Bolkcom: Item F. Discussion regarding strategic planning, reorganization of the Board of Supervisors Office. This item is on as kind of a follow-up from kind of an ongoing conversation of the Board about our office staffing and essentially how we're organized. One of the strategic goals of the Board has been basically looking at it's own office and how we're organized to manage our workload. I put this back on today to kind of get back to that in terms of talking about our work load. Particularly in light of the budget process beginning, our Deputy Administrative Assistant it seems to me the Board's goal is to have her be more involved in the budget, which is a good thing. But in having her shift her focus to do that full-time, she's got a number of other things we've had Deana do for us, including helping staff the Empowerment Zone Board that's developing, as well as a number of other things. I guess I'm wondering if we could possibly talk about maybe a more structural approach to this, where the Board would actually designate 2 of it's members to act as kind of a, there might be a better term for this, but a personnel committee for the Board to basically interact with the Board staff on issues related to workload, if the Board has got projects, seeing that they're getting carried out. But basically, ID a couple members of the Board, now and maybe in the future, to basically ride herd on the workload and insure that things are getting done. One of the challenges over the time that I've been on the Board and I think other members would agree, is that having 5 bosses it's kind of a challenge for our staff from time to time to know exactly what the priority on a given project is. I think if the Board could maybe try and develop a structure to work, kind of focus itself through say a personnel committee or a staffing committee of the Board, not only could deal with workload but other issues that may from time to time come up with staff that need our attention. So I throw that out as maybe a starting point to talk about what we need to do here. The additional thing I think we need to do as a Board is maybe try and develop a laundry list of those priorities that we have right now project-wise. Budget is certainly one of those. The Empowerment question, we need to revisit how we're going to staff that and who is responsible to do that. But there are probably some other committee kinds of things that come up from time to time that we call on our staff to help us with. Maybe we need to develop now a list of what are our priorities the next few months for our staff, so that it's clear.

Lacina: I think we need to be real sensitive to the needs of all of the Board members. For example, I may have a MECCA Finance.... well, I do tonight. I've got a meeting and they'll be some projects like that which will be really important to me, but not so to the rest of the Board. But for the budget cycle and the needs of the office, I'm going to suggest we start off with a Chair and Vice-Chair being a quasi-office operations committee. In December, we then take a look and appoint each year, I would assume it would be the Vice-Chair and Chair, but it may be somebody else. But anyway, 2 people who would basically work with Carol and staff and put the operations of the office together.

Bolkcom: All right.

Lacina: Obviously there are going to be times we'll need a letter done or something, or this or that, but especially the workload of the budget, I think it's going to be pretty tight this year. A lot of work coming at us and we'll need a lot of prioritization. Part of the problem with the budget as we set this system up, it's going to take a lot of work this year. A lot of stuff in the future will not be quite as difficult. But all the data entry and all the foundation and things that are taking place now are really critical for the future. So I think it's going to be a very busy fall.

Bolkcom: Yes.

Stutsman: I don't have a problem designating for this year the Chair and the Vice-Chair. I'm concerned somewhat if we say that that should be the committee. We all have interests and expertise in certain areas and I would almost rather have it be open to anybody. I think the Chair should be one of the people on the committee, but have it open to whoever is interested in being on the committee as the second person. I think Joe and Jonathan will do it just fine this year, but I'm thinking down the road there may be somebody that wouldn't be as effective or as good as being on that who would be Vice-Chair.

Lacina: Oh, I agree with that. Yes.

Stutsman: That would be the only concern that I would have. The other thing is that I was wondering how were are going to work communication with this for the rest of the Board, so that we're all in agreement with what is being set up and what's done. I don't know if we put it on as a regular agenda item on our informal meeting, just to have an update and to discuss where we're going. It's that old issue of there are 5 of us, are we all going in the same direction? To make sure that there is an agreement and communication on that.

Bolkcom: I think that is the real challenge of this, where we have had... This may be an imperfect way to approach it, but at least it puts a little bit more... It designates a couple of people to say when a problem does arise or a question does arise, there are a couple of people that are going try and get to the bottom of it and figure it out and help the Board move over that hump. One of the things I thought about was maybe trying to develop, and I haven't done this but will, is kind of a checklist of all of the things we're working on project-wise and could have places for other... Maybe have the Board, each of us try and prioritize 1, 2, 3, through 10, or whatever, those issues that we see and then get together and talk about those. We could do those independently. Talk about those and maybe that would be the basis for the first conversation that we have with staff about here is generally what the Board's direction is right now. It's the kind of thing that could be done every couple of months or quarterly where the Board could kind of on a regular basis sit down and go... Frankly, have the staff kind of keep us up to date on their workload. One of the things that... We clearly have some direction, but we also have a staff that's doing a certain workload now and it probably would be helpful for us to have a good sense of how they're spending their time as well as it relates to what our priorities are, so we can get on the same page with that. Maybe have our staff do a similar checklist of the top 5 things that are taking up all of time. Is it the phones? Is it people coming in off the street that want to talk to us? Is it a person...

Lacina: That's really going to change though because when the assessments go out for awhile we get a lot of people at the door wanting to know where the Assessor's Office is.

Bolkcom: Sure.

Lacina: Or taxes. I'm almost wondering, maybe we'd want to go to one, maybe just the Chair or one designee of the Board to work for operations. Then, if we have a question we know go to... It's not fair for me to go to Carol and all of us to go to Carol, who is not empowered as an elected official. If we had one or 2, it doesn't matter, just so we know who to go to to get, as you said, on the list. How do you feel about it?

Stutsman: I think it should be 2.

Lacina: 2? OK.

Stutsman: Yes. I think it's always a working situation.

Bolkcom: All right.

Lacina: So informally?

Bolkcom: Pat looks like he wants to say something. Yes? You don't have to.

White: I can. A couple of thoughts. Again, I want to caution you about the term committee and the formality there, because again by law a committee is going to need agendas and minutes and you're really talking about a different relationship here. The terminology I would probably recommend is staff liaison. I think the model that you've used for you new Human Resources Administrator is analogous and I think it's worked pretty well. One of the observations that I would have about communications is you could, as a way of formalizing a staff liaison communication, you could just put it on your agenda every week, whether you need it or not. Among the reports would be reports from staff liaison, Supervisors, and you could even go a step further and put an agenda item routinely where you Administrative Assistant reports to you. So that without having to call attention to any particular item she's got an agenda opportunity just to tell you about any issues that are out there.

Lacina: That's real good because then we're all here and if there is a weighting or priority...

Bolkcom: Right. And Carol doesn't hesitate to do that when there are items. But a regular diet of it would be good probably. Just kind of institutionalize it.

Lacina: So can we just give the liaison task to the Chair and Vice-Chair until the end of the year and at the end of the year when we do our committee assignments we'll just come up with a liaison responsibility, along with Road Committee and all of the other stuff, and appoint two at that time.

Stutsman: I think that sounds like a good idea.

Bolkcom: OK. So the liaison group will... Maybe what we can do is put together kind of a checklist and have members of the Board fill it out in terms of some priorities that you want to focus on. I would say maybe we'd have staff do the same to give us kind of a real time view of how they're spending their time now. We can then get together as a group, all of us, and just review that and give some direction to the liaison committee.

Lacina: I don't see much difference in operations other than we, the 5 of us, will know a little better.

Bolkcom: Yes.

Stutsman: I think this is great just to kind of have some order to this, because even after being on the Board for almost 4 years, I'm still not real sure if I have something to do if I go to Carol, if I go to Jo directly or whatever. Especially when you start talking into... typing a letter is no big thing, but if you have a bigger project that you want to work on, how do we work on or get that taken care of?

Lacina: Well, Empowerment is going to be a big one.

Stutsman: Yes.

Bolkcom: Yes, we need to clear that up.

Lacina: It has been and we're going to have to figure out how to handle it.

Bolkcom: Good. Carolyn?

Stutsman: I was going to say, from one Board member's perspective, I'm real interested in being informed about the progress and stuff. So I would really hope that we could have it as a regular agenda item just so that we could all be informed of what the liaison group is working on and things.

Bolkcom: That would be great. I think it's only going to work if we have good communication on this.

Stutsman: Uh-huh.

Bolkcom: Because we don't want people to feel left out, because I think that will be bad for it. So maybe we could...

Stutsman: Or...

Bolkcom: Go ahead.

Stutsman: Yes. I was going to say or to give their input too.

Bolkcom: Right. Carol, you had a comment?

Peters: Yes, I would just encourage you on your list to make it as complete as possible, because we certainly don't want to spend your time, waste it, in reporting on day to day activities. Number one. Number 2, I thought last year, or 2 years ago, that you and Kim had developed a timesheet like...

Bolkcom: We did.

Peters: What ever...

Bolkcom: I don't think it ever... I think it was just developed and it never was utilized. That's my recollection of it.

Peters: OK.

Bolkcom: Maybe we could find that.

Peters: That's what I was going to ask you, if perhaps you might have a copy of that that we could utilize.

Stutsman: What was it?

Bolkcom: I wouldn't know if I would have a copy of it. I've got a place I know kind of a general area to look maybe.

Peters: Well, I just thought it would save time rather than reinventing the wheel.

Bolkcom: What did you mean by timesheet?

Lacina: Oh, the form that everybody sat down and filled out? Is that...

Peters: No. No.

Stutsman: We're getting to the real problem. Joe doesn't know what you're talking about.

Bolkcom: No, I know exactly, I'm just being facetious. I know exactly what you're talking. It was a legal piece of paper. It was a legal page.

Peters: Yes, and at that point in time the Board members wanted to know, or some of the Board members, I'm not sure if it was a majority or not, wanted to know how the staff was spending their time. We were supposed to...

Bolkcom: Right. Right.

Stutsman: Oh.

Peters: The theory was I spent x amount of time on insurance, answering the phone, helping the customer. I'm sure Pat there is a legal term for this.

Stutsman: It sounds like it's just a time study.

White: It depends on how you define time.

Peters: Yes. So that you would have a better idea of how staff was spending their time.

Bolkcom: What do you mean by time?

Peters: I mean like minutes in the hour.

Bolkcom: I don't know how specific we need to get. As specific as we can. I think if the Board has a set of priorities and the staff is doing something that doesn't relate to those set of priorities we need to figure that out.

Peters: Precisely.

Bolkcom: All right.

Peters: I think maybe by keeping track, I know at one time you had us keep track of phone calls and stuff.

Bolkcom: Right. Right. I think that was the theory.

Peters: Yes, and I think we need to give you the best information we can so that you can make a real informed decision.

Bolkcom: Right. I would agree. We should see if we can dig that up, or something close to it. The other piece is, which is down the road, is the relationship between our Human Resources Department and this department in terms of staffing. Clearly Lora has a major workload and we continue to add to it, whether or not she is going to need some more assistance at some point and how this office can support what she does. She could easily be included in this at some point.

Stutsman: That all ties into our space needs too, where we are going to put people.

Peters: Yes, just like last year you had authorized another person.

Bolkcom: Right. OK. OK. So we will leave this item as- we'll put together some sort of checklist for the Board to review and to add to and we'll see if we can get staff to generate kind of a list of things they see as their priorities right now and maybe put this on next week to talk some more about it and make this a more regular item.

Lacina: In looking at it, and maybe we did discuss adding another position, and if the Board does decide to extend it's office hours, at that point we will not have clerical staff. Just plain short. One of the things we need to discuss is how we would cover extra hours. Another thing we probably need to do is get an update on voice mail.

Stutsman: Uh-huh.

Lacina: Some of the time that's being consumed is trying to track me down when I'm down at Zoning or here or there or writing messages when they could answer the phone, and I would prefer having it be a real person that gets the initial call and then hit a button and go to voice mail, which I think would save us some time. So we probably need an update on that at some point.

Peters: The Telephone Committee, hopefully we will meet at 11:00 on the 28th. That'll be our first meeting. As far as voice mail, it pretty much is at the same point that it was before, do we spend money on voice mail now that will not be adaptable to a new phone system or do we wait and have it all incorporated? From visiting with different vendors, I'm still convinced that one of the best ways to have it is the same as DHS does. You have your main number with a human being answering that phone, but also you have what they term the back door method, where you have another number that people can call and access your voice mail directly.

Lacina: OK, but you'll give us a full report on that after the 28th sometime.

Peters: Actually, no. All we're doing the 28th is getting organized and deciding how we want to proceed as far as do we want to have vendors come in? Do we want to visit to the sites? What are the main concerns? I have obtained... this isn't on the agenda, can I go ahead and talk Pat?

White: As long as you're just reporting and they're not deliberating.

Peters: I have gotten a couple of different RFPs that agencies have sent out, one of them being the Iowa City Library. They just (inaudible) from different vendors and a lot of the features that they had incorporated in theirs or what I see as features here, the one thing that I want the committee to be able to hear the different vendors of what they have to provide us with, because not being in the telephone business I don't know all of the features that can be available, or that are available.

Lacina: We're planning in this fiscal year to do something with the phone system, right? We set money aside.

Peters: That is correct. Hopefully once we have our initial organization meeting we can...

Lacina: I know at one time, too, we had all kinds of graphic layouts of the office if we added an additional person and it appears that we may need at least part-time. Especially during the budget cycle, if Deana is dedicated to working on just budget, and obviously Carol is going to have a load with that too. In the event that we do that we may want to reevaluate the floor space, where we would put a desk if we moved the table or if we put another cubicle or whatever.

Bolkcom: All right.

Lacina: Because I doubt that we're going to want somebody in operating in Jo's desk where she's got the agenda's and everything laid out that is pretty well organized. But just something to think about.

Bolkcom: I guess finally on that, on the office reorganization, why don't we put on for next Tuesday the issue of staff liaison. We don't want to call it committee, staff liaison group, something. We'll just start putting that on regular now.

Lacina: Then the other will just be an administrative, you and Jonathan will just kind of do that until the end of the year.

Bolkcom: Yes.

Lacina: OK.

Bolkcom: All right, and maybe next week we could try and do some prioritization of our workload and I'll try and put together a form of just kind of a list of everything I can think of and you can add things to it and we can just number it and bring it back and we can just talk about it and see what people think. All right. And get some report from our staff in the next couple weeks on how they feel, on how the majority of their time is being spent or what the top 5 things they're spending their time on. Okey doke? All right, does anybody need a break? We're doing all right? Item G.

Stutsman: Well, that was a short break. I didn't even have time to respond to that.

Bolkcom: D. Discussing schedule and procedure for evaluations of appointed department heads. Boy, we're just going right at it here, aren't we? The staff met last week, we met with our staff and indicated that the Board is on track to get back to our annual evaluations which we started last year, reconstituted last year. This is on today to basically to take a look at our schedules to try and determine some schedule over the course of the next 90 days or so. A schedule of when we might be able to sit down and do evaluations on the department heads that we supervise. So we have a couple members absent today. I'm not sure that today might be the day to set the schedule. It may be easier to set the schedule today, but I'm not sure, I want to make sure that everybody can be here.

Lacina: Do you want to kick it back a week?

Stutsman: Yes.

Bolkcom: We could do it next Tuesday. Charlie and Jonathan will both probably be here. Why don't we do that just to make it easier for everybody and to respect their schedules as well.

Bolkcom: Item H. John Yapp is not going to be here this morning because of Jonathan's absence. He really wanted to be here for that, so we will reschedule that to talk about the coordinated bike trail plan later.

Bolkcom: Item I. Discussion regarding the FY 2000 budget procedures and forms. Sally.

Stutsman: Well, are the forms... I didn't think Tom was ready with those forms.

Bolkcom: I think they're still working on them.

Stutsman: Yes. I think they're still working on them. So I think we're going to have to put this on for Thursday and just leave it for then. The committee met again yesterday morning and made some revisions in the forms and Tom was still working on those, so I don't think they're ready yet.

Bolkcom: OK.

Stutsman: I was trying to think if there was anything else that we... No. Yes, they were all related to the forms, so we'll just have to wait until he gets the forms back to us and go from there.

Bolkcom: Great so we can review those Thursday morning and we have a department head meeting at 1:00 that this item is on as well. Hopefully we'll be ready to pass them out.

Bolkcom: Item J. Report discussion regarding the 509A certificate of compliance and opinion regarding health insurance fund. Carol?

Peters: Johnson County has a self-funded health insurance fund and every year the County must file a compliance certification with the Insurance Commissioner saying that your account is in compliance. I have distributed before the meeting to each of you the report and certification. If you have any questions, could you get back to me before Thursday, because Thursday I'll have the actual certification and form for the approval.

Lacina: The auditor specifically referred to $293,000 that we had for incurred debt at the end of the year that we hadn't paid out in claims. Is that a problem or is that just...

Peters: That's usually just the lag time.

Lacina: Claims action. OK, detail.

Peters: I will reiterate last year when we were in the budgeting process the Board chose not to increase the premiums at that time. The Board has not increased them for several years and I think next year is going to be the time to increase those premiums.

Lacina: We have increased the employee pool and it probably is time to review that to make sure that the...

Peters: Basically what's happening is on the administrative portion of our premium, it continues to get larger, so it decreases the amount of money available. But at one time you had, your fund was so healthy it was out of proportion and now we're getting back to the point where it is pretty much in sync, but next year definitely you will have to increase the premiums.

Lacina: I know Linn was dinged on their audit. They had a 3 million balance for their employee pool.

Bolkcom: Is that right?

Lacina: They said they had too much. We're what at about a million?

Peters: Actually we're working that down right now. We're at like 700 and some thousand. I forget the exact amount right now.

Lacina: Yes we're probably going a little the other way.

Bolkcom: We're on track to make an increase next year for sure.

Peters: Right. Basically what happens, when we get towards the end of the year the monthly claims paid goes down somewhat because your stop loss kicks in.

Lacina: OK.

Bolkcom: OK. Add that to the budget discussion. Thank you Carol. Item L. Reports. Should we jump over reports, go to discussion from the public. Any member of the public want to address the Board, any topic?

Welsh: 3 Quick things. Yesterday the Nutrition Board met and I don't know whether Charlie confirmed with all of you the date for the volunteer dinner is October the 19th at 6 p.m. I would hope that the Board of Supervisors could be there again this year and help serve. Second, let me just say I appreciate the work on the proposed pay raises and merit. I think that's great. The other thing is when you were talking about the strategic planning reorganization of the office, let me suggest another model for your consideration. In fact Carol came back in the office and (inaudible); another way is (inaudible) and that would be that you set up a policy whereby you actually go through Carol on the things rather than taking some here, some here, and some here and each of you doing that and that would involve a budgetary matter of giving Carol the authority of hiring part-time help as the workload demanded it. Because there are times when I'm sure persons you now have could not get the work done. But if you considered having that organization whereby you would really use Carol as your Administrative Assistant and she in turn would delegate responsibility to others and as she needed assistance, which I think at times she would, this would be the kind of decision you all would have to make. Do you want Carol to then say hey, we can't do that, or do you want her to respect (inaudible) but give her the authority to hire an additional part-time person to come in 2 hours, 4 hours, whatever it was to get that job done and out of the way rather than creating a backlog. I know that puts more responsibility on Carol, but I think from my observation that's (inaudible) rather than with other members of the staff or with you all. Just something for you to consider.

Bolkcom: OK. Thank you.

Lacina: Well, and she's done that. When we had Karen Lineau that was in part-time, did a great job for us, and there are times when we need to do that. We need to go out and get a task accomplished. Obviously she was filling in when Kim left, but good point.

Bolkcom: Thanks Bob.

Lacina: One of our struggles right now is just physically floor space to put the desk and have some confidentiality and phone and just simple operation things.

Welsh: I understand.

Bolkcom: Anybody else want to say anything? OK. We won't make you.

Gertrude MacQueen: I'm restraining myself.

Bolkcom: Are you? Everybody else is.

Lacina: Oh, go ahead Gert, tell us.

Gertrude MacQueen: Yes. No, I have it written down.

Bolkcom: OK. Thanks for coming. All right, any member of the Board have a report?

Stutsman: Yes. Carol and I attended the Ambulance Advisory Committee Meeting last night and wasn't... things were discussed that the Board is well informed about concerning their statistics, talking about the third ambulance in Coralville, and they're starting to work with the mobile care unit over at University Hospital. One thing that did come up is that we are going to look at the resolution concerning appointments to the Ambulance Advisory Committee that evidently has been in place for a number of years, and it just needs to be updated and looked at again. So Carol, I, and Mike, and Dr. Huss will be looking at that resolution, bringing our recommendation to the next Advisory Committee board meeting which will be in January, when we meet again. Then...

Peters: (Inaudible).

Stutsman: It was December, the first of December wasn't it?

Peters: November 9th.

Stutsman: Oh, November. Oh. (Inaudible). Anyway and then that ultimately will come to the Board ,so we'll let you know the progress of that. Carol, do you have anything else to add about things that were discussed last night?

Peters: Not really. Speaking about the Ambulance Advisory Committee, the last time that there was a resolution amending that was in '79. So it's been (inaudible).

Bolkcom: Wow. Anything else?

Stutsman: That's it.

Bolkcom: Thanks. Steve?

Lacina: I'll be in Des Moines tomorrow with my first meeting of the economic development committee. We've got 4 companies requesting over a million dollars worth of forgivable loans and grants for different innovative ideas on value-added production for Iowa and most of them are major increases in jobs. So it's going to be really interesting. We get their balance sheets, business plans, a stack of stuff which could choke a horse, but of course they have to make certain benchmark levels and projections into the future and customer demographic studies and it's going to really be interesting. The other thing is the Tax and Finance Committee is going to be meeting later on and the governor has basically attacked the counties, saying we're not doing a good job and need to have the property tax freeze reimposed upon us because we had a 2.7% increase in the county budgets across the state. He didn't really represent the facts correctly in some areas. Some counties were really strapped because of lawsuits or other things, had to make some adjustments in payroll. But I think we do need to step up and say that we think the counties have done a good job statewide. It's easy for the State to look at all of their money when they had a 20% increase in the sales tax and nobody said boo about it in one year and they put all of this money in the bank and then they're sitting there beating the counties when we come up with a 2% increase. I'm sure they will try to reimpose the property tax freeze which takes away local governments rights to provide the services which are needed. So I wanted to bring that up and we'll see what happens.

Stutsman: Joe, you were working with the Auditor's Office to get a...

Bolkcom: Tom printed out the last spreadsheet that we had from last year to show what our county budget went up and by class of property. I have that on my desk. It's just the last page that has all of the different property. Ag land, what did that go up? If you lived in Iowa City what did your taxes go up for the County? Your County portion of your tax bill. On average our taxes went up 5.2% on the total budget after 4 years of property tax freeze.

Lacina: But keep in mind, too, this last year we realize there's going to be an additional pay period where we took half a million dollars so that we wouldn't step into our reserves. That made an increase into the taxes as well as putting some money aside for buildings and capital expenditures, that if you don't do that eventually your roof falls apart, your building starts to deteriorate because your living on that depreciation. At a 2.75 across the state, that's a very minimal increase. Again the legislature and the Governor need to take a look at their own game, a 20% increase on that sales tax.

Stutsman: Well and I think we need to document too the number of things that they have passed down to the local levels that we didn't get any additional moneys to fund. I'm thinking like the Recorder's Office, all of that additional workload and not a dime was given. We can't even keep a lot of those fees that we generate to offset some of the additional staff that's required to keep that going. You know you look at the court systems. I was even thinking about the credits. Did they ever fully fund those credits for the counties.

Lacina: No.

Stutsman: They talked about it.

Lacina: And that was one of the pieces that ISAC had negotiated with on some legislation to try to get it fully funded and they didn't do that. The Treasurers, if somebody is delinquent on childcare, now isn't it they're supposed to go in and not issue them the license. Well, that really makes a lot of happy people at the counter for that department when they come in and they say well you can't have your license. All of these things, suddenly we're now charged with enforcement of these rules and regulations. Empowerment, the whole empowerment thing...

Stutsman: Empowerment. That's going to be another whole level of administration. I don't know how we can get around it and there's not a dime to implement that. Even the Mental Health, that was a whole different way of doing things, there wasn't a dime for administration of that. We had to take all of that out of what we were using for services.

Lacina: If the legislature would pass a similar piece of legislation saying that they couldn't increase their revenues any more than the counties did they would choke.

Bolkcom: Well, that's what... They have no clue what's going on in local government. They act as if local elected officials are totally unaccountable to voters. Every 2 years there is an election for County Supervisor. We're closer to the tax question than they are. None of those folks have served... I shouldn't say none. I think we've had one member serve on a school board. Branstad has never served in local government. Lightfoot served down in Texas for a couple years on a city council, but they act like we're somehow unaccountable and they're accountable. It's just, I think it's a cheap shot at counties and I think we're going to see the freeze come back. Juvenile Detention is another significant increase we have as a result of the cap on placements. So I don't know. It's just very frustrating to hear them talk like they're doing a good job and we're not. It's ridiculous. We are accountable. We stewed over the increase that we had in our budget this last year and Steve pointed out some of that stuff was planning for the future. We had a pretty conservative budget after 4 years of property tax freeze.

Stutsman: Well, and what's so frustrating is that when we have to cut services or pull back, we're the ones that take the heat when irate people come and say why aren't you doing this or why aren't you doing that and they in Des Moines sit there and they're just totally removed from it and we're the ones on the frontline. It's not...

Bolkcom: It's good ISAC's active on this.

Lacina: Yes. Phil Peterson, I want to compliment him. He's...

Stutsman: Jerry brought over that... Was that editorial going to the Des Moines Register and things.

Lacina: They put out a press release on it and I don't know who all got it.

Stutsman: I didn't know if that was going to be...

Lacina: I hope.

Bolkcom: I mentioned this I think last week. I downloaded this off the web last night and I'm going to get copied of this but there was just a new study done on Iowa taxes, the entire tax system for the state, looking at kind of an analysis of it. It indicates that mostly the sales tax, it looks at the sales tax and the income tax cuts over increases and cuts over the last 5 years and it actually indicates that people making not very much money to middle income folks saw their taxes actually increase and people making most of the money actually saw fairly significant decreases. Make copies of this, all of the talk of tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, some people did get them, but the sales tax really had a major effect on raising peoples taxes at the lower, and middle income folks were about even to paying a little bit more.

MacQueen: It's funny that line, the most regressive tax of all is that tax that comes on sales tax and yet here we go ahead on all of these things, throwing in more sales tax. It hasn't changed.

Bolkcom: No, it hasn't.

MacQueen: This discussion could have been held 40 years ago.

Bolkcom: Yes. So the Republicans over in Des Moines, we've got this diet of a tax cut every election cycle and every year in the Legislature we've got to have a tax cut. Well, here's the effect of the tax cut. People's taxes are going up, unless your really well off.

Lacina: But it sounds good. Let's put a freeze on the counties after they got the 20%.

Bolkcom: Well, and it's even hard to counter this property tax, the counties we should freeze property tax. When we start arguing don't freeze it, it makes it sound like we're out just hammering people.

Lacina: We want to raise taxes, yes. But it also takes the attention off of the State. I think that's part of it.

Welsh: Can the Board of Supervisors take out a petition against the sales tax?

Bolkcom: Hmmm.

Stutsman: I'm not ready to do that.

Lacina: That's a good question and I don't know.

Welsh: I'm saying seriously (inaudible).

Mac Queen: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Welsh: I think what Gert's asking at that point is saying hey, if that's what the facts show that that is the place you've got a sensible way of holding it.

Bolkcom: Right. Right.

Lacina: Well, the other unfair thing, while the county collects all of the taxes for the school districts and for the cities and for the County, then we do our distribution, the rural area, we're keeping about for the Iowa City taxpayer what is it 18% of their tax bill will come to us, 18 to 19. The rest of it goes is intergovernmental transfers and they're the ones, one year the cities have a freeze on them, but they're ignoring the other huge players of the property tax bill and just zeroing in on us.

Stutsman: Yes, in Branstad's release he talked about no, he wouldn't consider it for the municipalities or the school districts and yet what do we get, 23% of it and that's the one he wants to put the freeze on.

Lacina: What was the city's amendment on their budget?

Bolkcom: 59 million, something like that.

Lacina: 59 million dollar budget amendment and they're just ignoring the municipalities. However the League of Municipalities and the school systems have very strong lobbies. Apparently we aren't quite strong enough. Interesting.

Bolkcom: Back to Bob's point is I think one of the things we should do with our colleagues and the other cities on this, whether we take a stand against this or not, is to do some education about this, and maybe we need an item on this upcoming agenda about... Clearly growing counties and growing cities need more resources relying exclusively on property tax is not working, but we've only got this one other mechanism called the sales tax. We need more ways to raise revenue and maybe that ought to be a discussion about trying to get our focus moving towards putting some pressure on the Legislature about some other ways to raise revenue.

Stutsman: Because it's frustrating if we're talking about a property tax freeze, we have all of these space needs plus other needs. What's our choices.

Welsh: I understand that. I think Joe's approach is a valid one. The only reason why I raise that is not to put you on the spot, but Joe mentions about the sales tax and that kind of data and Gert mentioned what she did, maybe that's a role you all need to play. Maybe it's an educational role.

Bolkcom: I think it is. This is a real eye opener to me. Everybody's getting tax cuts. The facts are just not the case. Most people are seeing their taxes increase.

Welsh: Maybe these 2 lovely ladies from the press can get a copy of that.

Bolkcom: Yes. There's like a 60 page report that I don't have yet but I'm getting copies for everybody. Christmas presents.

Lacina: It would be good to take a look at a graphic representation at how the schools and cities did during the time we were in the tax freeze too. Because he talks about increasing taxes, well, was it the counties with a big increases. Who increased those taxes how much.

Stutsman: I understand the schools and the cities have needs too, budgets to meet, and I don't want to unload on them, but it's just not fair to just pick out on counties when we're certainly doing the best job we can do too.

Bolkcom: OK, any other items Steve? I'd had a couple brief ones. We had a meeting earlier this- was it this week? I think it was this week, or was it, no, today is Tuesday, it was last week- with the Senior Center folks, City Manager Atkins, Linda Kopping, Pat, Jonathan and Mike Foster and had a very productive meeting about some of the issues that have come up regarding space at the Senior Center for County programs, parking. I think we're going to see some movement. It was a good meeting and hopefully we'll see some positive result from it. Steve was going to take kind of a more active role in reviewing some things and I understand he toured the Senior Center just yesterday to take a look at some things so I don't know if you have anything to add to that Pat, but...

White: No.

Bolkcom: But I think we're making some progress there.

Lacina: Good job.

Bolkcom: Just another comment about Salary Survey, I'll probably make this again Thursday as we talk about this, and it's to take a quote from Pat really. One of the things I think we've done historically is we've undervalued the work we do here in County government, we've undervalued our people. I think this salary survey takes an approach to try and address that. I think probably we could continue to say even though we've made a valiant effort to do some things here by increasing people's salaries a bit, we probably still have some work to do, but I think it's a good start and I guess. I don't want to come across that we're just showering resources and money on people without some context. I think as we will see when we see the salaries of everybody printed in the paper again the County folks are probably going to continue to be lagging behind, but none the less it's a good start to rewarding our human resources in the County. Let's take a break. We have business from the County attorney. Do we want to do a motion? Then we can take a short break. Do we have anything, Carol?

Peters: No, I just want to say Janet and Mike will be here at 11:00.

White: Timing is perfect.

Peters: Pardon?

White: Timing worked out perfect.

Motion by Stutsman, second by Lacina, to enter Executive Session at 10:53 a.m. to discuss collective bargaining strategy for the Secondary Roads Department under section 20.17(3), Code of Iowa: "negotiating sessions, strategy meetings of public employees... shall be exempt from the provisions of chapter 21 (Official Meetings Open to the Public)." Roll call: aye: Stutsman, Bolkcom, Lacina; absent: Jordahl, Duffy.

Motion by Stutsman, second by Lacina, to leave Executive Session at 11:15 a.m. Roll call: aye: Bolkcom, Jordahl, Stutsman, Lacina, Duffy.

Recessed at 11:15 a.m.; reconvened on September 24, 1998 at 9:21 a.m.

(Continued in Part 4)