Jordahl: We don't have Joan yet. Well we could go to discussion of ideas advanced during interviews to fill the vacancy on the Board of supervisors.
Thompson: Let's do that.
Welsh: If I could Mr. Chair, the suggestion changed in that memorandum is that the Board of Supervisors set up a time to invite all the applicants for the position...
Jordahl: Bob why don't you come up to the microphone here if we're going to talk about this. Identify yourself for the Auditor's Office just in case she doesn't already know your name.
Welsh: Bob Welsh. Mr. Chair, member of the Supervisors, the memorandum which you have the last part of that, says I hope these comments will be discussed by the Board at one of it's meetings. I think it would be helpful to invite the 3 member selection committee and the 12 applicants to be present. 2 of the members of that selection committee are here and, at least as I stated to you last Tuesday when I gave this to you, I personally thought they had a mistake by interviewing all 12. But after sitting through that process, I thought they had made a great choice because I was just amazed at the enthusiasm, the broad perspective of the applicants, and I have a feeling that, and I hope I'm speaking for the members of that committee, I think they were delighted with that whole process and felt that the ideas that were expressed were worthy of consideration. And I think that your meeting with them would do several things. Number one, I think it would be a way of expressing appreciation to them for their interest. Number 2, as was expressed to many of them as they interviewed, would hope that some of them might be future candidates for the Board of Supervisors. And number 3, at least from my perspective, even more important than the other 2 reasons, is I think there are some very good ideas here that it would be well for you to either take seriously and do something about it or refer to the appropriate committees of departments, structures within County government, for their consideration. And Tom and Kim, want to add anything or not?
Slockett: You said it well.
Duffy: Bob, what's wrong with the way we do business for the County now? I see all these things here. There's some that are alright but some of them are... I certainly wouldn't agree with. I just wonder.
Welsh: Charlie if you note, in parenthesis on the very first page, it says the 12 applicants on the whole were very positive about the present structure. The value of the direct relationship of citizens to their elected officials was repeated again and again. The suggestions at least I took, in the spirit that they were not said in the way of criticism but in the sense of saying, hey we think we've got a good thing. These might be things that could be done, that would improve. And I don't want to go through this list and tell you which ones I thought were great. I tried as fairly as I could to list all the ideas even some that I personally don't like. But I had the feeling that that's not my responsibility to say, hey I think these are good ideas that we shared, these are the ideas and that's not my determination. But Charlie, in no way is this, and I think that hopefully Tom and Kim who'll back me up, I heard only positive comments from the 12 applicants concerning Johnson County government. And so in answer to your question what's wrong, nothing. Can things be improved? I think these people were saying, hey we think there are some ideas that maybe you all need to consider that might lead to improvement.
Slockett: In fact one of the applicants said there's only one thing wrong with the Board of Supervisors and that is that I'm not on it.
Jordahl: I wonder who that was.
Slockett: And others repeatedly said it's like if it's not broken don't fix it. They were very positive about local government and county government in particular. But they had ideas and that's what Reverend Welsh informed you about.
Jordahl: Carol I find myself in a strange position asking you what do you think about this?
Thompson: Well it's not gelling for me. It's all so scattered, all these different ideas, and I can see that we can have a meeting and invite people to come and elucidate a little more on their ideas but I'm not sure... You don't want to ask people to take their time to do something, than you're not able to follow up on. I don't see how it gets from having them come back in and tell us this again to an action plan. Could you... I know that's probably clear in your mind but could you talk about it a little more?
Welsh: I guess number one, I think calling them in would be a way of recognizing them and expressing appreciation and quite frankly I think if nothing else was achieved that would be a worthy task. I do think that you might have some questions concerning what does this mean? For example, I have questions concerning what some of those ideas mean, but that's not my role and you might have some questions as to... Well just take the first one for example, an independent audit may be useful.
Duffy: Well we do that. We have an audit every year.
Welsh: And I didn't know whether that referred to a monetary audit or an audit in relation to structure. Because it was during that question and answer period. But whether or not there would be some value at that point, I guess my feeling is that exchange of ideas is always good. And I would hope that after you did that, you would then decide to refer those things to various groups for consideration or you would make some of those determinations yourself.
Slockett: 2 ideas that I can think up off the top of my head are one, having the tax bill state in the particular services like Ambulance Service, Sheriff, and so forth. How much of your County tax dollars go for those particular things.
Duffy: It's good.
Jordahl: Uh-huh.
Slockett: ...I thought that was a good one. And another one was that the County hire a grant writer.
Jordahl: I'm for that.
Slockett: I think that was something. I think those are 2 good ideas. There were many more. Some of them you won't like. Some you probably will. And I also... I think Carol's really put her finger on the sticky point, which is how do you make a meeting with that many people focused and productive in any way?
Jordahl: Well I think you could divide these, out group them into basic areas as Bob has done, and you could then pose some questions. Rather than rehearsing the interviews and saying all right, now each one of the, now 11 of you, because you'd have to sit and listen at this point.
Thompson: We'll get to that.
Jordahl: You get to talk up here. Each one of these 11 people get up and rehearse what they've already said which we have on tape and could listen to if we wanted to. We should do something along the lines, as Carol suggested, focusing it. Maybe come up with some questions that are based on these things and invite those 11 folks maybe as a kind of panel or something to address it. They could be present and a larger public discussion could be encouraged. We could spin off subcommittees if something seems productive or we could just say thank-you. I don't know. I think there's a wide range.
Slockett: I think those are good suggestions. I also have a suggestion. I think that in meetings it's always important to try to draw out participation from everyone, and make everyone feel like they're not shut out by certain people who...
Jordahl: You mean me?
Slockett: ...have a lot of good ideas but who tend to be more aggressive in getting the floor and so forth.
Jordahl: Yes.
Slockett: And so the way I like to handle meetings like this personally is to give everyone an equal chance. And in this case, that would mean putting definite limits on the amount of time.
Jordahl: OK.
Slockett: ...so if you would say we're going to spend an hour doing this, you each get 3 minutes. Let's see there, how many applicants did we have?
Jordahl: 11.
Welsh: There were 12 but Carol...
Thompson: So there would be 33 minutes.
Slockett: ...so divide it up equally and assume you're going to spend 33 minutes doing it. You each get 3 minutes and...
Jordahl: Question and answer.
Slockett: ...if there's additional time at the end we can continue the discussion but I'm the chair, I'm going to be really definite about cutting off the discussion at 3 minutes. Tell them that ahead of time, they could each have their say. I think that would also add to the compliment of doing this as Reverend Welsh suggests. But that's just an idea.
Jordahl: Uh-huh. Yes, so it wouldn't be an open ended go ahead and answer this but you could invite them in advance enough to compose a statement in 3 minutes of length that might cover their favorite topics or something rather than going.
Slockett: The most important points that they have to give to the Board of Supervisors.
Jordahl: And we could invite them to focus it around some questions. Responding to specific questions. But then that might tend to generate a degree of uniformity that would be unfortunate too, listen to the same speech 11 times. It might be better to let them go. There are different ways to do this but Mike, you're just sitting over there thinking well these people are nuts. What do you think of this idea?
Lehman: I think it's well worth while. The first step they said about appreciation, I think that's definitely the first step whether there's anything continued after that or not. But I think, in conjunction with it, everybody's got a little idea. Some of these suggestions were made are already being done I know. But I think some of them are maybe, help give a nudge to some of the people to get things done. But the other ones are ways to tweak what we're doing now which I think is great. We need a reminder, rather than just sitting here, maybe how we can extend our energies a little bit and make things easier for the public and more accessible and stuff. So I think it's something we can accomplish in a late afternoon type thing.
Jordahl: That's the other thing, when would we do it? I'm thinking if it's going to be a good discussion, then it's the kind of thing that we should share with the larger community, I'd like to see it videotaped, broadcast on cable at least. We might then consider doing something like this in conjunction with one of our formal meetings and yet it's of the character of an open discussion. And so you want to let there be that free give and take that would encourage people to participate and ask questions, but I think it would be such a valuable discussion that it shouldn't just be limited to the people who can just fit into this room. So, what do people think about taping it?
Lehman: I wouldn't have any problem with it. If something could be televised later for some people. Not that we don't get enough input now from... But it may trigger somebody to call us and say have you considered this, and something that may have never crossed our minds. I'm always open for new ideas.
Jordahl: Yes, exactly.
Thompson: So are you thinking we'd do it at the library and put it on the library channel or do it...
Jordahl: We could do that. We could just simply go to the library. We do videotape here. Andy comes in and we have a live hook-up to the library so we don't need to go to the library to have a live feed. We could get more people into the room.
Thompson: Call it a community forum or something.
Jordahl: Yes. I think that the public might like to see the Board of Supervisors inviting feedback in that way.
Thompson: Uh-huh.
Jordahl: So I guess that's another idea. Charlie, what do you think about that?
Duffy: Should we go through some of the things that we wouldn't be for to start with to cut...
Jordahl: No, I think we've got to move on the agenda here to GIS. We've got a lot of people sitting in the room that...
Duffy: I mean before we have these babies or...
Lehman: I think we kind of narrow it down and regroup them just a little bit. Maybe give them an idea of stuff that we feel that we're already addressing and then open it up to the ones... Reverend Welsh kind of listed everything and I'm sure he could agree that it could be rearranged here.
Welsh: Let me say, I can't take credit for the rearrangement. If you look at the questions, Carol recognized, the questions were grouped and so their responses are grouped according to those questions. There are some cases and I think I noted this on the (inaudible) are some of those that could go under different headings. I just used where it came up under the discussion for the questions that were asked.
Jordahl: What I think we ought to do with this, there seems to be general consensus that we should follow up on this idea. Am I hearing that correctly?
Lehman: I believe so. But I guess are we looking at pretty much limiting the discussion to the applicants or is there going to be public at that time? I guess I would like to somewhat keep it to the applicants because we're kind of doing it unless they're in their honor, but to respect their input. We could open it to the general public they could get overrun and not really get to voice their opinion.
Jordahl: Well I would suggest that we focus these points down to a few questions or topic areas or something that we would ask the applicants to respond to, give them the time limitation and then not accept questions from the public until after the applicants have had a chance to feed in. Then there would be room for a general questions and answer period, discussion after that. So we would have the public input but it wouldn't run the risk of getting in the way of letting these people speak.
Slockett: Your point about some things are already taken care of is a good one because I myself had to bite my tongue when the gentleman talked about the independent audit. But I didn't want to have a chilling effect on anybody's interview or anything like that so I didn't make any attempt to correct any misimpression's or anything like that.
Jordahl: Neither do we have to... This is where focusing the question would help. One of the questions wouldn't be do you think we should have an independent audit. So I guess what I would like to ask is if we could get a couple of members of the Board who would be interested in volunteering to ride herd on this until it's seen through to some form of public fruition. Perhaps members of the public would be interested as well.
Welsh: But let me ask a couple of questions because I didn't come with any agenda. But I hear you saying about an evening meeting that would be televised...
Jordahl: Well that's my thought, yes.
Welsh: ...or taped and you would invite those 12 but you'd also be open to input from other persons. It seems to me that at least what I would like to push for is that at some time you set a time and date because your calendars get so doggoned full at this point and also in terms of not letting months pass before you contact...
Jordahl: Well I think February is pretty well passed as far as this issue is concerned. How about, I'm not opposed to setting a date. We could look for an evening. Perhaps Carol, is the Board interested in doing this in the library, or would you prefer to have it here in the Board room?
Duffy: I would say here maybe.
Jordahl: As I say we do have the live television capacity here in this room.
Lehman: That would be OK. I'm looking for some way we could get some RSVP's. Well we'll know those but it's the public I'm kind of concerned.
Jordahl: We should do some advertising in some form.
Lehman: I'd hate to have to turn people away if they'd like to at least sit in and hear it. They may not even have a question but they'd like to sit here and hear it in person.
Thompson: I might mention late afternoon. I think that's always a good time.
Jordahl: How late is late afternoon? Are we talking 5:30?
Thompson: 4:30. Is that a bad time for you?
Jordahl: No. I... Anytime is fine with me.
Lehman: That was just a suggestion. I mean evenings maybe work better. I'm just thinking all of these applicants were able to change their schedule to get in here and if they were going to be appointed they know they were going to have to be flexible to stop what they had been doing. I don't know if that's still the case for them.
Slockett: A number of them are employed.
Lehman: I understand that.
Jordahl: The reason that I would mention an evening meeting is because most people would be free and wouldn't have to take time off of work.
Lehman: I don't have any objection to that I guess.
Thompson: Tom and Kim are both here. You guys heard the interviews, would you be willing to help work on the arrangement of the questions?
Slockett: Sure. Kim says she would and I would.
Jordahl: Your no longer a majority of a selection committee so you can meet without qualms. All right we need to get off of this topic. Can we get a date in March? Maybe a couple of them? What day of the week do we want to look at? We've got our evening Zoning Meeting on the 11th, public hearing on the budget on the 4th. So those are Thursdays. ISAC week of spring break, we're not meeting. We have building code committee and public input on the building codes on Tuesday. Trustees meeting on Wednesday. It looks like the 2nd week of March is pretty well out. We'll be interviewing CPC candidates on Wednesday the 3rd. Should we look for the 4th week of March. Is that too late?
Lehman: It's about the earliest we can do it.
Jordahl: We could do it on the 3rd. But it don't know if that's enough time to get letters out, publicity and so forth. But it would be better to do it sooner rather than later.
Duffy: That's too soon though.
Jordahl: So we go for the 4th week, the week of the 22nd.
Duffy: Just so it doesn't interfere with something else.
Jordahl: Well how is Tuesday night for the 23rd. That might be MH/DD.
Duffy: Kent Park is going up. What's the deal with Kent Park?
Lehman: It's department heads at 1:30.
Duffy: 1:30 on the 23rd.
Jordahl: The Kent Park dinner is on the 17th. That's tomorrow night. They're having us out at 5:30. Conservation Board. I guess tentatively lets look at the 23rd. Evening of the 23rd, or Monday night, the 22nd is a possibility.
Lehman: You're in February now.
Jordahl: No March.
Thompson: March.
Lehman: OK. 22nd would work for me.
Jordahl: Would the 23rd?
Lehman: I've got something on right now in the evening, but I can switch it.
Jordahl: Lets aim for the 22nd.
Thompson: At what? 7:00?
Jordahl: 7:00 yes. 7:00 and that would be here rather than at room A. OK. Monday the 22nd March 7:00 here. Lets see what we can do about live broadcast. Subcommittee to work on this. We've got Tom, we've got Kim, we've got probably Reverend Welsh is interested I'm guessing.
Lehman: I can work with them.
Jordahl: Mike.
Welsh: May I make one other suggestion?
Jordahl: You better make it quick we've got about 50 people behind you that have got another topic on their minds.
Welsh: If you set a time I would urge you as soon as possible to send letters to the persons and maybe that could be even cosigned Jonathan by you as chairman of the Board of Supervisors and Tom as Chair of the subcommittee.
Slockett: Well actually we didn't have a chair.
Welsh: OK.
Jordahl: Or maybe just me then.
Welsh: But number one expressing appreciation and you might even want to send them that summary of the suggestions because they may have a good idea. They felt (inaudible).
Jordahl: Notify them of date and time. All right. Thank you Reverend Welsh. Anybody else want to comment on that because we sure have a another topic waiting before us that people want to talk about. All right. Lets get to it.
Jordahl: GIS.
Slockett: OK. The Auditor's Office has prepared a grant that they would like permission to submit for the County to receive about $27,000 worth of software for GIS. We want to make it clear that we are doing this in full support of any other department's efforts in line with GIS. But we feel that we have identified certain elementary beginning steps for converting our maps to a GIS system that must be done no matter what course is taken with GIS in the future. We have immediate needs in the office that need to be addressed and money is going to have to be spent on those needs in addition to what we do with GIS later, unless we begin GIS right now. Then we can use the GIS capabilities to address these needs. Alicia from the office has a demonstration on that. But Mark is applying in my office for the County for this grant and so I'll just turn it over to him and we've got some stuff we'd like to show you, and they'll be some other comments, I think, from the people in the room.
Deputy Auditor Mark Kistler: This grant application is with Environmental Systems Research Institute, which is a private firm which develops GIS software. It's one of the 2 top companies in the nation in the area of GIS. Tom mentioned it's worth $27,000 in software, we get their leading package, which is ARC/INFO, a copy of ArcView, which is currently in use in Planning and Zoning, and MapObjects, which has an internet starter application built into it. There was some confusion at some point about the nature of this grant, that it might be an annual grant. It is not, this is a one-time grant. The due date was originally going to be February first, but it's not. They made a mistake in some literature that they sent out on it and put the wrong date in at February 28th. We do have until the 28th and they will honor that date. Once that deadline passes this opportunity is gone. If we do not take advantage of it, it will not be available again. I've heard some scuttlebutt from people in the company that there is some dissatisfaction with offering ARC/INFO, their top product, as part of the grant, and a lot of interest in not providing it. That's part of the rumor mill from people in the company, that they don't feel it will be available again, or they might find that this is so successful, they'll change their mind and they would do it. So I can't ascertain whether it will be available again or not. There was some discussion of us trying to do the work on our maps that we have in AutoCAD and try to create the polygons using AutoCAD, and that simply can't be done. A CAD package is just a good, accurate tool for drawing and presenting lines and arcs and text data, but it doesn't have the inherent intelligence of the GIS to identify polygons, which the GIS creates. It doesn't have (inaudible) to identify, without knowing what a polygon is, it can't identify closure errors, where you have an undershoot or an overshoot and automatically closes those for you if they're within a given tolerance that you put in, and also identify the ones that you'll want to fix manually.
Jordahl: Mark, I realize that we postponed this discussion for 20 minutes to half an hour while we finished this discussion in the Supervisors issue, but I would like to ask if you would suspend the presentation for just a few minutes to allow Joan VandenBerg who has come in since you have begun speaking. I don't think that her item is going to take nearly as long as the GIS discussion will.
Kistler: OK.
Jordahl: Joan, are you still... there you are. Thank you very much, Mark. We'll get right back to this I think.
Kistler: No problem.
Jordahl: Please come up to the microphone.
Iowa City Community School District Youth and Family Development Coordinator Joan Vanden Berg: Thank you, I didn't mean to interrupt someone's presentation.
Slockett: It's going to be a long presentation and discussion I think.
Vanden Berg: OK. Well, thanks for letting me sneak in then. I think in your packet you received a brief description about a grant opportunity that we have as well as a draft of a letter of support that we'd like the Board of Supervisors to give to us to submit with the grant. What this is, it's a Federal Program, it's called 21st Century Schools, and it's a Federal Initiative and they're interested in either funding inner city areas or rural areas, so the school district here in Iowa City has chosen to go for programs in Hills and North Liberty. Currently we have family resource programs operating there, but what this would do is it would really beef up our after school and weekend activities for young people, and kind of the whole premise of this program is to open schools up as community centers. So, we would have a wide range of academic programs as well as just recreational services and some substance abuse, and violence prevention activities for young people. In our needs assessment we found that over 50% of the 4-6th graders in North Liberty and in Hills are home alone after school, and I think we know that that's not a good thing, because that's often when they get into some trouble. And so, it doesn't surprise us that what follows is the juvenile crime rate, in North Liberty in particular, has really increased a lot. In Carol's previous job, she was good enough to get us some numbers for us. So that increased from 18 referrals in 1993 to over 80 in 1998, and that is quite a dramatic increase that we're concerned about. So what this program would do, is we'd have just opportunities for kids to have their time structured, and often the school building which isn't open on the weekend, so this would allow us to have more thing for kids to do so that they aren't getting into trouble. It's a collaboration we are working both with the City of North Liberty Rec. Department, United Action for Youth, the Extension Service, MECCA, and Community Mental Health. It's a big program it's a collaboration with many folks, and each site is eligible for up to $200,000, so we're going to go for the max. It's also a 3 year program which is kind of nice, because sometimes these things are short terms of we have some time to get it off the ground. What we're looking for is just support form the County, first we'll just having a Planning Committee to get this thing off the ground, so we'll want some help in terms of the planning and the collaboration. Whenever you do programs in these rural areas a major obstacle is transportation, so we need to get some creative ideas going in terms of how we can get some vans to get these kids home. They can stay after school and do the programs but there's no public transportation out to Regency, and Golf View and those rural areas. So, we're hoping that the County can help us identify some resources for some transportation.
Jordahl: I think some of the language in the Local Option Sales Tax might be applicable to the question of support for this, one of the lines is Social Services related to Juvenile Crime Prevention and serve as an other tag on that. It's conceivable that transportation like this might be part of that, and I'm not sure, I wouldn't want to speak or the Board here or for the law, but it's my recollection that's we intended is something like that. So maybe.
Vanden Berg: Great. I think in letter we wrote it vague enough that you would help us identify resources. We're not asking that you cough it up at this point in time.
Jordahl: Speaking of coughing up, does this grant obligate us to cough.
Vanden Berg: No. What we're asking you at this point is to help us figure out the transportation issue, and then it would in kind of staff time just in terms of the planning process.
Thompson: How long is the grant for?
Vanden Berg: 3 years. Originally the legislation said 5 years, but I don't think that made it into the administrative ranks.
Thompson: So it's $400,000 over.
Vanden Berg: Each year. It's a nice chunk of change. It's really competitive, I mean it's federal money. Ron Mirr is a really great grant writer that we have here locally, has been hired to help us with it. And he felt it wouldn't be as competitive if we had something like a van in it. So, we're trying to be as competitive with this thing as possible. It would be easier to find money for a van in other places that it would be for staff time.
Jordahl: The one question that occurs to me, and Carol you're fresh enough out of your last job that I can still ask you to speak as something of an authority on the matter, is there any kind of coordination that goes on County wide with the other school districts that would mirror this. We have neighborhood centers that function in other school districts.
Vanden Berg: I think that our Juvenile Crime Prevention group has been trying to involve the other rural districts more. I'm not aware of other rural districts applying for this particular grant.
Jordahl: I just certainly would want to promote that kind of communication and cooperation that we could get.
Vanden Berg: The other this is that these schools provide the ideal location to provide this kind of service, particularly Hills, they're the only show in town. It's having that school open up for more hours would be really helpful for the kids.
Jordahl: That's been great.
Thompson: Clear Creek has a school based youth services grant which allows them to do some of these kinds of things.
Lehman: How about as far as the transportation, do they have anything set up there for the kids after the programs over. That's what we're hearing from you as a need.
Vanden Berg: Right, that's a need that we have. I think that's an issue for them, I think that Neighborhood Centers has been able to secure a van for their Clear Creek Center. it's an obstacle that we talk about a lot, just because it's a huge issue.
Lehman: Are you thinking that some of this grant money would not be used for a van, you're asking for us to try and use one we already have and coordinate that.
Vanden Berg: Right, we're trying to identify other resources for the van, and we've written some money in for staff tine to drive a van, and some maintenance costs, but you know way up front, probably we would need 2 vans that would be I think kind of a lot of money for that (inaudible).
Jordahl: Have you approached the van proveyors of the area, and say , hey, how would you like to give, grant, lend, rent us a van?
Vanden Berg: We haven't at this point, if anyone has any connections with any of those folks. I don't have any.
Jordahl: Don Sehr got us a good van here a few years ago, I don't know.
Vanden Berg: And Sally has set up a meeting tomorrow with Lisa Dewey and I just to maybe brainstorm some ideas on how SEATS might be a possibility or maybe if they know how to access a van.
Jordahl: East Central Iowa Council of Governments might have some grant assistance to do rural transportation, you know, that meaning we were just in here earlier today talking about that, so talking with Lisa and ECICOG, Mary Rump, up there would be a good contact to make, I think.
Thompson: Well I am certainly in favor of writing this letter and participating in the planning.
Jordahl: Me too.
Duffy: I've seen you in past get grants before so I think you're a little modest. Does any of this go through the, where did the grant come from?
Vanden Berg: It's a Federal Grant, so it from the Federal Department of Education, and then it would go directly to the School district and then we would contract out with different groups.
Jordahl: This looks really nice. It's exactly the type of thing I like to see happening. Bring in outside money to help serve local needs and coordinating efforts in rural areas, hey, way to go.
Vanden Berg: Can't really go wrong with that huh?
Duffy: We'll see you in 3 years.
Jordahl: I imagine we'll take formal action on Thursday, but I don't see why you would need to come down here and spend any more time do it, unless you want to.
Vanden Berg: Well great, thanks for your time.
Jordahl: Thank you for coming in, and thank you for all of this work.