Reconvened on February 11, 1999 at 7:13 p.m.

Jordahl: Thank you. Reports and inquiries from the County Attorney.

County Attorney Pat White: No reports.

Jordahl: Thank you for coming in Pat. I'd like to report that Pat's not well and he's come in anyway. Inquiries and reports from members of the public? Reports and inquiries from members of the Board of Supervisors? Sally.

Stutsman: I have a short report. While we were in recess a while ago, Senator Bolkcom called to tell the public that there will be a meeting on Thursday February 18th, at Room A at the Public Library and the meeting will be put on by the Office of Consumer Advocates of the Iowa Attorney General's Office. And they will be talking about utility deregulation and how that affects consumers in the state of Iowa and that meeting will be live telecast on Channel 10. But it sounds like it will be a real good informational meeting. Utility deregulation is the big topic with the legislature this year and I think it really benefits all of us if we can learn as much as we can about how this will affect us and our utility bills. So that's Thursday February 18th, 7 o'clock at Room A of the Iowa City Public Library.

Jordahl: Thank you Senator Bolkcom and Supervisor Stutsman. Anything else Sally?

Stutsman: I think that's it for right now. Had a busy day today, but I think I'll just put off on any reports until Tuesday.

Jordahl: All right then. Mike, anything to report?

Lehman: I attended the Ambulance Advisory Board on Monday night; everything kind of runs together here. Has good useful information and they're redoing their mission statement. Today at our formal meeting here we approved the appointments of 2 individuals I think will be a real addition to that Board. This morning I attended a session for the mentally ill at the Iowa City Public Library. It was real informative for me. Answered a lot of questions for me about how the process works and suggestions how it might work better. It was well worthwhile for me to attend that. Thank you.

Jordahl: OK. Carol? Carol for the camera here. I think we introduced you last time we were on camera. But I'm going to do it one more time just to make sure people know Carol Thompson, our newest Board member appointed through the statutory process by the Auditor, Recorder and Treasurer. She's been doing a real bang up job here. Pleased to have you on board. Same is true for you Mike, but she's newer. Go ahead Charlie.

Duffy: I think I'm losing my voice to tell you the truth. I'm doing too much hollering tonight. One thing I did last Tuesday reason why I wasn't at the informal meeting I was in Des Moines at the state economic (inaudible) board I'm on. That was well attended; about 40 people there, most of them government entities. Most of our representatives and senators from Iowa had somebody to represent them there. I could talk about this for a half hour, but a lot of things that go through economic development and then there's different divisions of economic development. You read about it in the paper all the time. There's a grant I think we got one maybe this last week for Historic Preservation. I know Cedar County got one, $600,000 to help with infrastructure in Cedar County. There's things when you talk about economic development most people think this is development of commercial and industrial property, which some of it is. But there's other things that talk about children, families, Empowerment Zones. And there's going to be not only state Empowerment Zones, but some of them are working on other states and national Empowerment Zones. One other thing is home based business is a hot topic now and we would like to have a Home Business Association in Iowa that encompasses all Iowa. Because the surrounding states have home based businesses and there will be quite a large meeting coming up Jonathan I think that's the 9th of March, but I'm not sure.

Jordahl: 6th.

Duffy: 6th of March. That's on a Saturday. I'll have more information on that to see just how large that's going to be. But I would like to go back to that one. Maybe if you're interested.

Jordahl: Yeah, I think maybe you and I will both do that. In Des Moines home based business conference. We should, do you know how people would find out more about that if they're interested in attending?

Duffy: Yes I can give you a lot of people that all you have to do is call.

Jordahl: Department of Economic Development?

Duffy: Yeah. That's one division of economic development. That's a sub-committee that I'm on, too. I can't be running to Des Moines all the time on County business, but this does encompass counties too. Let's just kind of keep an eye on it and see just what's going to materialize from that. I know they have some real good speakers. The Marriott, we can get a room the night before for I think about $50. One of us. The next one's 40. I think it's going to be a pretty large thing again. Remember the one on keeping people in there homes? We thought that'd be about 300 people. I know Sally we went up to that one, 550 people showed up. So just kind of watch it. And if you're interested in going we can set up everything.

Jordahl: OK. Thank you Charlie. Along those same lines of keeping people in their homes, I want to point out that the Board has received its report from the East Central Iowa Council of Governments on the Housing Needs Assessment for the incorporated area and the small towns of Johnson County and it's quite a voluminous document. But I believe Carol has volunteered to go through and see what we can cull from it. We may need to take action on, but it's designed by the Board to serve as a basis for grant applications for people who might need a drink of water.

White: I'm starting to feel guilty.

Jordahl: It's all your fault Pat. It is. Have you got something to drink there Mike, do you want to take a little break?

Lehman: I'm OK.

Jordahl: I believe I was going on and on about something.

Thompson: It's a very interesting housing report and I'll be passing it on to you to read next.

Jordahl: Oh good. It's about this thick. But the idea is that it will serve as the basis for grant applications for people in the rural area and for the cities. We've seen results in the East Central Council of Governments that the kind of proportion of local match that has to be provided is like 10% to 90% of what federal money that comes in. It's just impressive. In some cases better than that. Really glad we've got that to start with. Let me see here. I met with Tom Dunbar twice in the last week. He's a planner hired by the DOT to assist various small governmental entities with planning related to DOT funds. First time was last Thursday in Coralville I met with the I-80 Committee out there as a representative of the County and looked at what concerns there might be as they look at beautifying and making the area between Iowa City and Coralville and through Johnson County and along Interstate 80 more distinctive. And again on Monday as kind of a first touching base with him after we received DOT funding to use his services for our County wide trails planning project. We've tentatively set a date of March 25th as a project initiation meeting. Does that work for everybody?

Stutsman: Are we all supposed to go to that meeting?

Jordahl: Yes, it would be a meeting for the Board and representatives of the, I don't suppose we all have to go. We could delegate one or 2 Supervisors to attend. It depends on how we want to handle that. It's something I'll put on the agenda again to discuss in greater detail how exactly we want to approach that. This would be representatives with the small towns and of ourselves and whatever other planning staff we might want to involve. I'll put that on the agenda shortly.

Duffy: Where does our ISTEA Committee come in on this? Because we appropriate money to trails.

Jordahl: Well, the specific trails projects would be something that would become part of an Ice Tea application, but at this time it's just simply laying out where in general coordination between the cities and the County as to where people expect or would like trails to go and then again like the ECICOG study will serve as the basis for future grant applications including ISTEA.

Duffy: I'd say maybe through REAP too. (Inaudible) probably (inaudible).

Jordahl: Yeah, yeah. I think probably the Conservation Board will be interested in this as well. That's one of the things that we need to be thinking about, is who all needs to sit at this table. It's a pretty wide ranging project.

Duffy: Well I'm on the REAP Committee too. We talked about this before. I think you're going to see more funding.

Jordahl: Yes. I think there's going to be some funding from a variety of sources. This plan again will serve as the basis for that. I'm really glad to see that happening. And then last night, or was it last night, seems like you say these things run together. It was Tuesday night I had the opportunity to give a talk to the Environmental Advocates at the Room A at the library. It was videotaped and I don't yet know when it will be rebroadcast. To some extent on my trip to Portland and looking at land use in Oregon, but more so how that bears on our new land use plan and looking forward to state legislation that has been proposed in the senate embodying the work of the legislature's commission on land use, urban planning, and farm land protection, something like that, close to what the name was. I'm real excited about that and I have a copy of that legislation printed off too if you'd like to have a look at that I'll circulate it around. Looking forward we have a budget meeting tomorrow in which we're pretty darn close to done. We're going to look and see with all the line items printed up by the Auditor's Office how things look and possibly approve that thing for publication. Anything to say about that Deana? A deep sigh of relief. Deana Pillard is the Board's Deputy Administrative Assistant and has played a central role in organizing the budget process that we are nearing completion of. We're trying to do a lot of changing in the way we do the budget and one of things we've really sought is to have some good staff support, some advice, some steering and Deana has really done a job of that helping to set the agenda for the budget process each day. It's been invaluable and we're really glad to have you aboard.

Stutsman: One other thing to mention is we have strategic planning with the Board all day yesterday with Tim Shields from the University of Iowa Institute of Public Affairs. Went very well I thought had real good discussion with the new Board members. I think we're on track to set out some goals for the Board for the coming year and to assign Board members to take the lead on those various goals.

Jordahl: It's been a really good thing. It's nice to have 5 voices up here and get different opinions, but it's a miracle when you sit down and do strategic planning and you can get people to agree on what those goals should be and to agree to work together. This has been a really fine couple of years for me serving on the Board and I really appreciate everybody's attitude of cooperation. Good Board.

Stutsman: Tim Shields is going to get feedback to us as far as what we outlined so then we can talk more about what those goals are, inform the public.

Jordahl: All right. Let me see. What does the piece of paper say here?

Stutsman: Adjourn. Or recess.

Jordahl: We're eager aren't we? We do have business from the County Attorney coming up so if there's anything else people would like to bring up I will otherwise turn to Pat.

Motion by Stutsman, second by Thompson, to enter Executive Session at 7:25 p.m. to discuss collective bargaining strategy for the Sheriff's Unit and the Administrative Unit under section 20.17(3), Code of Iowa: "negotiating sessions, strategy meetings of public employees... shall be exempt from the provisions of chapter 21 (Official Meetings Open to the Public)." Roll call: aye: Lehman, Stutsman, Jordahl, Thompson, Duffy.

Recessed at 7:25 p.m.; reconvened at 7:35 p.m.

Chairperson Jordahl called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in Executive Session at 7:35 p.m. Members present were: Charles Duffy, Jonathan Jordahl, Mike Lehman, Sally Stutsman, and Jonathan Jordahl. Also present were: Board of Supervisors Deputy Administrative Assistant Deana Pillard, County Attorney Pat White, Assistant County Attorney Janet Lyness, Sheriff's Captain Duane Lewis and Recording Secretary Casie Parkins.

Motion by Duffy, second by Thompson, to leave Executive Session at 9:13 p.m. Roll call: aye: Lehman, Stutsman, Jordahl, Thompson, Duffy.

Adjourned at 9:13 p.m.

Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor

By Josh Scieberras, and Casie Parkins, Recording Secretaries