MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
DECEMBER 29 AND 31, 1998
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Vice Chairperson Jordahl called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 9:00 a.m. Members present were: Charles Duffy, Jonathan Jordahl, Stephen Lacina, and Sally Stutsman; absent: Joseph Bolkcom.
Jordahl: (Inaudible) Johnson County Board of Supervisors for Tuesday the 29th of December, 1998. Jonathan Jordahl sitting in for Chairman Joe Bolkcom who won't be here today. Item number 2 on the agenda, review of the formal minutes of December 17th. Has anybody had a chance to look at those, have any comments, additions, deletions? We're OK. Those are available on the I drive on the computer.
DISCUSSION: SENIOR CENTER UPDATE
Jordahl: Item number 3, business from Joanne Hora, Senior Center Update and discussion. Good morning.
Senior Center Commission Board Member Joanne Hora: Good morning. First of all I want to than you all for reappointing me to another 3 year term on the Senior Center Commission Board. I appreciate the opportunity to and look forward to the next 3 years. It's a great place to be, and I guess the older I get, it's the place I should volunteer. We have some... You might already know that we have some new advisory people on the Board. That's Jay Honohan, Larry Pugh and Bill Kelly, 3 new ones. Some things that have been going on at the Senior Center, of course the parking ramp continues to be a topic of huge conversation. We just finished with the Annual Children's Holiday Bazaar. I have some numbers here. Hopefully, I didn't lose them. We had 273 children on Saturday December 5th. We had 462 volunteers that made the event possible. We sold over 200 pounds of cookies. That's a lot.
Jordahl: How many volunteers did you say? 400 and some?
Hora: 462 volunteers and that's from the very beginning with helping make the items to working that day, volunteering to bring the cookies, and the people that registered the children and then the 326 that worked that day at the bazaar. If you have never attended a Children's Bazaar, it is totally out of control, but it is... When you have 273 children and their parents or their grandparents there it is kind of out of control and you can't... it can't be controlled. But it is so much fun because you get to see the children come down with their shopping bags filled with things and it is kind of excited. The Elder Craft Shop had a record day that day. So there was almost $5,000 total sales for the day, which can all be put into the gift fund because the event was sponsored and so there are no bills to be paid. That's pretty impressive for the Senior Center. One other thing... Linda Kopping continues to do a great job. Some things that have changed since 1989, there has been a 91% increase in volunteers, from 392 to 746 volunteers annually. There's been a 93% increase in the volunteer hours. There's been a 62% increase in the programming since 1990. They've added an additional 125 programs and some... There's just tons of things going on down there. It's a great place to be. Do you have any questions?
Stutsman: Joanne, when you talk about the gift fund, what is that and what (inaudible).
Hora: The gift fund... This money goes into the gift fund for the Children's Bazaar but it's not earmarked for any certain thing. It's just different things that come up throughout the year that they might need funds for, other than what is already given to them by the City or the County.
Stutsman: OK. Thank you.
Duffy: I think we're lucky to have you on that Committee and indeed that's why we have such a good county. When you have volunteers like that, that's really amazing.
Hora: It is.
Duffy: Without them, we just couldn't function the way that we should.
Hora: No one could function without volunteers.
Duffy: That's right.
Jordahl: Go pay for those staff hours.
Hora: Yes, really.
Stutsman: Joanne, when you talk about the big issue is the parking lot, what are some of the things that people are dealing with?
Hora: The parking ramp?
Stutsman: The parking ramp.
Hora: This could get to be a huge discussion.
Jordahl: Uh-huh.
Hora: I don't know if I'm ready for that. But one is the historical building that is the sitting there and should that be taken down or moved or left. The number of spaces that the Senior Center needs, that's an issue. Is there going to be a walkway from the ramp into the Senior Center for safety's sake for the Seniors? Does the City really need another parking ramp? Those kind of things...
Jordahl: What about the Senior Dining program and it's space needs as it pertains to the ramp?
Hora: Yes, that's another huge discussion about the space needs. I know Linda has been meeting with them about it and they're discussing some space issues.
Jordahl: Do you know...
Hora: Everyone really needs more space there. There's not enough office space. There's not enough storage space. There needs to be more space especially the computer lab, it's getting to be more popular. They need more space to that.
Lacina: They're still up in that little atrium?
Hora: Uh-huh.
Lacina: Up above, which is pretty crowded.
Hora: Uh-huh.
Stutsman: Talking about space needs, I got a call last week from Mike Foster, who was asking for some assistance from the Board in dealing with the space needs. I think after the first of the year the Board needs to talk about how we're going to handle that so that we can be an advocate for the Senior Dining Program when they're starting to work through all these issues as far as face and reconstruction and things.
Hora: I know that is a huge concern. They do feed... I don't really know the numbers off the top of my head that they feed from Senior Dining.
Duffy: 107,000 this last year.
Hora: It's very important and I know that they need more space. They need storage. I know Linda is aware of that. It is important that it's discussed early on in January.
Jordahl: Yes, we need to put that on the agenda and...
Stutsman: Put that on the agenda. We probably want to...
Jordahl: ...make sure we're participating in that discussion at some level. But the Senior Center Commission Representatives really are the Board's representatives to that discussion. Mike Foster is there, yes, and clearly we will speak with him and try and communicate our wishes. But at what level or in what way have you been involved or do you foresee that you are scheduled to be involved in those decisions? Is that really taking place between Linda and Mike?
Hora: I think they are having most of the meetings together. I would be very happy to sit in with any of those meetings if anyone sees that to be necessary. But I know that they have been exploring storage space. There's no place to build on. You can't build up because of the soundness of the building.
Jordahl: OK. Anyone else have questions or comments? Members of the public like to ask about the Senior Center, what's going on there, is planned there? All right then, I think we'll thank you for your report...
Hora: Thank you very much.
Lacina: Thanks Joanne.
Stutsman: Thanks Joanne.
Jordahl: ...update, and we'll continue to follow this with interest.
Jordahl: Item 4 on the agenda, business from Mary Clem, Health Center USA Consultant and John Beckord, Chamber of Commerce Director regarding a review of the Health Care USA Grant Application and requesting Johnson County to submit the application on its behalf. Good Morning.
Health Center USA Consultant Mary Clem: Morning.
Chamber of Commerce Director John Beckord: Last week we had a conversation about the County's role in economic development and I'm here this morning to ask for your assistance in being an applicant on behalf of the Health Center USA organization for the Iowa Department of Economic Development Rural Enterprise Grant that has many aspects of economic development as part. You have the document before you. I won't go through every step of the way. I'll just summarize it as to say that this effort to stimulate and grow our health care sector came out of a project that started over 2 years ago. The 3 major institutions, the VA, UIHC and Mercy, collaborate with the business community, via the Chamber and the Convention of the Business Bureau to initiate a number of projects that we feel has the potential to increase patient load, visitors to the area and enhance our economy. This particular grant application goes another step, and as you can see, there are components related to attempting to stimulate medical technology development and do some things to leverage this asset that we have in our community.
Lacina: The payback is $2,300,000 over 2 years for...
Beckord: For difficult equipment that we have yet to try.
Lacina: Yes, and that's...
Stutsman: I'm really excited about this grant proposal because it fits in well with what the County has outlined as one of our strategic goals, is economic development. Although we can't do a lot of things in that area, this is just something that we can do so I really am supportive of it. So what happens is that we would be basically applying for the grant. We would be the fiscal agent and then we would subcontract to the Chamber to actually do the follow-up, the allocating of the funds and the reports and things. There really wouldn't be any responsibility on the part of the County.
Beckord: There would be no burden put on your staff.
Stutsman: As far as administration...
Beckord: That's right.
Stutsman: OK.
Jordahl: What is the... I'm really just now having my first opportunity to scan this grant application in its detail. For my benefit, perhaps, and also for anyone else here, could you tell me what are the, in layman's terms, what is this going to produce?
Beckord: We call it deliverables. These are things that you can tangibly put your hands around. We will publish a regular patient-visitor's guide, guest book, another name for it, that will be a compendium of all the information that you can think of that a visiting patient might want to know and it can be used by any of the hospitals. It can be put in the waiting rooms of physicians in Iowa where patients may be making decisions about where they might get follow up health care. It will answer literally any question they have. Obviously, it will include maps and all kinds of information relating on how to get to various places to receive health care here. From focus groups that we did with patients in the 3 institutions, we learned a variety of things about the challenges they had when they came here, things they wish they had known...
Jordahl: Uh-huh.
Beckord: Simple things... where do I board my pet?
Jordahl: Uh-huh.
Beckord: You have to remember there are... elderly people come here and they don't have that support structure and they need a variety of services. So we learned a lot about the kinds of questions, from those focus groups, the kinds of questions that need to be answered by this publication. A lot of their information can perhaps be different information. It can be repackaged in the form of a web site, which is yet another way to deliver that kind of information. We don't know how many visiting patients would find that to be a useful tool but we're going to give it a go. We're going to develop the information anyway for the guest book (inaudible) as well. We're going to launch something we've kind of packaged as a, or called, a customer service campaign. When you go to major medical centers around this country, the ones that are growing, what you find is that there's, throughout the community, a mindset of customer service patient hospitality. The restaurant attendee, the cab driver, the hotel front desk clerk knows how to answer questions that patients might have. Everything is geared towards that. We want to do what we can to instill this kind of high level customer service ethic throughout the community. Obviously, it has to be also within the institutions and they have agreed to do what they can, of course, to improve customer service within the institutions because there are some things we learned about. Once you get into a hospital, finding your way around and things of that nature and they're not as customer friendly as they need to be. Of course, hospitals take measures to do that, to change that. So we'll have a variety of things from workshops, videotapes, presenters on customer service and the like over a period of time. This will not be a one shot thing. Again, we will also do some things related to medical industry. We're planning to launch a technology council. One of perhaps several threads within the technology council would be medical technology, although we don't want to limit ourselves to just medical technology. Technology councils are very popular in the larger communities, larger cities, but we think we can duplicate that here, even though we're small, because we have such a concentration of technology companies and they're growing. It even has a rural aspect to it. People like Charles Claussen from CIVCO has expressed an interest in this from Kalona. Kurt Hyer from MensiMed out in Coralville is another one that has an interest. The Engineering School has a real interest in this as well. So we hope we can with this money hire a part time person to pull a group of technology advocates together and that we can form a network to learn what we can about advancing the interest of technology based companies. With the healthcare industry being what it is, and the research that's going on here in medical technology, which, as you all know, is world class research, there seems to me to be an opportunity to get as much of that moved from the laboratory into the marketplace and try to develop more medical technology companies. That's leveraging your strengths.
Stutsman: Uh-huh. I think that's a good term, leveraging your strengths. We have a lot of positives here. We just need to improve marketing them and telling people what we do have. I think that's just real positive.
Beckord: (Inaudible) manager of one of the technology companies in the exchange of information with an engineering professor of a biomedical engineering professor. There may be a connection that's made that leads to some advice on how to get that idea moved to the marketplace. Having done it, some of these CEOs of these medical and other types of technology based companies, I think have something to offer to those who are looking to do the same thing.
Lacina: So procedurally, you need us to actually make the application for the grant. Then from that point on, it will work a lot like our Juvenile Justice Committee and that will function on it's own.
Beckord: Mary, of course, wrote the grant and knows all the details on how it actually would work.
Lacina: OK, so how soon do you need this in, like you want us to take action on it Thursday...
Clem: That would be wonderful.
Stutsman: When will you know if you're successful with this grant?
Clem: They don't have a set time line.
Stutsman: OK.
Clem: It's reviewed on an individual basis unlike a specific application process where there's a deadline and then like a 3 month period. We send in a pre-application to just route and get feelings back about how this would be perceived and the Department of Economic Development has really liked the idea. I think it would probably be reviewed pretty quickly. I bet we'd hear within a month.
Stutsman: OK. Good.
Jordahl: So I see that the in kind match is provided by the Chamber. It sounds like the bookkeeping of this administration would also be handled by the Chamber with the exception that the County would pass the funds through. Is that about right? So it sounds like we're able to help this out without necessarily pinching the tax payers to do it. That's a good deal.
Lacina: Thank you for pursuing this. I think the other... There used to be an old saying that our greatest resources were our best kept secrets and anytime we can draw awareness to these things. It will have a ripple effect in even trying to attract families back to Iowa. They're going to look at our schools and they're going to look at our medical support and these are things that will make them more aware of the positives we have.
Stutsman: So we'll put this on then for Thursday?
Jordahl: This is a grant from the Rural Development Fund and I assume that at some point in here there's a bit of a spin that takes this beyond the Iowa City area and talks about it's connection with the rest of the state. You mentioned having these brochures in doctors' offices. I know that the Medical College here has an emphasis on rural health care providers, on educating Iowa doctors who will stay in the state. I see the staff from the College of Medicine involved in this. I'm assuming that there's some sort of a focus on that sort of extension aspect of this as well. I haven't read details of that in the grant. Could you speak to that briefly?
Beckord: If we can develop our medical industry in this community, the benefits... yes, they accrue to our largest communities. But you know also that there are suppliers to these institutions that are located in communities and even in rural areas around here. You certainly know that there are a lot of people working at these medical institutions who live in rural communities around here. We are of the mind and of the opinion that developing our medical industries and helping our institutions grow has a spin off affect of helping the entire commercial center that includes rural areas as well as our urban areas. It isn't a requirement of a rural enterprise fund that no benefits accrue to an urban area. It's just that it has to also benefit the rural areas around an urban area. That's clearly the case here.
Jordahl: I'm not suggesting that they don't. In fact, I'm suggesting that there may be benefits to rural areas throughout the state, that aren't emphasized in the grant application, that might actually help the grant application. But it's probably a little late for that according to your timetable. OK, so we'll put that on for formal action on Thursday. We very much appreciate your efforts. It sounds like the kind of bringing the community together that's going to be very healthy in the long run for a lot of enterprises, not just this one.
Beckord: Thank you.
Lacina: Thank you.
Jordahl: Thank you.
Lacina: So Thursday, we'll vote on that?
Jordahl: Uh-huh.
HUMAN RESOURCES ADMINISTRATOR LORA SHRAMEK: FAMILY MEDICAL LEAVE ACT AND FLEX TIME POLICIES
Jordahl: Is Lora here? There's Lora. Item 5, business from Lora Shramek, Human Resource Administrator regarding the Family Medical Leave Act and the Flex Time Policies. Good morning, Lora.
Human Resource Administrator Lora Shramek: Hi. I'm here to recommend that the Board formally adopt the attached 2 policies, both of which have been discussed at great length during the past several months at Board meetings, Department Head meetings and Appointed Department Head meetings. The first one, we'll start with the short one, is flexible time. I really considered the flexible time policy a clarification of the January 5th, 1990 Compensatory Time Policy that was put into place effective January 1, 1990. This Compensatory Time Policy addresses employees who are nonexempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act where the Flexible Time Policy addresses those employees who are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act. Of course, there are several categories of exempt employees. Those that would primarily apply to the County would be executive, administrative and professional employees. These are employees that are engaged in management, exercise discretion, use independent judgment or are in jobs that require advanced knowledge, creativity or originality with their positions. In other words, if they work hours that are in excess of 40, they are not eligible for one and one half... excuse me, for every hour that they work over 40, they are not eligible for one and one half hours of either overtime or comp time. It's just important to make that clarification in order to be in compliance with Federal Regulations (inaudible) Act.
Stutsman: Lora, did you, when we took it to department heads, we asked them for feedback. Were there any comments or any suggestions about the policy that you heard.
Shramek: Not on the flexible time policy but I did get feedback on the FMLA.
Stutsman: OK. I didn't hear anything so I didn't know if any Board members had heard anything either. We asked them to, if they had thoughts, to contact any of us.
Shramek: In a nutshell, the Flexible Time Policy is saying if you have a department head, for example, that might have worked 60 hours one week, that they might be able to flex their schedule and maybe take an afternoon off or a day off the following week. That does not have to be recorded as time in and out of the office on a specific time card.
Lacina: Subject to the conditions that you spelled out as it can't negatively impact a department and another list of things. They can't take that time off during heavy, peak times.
Shramek: Right.
Lacina: Sounds good. You did a lot of work on this.
Shramek: They're still paid to get the job done and be held accountable for that.
Lacina: Let's move to the FMLA. Or did you have something?
Jordahl: Yes, I wanted to emphasize here that the basic point of this is these are professional employees. A professional job may take more than 40 hours. They are not to assume that an hour worked beyond 40 equals an hour of vacation time, nor are they to keep track of that. But rather at the discretion of the department head, they may be allowed to work different hours, shorter hours, during the week at some point, as long as the office is covered appropriately.
Shramek: Exactly.
Jordahl: But there's no one for one here for professional staff. That's basically what this is saying.
Shramek: Right.
Stutsman: Lora, this will be incorporated into the handbook then?
Shramek: Yes.
Stutsman: OK.
Shramek: My understanding is we have the loose leaf handbook that we kind of add policies as we go. But once it is formally adopted, I would distribute that to all department heads to share with employees.
Stutsman: OK.
Jordahl: OK.
Shramek: The second one, of course, is the Family Medical Leave Act Policy. We at Johnson County have been providing employees both family and medical leaves in compliance with the act since 1993. This basically just puts it down in writing for us so that we don't always take a look at everything on an individual basis. We have this in our handbook to refer to. But it's basically just right out of the federal act saying that employees that worked more than 12 months and at least 1,250 hours during the last year would be eligible for family or medical leave for up to 12 weeks. It specifies the criteria. There's also supporting documentation. There's a Family or Medical Leave Request Form that's nice. Employees can just go ahead and check the box if it was either birth of a child, care for an immediate family member with a serious health condition, or their own serious health condition. Right now, employees have just been kind of writing this on a piece of paper and this way we have answers to all of our questions. It's a nice, simple form for them. Then we have the U.S. Department of Labor, their Physician Certification Form, if it's an illness relating to that and then we also have the Employer Response to Employee Request for Family or Medical Leave. The department head and I would go ahead and fill this out together and respond to the employee's request for family or medical leave. That way we have everything documented and the employee knows how their insurance and everything will be handled while they're on the leave.
Lacina: OK, now this will keep us in compliance with the federal regulations.
Shramek: Yes.
Lacina: What were the concerns that were put up to you then from the staff?
Shramek: The recommendations?
Lacina: Yes.
Shramek: First of all, the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993... it says that we must provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave but of course, we have a sick pay plan and we also have vacation where employees could be using their paid leave as part of those 12 weeks. Jean Schultz, for example, had some good recommendations in the paid and unpaid FMLA leave paragraph, it's like 2/3 of the way down. We have stated there, employees will used available accrued sick leave. Before we had employees may use available accrued sick leave. But if they do have sick leave available and it's a situation that's applicable, we would want them to use that first. Then they may use accrued vacation. Then this last part of that paragraph talks about if an employee would request unpaid leave, the County would require them to substitute 50% of their available accrued vacation time as of the date of the leave before an unpaid leave would be granted.
Lacina: So this incorporates their concerns.
Shramek: Uh-huh.
Lacina: OK. That's good.
Stutsman: The process for having this, Lora, then you will sit down with the department head and fill out the forms and things? Is that how this will go?
Shramek: Yes. What we'd like to do is if an employee plans on being gone like for 2 weeks or more, we will go ahead and provide them with a request form. For example, maybe they're going in to have knee replacement surgery. We would provide them with a request form. They'd simply check, sign off, give that back to the department head, the department head and I would sit down, take a look at their benefits, how long they're going to be gone and of course, if it's the case of a pregnancy, you base it on the estimated delivery date and you can always go back and firm up the dates afterwards but we will sit down and fill out that employer response, and send that back to the employee in advance so they know exactly how their paychecks will be handled.
Stutsman: This is great to have a consistent process and policy and forms. I'm really glad to have this in front of us and am ready to approve it.
Jordahl: This is why we hired a Human Resource Administrator, to make sure that things that needed to be handled were handled in a professional, orderly and trackable way that kept us out of trouble. It looks like you're making significant progress in doing that. I really appreciate it.
Lacina: Do you need formal action on this?
Shramek: On Thursday.
Lacina: So when do you want to do that? Incorporate it into the Employee Handbook.
Jordahl: Thursday would be good, wouldn't it.
Shramek: Thursday and I'm working on a draft for employees, a cover letter.
Jordahl: Are we ready to handle this on Thursday, then?
Shramek: Yes.
Jordahl: OK. All right. Members of the public have questions or comments about the medical leave or flex time policies? OK. Thank you very much, Lora.