duffy: Yes.
Stutsman: Yes.
Lacina: It will come out of our reserves, we'll tax (inaudible) court order.
Thompson: I do see some optimism in the fact that overall referrals are down slightly. That could mean that your juvenile crime prevention work is paying off.
Stutsman: Uh-huh.
Thompson: If kids don't get in trouble the first time, then they won't be in trouble the second time. So that's good.
Duffy: Yes, just one other question. Is some of this due to the fact that maybe there are more strict laws than we had in the past on some of these things? When they get started like tobacco, you're not supposed to buy the cigarettes now, and drinking is down to a blood alcohol content in your blood, we have more severe laws than they have had in the past. Would that have anything to do with delinquency?
Beaudry: If I could speak to that, I think that...
Duffy: I'm not fighting you, I just wonder.
Beaudry: I think the detention criteria have remained relatively stable over the past 10 years or so. The only difference that I can see is that the Code now does allow for children to be placed in detention for short periods of time as a sanction for probationary violations, with the idea that we would try to do this to avoid later on a residential treatment which might last 8 or 10 months. I think that has been somewhat successful in doing that, and I think certainly the day treatment programs that we have have been very successful and we do see a number of children who go into residential treatment. I think we just have an increase in the number of children who need detention. One factor in this which might come under number 2, the number of delinquency amendments that we've seen quite an increase in, might be that the last 5 years, the State has decreased funding for residential treatment beds. My understanding is that approximately 5 years ago, we had about 14,050 children in residential treatment and that is now down to about 1,000 to 900. That has been the result of the legislature placing either numerical funding caps on residential treatment and while I think some of that trend has been good, I think the legislature possibly went too far in it's reduction of funding. We have some children who are in the community who probably shouldn't be. I think other kids see that some of their kids are getting by with 3 and 4 and 5 delinquent acts and nothing is really happening to them besides probationary types of things. In the home, they're not leaving the home and I think that does have an impact on the perception of some kids when they continue to commit offenses against the public and not have to leave their homes because of it.
Stutsman: Well thank you for coming in and be sure to keep us informed about what's going on and we'll see you in the spring for sure. Oh, Brandon could we have that information by 4:00, so that we could make copies and get it distributed?
Beaudry: Sure.
Stutsman: We will give this information, but if you could just talk about those 2 specific cases, that would be great. OK, thank you.
Lacina: Thanks.
Stutsman: Business from Kathy Penningroth, Chairperson for Historical Preservation Commission. This is regarding a grant proposal for mapping 3 County parks. Good morning Kathy. Thank you for being patient and...
Historical Preservation Commission Chairperson Kathy Penningroth: Good morning, thank you. I am assuming since I gave you the materials, although not in the actually typed into the form that has to be sent in, that you have some information about the grant. It is a grant for a certified local government which Johnson Count is to do some predictive modeling in 3 County parks. Kent Park, Scott Church Park, and Walker Park. What that would involve is hiring an archaeologist and an architectural historian and that would be a request for proposal would go out for that. If we receive the grant to do some mapping of the land in the park to predict if there had been historic or prehistoric settlement according to land forms, erosion, these kinds of things, which could then be used by the Conservation Board to determine where to put things in the parks if they decide to alter the physical landscape or erect a building, or something like this. It is something that we thought we could do, it's not asking for a lot of money. The less money you ask for, the better chance you have to get the grant. Our budget as a commission is very limited. In order to do anything significant with historic preservation, we need to ask for grants. This is an attempt to do some education, to have some awareness of historic preservation, and to do something that perhaps is possible and perhaps would get funded by the Federal funds, which is what these funds would be from. I will say that, and part of the grant is a 60/40 match. So we are at 60 Federal funds which is the funds that would come through the State Historical Society, and 40 local. A lot of this is in-kind, volunteer, from Commission members, and other people that might volunteer to do this. Some of it is in terms of money that would come from our budget, although our budget for this year is $254, down from $300 the previous year. But hopefully we could eke that out. I will also say to be fair and let you know what the conditions of this grant are from the State Historical Society is that if we do get the grant, then the money initially to pay for these things has to come from the County and then the County submits a bill to the State and to the State Historical Society for the funds that were expended. So this is something that right up front you have to consider if that is a possibility, if that is something that...
Stutsman: So there is reimbursement for the funds.
Penningroth: There is reimbursement, but I will say that the money has to come first from the County and then you submit a statement, the County submits a statement.
Stutsman: How much money are we talking about Kathy? Do you have any idea?
Penningroth: What kind of what?
Stutsman: Money. That we have to...
Penningroth: Oh, it would, well not a whole lot. We're asking for $2,294 in Federal funds. It's not a huge amount. That's one of the reasons we're doing this. It's a start.
Stutsman: OK.
Penningroth: Because if you ask for larger grants, you generally won't get them. Our certified local government, i.e. Johnson County has never asked for one of these, we don't have any past grant performance therefore. So that is a consideration in terms of getting it.
Lacina: Total cost is going to be just barely over $2 an acre and we can probably set up a resolution for Thursday do you think and then write a letter in support of the grant.
Stutsman: Do you need a letter of support?
Penningroth: What I need is for, I don't need a letter of support. All I need is for you to approve this. For Sally to sign this. This is the final report, which I will have to duplicate of course and send in umpteen copies. I will of course have several copies for here, so that we have a copy of it, and send in copies to the State Historical Society by, it has to be postmarked by December 15th.
Stutsman: OK.
Penningroth: So that's all you need to do. If you vote to approve our applying for this grant, then all you need to do is to sign this.
Bolkcom: Have you visited with the Conservation Board?
Penningroth: Yes. That's what I meant to say. I did visit the Conservation Board, not last week, the week before last at their last meeting. I just informed them of what we intended to do. They were fine. They don't have to do anything, it's not anything that involves any money or time on their part. They were supportive and say good luck. So I'm assuming they support the (inaudible).
Lacina: And our match would be roughly 880 to 900 dollars.
Stutsman: Well it sounds like it's all in-kind.
Jordahl: Well, my question is how do you calculate the in-kind contribution.
Penningroth: Well you calculate it partially from labor, contributed labor. They stipulate what kinds of hourly charges you can make according to your professional qualifications. So basically what we are asking for, the in-kind is contributed labor. The other things that are under cash are things like postage that we can pay from our budget or things like that.
Stutsman: So there really, you're not asking for any additional moneys from the County. You're just asking for us to agree to submit this grant.
Penningroth: I'm not really asking for any addition... What will come from the County is some kind of time on the part of the staff. Because you have to send in these, the staff has to send in the request for reimbursement and do these kinds of things. So it sort of, it requires staff time, but we're not asking for an outlay of extra money. We're not asking for that kind of thing. I will say that if the postage, etc., comes at, maybe we can restrict that, comes up to what is asked for in the budget, our budget, will not cover it the way it is set up this year for $254.00. Or this past year has been set. And that if we do that we will have no money in the budget, although we have not expended our moneys. Our thinking as a commission is that if we don't do something, our budget is going to go down, down, down, and we need to do something in order to maintain some funding for historical preservation in the County.
Stutsman: Well, it sounds like a good project and I guess I would support putting it on Thursday and we...
Peters: In the past, the only moneys that have been expended from that budget was just for the judges.
Stutsman: OK.
Peters: When they came in at the Historical Preservation (inaudible).
Penningroth: Yes, it's for travel money for the judges, who contribute their time. They don't get paid, but they do get expenses and we take them out to lunch.
Jordahl: Well it's.
Peters: That's the kind of things Johnson County (inaudible).
Jordahl: It sounds as though whether we may initially have to pay for some postage or not, that the Federal matching, the Federal portion of the grant would ultimately cover that.
Penningroth: Yes, I think it would. It's just in doing these budgets as you well know, you have to make sure, and you have a better chance if you have more than a 40 matching. So you try and figure out how you can work things.
Stutsman: I'm glad the Historical Commission is going ahead with this.
Penningroth: OK.
Bolkcom: So just to get clear. The total grant is $2,294, and that includes in-kind?
Penningroth: No.
Bolkcom: The total cost, that's the...
Jordahl: That's the Federal portion.
Penningroth: The total is $3,899.12. I think you have a copy of it.
Stutsman: Did you get a copy of the budget?
Bolkcom: We haven't seen.
Lacina: We have the...
Bolkcom: So if we could see that.
Penningroth: Oh, OK.
Bolkcom: If we could see that by Thursday, that would be helpful. We just got kind of the description page.
Penningroth: Oh, you didn't get a copy of the budget.
Stutsman: Uh-uh.
Bolkcom: I haven't seen...
Penningroth: OK. The total is $3,899.12. The Federal portion is $2,294.00. The applicant portion is, and that includes in-kind, is $1,605.00. Of that, about $300 is the actual cash and the other is in-kind.
Stutsman: If we could just have one copy of that budget just as...
Penningroth: What I'm going to do is turn this in. I will give this to Carol. If you could, the budget's on the last page. I thought I gave a copy of that to be copied, but not. If this could be signed...
Stutsman: Right after the meeting on Thursday.
Penningroth: Right after the meeting on Thursday? So I can pick that up on Friday perhaps or and send it on to the State. That would be fine.
Stutsman: If the Board has any questions between now and then they could contact you and...
Penningroth: Sure. That would be fine. I have, could I ask one other thing? I noticed you're talking about commission members.
Stutsman: Uh-huh.
Penningroth: This just came to my attention as I was doing the annual report, which I also have to send in for the Commission. That is the recent appointees, several of them have been appointed only until the end of the year. They were appointed to finish out terms that people who resigned or who left and I also noticed that you had asked for applications to the Historic Preservation Commission and I thought, well I wonder why that is, but then I realized why that is. I don't know the procedure. The people that are on it, the recent appointees are very committed. In fact the person, one of them is a person who wrote this grant. How does that work? Do they have to reapply or what happens?
Stutsman: They use that letter, Kathy.
Peters: Everybody is, when their term is nearing the end, they are sent a letter asking them to indicate whether they would like to be considered for re-appointment or not.
Penningroth: OK.
Peters: But in the end, we go ahead and advertise.
Penningroth: Right.
Peters: Because of the timing. Every year we have some people that say no, they do not wish to be appointed.
Stutsman: I was just looking through here and both of your people who were appointed last year asked to be reappointed.
Penningroth: Good. Good that's fine. I didn't want to lose the Commission again. We had trouble keeping our members.
Stutsman: Yes you had quite a turnover last year didn't you.
Penningroth: Yes, yes right.
Bolkcom: Thanks.
Stutsman: Thank you very much.
Penningroth: Thank you.
Stutsman: Lynnette, on business from the County Auditor, will your business take long? OK, all right, then we why don't we go ahead with that then if it won't take long. This is discussion regarding earmarking funds in capital projects and rural capital projects funds. Morning Lynnette.
Deputy Auditor Lynnette Hultman: Good morning.
Stutsman: I think we've got some of the information.
Hultman: Yes this is just a reminder. Back in June the Board transferred some moneys into the Capital Projects fund and the rural Capital Projects fund and at that time they weren't specified to a specific project and in the resolution doing the transferring it stated that you would have specific projects earmarked by December 31st for those amounts. So I'm just reminding you about it. You've been thinking about projects. I've attached copies of the resolutions, transferring the money. There is also last year the resolution that was passed to earmark the rural capital projects money last year. So that's probably the same framework for the resolution. We just need the project, the completion date, anticipated completion date, anticipated beginning date and the dollar amount. So you can just be thinking about projects. The amounts we need to earmark specific projects, $108,710.26 in the capital projects fund. The rural capital projects fund, we need to earmark $13,599.
Stutsman: So we'll have to work with Mike on that.
Hultman: For the $13,000 yes.
Stutsman: So we just have to do that by the end of the year, so we'll...
Hultman: Yes.
Lacina: In the event we don't get that grant down by Lone Tree it might be wise to encumber those funds to go for the surfacing of that road down by Lone Tree. But again I think your right. Mike needs to give us some feedback.
Stutsman: Yes, maybe we could have him come in next week and then we could be thinking about how we want to earmark those Capital Project funds too. OK.
Hultman: Yes, he'll be involved in the $13,000. The $108,000 though is just for other capital projects in general.
Stutsman: I was thinking we had some of that earmarked for the Courthouse. Well we'll have to talk to Pat.
Hultman: Yes, you do but this is an additional amount.
Bolkcom: This is additional.
Hultman: You do have amounts specified for the Courthouse already.
Bolkcom: So Lynnette in terms of the capital funds we've set up in the last couple of years for Jail and Courthouse and Administration Building, etc. In looking ahead at some space needs and building needs which are really undefined in terms of the time frame when we might spend that money would it be appropriate to designate that $108,000 towards those general capital funds knowing that we don't have a date certain when that money is going to be spent.
Hultman: I think it would be best to have a general time line, time frame in mind when specifying it for a project. But you could be general in just saying Courthouse remodeling or whatever. But just have some kind of specific project and a general time frame in mind.
Bolkcom: OK.
Lacina: Perhaps Langenberg could help us with that as well.
Stutsman: Right. Do you want to deal with that then next Tuesday?
Hultman: That's just kind of up to you when if you want to think about it kind of come up with ideas on your own. Just so you have a resolution by the end of the year.
Stutsman: Yes we have... Well actually we have to do it either the 16th or the 23rd to discuss it.
Jordahl: I think what we're looking at here really as a kind of a tentative date and then we have a space needs study that's going to tell us more precisely what we might want to lean at. So I think we could adjust that date at a later time.
Lacina: Well we can also adjust the amount. If we set it aside now and decide if we need another week we can make that transfer. We just need to encumber it.
Stutsman: So Carol, if maybe we could have Mike and Pat come in on the 16th and then we can discuss how we want to handle that. Thank you Lynnette. Anything else from the Auditor?
Hultman: No.
Bolkcom: Thank you.
Stutsman: How about a short break?
Lacina: Under other under Auditor, Lynnette, I'm assuming we're going to ask for more help from the Auditor's office this year during the budget. I'm just bringing that up.
Stutsman: Yes I think we're talking about that under budget process. We are going to take just a short five minute break.
Recessed 10:42 a.m.; reconvene 10:46 a.m.
Assistant Planning and Zoning Administrator R.J. Moore: Proposals for Tax Impact Statement Study
Stutsman: Back in session. Next item on the agenda is business from the Assistant Planning and Zoning Administrator. Review discussion regarding proposals for the tax impact study statement, or statement study.
Moore: Good morning.
Stutsman: Good morning R.J.
Bolkcom: Good morning.
Moore: As you know, approximately a month, month and a half ago, the Supervisors gave your Zoning Administrator permission to send our requests for proposals on a study that would be a tax impact assessment/sustainability study. The purpose of that study is to generate data for us that tells us exactly what's happening with growth in the rural parts of Johnson County. As part of that, we told everybody that we sent a request for proposal out to that today, we would hold an informational meeting and give them an opportunity to submit in writing, and/or come in person, any questions they might have after they reviewed the request for a proposal. We did receive one set of questions in writing from Stanley Consultants out of Muscatine, Iowa, and I believe they are represented here today, as well as Snyder and Associates out of Ankeny, and Karen Countryman of Countryman Planners here in the local area, and students from the University of Iowa's graduate program in Urban and Regional Planning. If there's anybody else here that I'm not familiar with them, I apologize for that. But basically what we wanted to do today is have anybody interested come and we try to answer questions. We decided to do this in a Board setting because we know the Board is very interested in this and feels that the data that could come out of this could be something that you could use as you set policies in the future for growth in the County. That staff felt there might be some things we look at more technical that we would ask and we might miss some of the policy questions or answers to the questions that you might have as the Board of Supervisors. So therefore, I think what I'll do here is basically I would like to address the questions that were submitted by the Stanley and Consultants and... Did Cole give you copies of the handouts?
Stutsman: Uh-huh, right.
Moore: OK, maybe the first thing I should do because we want the Board's input here in case we've missed something, we generated a list of priorities that we thought the County would like to know most from this study. What kind of information we'd like to have the most. Under that was number one, the tax increase by development type. We'd like to know what kind of revenues that we generate from different types of land uses in the County. We've identified residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural. Second would be the service costs. What does it cost the County to provide certain services to users out in the County. Under that, we identified roads, schools, fire, Sheriff, parks and recreational, and Ambulance. Third would be environmental and social costs, there we identified the impacts on surface and ground water, the impact on wildlife, wildlife habitat, the impact of quality of life. And last, the impact on agricultural businesses of different land uses in the County. Is there anything there at this point that the Board would like to see added to that? Or that you can think of that would be something that you would be interested in.
Jordahl: Well I'd just like a clarification first, R.J., the very first line says tax increase by development type. Now...
Chase: That should be tax revenue increase.
Jordahl: OK, that's kind of a...
Moore: Yes. Revenue increase.
Jordahl: Because the existing Comprehensive Plan operates on the assumption, and it's something that I've heard and read repeated many times that development doesn't pay for itself. It's sort of an assumption that there wouldn't a tax revenue increase ultimately on balance. The purpose of the study really is to assess that. Is there in fact a gain...
Moore: A gain within the study.
Jordahl: If there is, gee, it would be nice to know. But if there isn't, which is the operational assumption that we have currently, then there's kind of I guess a prejudice in the phrasing of that tax revenue increase like presuming the conclusion in the question.
Moore: When I finished typing that this morning, Jonathan, I couldn't think of my own name. It should be...
Lacina: The gross tax revenue.
Moore: Tax revenue increase.
Jordahl: Tax revenue outcome, net, something like that.
Chase: As we were talking about the process, how we thought that the study would be undertaken, first the consultant or whoever is chosen would assess the increase by development type. So regardless of the cost, there is an increase in the revenue base. It may be less. So that's actually just the first plus on the balance sheet.
Bolkcom: The concurrent part about this and what's maybe missing or maybe just needs to be more clearly defined is what is the cost of providing services to various zoning classifications, as opposed to what are the service costs for roads, schools, fire, I mean we can quantify all that, we can quantify the added tax, but the question is for every dollar of taxes we get for ag ground, how much does it cost us to provide the services to that ag ground. Is it, as Steve said, less for every dollar, it's 60 cents? And for every dollar of new residential, how much does it cost to provide the services you've listed and maybe some others to those residential houses. So.
Duffy: I really think that some of the information our Auditor has been giving us, you'll find out that the non-residential farm homes are paying a substantial amount of taxes. If it says that, I think Jonathan you made this statement, that you've heard it costs money for every house built in the County, I think it is hearsay, there are other groups that just argue the other way and probably have proof.
Stutsman: Well, that's the purpose of this whole study, is to get at those kinds of...
Duffy: In this County are we going to keep in mind the impact on the roads? We have 24,000 acres of government property, Coralville dam, the folks that are using our roads there. Lake MacBride, for example, draws a lot of people, what are you going to do with that impact statement? Is that going to be in the study? I think it should be if we're talking about people using the roads.
Jordahl: I think what we're really looking at here is trends. The non-residential utilization of the roads in the area of the north corridor, for example, is part of that picture. That will continue regardless of what homes are built there. But additional homes are going to put additional traffic on those roads. The question that we're looking at is the correlation of increases. Tax increase by building type, what is the relation between increase of homes and the increase in service costs. So if we approve more developments, what infrastructure costs are we going to incur as a result. How do those balance out.
Moore: I think the way Joe phrased it was very good. That different uses require a certain amount of service and a cost that we must pay. We generate x amount of revenues and taxes from them. That would be a good way to look at it, and that's the way we'd like to see it when it comes out of this study, is that way. Most of the studies I'm familiar with have done it that way. You generate a dollar in taxes from ag ground, you spend 60 cents, residential, you generate a dollar, you could spend somewhere plus or minus that dollar. Depending on what the situation is for that use. Then what services you are providing. So yes, that's exactly what we'd like to get out of this, Joe. And to find that way so it's easily understood. We can work on these, we have time. The request for proposals aren't due until January 9th. So when we come out of here with your concerns and the questions that are brought to us by the consultants, we will try to summarize those and feed those back to them and yourselves as well, to make sure that we're on base with you, that what you're going to get out of it is something that you want.
Stutsman: That's good.
Jordahl: The water issue under number 3, impact surface and groundwater, is to me, in part, fitting under service cost, even though it's not a direct service provided by the County at this point. There is monitoring and so forth, but there is the question, what you might call an infrastructure cost to the private homeowner, so that this isn't just a question of is the groundwater getting polluted, but how much groundwater is there and at what point, give an increase in density population are we going to have the need for some other approach to the issues of water and wastewater. That to me is sort of a service cost issue, not just an environmental impact issue.
Stutsman: Do we want to deal with that in this study?
Lacina: I don't think the geological survey is able to calculate the volume of under, subsurface groundwater, but I think that you have a point and it's going to be a little bit difficult to determine what actually has an assignable dollar value, versus what may have an assignable dollar value in the future.
Jordahl: Well sustainability is the question, not necessarily dollars. We're talking about trends, we have currently underway a study of the Silurian Aquifer to sustain development in the North Corridor area. That's part that ought to be designated specifically as part of the task here is to correlate the cost of continued development with the groundwater resources in the area.
Bolkcom: I see it as a separate issue.
Stutsman: I guess I do too.
Bolkcom: But I do think there's a private component to this. That's those costs, if I live in a subdivision in a homeowners association and I'm paying for some water stuff, I'm paying for the road, whatever. There's some private costs of living in these subdivisions. For example one of the things we say is we don't take care of subdivision roads, we're proud of that. But there is a cost to the homeowner to do that. It doesn't show up in their tax bill but it shows up in their payment every month or however often they do that. Whether or not we want to try and do some calculation of what's the average cost of being in a homeowners association for roads and...
Stutsman: I guess I see that as a separate issue too.
Duffy: That's a separate issue.
Stutsman: I would like to keep this focused on County costs.
Lacina: Homeowner's association may say concrete pavement, in which case... That's kind of in their discretion which would be...
Bolkcom: But it's one of those hidden costs of living in the country.
Stutsman: It is. Another hidden cost is the impact that continued development has on Iowa City. But I don't think we want to get into that. Because they talk about continued development in the North Corridor impacts Dubuque Street and what they're going to have to do to handle that increased traffic, I mean coming into Iowa City. But I see this as.
Bolkcom: I was just throwing that out as, it's a cost we could define if we wanted too. I think it's difficult how to define how much water is left in the aquifer and as it goes up and down how many more houses... Hopefully that study that we're doing is going to give us that as a separate issue.
Stutsman: Right.
Duffy: I want to say something about this. We're getting into land use planning because it's been said that some people would have everybody build inside the corporate limits of Iowa City. Now if we're going to start talking about groundwater I would like to know the impact of the water Iowa City's new water plant out of the Silurian Aquifer, which is the best water and then you'd have to have that impact statement too. Now if we're going to get into groundwater and I think your right Sally.
Stutsman: I think that's just what we need to stay focused on.
Lacina: Whoever does the study, hopefully as they go through if they identify problems, be it location of an industrial site away from the interstate, there is going to be a resulting impact. Maybe there is a... We have a policy we could change which would reduce that impact and put it closer to the interstate instead of having semis drive 20 miles out on our roads. I think those are footnotes that as they go through they might identify be aware of homeowners subdivision road might be something you want to look at, be aware of things that they see that might be additional costs and changes that we could make that down the road might spring off another study. Would that be a suggestion that would be feasible.
Jordahl: You know I think what we're talking about isn't so much sustainability as it cost. We're talking here about taxes, the cost of providing services and then kind of an environmental set of footnotes about impacts, more of an afterthought. The title for this might then more appropriately be not a sustainability study but sort of like a tax impact study or something like that. Because if we're not going to look at the level of the aquifer, for example, then we're not really talking about sustainability we're talking about cost.
Bolkcom: I agree.
Stutsman: I would agree too. I thought this was a tax impact study, that's what I thought we were limiting it to.
Moore: It is. It is.
Stutsman: OK should we change it then to tax impact study?
Bolkcom: Yes. And to comment on the point three on here. I like trying to do this, but I would be interested in some feedback from the consultants. I think, I don't know how you do that. I think it's really, really a challenge. Maybe R.J. has some ideas on that.
Moore: Well some of the... I think the first two, all the items in it or the first two things can be quantified. We have data on that. We have a history of it, it can be quantified. The environmental and social costs, those are more difficult to quantify but they can be addressed. Those issues are very important and they can be addressed in some manner to identify that as you do a certain type of development, say typically known as the sprawl development as you do that. The impacts on wildlife and wildlife habitat are gray, but if you are still growing and are utilizing some kind of conservation subdivision design you can minimize those impacts, but the impacts are still there. We feel that the chosen consultant if we go with that can address that in some manner. They may not be able to quantify it as easily as we can the others because we have numbers on those. But they can be addressed and we think that's information that you need to know.
Stutsman: Yes, and I would be interested in getting that information too.
Jordahl: Well let me modify my suggestion then, how about a development impact study. Because you are talking about things there that aren't money under number 3.
Moore: Well, I'll call it anything you want.
Jordahl: Well, I think you raise a good point. Those issues should be addressed. They're part of the question so if the question is bigger than tax we should say it as...
Bolkcom: It seems to me though, one needs, if I were going to do this I would want to have a specific example to say how does this proposed subdivision or this proposed industrial park impact on surface and groundwater, wildlife habitat, all of these other measures that we have. To try and do a more generic statement I think becomes because they all have different impacts on various elements here. If we're going to have a subdivision go in next to an active confinement area, it might have a negative impact on ag business. If there's no ag business there, it's not. I think our consultants are going to want us to define as specifically as possible what we're after here. I think that these are harder to quantify, should be quantified, but unless we have a specific example, I think would be difficult.
Stutsman: I guess I'm going to ask the consultants is this enough direction or do you need more definition? Because I'm almost thinking give this to the consultants and let them come up with a...
Moore: If I could interject before you... You could get anything you want for them, it's the cost. The more you want the more they're going to charge you, because it's going to take more time. Certain things as we've noted are more difficult. We know that we're a governmental entity. Resources are very valuable for us and scarce and that we have to use our money wisely. We know over the years that the Board has been concerned about these things. So if you want more, we have some very reputable firms here. Stanley and Consultant does planning worldwide. Snyder and Associates I believe may be national. Karen Countryman is very respected in Countryman Planners and the University of Iowa's graduate students have recently within the past year had a successful project with this downtown shuttle bus. That was the students that did that. So if you ask them, they'll give it to you, but you have to be prepared to pay for it, what your asking for. So if there is something we can work out, we're willing to take your direction and try to put into the priorities of what you want, anything you would like as to the Board sees fit, we'll do that and we'll ask that of them. Then when we get the feedback for the requests for proposals and what it will take the generate that and then maybe you have an opportunity to look at that and see how it breaks down cost-wise.
Jordahl: You know there is something I would like to get out of this R.J. too is starting from you as a professional planner yourself. I would like to have a bibliography of existing works that address this question. I'm sure you have a lot of that information available that you could give us and if we choose to pursue it, then it's available. Similarly I guess I would ask that from the consultants to help us look into this in terms of what's already been done. Are we reinventing the wheel here. Let's have as broad a base of knowledge as we can get to start with.
Stutsman: I'm confused. Why a bibliography? I mean as part of this study you want a...
Jordahl: Yes. A bibliography of additional work that bears on this question. Yes. I would like to address that.
Lacina: Well I guess we're paying for research, which I suppose we could just do ourselves by going up on the net or looking at planning (inaudible).
Jordahl: We could do all kinds of things ourselves.
Lacina: A greater concern would be to me, so that this would be consistent with the State that's going to do a similar thing statewide, so that we can compare our numbers to say Linn and others and see how we do rank and some comparative numbers. We may pull up, a suggestion would be to pull up some of the legislation that they're looking at in doing a similar study, so that this could be a component of it and give us some comparable numbers.
Jordahl: I guess I think that this information probably would not involve research on the part of these firms or on R.J.'s part. This information is probably one of the things that is readily available and they could just simply impart to us if we requested it.
Lacina: Well lets just direct staff to take a look and see if they could find something and then we won't have to pay a consultant to do it.
Moore: Similar studies.
Lacina: Yes, if there are some similar studies.
Bolkcom: Well I guess it raises a question really about, there are 2 differing opinions about what pays and what doesn't pay. We want to try and substantiate that for Johnson County. That's what this is about it seems to me.
Stutsman: Right. Right.
Bolkcom: So future decisions can... Whether we're going to have for example impact fees would be an outgrowth. If something is not paying it's way, we have some information to say well maybe the developers should kick in money to pay for the roads because our study shows that every other taxpayer... That's the kind of thing it seems to me that trying to nail these numbers down specifically for Johnson County... I guess the question that Steve raises, if the State is doing a study like this, I wasn't aware, I don't know what time frame there is on that. Is that something that would be useful to us as a precursor to this?
Lacina: It's a long ways down the road that they're just discussing it now. The other concern though, be careful, to the consultants. Don't try to guess what we're going to use this for. Because a cost analysis of subsidized housing or your fire districts or some of those things will not show a quote financial benefit, just hopefully they'll just do the study and then we'll talk a look at it and see what to extrapolate. Because there are many areas in this County that will not or every carry their own weight in terms of human services functions and things that we do bring people in. So I think what you've got is a good skeletal work that will probably take components of it and flesh it out later.
Stutsman: Any other...
Lacina: But I support what we're doing.
Bolkcom: But the question I guess on service costs, we don't have any, we probably have some subsidized housing out in the County but I don't know where that... Somebody could have a voucher and rent a house outside of the City I guess. I don't know how that works OK. That would be a question and human services are not listed here as a service cost. I think we need to be as clear as possible about what we want here and I think as narrowly focused as we can get to hold down the costs...
Stutsman: I would agree.
Bolkcom: ...and to give these folks some guidance. Are human services costs something that should be included here?
Stutsman: I guess I would say yes.
Lacina: If it's identified as a cost and an effect of development.
Moore: We'll include that.
Lacina: OK, so going back to this sheet we'll include that factor and then we'll stay with pretty much what's on this page, is that acceptable?
Stutsman: Maybe change the title to development impact study.
Bolkcom: What about courts, what about the court system? We've had Sheriff does that include courts? When you start adding stuff you look at everything we do, the planning department, Planning and Zoning.
Jordahl: I wonder if, courts, they probably wouldn't be a differential effect of rural versus urban development for court costs would there?
Bolkcom: You could probably do a per-capita cost or something per number of these.
Lacina: Is court cost a function of development.
Jordahl: It's rural development. I mean we're looking at development we have any control over, which is rural development.
Bolkcom: Or do you just want to look at physical stuff like roads, services that we know absolutely go to...
Lacina: Let's start with that.
Stutsman: Yes, because I'm concerned with Human Services, we cover Human Services for the entire county, just not the unincorporated areas and so I think it's going to be hard to quantify that more than anything else.
Moore: Well they could do a brief... It would be we spend X amount of money per year on Human Services and based on our population we have a per-capita expenditure regardless. So you could just do an across the board, I don't know how accurate it is. They may have to qualify that with because of the nature of how we do things in the County as opposed to City of Iowa City we actually consume less of that. There might be an average there that we spend on every person in the county, but maybe the city dwellers actually receive a larger share. Well again I know they're more than capable of looking at anything you want.
Lacina: I don't want to throw a real wrench into this, but are you going to have them break them down by fund? Rural fund? I mean probably not?
Stutsman: I think we need to...
Lacina: let's just stay with what we've got here, because otherwise it will become so complex that...
Jordahl: Well the roads, I mean roads is up there. Roads is going to be a rural fund.
Lacina: That is one component of the rural fund.
Bolkcom: Yes they're going to have to look at that.
Stutsman: Do we want, is there impact on libraries?
Moore: Well...
Bolkcom: Well, I think there is. You have to maybe look at all of the things we fund in the rural fund and say these are attributed to people that live in unincorporated areas, because that's the only way we can spend the money on, solid waste, we have a little bit there.
Moore: I'm sure they would address that, that because of our situation we don't provide rural water or sewer. We don't provide rural wastewater or solid waste. That's as Joe noted earlier those things are picked up by the homeowners associations or the private individuals as they have an opportunity to live there. We tried to keep it fairly simple. There's so much you could ask for it keeps driving up the costs and we know that your in the middle of your land use planning and plus some very comprehensive planning for the County as a whole and that the basic information which we tried to identify and put on this list we felt had a higher priority. Again that's I think we've talked about it last week Sally is that we only have so much resources, so what is most important to us to know? We don't have to ask them to give us an actual breakdown in the library, but they can address that.
Lacina: Except that's a contract we negotiate. It really doesn't reflect the true costs.
Stutsman: I'm thinking we're almost getting too detailed and I think when we look back at what our original plan was, it was just to get a good a basic kind of what kind of costs we're talking about with increased development.
Jordahl: Schools I would point to as an area where as Steve brought up which fund are we talking about and the County doesn't pay for schools. So the money is going to come from the townships or the towns where the schools are and so that... Cost I think should be assessed here, it's appropriate, but the question of where those costs are assessed is obviously going to be part of the study.
Moore: Well, I think they can look at I'm not in the town but I'm part of the Iowa City School District and X amount of my taxes goes to the school.
Bolkcom: Right.
Jordahl: So there is a school impact...
Moore: They can identify that and then what it costs the schools to provide service to each student.
Jordahl: Part of that question is how do those school districts feel about rural growth. Maybe they want it, maybe they don't want it and that's part of the question too.
Lacina: Not in this study. This study deals with dollars and not things...
Stutsman: Charlie did you have a comment?
Duffy: I say the more students you have in a school district of course you get some State funding. Again going back to roads and the Sheriff's Department, for example, with a tremendous amount of government acres we have in this county and you and I have been out on one of their drownings, for example our Sheriff's department handles drownings and patrols their area out there because most of what we're talking about that Corridor. First responders a lot of times they go and respond to the people that use these 24,000 acres plus lake MacBride and that has to be taken into account too. But I think before we talk school, we ought to have some school people on this and if there is going to be a committee of some kind we want to try to do it with the cost per dollar-wise.
Moore: Well the consultant would do that Charlie. They'll contact the schools, they'll find out how much money they receive for students, what it's costing them to provide the service to the schools for education. They'll do that and they'll quantify it for us, that's numbers that are readily available out there for us. So they would do that. But at this point, no, this is a study, there will be... I don't believe there will be any committees. You will pick a consultant to do a study for you. Maybe it's something that you can think of and how we want to... What we want on this and just to move things forward. We'll here, I maybe addressed the question that came in, written responses. The first question was who will be the ultimate user of the study? We feel that it's the Board of Supervisors and other County offices. This will be a public document and will be made available on request to any and all users of it.
Duffy: Where did this come from?
Moore: This, we answered it. Stanley and Consultants submitted these questions. Who has been a key proponent of this study? That's been a number of individuals, both private outside of the governmental entity and governmental offices, our office the Commissioners and the Board of Supervisors, we feel has wanted to be a proponent of this. What answers are we looking for? Basically I think we've just been discussing those as the priorities and those are stated in our part one, purpose. Will copies of the Johnson County comprehensive plan be made available for consultant use and yes that would be the current plan. We're not going to submit the proposed land use plan. We want them to deal with the current plan that you haven't adopted.
Duffy: I've got a question to ask about that. Wasn't the plan adopted in 1983, it started back in the seventies, but I think...
Jordahl: That's the North Corridor.
Duffy: But I think we're going on the North Corridor, that's where we're talking most of it.
Jordahl: The North Corridor Plan there, where this is the comprehensive plan was adopted in January ‘79.
Moore: Rick says January of ‘79. The other question is what other study plans or documents will be made available. We will make available all County documents that are relevant to this study that we have access to. What's the source of the funding for this project? At this point it's coming out of public tax funds. We're not sure whose budget it's coming out of yet. That will have to be decided once you receive those proposals and see what it's cost is. How many consultants will be asked to make oral presentations, and we figure a maximum of three. How many consultants received the RFP? We sent out 15, 10 to private to planning consultants, 2 engineering firms, 2 to COGS, and the last one the graduate students at the University of Iowa Urban and Regional Planning Program. What is the budget for this project? At this time we haven't defined the budget. We felt that that we didn't want them to give us answers to the proposal based on what they thought our budget was. We wanted them to look at what were asking and give us an honest response of what it's going to take them to produce that study for us. So we haven't defined the budget yet and I think you won't do that until after you get the proposals back in and you determine whether or not the benefits that you receive from that study are worth the cost.
Jordahl: I want to clarify my earlier comments regarding what Charlie was saying, I think Charlie's right, I think that the North Corridor Plan is very important to this process and whether we're looking at the ‘82 one was superseded by the ‘96 North Corridor Plan, but still that's a central piece of this is what most developments going on anyway.
Moore: Uh-huh, yes... and then that will be made available too so...
Stutsman: Any other, Oh... go ahead.
Moore: ...at this point I guess... that's the questions we received I know we have representatives here and I'll move aside and see if they have any questions they'd like to ask either the Board or staff.
Lacina: Before you do, just timetables, assuming that we say it's a go, do it, how soon will we go out for proposals and how soon do you expect them to come back?
Moore: The proposals are due back January 9th and by the week of the 16th is when we plan on bringing in the 3 for presentations...
Lacina: OK...we'll need to keep that in mind when we do our budget stuff ...
Stutsman: Uh-huh.
Lacina: , and that was what I was after timeline wise. Thanks, R.J.
Moore: OK... and then there's the 3 day period that you'd interview and bring them in and then after that you'll decide.
Stutsman: Uh-huh.
Moore: We'd like them to get started as soon as possible, because we know that we've got no land use planning document and we figure if we could get by spring time, late spring early summer, that would hopefully be in time to help you determine some of the policies in the future land use planning
Jordahl: Uh-huh
Planning and Zoning Intern Cole Chase: Also I had one last thing regarding the bibliographical research you wanted on existing studies, did you just want rural counties... I know Wisconsin has several studies, counties in Wisconsin have several, but they provide the different levels of service, like the Wisconsin counties that I've seen the studies on, they actually maintain the roads and provide sewer. So...
Jordahl: Uh-huh
Chase: What sort of, obviously you're not going to want (inaudible) study for Los Angles, but ...
Jordahl: Well I think comparable, you know, comparable situations would be the thing. Since were dealing with rural area and suburban development in it, it may be that a county which has considerable spread out development in it, you know Wisconsin has to be characterized by a lot of development spread out through out the county...
Stutsman: Are we in agreement to include a bibliography in this?
Chase: This was something I was going to do anyway.
Jordahl: He was going to do this...
Stutsman: Oh, OK fine, fine
Jordahl: I guess I'd to see it in state were we have comparable laws.
Bolkcom: Yes, I mean
Chase: In state.
Jordahl: Once you jump across the border...
Chase: I've been in contact with Les Beck the Secretary of the Iowa Chapter of APA and he's very interested in the project we have going here, because none exist currently in Iowa.
Lacina: Really.
Stutsman: OK.
Jordahl: Yes, I think the problem occurs nationally, the problem will sprawl, and this idea of urbanization is an on-going process nationally and I think if studies have been done... That's what I'd like to see.
Lacina: So Cole will you work with him on this project too?
Chase: Yes, well just through the office as well.
Lacina: Good.
Stutsman: Charlie.