Chairperson Bolkcom called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 1:40 a.m. Members present were: Joseph Bolkcom, Charles Duffy, Jonathan Jordahl, Stephen Lacina, and Sally Stutsman.

Bolkcom said that the purpose of the meeting was to go over a Board of Supervisors strategic goal of looking at how they discharge their duties in the Board of Supervisors Office. He said they are moving towards putting more time on this item. Bolkcom said whenever they get into a conversation about taking a look at what they've been doing it raises concern and some question about how they have been organized. He said he didn't want this to seem like a rejection of everything they've been doing and the way they've been doing it. He said the office operates quite well. He said this is a positive exercise to make everybody's work more enjoyable and productive. He said reorganization might be a little bit strong but the meeting was open to any comments that people wanted to make. Bolkcom said they have a checklist of things the Supervisors brainstormed about. He said they wanted to get some direction from the Board on priority areas. He said that staff was also asked to define areas where they think they could make improvements. Bolkcom said it was his goal to define a process whereby the Board could interact with staff to pursue improvements. He said it would be hard not to talk about details but he would like to come out of the meeting with a sense of how the Board wanted to organize itself to facilitate whatever changes the Board wants to see. Bolkcom explained that the second item on the agenda was to determine whether the Board wanted to designate a staff liaison to interact with staff. Duffy said he wouldn't be for that. He said they will come to the second part of how they're going to implement it.

Lacina said the list breaks down into 2 different components, what the Board of Supervisors needs to address, and the other would be office operations. Lacina said he and Jordahl thought they should pick 5 areas that they want to make changes and they would go out and do some quick analysis to see if it's realistic. He said maybe what they've got in place is what they need but at the same time in a week or so they could come back to the Board and give a report as to areas they might address. He said general areas they would talk about include paper reduction. He said anything they could computerize would lead to paper reduction. He said one might be the Human Resources realignment. He said they should look at duplications, redundancies, and research. He said they are still struggling with the budget as far as responsibility and the authority that they're going to give Deputy Administrative Assistant Deana Pillard in terms of dealing with the department heads if they reject some of the ideas. Lacina said they should decide how they're going to adequately staff their committees such as the phone committee and Empowerment. Lacina said if each of the Supervisors took one item or if 2 Supervisors took an item they might get things done. Lacina said they want input from everybody involved, customers, staff, and the Supervisors on the ideas for ways it might help save time. He said they could look at grant monitoring, payroll cards and authorizations- do they need them, unemployment claims, Code of Iowa and the Administrative Code which could be stored in the storeroom. Peters said the Administrative Code was not looked at very often. Stutsman said there was one in the Auditor's Office. Lacina suggested they put it in the storage room. Jordahl said it might be on-line or available on disc. Jordahl said they could have one paper copy in the building and then acknowledge that it's available electronically. Peters said they could see if there was another department that could use it. Lacina said that the scrapbook takes time but Duffy thought it had value; they might figure out a way of keeping relevant articles. Lacina said the older things from the Administrative Code and the Scrapbook could be put somewhere else. Lacina said the Auditor has the minutes. Lacina said it was sometimes important that they keep an original signed copy of things such as contracts, but they might be kept in storage outside the office. Lacina asked if with job flow were there things that slow them down as the flow comes through. He suggested there might be an easier way in dealing with the landfill information. He said they could assign one or 2 Supervisors for each general area, put it together in a general outline and then start working on it.

Jordahl said he had been accused of being a generalist and suggested not negating what Lacina and he talked about but start with one general look at the whole thing. He said by that he meant talking about a department mission statement. He said they could have mission, goals and strategies. He said if for example in performance based budgeting they want departments to be able to characterize how their core functions can be accounted for and costed out, they need to model that behavior and come up with a mission statement and then align things with what they think is important as they look at it generally. He said they shouldn't start with specifics, but they should look positively into the future and ask what is their mission, what do they intend to accomplish as a Board of Supervisors office and see if they can answer that question. Lacina suggested- to establish a pleasant work environment for our employees and the public and to efficiently respond to the public's needs. He said they have to fill out other components like accomplish their work but a lot of what they do is public relations and they want to establish a good experience for the consumer when they come to the Board. Jordahl asked why there was a Board of Supervisors. Bolkcom said to manage the County. Stutsman said the budget was the big thing. She said the mission statement could be what was in the Code. Duffy said Roads. Bolkcom suggested manage the County's resources. Stutsman said she had a copy of what the Iowa State Association of Counties states is the mission of county boards of supervisors.

Bolkcom asked if Jordahl had another item for discussion besides the mission. Jordahl asked what are the goals of the Board of Supervisors Office. Bolkcom said to be efficient. Jordahl asked to be efficient at what. Bolkcom said to meet the mission. He said he would see it broken down into more objectives. He said he saw the goal and the mission being synonymous. Jordahl said manage the County's resources might be the mission; the goals would be to manage the budget, to make sure departments function smoothly. Lacina asked if they were discussing the objectives and goals of the Board of Supervisors or the office. Jordahl said he was saying office because Pillard is helping with the budget process, Administrative Assistant Carol Peters and Human Resource Administrator Lora Shramek are helping with employee questions. He said within the goals they will begin to see the functions they perform in the office outlined and that can move towards budget categories. He said rather than focusing on budget they could ask what the different areas that are their goals to efficiently accomplish.

Stutsman read from an ISAC pamphlet on the Board of Supervisors, "The Board of Supervisors is the executive and legislative branch of County Government. The Supervisors make policy for the County, Administer the various programs or hire staff to administer them, such as the County Engineer, Administrator etc. and have final authority over the county budget." Bolkcom said- establish policy, implement the budget, and administer the various county programs. Bolkcom said there were 3 goals right there. Jordahl said that was the mission and the goals that they want to set might be to make sure for example that their Ordinances are up-to-date and meet the developing changing needs of a growing county. He said that would obligate them to review ordinances and to not keep things that are archaic and to promote new ones that would address developing needs. He said it was something they might not see it as their duty if they don't ask themselves what they're doing about their legislative function. He said manage the budget meant innovating, so their goal there might be to improve the budget process. He said each one of these categories could later be broken into the details. He said they should define what policies they make. He said they've got a County Clean-up Week and they make policies about that, but what about Secondary Roads, do they have as goal to do it in conjunction with the department that is administering that. He asked if they involve the pubic in the making of policy. He asked what their goals were under that part of their mission. Bolkcom said one goal would be to interact closely with their own administrative staff and that would be the goal they should spend a little more time focusing on at this meeting. Bolkcom said the personnel function was a huge one, they establish personnel policies, but they don't need to lay out every specific area necessarily. Jordahl said the goal might not be to make a better policy for a particular department, that would be a strategy. Bolkcom suggested they set good policies but he didn't know that he was interested in doing a plan that tries to guess about every policy that they might make. Jordahl said he wasn't guessing about the policy but the idea of method. He said Lacina and himself were talking about committees; they have all these committees they want to formulate but then the committees don't have a time frame. He said in terms of talking about strategies under making policy they might have it as a goal to involve the public but the strategy would be to make committees which are representative of the broad range of the community and are balanced but also operate with in a reasonable time frame and report back to the Board at regular intervals so that they can keep track of what they're doing. He said that was not talking about the specifics of a program or department. He said it was talking about the general means of which they would like to see these policies developed.

Bolkcom said within the context of Jordahl's approach he would like to suggest that they focus on the strategy when they talk about implementing the goals of the Board, the specific strategies about how their office and staff are organized. He said they've taken their staff away from their jobs to talk about the Board of Supervisors office, not globally about a strategic plan for the Board of Supervisors that would encompass other areas. He said they should try and focus today on the office and visit Jordahl's global questions later. Jordahl said if they went through that process it would imply the activities of the Board as a broad sweep which then implies how they utilize the staff to accomplish them. He said if they say they're going to have committees do a lot of things they might want to shift more of our responsibilities off to committees but that then has an implication for the staffing of those committees. He said rather than talking about how they're going to resolve any particular staffing issue they might talk about specific problems within Board organization and then return to the global look to talk about staffing of committees. Bolkcom said he agreed with that. Stutsman said that Jordahl had one approach and she thought what he was saying was a good idea it would just take a lot more time than she was prepared to spend today. Lacina said in March if they have a retreat for the 3 of them and the 2 new board members it would be a good time to sit down and talk about strategies, timetables, implementation plans, because they want the other 2 members on board at that point. Stutsman said that was a good point. Lacina said they should just get away and do that like they did with the strategic planning. Jordahl said there was a merit to the experience that they were bringing to the table now talking about matters that the new Board members would not have experience with. Jordahl said there was the question of the budget process, which as he would like to see it developed uses strategic planning as the foundation of the reporting question. He said they need to model that behavior for the other departments.

Stutsman asked how they should begin this then. Jordahl said her ISAC pamphlet breaks it down well. He said that Bolkcom also had a point because they brought all of the staff together and there was a question of what degree of relevance some of the issues have to the rest of the staff. Bolkcom said he was prepared to muddle through. He said incrementalism is the best approach and hopefully they have a bigger goal in mind that would be articulated through a mission statement and some more considered discussion about their bigger picture. He said they are at a certain place that differs from a new approach that might be there in a year or 2. He said to get to where they want to go they probably are going to be doing things more like they're doing them. He said Lacina and Jordahl have articulated a number of things that if they are going to make changes they need to find some efficiencies. He said there have been a number of suggestions there. He said with their staff, if they were to sit down with them, could probably articulate and come up with things that they might see, or they might have changes they already want to make but they haven't because they think the Board wanted it that way. He said so they can improve what they're doing without taking the time immediately to do a more global strategic planning piece. He said the idea that's been suggested is that members of the Board take areas, saying there were a number of ways to break it down and they should try to tackle the items in a streamlined approach. Jordahl suggested getting some staff feedback on what is the problem. Lacina said they could discuss it today and have everybody write down brainstorming ideas and submit them and get back together in a week and look at what they've listed as possible things to look at. Stutsman said brainstorming ideas, did he mean paper reduction or things that they think the office should be doing. Lacina said in all of those categories or they may want to look at some things such as the budget.

Bolkcom said another approach would be to get direction from the Board and have a couple members of the Board visit with staff where people could knock ideas back and forth without them having to worry too much about being free in what they say. He said one of the things they need to try and establish is the idea that they talked about having a staff liaison. He said he thinks it's difficult for staff to have 5 bosses and they do an incredible job responding to that. He said as they look towards making efficiencies it's important that the Board try and narrow or funnel the ideas that they think are important. He said this is one of those places where they could do it. Lacina said logically the Chair and Vice Chair because of the workload the Chair has are the 2 that are closest to the operations of the office. He said frankly if you appoint 2 other Supervisors then there almost is a conflict if there isn't agreement. He said it's best to have the Chair, Vice Chair, and the office manager to manage the office. Bolkcom said he wanted to hear what staff wanted to say but the Board needs to decide what the process they want to put in place to implement if there are some improvements and efficiencies, what's the process to do that. He said he didn't want to get into a discussion about details. Jordahl said step one is listen to the staff. Bolkcom said the Board needs to determine the process to implement improvements and how they're going to interact with the staff. Stutsman agreed. Bolkcom said he wasn't interested today in a discussion about details. Stutsman said she didn't think they had their act together enough to know what they want staff to tell the Board. Duffy asked Hogarty and Peters how long they had worked for the County. Peters said 27 years and Hogarty said 11 and a half years. Duffy said that was 38 and a half years of experience. Duffy said he felt he should be looking at zonings instead of going through all of this because he doesn't see a real big problem except for questions such as how much time Pillard is going to help with the budget. Duffy said he was going to do a zoning site review.

Duffy left at 2:14 p.m.

Jordahl said they should open their ears because the staff has a lot of experience. Peters said a lot of the way they do things in the office has been a direct reaction to something a Board or Board member has requested over the years. She said there always comes a time for change. She said it would be helpful to know what this Board of Supervisors expects and wants from the office. She said she firmly believed that a new broom sweeps clean and it would be nice to hear from Pillard and Shramek about reorganizing to be more productive, because they bring vast amount of experience from the private sector or city government. Peters said she can give any background on some of the office procedures. Peters said that since Hogarty had been there her workload had increased, she said people want more documentation and that doesn't take 2 seconds. Hogarty asked on the landfill if there was any way the City could bill them instead of having each individual come in with their ticket. Jordahl said that was as a good idea. Lacina said the only problem he could see with that would be one of verification. Peters said the City used to do that for them and then they got a new computer system with which supposedly they couldn't do that anymore. Stutsman said she could see the City charging them for it. Bolkcom said Hogarty could investigate with the City whether they were willing to do that. Bolkcom said they didn't need to micromanage this question.

Stutsman asked if there were ideas on how they should proceed with reorganization. Lacina said this is going to take time but there might be some things they could accomplish in a week but there may be some that would take 6 months or a year. Bolkcom said they asked staff to generate ideas on efficiencies. He said maybe the next step is to give them more time to do that and sit down in some format and work through those lists. Shramek said that was a good start because staff is going to have the best knowledge about where those are. She said looking at those workflow issues, if they're doing something they don't need to be doing, it will free up time and they know how much they have to devote to the other issues. She said the duplication, redundancy research is the best starting point. Stutsman asked if that was the next thing they wanted to do, was come up with a list to work on. Lacina suggested brainstorming some ideas. Bolkcom said the staff have a better understanding about what's going on, what they like and don't like, and how they think things could be improved. He said, as Peters pointed out, they do a lot of things based on past Boards and past Supervisors.

Peters gave as an example payroll authorizations. She said they go to the Board and Hogarty distributes them to the department head, employee, and Board files. He said they have one file that has the complete payroll authorization and they also have a payroll card. She said in addition to the payroll card, the Auditor's office has a file. Peters said one way to eliminate the duplication would be to eliminate the payroll authorization forms. She said in addition to that Pillard enters the employee, job title, date of hire etc. and that is used for longevity and for employee recognition. She said if there would be some way of working with the Auditor's Office to compile the information together it would be one way of eliminating all of that work. Lacina said in theory they would establish a database and if it's set up correctly they could do a query for any kind of breakdown they want. Bolkcom said they need a new payroll system. Shramek said a new HRIS payroll system would take care of all of that. She said that right now Deana is duplicating that because they don't have access to the payroll system. Peters agreed. Stutsman asked how much a new payroll system was. Lacina said Information Services Director Jean Schultz was looking at that. Shramek said that Schultz has asked the Auditor's Office and herself to compile a list of things they would like to see in a new payroll system. She said the Board should be included in that as well. Bolkcom said that was a good example. Stutsman asked if their time wouldn't be better spent if a couple of Supervisors sat down with staff and talked about these issues. Lacina said the Technology Committee could deal with the payroll system since it deals with software. Shramek said it would be at least 6 months but they want to spend a lot of time on it because this is the system they will have in place for a long time. Stutsman asked where it would be budgeted. Shramek said it would be in the Technology budget. Stutsman said in having this meeting she doesn't know all of what the office does. She said she didn't' know all of the files the office has and she has to count on the staff to get that information.

Peters said one thing that is helping now is that the Auditor's Office has the minutes on the computer, because they don't have to keep paper copies in the file. She said a question is do they still want the minutes circulated because everybody has a computer. Stutsman asked when the last time was that they looked at them; she picks and chooses. Lacina said if they wanted to they could always print their own if they needed them. Lacina said put them on screen. Jordahl said they should stop printing them and circulating them. Lacina asked if there was a specific reason they would want hard copy. Hogarty asked if they still wanted the Auditor's Office to bring up a copy for the files. Jordahl asked if the Auditor's Office printed a copy for themselves and Recording Secretary Casie Parkins said they do. Shramek said that a good point was orientation for new Board members. Lacina said they would need orientation for all staff, including the location of information on the computer. Lacina said that sometimes a system can become so burdensome, from time to time they need to purge some electronic records. Jordahl said the idea of new Board member orientation points to them the utility of a monthly staff meeting where they would get together and talk about the office. He asked why they couldn't just do that. Lacina asked when it would take place that they would just find out where they are on, what hard drive, and they would just not get a paper copy. He asked about Monday. Bolkcom said they should figure it out, he said they were on-line on the Internet and he supposed they were on the internal drive somewhere. Pillard said they were on the Board's I drive. Jordahl said Parkins listed a number of places where the minutes are and asked her to go through them again. Parkins said the minutes were on the Board of Supervisors' I drive, they were in the Auditors Office computer system, there is a paper copy of individual meetings for the past year, a paper copy of each annual minute book, and they're on the Web page. Lacina asked Pillard to do an index of what is on the PC's. Peters said the main reason they have the minutes in their office is so that Supervisors could look at them on their own. Stutsman said to keep it simple they should go down to the Auditor's office if they have a question on minutes. Stutsman said they need to write these policies down.

Bolkcom asked if they could jump to something that was coming up later, Empowerment Zone. Stutsman said they need to take advantage of Linda Severson and Johnson County Council of Governments to do the support on that. Jordahl said it made a lot of sense because it was an intergovernmental function. Jordahl asked how many committees they could ask to keep their own minutes. Stutsman suggested working out a transition with Severson. Peters said the REAP committee only meets once or twice a year. She said the Code of Iowa states that the Board has to provide somebody to take the minutes. Lacina said they have a minute taking component in the Auditor's Office. She said if they allocate a budget for that they are quite capable of it. Stutsman asked if there was any advantage to the Board of Supervisors being involved on the REAP committee. Bolkcom said it is just due to the wording in the Code for the Board to staff it. Bolkcom said they should ask Slockett to provide the minutes for that. Jordahl asked how many other committees they provided staffing for. Jordahl asked if it was possible to divide their committees up into categories. Lacina said the breakdown needed to be who had the expertise in taking good minutes and it boiled back down to the Auditor having the equipment and the computer systems. Jordahl said what he is suggesting is if there is a category of committees for which they may currently be providing minute takers. Bolkcom said it depends on the topic. Bolkcom said it wasn't a problem for them and he didn't see them spending a lot of time on this. Stutsman said they deal with it as it comes along. Bolkcom said when they establish new committees they should say who is taking minutes and at that point decide when the minutes are needed and if they are who is going to take them. Lacina said they can't envision what will come for committees in the future but they know at this point now they will let the Auditor's office do the work now. Stutsman questioned whether an elected official or department should be expected to take minutes for a committee established by the Board. Jordahl said they may not need a staff person taking minutes for brief summary minutes. Lacina said if they truly need minutes they should check with the Auditor. Bolkcom and Stutsman said there was a cost involved. Lacina said they were budgeting for that. Stutsman said if they are going to expect them to take minutes they are going to have to be prepared to pay for additional minute takers. Bolkcom said they should be parsimonious for this. Jordahl said instead of minutes they should have a summary of what was decided. Bolkcom said minutes should just be decision points. Jordahl said it didn't matter who said what as long as they know what was decided. Jordahl asked how that was going to be done. Bolkcom said ad hoc on a case by case basis.

Lacina said he liked the idea of brainstorming because now they were thinking about these things. Peters said the Board wants to get the office to where they feel it is being the most productive. Lacina said the computer technology committee could probably look at paper reduction and make recommendations. Peters said one thing that would help save staff time would be if the Board could figure out the best way of routing correspondence. Bolkcom asked how they want to proceed, to meet as a Board or in small groups with staff. Shramek asked Pillard how long it would take staff to come up with a list of duplication. Pillard said next week. Lacina said because of the sensitivity on the scrapbook and the minutes they all need to have the discussion in the Board Room. He said he thought they made progress today. Stutsman suggested a subcommittee meet before the large group gets together to nail things down, suggesting the Chair and Vice Chair. Bolkcom said he was open to whatever they want to do. Jordahl suggested having a strategic planning session for the Board covering more than office communication. Bolkcom suggested they visit with staff on the Board of Supervisors office hours. The Board decided to have another work session on October 14th at 10:00 a.m.

Adjourned at 2:55 p.m.

Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor

By Casie Parkins, Recording Secretary