Bolkcom: Local option sales tax.

Lacina: Sure.

Stutsman: You almost have to. Is this on the agenda for tomorrow at the joint meeting?

Lacina: Space needs? If this passes, is that what we're going to target the local option tax for?

Duffy: Maybe.

Jordahl: The jail is a community wide thing. That's one thing that makes some sense as a joint effort. I think it's important as we look at this local option sales tax that we try to do something that is cooperative with other entities. I think there's a problem when people see you as grasping, like you're going to take Coralville's money and put into something of ours just because the mall's there. If we could find something, like Deer Creek Road that you're working with Steve strikes me as the kind of project where you've got it's a benefit to Coralville it's a benefit to Iowa City. It runs through the County. We've all got obligations there. Although it's the kind of infrastructure that has other sources of funding, it is also a common need. I'm just tossing out there the idea of a common need as opposed to a County only need as a item to discuss.

Stutsman: But everybody uses the jail.

Jordahl: Exactly. The jail's like that too.

Stutsman: Oh, OK. So you're saying the both of them are.

Jordahl: The jail's like that. Deer Creek Road's like that.

Bolkcom: There's no other source of funding for the jail. We get tons of money for roads.

Duffy: No, we really don't Joe.

Bolkcom: Well it's not keeping up.

Duffy: They really don't because...

Bolkcom: It's not keeping up. But we have millions of dollars for roads.

Duffy:...10 % of our road moneys for other places. (Inaudible).

Stutsman: I guess I would say... Pardon me?

Lacina: You're going to have a tax freeze. It's going to come down and hit you. I would suggest you do on reoccurring expense on capital expenditure.

Stutsman: Are we just going to say the jail... It's been brought up to me juvenile justice, crime prevention grant. They keep talking that we're in the final year of funding for that. We want to earmark some of those moneys for human services programming?

Lacina: Not reoccurring expenses because the counties that have been challenged on their budgets that have gotten into trouble, there were 2 this year that were challenged and did not sustain their defense, were on reoccurring expenses. If you start using local option taxes for on-going expenditures, I think you're in trouble.

Jordahl: It's supposed to be a limited term.

Bolkcom: Carol, do we have a meeting at one?

Stutsman: No.

Bolkcom: Good I just got some time. Thank you.

Lacina: I think you'll have a real difficult time going to the public for a local option tax for reoccurring expenses for something like that that they really don't understand. Now, if you reallocate funds for a jail and it frees up funds for your juvenile justice, you've got discretion to do that. I think that was one of the things that got Linn County, they had what, 9 things on the ballot. It was hodgepodge and it was so confusing I don't think people really understood it.

Duffy: Some of them they didn't need.

Stutsman: Do we want to just earmark the jail, or do we want to say County space needs?

Bolkcom: I'd say space needs.

Duffy: For the whole thing?

Lacina: I would.

Stutsman: If passed the County would get 4 or 5 million dollars a year?

Jordahl: 2 and a half I heard.

Bolkcom: It's about 2.1.

Stutsman: Was it 2.1?

Lacina: But here's the logic. Say you can build a jail and pay for it in 5 years.

Stutsman: It's a lot of money but it pales when... I'm sorry Steve... When you look at the jail...

Bolkcom: $30,000,000 in projects.

Stutsman: ...we're talking about $10-20,000,000. What's $2,000,000 a year?

Lacina: But if it passes, you can then change the project after the jail's paid off. You pay it off in 5 or 7 years and that source is there and you come up with another good meaningful project, you could continue that option tax. But the first problem you're going to have is just getting it passed. So it's going to have to really be a solid concrete...

Bolkcom: People don't want to pay for a jail.

Lacina: ...something that they can say boy there's something I'm getting.

Bolkcom: This will probably kill it.

Stutsman: You think? I would think people would say...

Jordahl: The case to be made for the jail is pretty easy.

Duffy: Either that or a bond issue.

Stutsman: I think it would be a lot less painful to have a sales option tax to pay for a jail versus... That way you're spreading it over everybody that comes to our community.

Lacina: You can sell it that way. You have a choice: one or the other. Pay for it out of your pocket, or pay for it with all these tourists and people coming in.

Duffy: I think you're right, Steve.

Jordahl: Let the people on the interstate pay for the jail. They're going to be the ones in it, so...

Bolkcom: It's so American, let's get somebody else to pay for this. It's a free lunch.

Lacina: No, let's pay for it ourselves.

Bolkcom: Jail space. What else? You want to just say space, space...

Lacina: Space needs.

Bolkcom: ...space needs. And what would they be?

Stutsman: The Jail, DHS, Administration...

Bolkcom: Court.

Stutsman: ...the court services.

Jordahl: I think prioritized space needs... Space needs is too generic. It's kind of like the jail and. The public needs to have an image. The public. We, anybody, needs to have an image that they can tie into. Space needs is kind of vacuous. It's like space. Jail is concrete.

Bolkcom: We got time to think of a...

Lacina: For the purposes of this agenda, I think we just say space needs...

Jordahl: For the agendas yes.

Lacina: ...do include jail, administrative, health, human services, are space needs. As we move down the road before next spring, you're going to need to firm up specifically where the money would go.

Jordahl: I would say prioritized space needs.

Duffy: So would I. We'd better prioritize. That's a long list. Might even say plain jail.

Lacina: Non reoccurring expenses.

Stutsman: Yes. Capital projects.

Bolkcom: Jail, DHS, Health, Courts, Admin. What else?

Jordahl: In non recurring capital projects. Jail, etc, etc.

Lacina: Ambulance? Are they going to ask. There's going to be a location.

Bolkcom: Ambulance. Yes, they're looking for a location now.

Stutsman: SEATS when we get...

Duffy: Been looking for years.

Bolkcom: SEATS. These are all multi-jurisdictional kinds of things.

Jordahl: DHS.

Bolkcom: All right. God that was easy. Anything else on local option sales tax?

Jordahl: Is there money left over?

Bolkcom: Did anybody see the news on the report releases yesterday on taxation in Iowa?

Stutsman: No.

Bolkcom: From the paper this morning. All these tax increases, or tax decreases that we've gotten in the last few years. Low to middle income people have seen no, either their taxes have gone up or they've stayed flat.

Stutsman: Is that right, Joe?

Lacina: Which taxes, because the State...

Bolkcom: Income tax and sales and excise taxes combined. If you look at those from '92 through '98.

Lacina: The State took a 20 % increase in sales tax. Did they talk about that when they talk about (inaudible) ?

Bolkcom: They do. These 20th percents. It looks like this. The middle income and then for rich people... Actually this is inverted. The richest people had... The poorest people had their taxes actually increased.

Duffy: Why?

Bolkcom: As you get to the middle 20th, they were like at zero. We had a 10% income tax decrease. These people's tax dropped, the rich people, they've just dropped dramatically. Because the 10% to somebody making $500,000 is like real money.

Lacina: In relation to their income?

Duffy: To their income. Yes, that's be right.

Bolkcom: Yes. That's how we base income tax. So it's sales tax, excise taxes, and income taxes the last 7 years in Iowa, 5 years in Iowa.

Duffy: The more you make the more...

Lacina: Makes sense.

Bolkcom: It does when you have Republicans running the show. Anyway. This is Iowa. Check out that report. I'm going to get copies of that report so you can see it.

Stutsman: Is it in the Des Moines Register?

Bolkcom: Yes.

Lacina: Let me ask, how do you change that?

Duffy: Who's it by?

Bolkcom: You quit relying so much on sales taxes for one thing.

Lacina: And go with a straight income tax?

Bolkcom: You target income taxes to people that need it.

Lacina: With no step downs.

Bolkcom: Across the board income tax cut helps people that have more money in a disproportionate way. I'll get...

Lacina: Yes, but it doesn't hurt those at the low end if you give them a tax cut. That's probably also more meaningful as far as disposable income for them. This guy up here that's pulling huge bucks you give him a cut, big deal. The guy down here that's just struggling like crazy, if you can make a cut and put another couple hundred bucks in his pocket, you've made an impact (inaudible) .

Bolkcom: But the reality of the 5 years of tax policy in Iowa income tax, which we've seen these regular cuts, and increases in sales taxes, poor people which are here, their taxes have actually increased as a percentage of income. Rich people's taxes have precipitously dropped as a percentage of income.

Duffy: Explain that why...

Bolkcom: It's not fair. We may not agree on this. If taxes should be based on one's ability to pay, and mean that's kind of how the tax system's been formulated, this is totally unfair. People don't understand this because they think we're all getting tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. When you look at the real dollars, poor people and middle income people are getting nothing.

Duffy: I don't agree with that.

Bolkcom: Anyway, you've got to see the charts. Don't take my word for it. All right, we're to k, reports. Are there any? Lunch.

Stutsman: No, I have a report.

Bolkcom: Sorry.

Stutsman: I had an Ambulance Labor Management Committee meeting yesterday. I just wanted to go over with the Board some of the things. They're relooking at their hospital clinical opportunities. They're meeting with Mercy Hospital and are approaching them about how they can make this work better. There were some pitfalls with it before, so they're going to be meeting with Mercy on the 22nd. We'll meet with University Hospital when their new medical director is in place. Also, talked about communication system needs to be updated. The University is looking at maybe putting some money into that. Steve, I need to talk to you about 911 decided not to fund a new base station. There were some questions why...

Lacina: If it's dispatch related, we can do it. If it is not dispatch related, then Miller's going to tell us no.

Stutsman: The question why the Iowa City Fire Department got funding and we didn't and Ambulance Service didn't.

Lacina: For what? Iowa City got funding for...

Stutsman: For radios or something. I don't know. But they had some questions about that. There was some talk about maybe putting an education coordinator position in place at the Ambulance Department. Initially this would be a part time positions maybe to go into full time position. They have found that the training they're offering for CPR classes and Medic/First Aid, they're getting more and more demand for that. It's a great revenue generator so we're looking at making that a separate position, administrative position with the Ambulance Department so that might be coming up during the budget hearing. They've done a lot over there as far as addressing safety concerns that have been brought to light within the department. For instance, putting in approved lighting, they've replaced some of the doors over there, they've got some new locks, they've put an exhaust fan in the garage so that's some good improvements that the staff has brought to them and that they've responded to. Next time that we meet we're going to be talking about conferences and who's going to be able to go to those conference and how do we set up an equitable way to deal with that, talking about some national conferences. Everybody has a small budget over there to go to meetings. Some people take advantage of that, some people don't. There seems to be some real benefit to going to these national meetings. But there real expensive, too. How they put a system like that into place. Also talked a little bit about increasing the education for people that run the trucks to have PHTLS, pre hospital trauma life support and the pediatric advance life support and making that as a requirement for being a medic at the Ambulance Department. It was a good meeting. Lots of good discussion and things that come up that they just are dealing with. It seems like it's a good communication tool. I think those committees are supposed to be in place for. But I just wanted to tell you about that education coordinator position and maybe be thinking about that. It will probably come up during the budget process.

Bolkcom: Anything over there on the left?

Lacina: We think we know were the 2 December 12th missing tapes are in the from the audio with the County Attorney's (inaudible).

Bolkcom: I hope he does.

Duffy: We've got to do some work this afternoon.

Lacina: Carol's going to check with (inaudible). Charlie you said you did talk to...

Duffy: I did. I think that they're up there.

Lacina: We're on for tomorrow.

Bolkcom: Good luck.

Lacina: Good luck.

Duffy: There's 7 places I should of went... 7 different things going on over the weekend and I couldn't go to all so I only went to 3 so that's my report.

Stutsman: What were the 3 Charlie?

Duffy: I don't want to prioritize these. Well they're important for public input. One of them was the Old Settler which you get a lot of in put down there. I guess you can't be every place.

Bolkcom: Did you get down there?

Duffy: No. That was one I didn't.

Bolkcom: They were looking for you.

Duffy: I bet they were.

Lacina: Morgan, you mean? I thought you meant...

Duffy: The Old Settlers.

Bolkcom: Jonathan?

Jordahl: Last night I attended the Clear Creek Watershed Leadership team which is this deal that's funded by a grant from the Leopold Center looking at what we might be able to do there. It's an interesting process of bringing together people from a variety of different walks of life. It's kind of like one of the committees that we put together for the Sensitive Areas Ordinance Review, you've got people from all different perspectives. Boy did we eat. There's a woman there... What was her name again?

Stutsman: Is it Morgan?

Jordahl: Ruth Brant, something like that. Come on...where is my name?

Bolkcom: Ruth Walker?

Jordahl: Carol Hunt. Carol Hunt cooks... Apparently last time which I had to miss and this time and going on into the future, she's cooking Iowa stuff. I've got the menu here, just to drive you crazy. Herbed oven fried free-range chicken, deviled eggs with Maytag blue cheese, Solon bacon and chives, new potato and red bell pepper salad, cabbage and apple slaw, tomato green bean and basil salad with shallot vinaigrette, pickled cucumbers and onions flavored with paria leaf, cornbread and honey butter, caramelized pure country chicken, organic shade-grown coffee.

Bolkcom: Sounds like a Congregate Meal report.

Stutsman: How come we weren't asked to be on that committee?

Jordahl: All of this stuff is Iowa and mostly just downright local... She drives around and gets this from the actual producers so this is just as fresh as possible. We were so full and happy by the time this was over we would have agreed to about anything.

Lacina: She runs down those range chickens?

Jordahl: She chases them down. She was tired too.

Bolkcom: Road kill.

Stutsman: And you had to ruin it Joe.

Duffy: Have they got goat milk in on that?

Jordahl: No goat milk in here this time. But they did have milk and cream organic from Radiance Dairy in Fairfield, Iowa. To get to the more substantive matters, we did adopt a vision statement for the watershed leadership teams. It says, I see a watershed where urban and rural residents band together to protect and restore natural resources, control flooding, and foster sound economic development to create a sustainable watershed community. The following up on the wording that Wayne Peterson provided there, he noted to us that he had also taken the liberty of submitting a pre-proposal grant submission to fund projects that we might pursue in enhancing quality of the watershed. Wayne Peterson active here. I'll make you guys a copy of this.

Lacina: Great.

Duffy: How many farmers are on the committee?

Jordahl: Let's see. I think there's 3.

Duffy: Landowners that own land (inaudible)

Jordahl: Well I think most of us are landowners among the creek. Robert Mead is one of them there. He owns land just west of Tiffin and north of the rest stop. And another guy from Iowa County that I'm forgetting the name of it right now is a hog farmer from Iowa County. He's a part of the upper part of the watershed. They have some different concerns over in Iowa County. They're not so much interested in the recreational component that we might be in Johnson County and much more concerned with the run off questions and what they can do there. The idea that is of most interest to the Board I think, is that they were talking about some way of getting people downstream to pay for the improvements, like buffer strips and stuff, that might be done by farmers upstream. So that the farmers...

Duffy: What's that again?

Jordahl: ...the farmers upstream might get the cost of installing buffer strips and various other erosion control measures defrayed by contributions by communities downstream. So like Coralville not wanting to have flooding and wanting to have a clearer Clear Creek might chip in some how to help pay the cost of erosion control measures upstream, even in Iowa County.

Lacina: (Inaudible) shouldn't you be able to get grant funds (inaudible) conservation for the installation of those control measure? (Inaudible).

Jordahl: I think that it's something like...

Lacina: So if the town picked up 20 and the fed picked up 80...

Jordahl: Exactly. If the town did some kind of small cost share. This is the concept. It has a value to people downstream. But right now there's no mechanism for communication back and forth so it's one of the group is to establish that.

Duffy: How about the federal; government with the 28,000 acres that they have. Don't you think that they should pay more of the bill after what happened in 1993?

Lacina: Well, Corps of Engineers isn't going to do that though Charlie.

Duffy: Of course they're not.

Bolkcom: Anything else?

Lacina: Lunch. Especially after that menu Johnson just read off.

Jordahl: Yes, tell you.

Bolkcom: Sauerkraut and biscuits.

Bolkcom: Is that it Charlie?

Jordahl: I guess so. MH/DD tonight 4:30 if you want to be here. I don't have to chair it this time.

Duffy: Jonathan, in case we can't make it, we got to go over this thing for tomorrow. That Farm Bureau Meeting's at 6:30. My wife has to go down there earlier, so I might... If I'm not there, explain to them (inaudible).

Jordahl: What thing for tomorrow?

Stutsman: (Inaudible).

Duffy: What?

Jordahl: You said you had to go over this thing for tomorrow.

Duffy: That's up at the County Attorney's office. About the lawsuit.

Jordahl: You want to talk to me about that?

Duffy: No. I want to study...

Jordahl: Oh yeah.

Bolkcom: Free dinner.

Bolkcom: All right, here it is. My report.

Stutsman: You have a report?

Bolkcom: I got a meeting...

Lacina: Pay your dues, get a free meal.

Bolkcom: ...weighty meeting, not a good word. Zoning Commission, last night took our grievances on commission...

Lacina: After spell check.

Bolkcom: After spell check we found a few... Actually I got to read the whole thing. There were a couple of repeated words and stuff. I felt better and I appreciate the comments about trying to clean it up.

Lacina: I just felt if we went out with something like that it's just going to really come off as unprofessional.

Stutsman: I was very disappointed with the product we got.

Duffy: I'm one of the original plans submitted that, so I'm going to work on it.

Bolkcom: The cleaned up copy, there's still some work left to do on this, the cleaned up copy was left on your seat at your desk...

Duffy: Cleaned up copy.

Bolkcom: ...recycle the old ones so we're all working off the same one...

Duffy: You mean the one she presented to us last night?

Lacina: No.

Bolkcom: We took typo... She came in... Karen dropped off a disk and a copy. Steve noted some typographical errors. Those were corrected. There were a few repeated words that knocked out. I left a cleaned up copy, that version on people's seats, on the seat of your chair, it would have been there this morning when you got here at 5 a.m.

Stutsman: With the spelling corrections.

Bolkcom: With corrections. Exactly. Pitch the other copy in the recycling bin. It looks has 2 big draft stickers on it. Note that. I just said here it is glad to get back together, we'd like to meet couple weeks very briefly. We tentatively have looked at a time on the 29th of September...

Stutsman: Actually, the 30th.

Bolkcom: No, the 29th of September. We've looked at the 29th or the 30th and they chose the 29th. Sorry.

Duffy: When is...

Bolkcom: That's an evening, 6:30 p.m.

Stutsman: That's a Tuesday.

Bolkcom: That's a Tuesday night, here.

Stutsman: What time (Inaudible)?

Bolkcom: 6:30, Tuesday, September 29th, in this room at 6:30.

Stutsman: I put it in ink.

Duffy: Does it mention the one that they voted on that we didn't vote?

Bolkcom: We're going to get together and visit. They have it, they'll have it for a couple of weeks. We said we want your help to finish this, we want your input for changes. Let's get back on the same page (inaudible) short and sweet.

Jordahl: What about our staff role in that? Are we going to have that in the agenda some time, or talk about it now.

Bolkcom: Let's have it on Tuesday. Just discussion (inaudible)

Lacina: Sounds good.

Bolkcom: All right. A couple other items, quickly. We need to continue to work on the our comp policy, comp-time policy. I don't know if we want a subcommittee or the Board to do that. But we talked about it. I don't want that to get to far away from us. Also the strategic plan. One of the things in our strategic plan was looking at our own office and how it's organized. It would be helpful now that we're moving towards the budget and stripping Deana off more to do some of those things away from some other things I think it would be helpful for the Board to talk about them. I'm thinking about putting that on next Tuesday, get back to that question. It also relates to the budget question as what's Deana's role. I think we need to get a little more direction on that.

Lacina: So is our intent, for example like empowerment, we really need to find, Deana needs to budget, right? Then we need address these other concerns as they come along?

Bolkcom: I think that's part of the conversation. She's been doing empowerment, is that reasonable be able to continue to do that.

Lacina: Is it realistic to think that we might need another half time position (inaudible) this office?

Bolkcom: I think that's part of the discussion about how the office is organized. Let's put that on for Tuesday. Maybe we want a work session at some point on it. There's a ton of things going on. I think one of the things is have our staff define what they're spending their time on. The Board probably tried (inaudible) to develop its own list of things that we see that are going on that we might want to help with and try and merge those 2. How are we spending their time.

Lacina: OK. Just real quickly. Budget is going to be a time consumer and empowerment is going to be a time consumer. They'll be some minute taking and filling in. Are there other major projects that we have been traditionally dumping on that position if we're going to look at reassessment. Let's just think about it we'll discuss it tomorrow.

Stutsman: Yes. I think that's what we need to do.

Bolkcom: I think try and generate a list by next Tuesday of like (inaudible) Committee Historic Preservation. There's all these other things that are out there.

Jordahl: The computer needs the businesses to be reviewed annually and hasn't been since we adopted the plan last year.

Bolkcom: The other item I have finally is to have Jean Schultz come in and give the Board an update on the implementation of the computer plan. How are we doing, what do we need to keep focus on?

Stutsman: I think we need to do that before we get into the budget process.

Duffy: What'd you say about the REAP Committee?, Joe?

Bolkcom: I'm just saying there's a lot of different committees that this Board tries to staff including REAP is that something we want Deana to do?

Duffy: We used to have that once a month and now its up...

Stutsman: (Inaudible) a year

Duffy: Yes, twice a year.

Lacina: A number of years ago we updated the 936 or whatever it is computer. We need to ask Jean what's the life expectancy of that. Where do we stand in terms...A lot of the stuff we've been doing has been thrust towards PC side. We also need to take a look and see if programming is still critical.

Bolkcom: That's good. I will visit with Jean and see if she could come in in the next couple of weeks under informal and give the Board an overview.

Stutsman: When we talk about this reorganization, I wonder if we should have Lora be a part of that too. How we reorganize... Just the discussion with EAP I'm wondering if that shouldn't be included in the HR budget?

Lacina: Well, the discussion of Sher as far as Wellness program under HR...

Jordahl: We need to look at the HR budget in a lot of ways... I should say Sheriff.

Peters: So are you looking at addressing the reorganization of both departments, the Human Resource Department as well as the Board of Supervisors?

Jordahl: That might be a separate discussion, Human Resources.

Stutsman: I think we should have it all at the same time.

Bolkcom: Reorganization might not be the word. But organization and how things fir together. The other item, I said I had that was the last item, here's the other item. Might like to put this on Tuesday's to get our schedules together for department head evaluations. (Inaudible). A lot of little admin. stuff.

Stutsman: No kidding.

Duffy: When you going to start doing that now Joe?

Bolkcom: Hopefully in the next month. All right, that's all I have.

Duffy: When was the last time we evaluated them?

Stutsman: Been over a year.

Jordahl: We did a rolling evaluation thing over the last year.

Duffy: Yeah, but when? Was it this fiscal year or last year?

Jordahl: It was last year, '98.

Bolkcom: We are recessed until Thursday.

Recessed at 12:22 p.m.; reconvened on September 17, 1997 at 9:17 a.m.

(Continued in Part 6)