Bolkcom: All right we're down to item 5, business from Kathy Penningroth, Historical Preservation Commissioner regarding matching funds for the certified local government grant. Good morning.

Historical Preservation Commissioner Kathy Penningroth: Good morning.

Bolkcom: We're not to far behind. We're trying to get back on track here.

Penningroth: That's fine.

Bolkcom: There's a memo in the packet. Board members.

Penningroth: I can go through this if you haven't had a chance to read it. The Historic Preservation Commission is very interested in starting some kind of a structured historic preservation plan. Since our inception since 1989, and because of the transient nature of some of the Commission members, we don't have much of a history and I think we need some kind of frame work and structure to begin a process for historic preservation planning. Hopefully we could begin with this planning for preservation grant. The reason I'm coming to you first and we have not applied for the grant is because if you don't appropriate the money we will not apply for the grant. So we didn't want to put forth a lot of effort. We also wanted to let you know what we were doing. The first phase is a planning for preservation. That is just surveying our written and archival material making notes about it annotating a bibliography that contains all of the material that we can access. It also would develop a context for historic preservation and that means a context specific to Johnson County. What were the important things, events, areas that shaped the character and nature of Johnson County? so that you can target your historic preservation efforts. Not everything is worthy "of being saved". This helps you know what it is you should be looking at and making some decisions about that. The final phase would be research design which would allow a survey of the County's historical and archaeological resources. As I've said, this is only the first phase. There are other phases and I've detailed them in my memo. Why should we undertake preservation planning? I've said something sort of specific to our Commission. But in terms of the County, I think its'; beneficial to know what we want to say in case of changes in zoning, developing areas, and sensitive area which I know the County is looking at at the moment. Also, it can be used to you advantage for tourism, so to speak. Identifying places and having something about them and organizing tours. And this could certainly be done in conjunction with Iowa City as well. We would hire somebody. This is the main cost of this grant. To look for the archival resources and to document them and to develop a written context to use as a frame-work and to develop a research design. I've tried to be as definite as I could about what the obligations of the County would be. We would apply for a certified local government grant for which the County must supply at least 40 % of the total cost. This 40 % can consist of volunteer time, in kind support such as clerical help, and cash. Because the main cost of this grant is a salary for this person that we would hire to do this, the County would need to contribute some of that salary. We would send out a description of the job and people would bid on it. As I said it's a little iffy. We would estimate in kind contributions and that would involve County employees time not a whole lot but some and copying costs, things like that. And also the Commission members are willing and eager if we get the grant to undertake some of the archival and written research. We would apply in late 1999 for the year 2000. If we get the grant, work would start approximately in June of the year 2000 and run to June of the following year. As far as future obligations, this is it in terms of this phase. If we want to apply for further phases, which I would hope we would do in order to keep on going, then we would come back for further funding.

Duffy: Is this just in the rural area?

Penningroth: It kind of depends because this could be in unincorporated areas of Johnson County. Iowa City has it's own Preservation Commission so this would not include Iowa City. But it could also include incorporated areas if they wanted to be included and I would hope that some would want to be included.

Bolkcom: Questions?

Stutsman: How would this information be used Kathy, I mean you gather this information and things, then how do you disseminate it or what would happen?

Penningroth: If you go on to a survey then this could target areas that would be of particular interest in surveying the County. It provides some meaning to historic preservation. This context is very important in deciding what we should preserve. Some buildings would not have much significance in terms of the historical context of Johnson County. It could also help us to target certain kinds of things that we would want to preserve. Adopt a theme and preserve those things that are relevant to that theme. It would also help in the surveying. You have to know what went on before you can do some targeted surveying and see where the significant areas might be.

Lacina: This would look at the County overall and like I said have some direction. In the past we've had significant structures that a local area might think was really important to, which it was to them. But the question was was it in terms of the entire County and the history. We saw a partnership set up, a corporation, and the designation of a bridge for historic preservation and then as it became extremely expensive the liability of people jumping off the bridge and it in fact became dangerous they wanted to gift it back to the County. We would've ended up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that may not have been in the best interest of the entire County. Under your proposal we'll do a study of the entire County, look at what's really meaningful, have a plan so that we're not just reacting to one little request here or there. The 40 %, is there any way that we could work with Lorie Robinson in the museum to try to do some in kind in that area?

Penningroth: We have talked to Lorie. One of our commission members talked to Lorie about this proposal and she was very excited about the fact that we wanted to do this. We haven't worked out a particular way of doing it. But before we would apply for the grant we would approach other entities other groups in the County that are interested in historic preservation of one site or another. But Lorie would be very significant and the Johnson County Historical Society would be very significant in here and certainly could lead us to some resources and help in identifying.

Lacina: Kathy, the total amount of the grant was?

Penningroth: I used a model from Linn County which applied for a grant like this in 1991. Their cost at that time was around $10,000. The County contributed $4,000 in cash and there were other volunteer and clerical and copying time. Which amounted in that instance to about a 50/50 match.

Stutsman: You would be applying for this in you said late '99 December. I'm trying to think of budget years.

Penningroth: It's due in December of 1999 if they follow the same kinds of guidelines. Work cannot start on it until it is approved. By the time it gets approved it's May. I think everybody has to sign off on it if we get the grant.

Stutsman: Do you need to know an answer to this fairly soon or can we take this up as part of our budget process?

Penningroth: You can take it up as part of your budget process and that is what I would hope that you would do. Because it is a fairly significant expenditure I think it needs to be put in the budget. I don't know how you would want to do that. As I said it would be across 2 fiscal years and budgeted in 2 fiscal years I would think. How much we get done depends on... We can have some things done. But if we want to get our requisite match then we have to target some money for the salary because we can't make up that in volunteer time.

Bolkcom: The first phase is a study of portion of the County and the 2nd...

Penningroth: This very first phase, nobody's looking at anything except written and archival sources to get the history of the County down. This is the first research kind of phase. Once you identify what these written sources say, you look in old journals, archives that have to do with early settlement in Johnson County...

Bolkcom: It's almost like a hunt or something. You're looking at these documents to find out where things are. How significant they are.

Penningroth: And also to identify a context.

Bolkcom: OK. How much of that's been done in terms of the work of the Historic Preservation Society with Lorie Robinson's effort? Is that where you start to look at what they've compiled? It would seem like they'd have some documentation...

Penningroth: Oh yes. They would have some certainly.

Stutsman: It sounds like ultimately you'd just make some decisions about what are some significant historical buildings and things in the County. Like Steve said, we all think something's old and valuable and what not. But I think you almost need that professional determination, yes, this is something that we need to really work to save.

Penningroth: Yes. It really is better than just sort of, as Steve says, the city decides that something is important and that may not fit in with what really is important. It also helps people know that if they have something on their property of course that might be considered historical. They can do with it if it's on private property what they want. But in terms of developing or re-zoning or something, then those kinds of reservations would be known before something happened. You can't always prevent things. But Iowa City's embroiled in the building downtown and should they not build it, should they preserve it or destroy it.

Stutsman: Just the previous comment from Lisa about tearing down that SEATS building. I know that there's been some talk about the historical significance about that airport hangar.

Lacina: That's one of the problems we have right now. We're going back, if you consider when that was built, actually that was when technology people were flying in the air, which really isn't that old, if you want to compare that against the fact that Iowa City was the state capitol, prior to that was designated as a major point for the province. If you want to really go back into the history and preserve old things versus yes this was an airline hangar. But technologically with airplanes that's really pretty new. But this will give us some plan to look at these things and then they can sit down and make those decisions of what is significant. Maybe the idea will be to preserve an element in each of those time periods. But at least there's an overall plan as opposed to reacting to individual requests.

Duffy: I'd like to ask some questions. Again, say that historic preservation there might be an old barn someplace or an area. Say yes this should be preserved, but the landowner says no I don't think so. Then what happens. This has to be voluntary. There wouldn't be any mandatory.

Penningroth: No.

Bolkcom: Then we go to court.

Duffy: Then he might want to bulldoze down the barn someday. That's still on private property. There are some that are on the historical register. Once you're on it it's great as far as I'm concerned. But suppose they want to take their old buildings or areas back off, then what happens?

Penningroth: That's really up to the individual person. I think if it's on private property then there isn't really much we can do about it. Of course if the property owner has put something on the national register of historic places then they have to abide by certain guidelines and can't destroy it. But if somebody wants to tear down something that they own and is on their property then there isn't a whole lot that we can do about it. However, this could also be a process of education and if people understand that certain things are important to the history of the County and they happen to own one of those things perhaps it would be important enough that they would want to preserve it.

Duffy: There's quite a few areas around the County. I think is great to tell you the truth.

Penningroth: Rich is a member of our Commission, Rich Fishel.

Fishel: I just want to say that if a building is on private property and it's on the national register all that says is the landowner can't use federal funds to tear the building down and modify it. If they want to use private funds and bulldoze it, there isn't anything to stop it. We won't be doing anything for private property. We'll just come up with a report after this first phase saying what areas, buildings, Indian sites in the County are significant? What areas might be significant? What areas aren't significant? That's what you'll get at the end of this first phase. And then for our 2nd phase we would look at those areas that might be significant. We'd want to go out and have someone look at those areas to determine if they are significant. That way if you're planning a housing development someplace or whatever, you could look at this first report and you could say that there isn't anything out there that's significant. Then you'd know that you probably won't have any problems going on with that plan or anything like that.

Bolkcom: OK. Good summary. Thank you Rich for being here.

Jordahl: I'd like to say a couple of things here. We've mentioned the Johnson County Historical Society and work that I've done looking at our property the State Historical Society has been very useful and obviously your consultant would use that as a resource. To the question that was raised by someone here earlier, I think it was Joe, what has already been done. We have history's of Johnson County that have been written, some of them relatively more recently in the context of sesquicentennials or whatever. A lot of this work has been done.

Penningroth: Yes. But it hasn't been collected.

Stutsman: In one place.

Jordahl: I'm not opposed to this idea. I just want to make clear that we're not starting from scratch here.

Penningroth: No we're not. We do have sources. If we have them listed and documented and annotated so that we know what they briefly, what they say then we can make a determination about what our priorities are for historic preservation.

Jordahl: Another interesting that's come up and Steve brought this point up is newer things. Everything from the city of Napoleon which I heard your presentation on down in Hills and was quite fascinated by, to something even more modern than the airport. We tend in this country to tear down our Formica and our modern things because we think oh well that's just new and who cares. But it may be that there's something I'm not sure what it would be that will be historic because of its uniqueness even though it's not that old.

Lacina: I would encourage you if you have a chance to in your committee include the County Recorder and also the Director for the Historical Society, the new director I think is pretty sharp. Both of those will have a lot a documentations and history which will help hold the cost down because they can do a lot of that, it's available.

Bolkcom: Sally.

Stutsman: We do reports and then we put them on shelves and forget them. How are we assured that this is going to be used and integrated into decisions and things?

Penningroth: For one thing it would give us something to work from. We don't have anything now. We don't have anything that's collected to work from. Frankly I think it would be too bad to do this and not go ahead with a survey to see what we do have. And to document those kinds of things. Once we have a survey done and areas that are important, identified, then that certainly helps with either we could make national register nominations for those areas, or identify them and have a theme of these kinds of things are important and this is what the history of Johnson County is. Without subsequent action this is information that can go somewhere and it's up to us to decide if we want to go ahead with the surveying or not. But this is the first step. Any kind of a project like this is to gather the information and get it in one place. Very important is establishing some kind of context.

Jordahl: I would add here that the County is probably going to be working with a consultant from Des Moines on trails planning throughout the County to try and integrate that. It would be very interesting to try and combine that plan with the information that you'll come up with.

Penningroth: It really should be. I don't know how far that plan has gotten.

Jordahl: They've done quite a bit on Coralville. But the County wide plan, as far as I know we haven't the grant to do that yet but I assume that we will.

Stutsman: They're hoping to extend that to Iowa County too, I understand.

Lacina: Through education the public will expend certain amount of funds if they're aware. For example we just lost a general store the last couple of years that the former senator Bob Burns used to operate out of and the building was destroyed. If the history of that structure was known there may have been private individuals step forward to preserve it. First we need a plan.

Bolkcom: Kathy thank you. Rich thank you for being here. Deana let's keep track of this request as the Board approaches...

Pillard: I'm assuming then if it's going over 2 fiscal cycles you each want 25 (inaudible).

Stutsman: That's fine however...

Pillard: OK, that's what I was thinking.

Bolkcom: All right.

Stutsman: I think it could divide five in half...

Pillard: It's just 5 total that you want.

Stutsman: ...or whatever.

Bolkcom: She'd love to decide. Thank you again.

Bolkcom: We're on to the next item, which I guess I need some input from the Board. Mike Gardner and Al Miller are here to talk about Hwy 965 extension. I'd like to do that and maybe move to sales tax. I guess we've got a couple other items on the Board's agenda under items b, e and f but we've scheduled a work session this morning at 10:30 on the sales tax.

Jordahl: I think we can handle item f relatively quickly. I have to leave before noon today.

Bolkcom: All right, let's do item f quickly.

Jordahl: Quickly. Often times we don't legally have to have the Board's agenda finalized until 24 hours prior to the meeting but that may not provide sufficient time for members of the public, or even members of the Board for that matter, to prepare for an item that's going to be on an agenda. We do know in many cases, as the agenda develops about items that are going to be there, but we don't have ready access to that information. Yes, we can go to each other's desks, the secretaries and look at the agenda as it's developing, the members of the public don't do that quite as readily. What I propose here is that we, on our web page have a calendar very similar to what the Auditor has for agendas which are set and for past minutes that would perhaps mirror that, but would include future agendas as they were developing. They would be tentative agendas. The Board of Health, as an example, does send out tentative agendas and then 24 hours in advance you could call and find out if that item is still on, has something has been added or whatever, but at least you can generally make plans about whether you want to attend that meeting. It would help the public to arrange their schedules to be able to attend meetings to talk about items that are of concern to them. In order to operationalize this all, all that would be necessary is that Jo would send an attachment with an e-mail to Ann McGinley. She'd put it on the web page and provide updates as necessary. It's a relatively low stress operation. The downside is that an item might tentatively be placed on the agenda and then taken off and someone will come to the meeting. We'd have to have some clear statement, maybe flashing in red above it, this is a tentative agenda. Please call 24 hours in advance to find out for sure if your item is on the agenda. But I think it would be useful in terms of public outreach in the same spirit that we have our newsletter being published to make this information available in that way.

Bolkcom: All right. Good summary. Comments?

Lacina: It could be very confusing. I agree, Jonathan, that if it's out there and somebody prints a hard copy and starts passing it around, this is an agenda item and then people came in to speak to a issue and we don't have it on that could be confusing.

Jordahl: That's why tentative is in big red letters on the top of the page.

Bolkcom: Yes, right. Other comments.

Stutsman: I guess I share Steve's concern too. I know that people, and I don't know what's a good way to work around this to make sure that even though you put tentative in flashing lights, people don't always understand what tentative means and that there can be changes. So that's my concern. I know how upset people get when they take time off and they come up here and it's not on the agenda.

Bolkcom: So the goal is to get the agenda out at the earliest possible point.

Jordahl: The other side of that though is you've got people upset because they come here and the item is not on the agenda but what about the people who don't know that an item is on an agenda, and as a result, don't come here. Which is worse? I think the effort to reach out to people and say this is public business and making it possible for the public to attend and observe the public's business and give their input... It seems to me to be more important. It's always going to be the case. If we don't publish the agenda until 24 hours in advance, that nobody knows what's on the agenda until 24 hours in advance. Where if we publish the agenda well in advance... How often is it that we take an item off of an agenda or move it. We always publish an agenda and people always don't know until 24 hours in advance but once in a while, we move an agenda item off.

Bolkcom: I'd be willing to try it and see how it works. I guess I want to talk to... You don't want to send e-mail every day. You need to decide how often you want Jo and Ann to be uploading, right.

Jordahl: Well Ann says it's really a very simple thing. A very easy thing to do.

Bolkcom: Yes, I'm sure it is but do you do it 2 times a day?

Jordahl: No, I think once a day is probably plenty.

Stutsman: Or do we put it out a week ahead, 2 weeks ahead and then update it every 2 days, whatever?

Lacina: Generally, the departments don't come in with much lead time other than if they're going to come on the agenda they... Thursday and Friday are really the 2 days that you see a lot of stuff.

Stutsman: Are we going to keep still the same requirements for the 24 hour agenda.

Bolkcom: Yes.

Lacina: Well legally you have to. You have certain legal requirements.

Stutsman: I know but they have some policy set up in this office when people can submit stuff.

Lacina: Well I'm wondering about the workload too.

Pillard: That is isn't really held to. There are set deadlines that some things have to be in by but many things are put off.

Jordahl: We could...

Bolkcom: The Board constantly...

Stutsman: I beg to differ. I think there are a lot of changes made to that agenda right up until the time it goes out. I think we have to be aware that there are additions, there's things taken off, there's things moved around and stuff. So to say that it very rarely happens, I think is misleading.

Jordahl: But they're also big items. They are put on well in advance, like we're going to discuss sales tax at this time and we know 2,3, or 4 weeks in advance, where any number of members of the public are interested, and yet they... How are they going to find out. It's not out there.

Bolkcom: I think that's true. Bob...

Welsh: I access your agenda, even though I regularly attend meetings and what Jonathan is proposing would be a big help to a person like myself because often times you can't get what the agenda is until... really when you present on Friday, you can't get your agenda for today. It's really not there.

Duffy: You're supposed to... It will be in the Sunday paper.

Bolkcom: It's pretty much... It's probably 90% or 100%... by 2:00 in the afternoon on Friday, it's pretty much ready but whether you get it... I think we should maybe try it for a month and see how it goes with staff and see what kind of reaction we get.

Lacina: I guess I'm going to have to ask Jo how she thinks it's going to work first.

Bolkcom: Yes.

Lacina: I don't want to put (inaudible).

Stutsman: I know Jo has concerns about errors and mistakes. If there's an error or mistake it comes down to her and I know she has some hesitations but maybe we need to just talk to her about it. See how she feels about it.

Bolkcom: Have you talked with her, Jon.

Jordahl: Yes, I have talked with Jo about it. She'll do whatever we direct her to do. In terms of the difficulty, I think her concern about accuracy is that she be the only person that enters things so you wouldn't have Supervisors going in and typing in agenda items on like a shared drive or something. As long as Jo is the only one that enters them and she sends it to Ann then Jo's got control over that situation.

Bolkcom: That's the way I assume we'll continue to do that. Right? That's what we do now.

Jordahl: Uh-huh. Right.

Stutsman: Try it too and just see how much... if it can be done with relatively little hassle. I hate, and I can't imagine this would happen, having this office flooded with phone calls of people saying are there any changes.

Bolkcom: Bob might call us.

Stutsman: Yes.

Jordahl: If we updated it daily...

Stutsman: Well see now we're talking about updating daily. I think we need to set some parameters too, how often we are going to update, like Joe said, every 2 hours, every 24 hours or...

Jordahl: Well I think as often as there's a major change. If sales tax gets taken off of an agenda, then that should happen right away.

Lacina: You need to set a definite time. For example, if I download an agenda, an hour later it's changed and I'm preparing for that...

Bolkcom: You have to change it regularly.

Lacina: ...you need at some point to say, at this time, this is the fixed agenda.

Jordahl: Oh, for sure.

Lacina: In addressing...

Bolkcom: Yes.

Jordahl: Yes (inaudible).

Bolkcom: Whatever... That one goes out now but tentative needs to go at the top. (Inaudible).

Jordahl: But then we have final, that then is the final agenda. It says final on the top of it. This will not, can not be changed.

Stutsman: I don't know how much is involved in the change. If it's just pushing a button, no big deal. That can be changed every 5 minutes or every time we make a change, or whatever. But if it's...

Lacina: (Inaudible) internally.

Bolkcom: Why don't you talk to Jo and Ann and figure that out. Let's not update it every 2 hours, but some reasonable amount of time.

Lacina: You probably need to talk to Carol.

Bolkcom: And Carolyn. Let's try it, try it for a month and see where we're at.

Jordahl: Thank you.

Bolkcom: You're welcome. That was relatively brief.

(Continued in Part 5)