Jordahl: Minutes received. We've got minutes from the Chamber of Commerce, Senior Center Commission, 6th Judicial District, Department of Corrections, East Central Iowa Council of Governments, and JTPA. We have some voluntary annexations submitted from the from the City of Iowa City and the City of Tiffin. If anybody's interested in those things they're on file here and you're more than welcome. These are public documents to have a look at them. Members of the Board have any reports to make?

Lacina: Mr. Eden came in and was telling us about Washington County has a program to pick up some of the metal found in the fields and road ditches and that for the landfill and wondered if we would consider some type of support in that area? They're providing a semi and pretty detailed. I don't know that we can necessarily go to that expense. I don't think we can legitimately utilize rural road funds for off road use. But at the same time, if you hear of demand we may want to consider utilizing the landfill fee, which I think there' still money left in it, for sheet metal construction damage from the wind. Not private sector, somebody tearing down a home. But if a grain bin was destroyed and they find it laying in the middle of some field somewhere, which they've done, some owner doesn't know where it came from and they need to scrap it out. Right now, scrap metal prices are such that, I talked to a steel buyer the other day and he's not buying because it all goes overseas and the value of the dollar and all that. You may want to consider allocating, maybe check with Washington County. Which brings me to my 2nd point, Washington and Muscatine would like to get back together with a joint meeting; updating the bridge down there. They lost their Engineer that went to the private sector, so there's some things like that they just like to get back together and talk to us about. They're going to be doing some reorganization in some of those areas and we did the salary survey. Muscatine did. Washington's considering it. That's all I have for now.

Jordahl: Regarding the sheet metal Steve, what about emergency management funds. Pretty clearly emergency thing that happened. Does FEMA have anything for this to help with this clean up?

Lacina: FEMA would primarily...

Jordahl: It strikes me as storm clean up. I don't if Jim McGinley has access to funds for this. It's certainly a reasonable thing the County should get involved in. I'm wondering if there isn't a source of funding readily apparent.

Lacina: We could ask Jim. But not that I know of. I'm trying to think, that we be something else we could ask Washington County, what they found out, if they researched it. Probably our landfill fee would be what we would use.

Jordahl: Would you mind asking Jim?

Lacina: Or I can ask Charlie to check with Jim. He's on that committee.

Jordahl: He's unfortunately not here. Thank you.

Lacina: Yes, we'll get it to him and have him check.

Jordahl: Anything else. Sally?

Stutsman: Wanted to give an update on empowerment. The 2nd round of grants were due today. We did submit another grant and that was sent so we will hear January 8th whether we were successful in being designated as an Empowerment Area and whether we receive any grant funding. We did have election of officers for the transition board for the Empowerment Board. Chair will be Beverly Weber, who is Director of the United Way; Vice-chair is Bill Worth and Secretary is Linda Severson. Attended ISAC, Iowa State Association of Counties, that was the week before last, how time flies. Excellent session. Always learn a lot, not only from the meetings themselves but from visiting with other supervisors. That was time well spent. Listened to Al Haynes who was the airplane pilot with the Sioux City crash. He was just outstanding. He was the keynote speaker. Governor Elect Vilsack appeared and spoke to the group. He was very very warmly received by county officials. That was good to have him be there and hear of his pledge for cooperation working with county officials. That was real good, real good meeting.

Lacina: I will be in Des Moines tomorrow on a private matter. I will not be in. Sorry.

Jordahl: Right. That does raise a question of who will in fact be here. Charlie was leaving just now for Des Moines, is that right? Joe isn't going to be back yet, so are we going to have...who's going to be here on the Board for our budget meetings tomorrow? One, 2,

Pillard: (Inaudible).

Lacina: DHS is pretty heavy.

Stutsman: My feeling about this is I think we should go ahead with the budget hearings. These have been put on the calendar for well over a month. Department heads have planned accordingly. They're ready to give their presentation. They will be taped. Board members who aren't here can listen to the tape.

Lacina: And Charlie's really the one that will be affected by this since he'll be on the Board.

Jordahl: Mike it will be a question of whether you can be here as well tomorrow morning.

Lacina: Certainly should make paper copies available to Mike too.

Lehman: Are those open to the public.

Stutsman: Those meetings are all open to the public.

Jordahl: Most things we do around here are.

Stutsman: It will be just the department heads giving their budget presentation. We won't be doing any deliberating. Just asking questions and things.

Jordahl: It would be good informational kinds of stuff. In particular DHS and MH/DD budgets are significant.

Lacina: Veteran's Affairs comes in first at 9. That is overseen by a autonomous board. You'll be probably looking at the bottom line on that one. Who's next then?

Stutsman: Planning and Zoning.

Lacina: Planning and Zoning. It probably wouldn't hurt if you could catch Planning and Zoning, MH/MR and DHS.

Jordahl: I think we're going to see a staff request from Zoning, which we be a significant future.

Stutsman: And staff request from DHS and from MH/MR/DD. MH/MR/DD and DHS is probably the biggest budget we do. Well Secondary Roads is.

Jordahl: It's an important morning of meetings. In as much as you'll be on the Board on January, we'll have at least 3 Board members who we be Board members at the time.

Stutsman: That's good.

Jordahl: So that's redemptive factor in our scant supply of Supervisors for tomorrow.

Jordahl: Reports, anything from me? Yes. I attended the trip of the spin off the state legislative sub-committee on land use, urban sprawl and farm land protection that Ed Fallon, the legislator from Des Moines put together went out to Oregon the week before last at the same time as the ISAC meeting and had that wonderful opportunities to speak with people who were the chief executive of the 24 city metro region that surrounds Portland and includes Portland. Spoke with members of the State Land Conservation and Development Commission and the mayor of a small town that's in the Portland metro area of Beavertown. Turns out this guy's name was Rob Drake was the brother of Don Drake whom I served with on the Social Welfare Board here the first year that I was on the Board of Supervisors. Got to really be good friends with him and was the Director of the State Historical Society briefly. He went on up to Seattle area. I was just amazed at how small a world it is. Met with members of the farm bureau and looked at rural areas. IT was a wonderful wide ranging... We met with the lobbyists for the Homebuilders Association. It was a well thought out trip that Ed put together. I have a stack of information to share. I need to try and boil it down into some form that will be usable by Board members. The main points that I would indicate are the State really drove that thing. It was the decision on the part of the Republican governor and the legislature to outline a set of policies that all of the counties and cities of the state had to adhere to. They had to formulate comprehensive land use plans and have them be approved by the state as addressing those multiple points. The state funding, anything that was controlled by the state going to those local areas, was contingent upon their approved land use plan. It was an amazingly strong central control that has 3 times been voted on by state referendum and has won each time by between 10 and 20% approval of the electorate. That's what's really made this thing work is that strong state central control. It avoids the problem that we have as a local Board of Supervisors having neighbors and friends and people that you know come in and say well you know I need this for my daughter and she wants to come back here and live and wouldn't it be nice to keep the family together. It's hard to make a decision that's just based on some principle when you have individuals and cases and stories involved, Boards of supervisors, City Councils, they make decisions on a local basis. The state has a court that is the arbiter of land use decisions. Anybody, even if they aren't a resident of Oregon, can appeal a land use decision and take it to the state and get it decided according to the principles articulated by the state. It's a very centralized process. What's going to come out of this is a recommendation to the legislature for legislation in Iowa, Iowa is a different situation from Oregon. Here you have a predominance of rural legislators as opposed to urban as you have in Oregon, so it could be a very different set of policies that result. But at least it was a very informative thing. If you have questions or would like to see some of this policy statements, for example Farm Bureau's policy from Oregon I'd be more than happy to share them with you. Going to go up to the 6th Judicial District after this. Steve you're probably aware of some activities going on today surrounding the Community Justice Programming up there a couple of presentations that I'd like to sit in on because my wife's centrally involved in it. I may see you up there.

Lacina: Yes. They called to see if I was going to go up. I told them I was going to be up there. We have legislative night tonight as well, so we're meeting with our local area legislators.

Jordahl: OK.

Pillard: You guys are still holding the area legislator meeting right?

Lacina: Which is Thursday afternoon.

Pillard: I just wanted to make sure there was some discussion whether you were going to have it or not.

Lacina: Yes, 3:30.

Jordahl: Joe told me this morning that representative Masher is going to be attending the legislative night, so we're going to have a more full compliment of legislators than we had thought. This is an opportunity for County leaders and really anyone to come and address concerns for the upcoming legislative session with our local legislators. That's Thursday afternoon, the 3rd, at 3:30, here in this room.

Stutsman: I have the ISAC priority legislative issues.

Lacina: I've got one too. I brought that stuff.

Stutsman: We probably need to get our thoughts together on the issues that we want to discuss with the legislators. Can we put that on Thursday during the informal part of the meeting so that we have an agreement that we want to talk to them about?

Lacina: This is also a great time to come up with a couple of pro-active points on behalf of the County to go to the Governor and say look, here are some things we really need fully funding all of these projects you dumped down on the counties. Juvenile detention or a few things like that. Let's see if can't have some pro-active initiatives to get some things correct.

Jordahl: What has impressed me about those meetings in the past is the extent to which they are ready to rely on a summary and a specific recommendation for action from people who are there.

Stutsman: Facts not statistics.

Jordahl: Facts and really concise sense of what the legislation should do. We talked about getting suggestions from the department heads for things that they thought should be on the agenda for the Linn County supervisors, and obviously coming immediately prior to the meeting with the legislatures, there is some relationship between those 2 meetings. I'm wondering if it should be an agenda item for the department heads meeting to summarize the ISAC legislative recommendations so that we have that going into the meeting at 3:30.

Stutsman: That might be a good idea. Is there an agenda for that staff meeting?

Pillard: I have no idea.

Lacina: How are we going to summarize that book. That'd choke a horse.

Stutsman: We just have to pick and choose which issues...

Jordahl: Highlight.

Stutsman: ...have an impact on us.

Lacina: This isn't for elected officials. I was going to say all of our elected officials would have... That were up there, would have the document, but the others wouldn't. Jerry was up there, I saw him up there, he would have it, but...

Stutsman: We might need to send a reminder around to department heads and elected officials that this legislative meeting is Thursday and be prepared to discuss issues with legislators.

Lacina: Do we want to ask them each to bring an issue that's germane to their department?

Stutsman: Uh-huh.

Pillard: I think you have (inaudible)...

Stutsman: We have.

Pillard: ...previous meetings.

Jordahl: Yes.

Pillard: Jerry (inaudible) I don't know about other departments, but I believe you already mentioned that.

Lacina: OK, good.

Stutsman: But I think it would be good to send a memo around...

Jordahl: Yes and to...

Stutsman: ...just to remind them.

Jordahl: ...emphasize the importance of statistics and specific recommendations, brief specific recommendations. OK, well, it looks like that's it for Board reports. Discussion from the public. Yes, Carol.

Carol Spaziani: Something that occurred to me, would a good issue be to raise with the legislators the effect of the transfer of vital statistics without funding?

Stutsman: I bet Deb's probably...

Lacina: You know...

Stutsman: We could ask if that's what she's going to...

Spaziani: I don't know what's good.

Lacina: No, that's a very good point because when the State did that they promised that they would have all the software and the hospitals would be able to transfer direct. Well the company that got the contract for that was purchased by another company that's now technically... They're not in default, but close to it. Because they have the contract and because of the way the State wrote the contract they can't go to any other vendor now because this company has this contract and they don't have performance measures. They're 2 1/2 years behind, they have boxes of 100 megahertz Pentium computers sitting on the floor not open that are becoming obsolete because we're already up to 330 and 400 megahertz. The whole thing is a... Similar to what the court system went through with ISIS when they had computers sitting on the floor for several and when they opened they ran on DOS and everything else was starting to go Windows. So the State made all of these promises and then we're going to be shuffling paper for a long time. So it really is something we should bring up and ask them if they would just get their act in order. Another thing that the County will receive criticism for and we're not tied in with the State to be able to utilize their system and all the stuff they promised. So that's a very good point. Whoever wrote that contract should have been terminated. I mean that just... Fired, I don't mean terminated.

Stutsman: Editorial comment. Jonathan, under other, is anybody going to this district meeting on Friday?

Lacina: No, I'm not.

Stutsman: OK, I can't go either. We've all got meetings all day long.

Jordahl: Yes, I... no time.

Stutsman: OK.

Jordahl: All right, well. The only remaining agenda item is recess. Going, going, gone. Anybody want to talk? All right, then we'll recess the meeting until Thursday.

Recessed at 10:55 a.m.; reconvened at 9:45 a.m. on December 3, 1998 with Bolkcom and Duffy present.

(Continued in Part 5)