Reconvened on October 8, 1998 at 5:40 p.m.

Bolkcom: Back to Pat. Any reports Pat under the informal meeting this evening?

County Attorney Pat White: No.

Bolkcom: Item B is reports or inquiries from members of the public. Is there any member of the public wish to address the Board this evening? OK. Item C is reports and inquiries from members of the Board of Supervisors. Does anybody have a report this evening? Charlie do you want to start?

Duffy: Well we all attended a meeting with the Coralville City Council and some other folks. I thought that went quite well. If somebody else wants to report, that's all right. Doreen Nightly, the head of the Adult Day Care decided to accept a position I think with the University and so there was a party for her. It was kind of nice to go over there. Maybe some of the rest of you (inaudible). It's kind of hard to replace a person like that because she's been doing that for several years. It's a fine program and quite a few of the people that use the program, it was pouring down rain. There was a real good crowd there and it was just kind of a nice thing to do for Doreen.

Bolkcom: Great.

Duffy: That's enough I guess.

Bolkcom: Yes. They had a nice turnout. It was a nice little reception. Doreen has done a great job with the Adult Day Care program. Was really the founder of it, and now she's moving on to some other things so good luck to her. Steve?

Lacina: We have 2 individuals interested in the Wetlands Mitigation Program which we're still waiting to get more information from the state but they'll go up to what was it 90% of the value of the to get them out of the floodplain is what it amounts to. So we have 2 individuals interested in that. Again we're working with the state on that. Also we met on the Deer Creek/Mormon Trek JCCOG Committee and we'll be making a recommendation before the end of the month. But the numbers continue to get higher and higher. We're at I think 8.4 million with a question on one of the bridges on 965 extended. We briefly discussed funding but primarily what we'll do is rank the 2 projects and then make a recommendation towards the end of the month.

Bolkcom: Great thanks. Jonathan.

Jordahl: I took a trip into Des Moines Monday this week to attend the meeting of the legislatures commission on urban planning and sprawl and agricultural protection. Heard some wonderful presentations from the City of Cedar Rapids on annexation. A significant fact to come out of that is that although we are concerned about the annexation of farmland around cities, the farmland that is consumed by rural rezonings which tend to be larger lots, it consumes more lot per house, so in terms of the same number of houses being built if you build them in the city it takes up far less land than it does in the rural area. They had some statistics on that that were quite impressive. I'm circulating those materials, Steve has them I believe at the present time. I also heard a presentation from Robert Frielich who is head of Frielich, Lightner and I can't remember the third name Planning Organization that is doing Cedar Rapids Comprehensive Land Use Planning for them. He gave such a rapid fire presentation that it was like taking a college course in the theory of land use planning and controls in an hour and I couldn't take notes fast enough to understand what that guy was talking about. But there again is an article or 2 that was passed out and so that's again circulating of the Board to read. It might make sense for us to consider inviting him to come and speak to us at some time. I'm not sure what the price would be but he's really something. There was discussion from a law professor at Drake about the right to farm laws in the state being in some question now because of the agricultural areas law being struck down by the Supreme Court. It seems that the same, Pat you may want to address this, I don't know if it may be an agenda item later. But the same issue of protection against nuisance suits for farmers that was the problem with the ag areas law is also a part of the hog confinement law that was passed last year and so that's in some question as well. This could have huge implications for us down the road. Let's see. I want to update the Board on the idea of having a joint meeting with the city of Cedar Rapids. I've talked with 3 of the Cedar Rapids City Commissioners, Donald Thomas, Ole Munson and Dale Todd and they're all in favor of this and they're going to be going forward to talk to the mayor about it when she returns to town. They all seem real positive about the idea. R.J. left the room so on his behalf I'll remind everybody about the Upper Midwest American Planning Association Conference that's going to be right up the road in Cedar Rapids too and we haven't really talked about what our policy on that is. We were going to support it, are we going to encourage people to go, are we going. I think that's something that we should really consider. I mean this is a real asset right in our backyard. So how many of this stuff we want to put on the agenda.

Bolkcom: When is that? When is the conference?

Jordahl: Wednesday October 28th and see it goes for more than that.

Stutsman: I think the staff are going to that.

Jordahl: Thursday October 29th. And Friday the 30th. So the 28th, 29th and 30th of October this month.

Lacina: I think its our association meeting or convention isn't it?

Stutsman: I think registration unfortunately like so many of these conferences is pretty expensive.

Bolkcom: Is it?

Jordahl: I'm sure I've got that here. APA member 125, non member 145.

Stutsman: Well that's not as bad as some of them are. I was thinking it was closer to $300.

Bolkcom: All right. A lot going on.

Jordahl: Then another item. I've spoken with Tom Dunbar finally. It took 4 or 5 visits of phone tag, But he's apparently got some kind of arrangement with the Department of Transportation to do planning work for communities that want to take advantage of the enhancement funds through the DOT. The DOT wanted to make sure these were good projects, so they've got this really good planner that's available to us. It's not exactly open and shut. But if we want him we can probably get him and I'm going to have lunch with him in the near future and try to pin that down a little bit, get some further information on it. But is sounds really good. Coralville is using them. It's just unbelievable the quality of maps the work that they're getting basically for free. The idea there is to put our trails planning in some sort of unified coordinated way into existence with the cities's trails planning. That will help to support their ability to apply for grants and get funded from the DOT to do trails works. Even if we didn't ultimately build out this whole plan of things, it doesn't obligate us to do anything, but at least if we do decide to do something its got some priorities maybe laid out. Its got some initial engineering work done. Things will be ready to take whatever action we or future boards decide to take on that. I really think we should go on with this, but I'll get some more details for us. OK, that's it.

Bolkcom: Sally.

Stutsman: A couple of things. Had a meeting of the Juvenile Justice Policy Board Workgroup yesterday. Talked about organizing a meeting with agency individuals on November 6. We've done this before. Just get people together to acquaint one another with what's going on in different programs and things like that. It's been a good opportunity for staff to sit down and talk about their programming and where they see needs. Probably are going to have somebody from MECCA come and talk about (inaudible) there's a lot of concerns about what's happening with substance abuse in the community. So, thought that this might be a good focus to at least begin discussion of things. Also, a letter has been sent to all the mayors in the County thinking about using funding for sales option tax for Juvenile Justice. This is a grant that is renewed every year. We are on a 3 year cycle, we don't know what the legislature is going to do about continued funding for this grant. (Inaudible) valuable programs for the communities . So, the policy board has looked for new ways to fund this. The sales auction tax might be a way to do that. So, a letter was sent and hopefully we'll get some response from that and people consider this as one of the funding proposals. Empowerment Board met this afternoon. Even though we didn't get designated as an Empowerment Board at the State level, during this first round of funding we definitely plan to submit another grant for the second round which will in December. Went ahead with appointing the Empowerment Board, we'll be setting up an organizational to continue work on (inaudible). That's it.

Bolkcom: Good.

Bolkcom: I have just a couple of short things. The Board continues to work on its strategic planning. We had a meeting again this afternoon focused on the organization of our own office and how we can streamline some of the things that we're doing. I thought it was a good discussion. The County's first County employee newsletter is hours away from going to the printer. Maybe a couple of days. We've had a volunteer committee of employees working on that. People are going to enjoy seeing that first issue of the newsletter which was developed really with a lot of feedback from employees about the kinds of things they'd like to see in a newsletter. That's all I had. Pat, do you have a report yet?

White: No.

Bolkcom: No, still no report from Pat. Anybody else have anything they want to report on? We have a Planning Zoning Commission meeting next Thursday night. I'm sorry, next Wednesday night at 6:30 on October 14 in this room to continue to talk about the Comprehensive Land Use Plan. Members of the public are welcome to attend. Any other business from the Board at this moment? If not, we'll take a brief break before the 6:00 p.m. public hearing.

Adjourned at 5:50 p.m.

Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor

By Casie Parkins Recording Secretary

Sent to the Board of Supervisors on December 15, 1998 at 5:00 p.m.