Reconvened at 10:43 a.m.

Jordahl: OK Angela, let's look at the, what did the agenda say? Earlier than that, significantly earlier than that.

Stutsman: Johnson County Housing Needs Assessment.

Jordahl: 9:15 in the morning. We owe you, at least I do. We're back in session. The informal meeting February 23rd. With the patience of Angela Williams, Housing Planner for East Central Iowa Council of Governments having been sorely tried by my handling of the agenda. We'll tolerate almost anything from Angela this morning. Good morning.

East Central Iowa Council of Governments Housing Planner Angela Williams: I'm assuming that you've all had a chance to look over at the (inaudible).

Stutsman: Let's just cut right to the quick. Action steps here and one is to establish a countywide housing task force and then the other is to provide a property tax abatement.

Thompson: There's actually another recommendation to provide assist cost burdened households. I read this report and talked with Angela at some length and she has provided some revised pages for the draft document that she'll have ready by Thursday. She's requesting that we make a resolution adopting this formally as the housing report for Johnson County. And that we could do that on Thursday. She says she'll have a final draft in here by then. I felt that there were a number of additional questions. She answered many questions for me in our meeting. One has to do with how much infrastructure the County has to support housing development out there. Also, things like transportation and human services access and the capacity of the County to do this. I understand from Angela that any staffing and administration costs would be born by ECICOG. I saw that as a real plus because it would be neutral to the County. But I would recommend that we have another meeting with the people that Angela met with as she was doing this. Plus, I made a list on the back page, plus R.J. and Maryanne Dennis from the Iowa City Housing Commission and Linda Severson and Graham Dameron and really go over the possible kinds of assistance that we could provide and then form our task force based on the kinds that we decided it would be feasible for Johnson County to provide. It goes anywhere from low-income loans or tax statements for people who do repairs on their own house at one end of a continuum all the way to building low-income housing out in the County at the other end. Is that accurate? We need to look at that whole picture and see how feasible it is and form our task force around that I think. I would think the committee would only have to meet once or twice in order to work these things out because this report is very thorough.

Jordahl: Perhaps you'd like a visual aid.

Williams: I have one right here.

Jordahl: OK.

Stutsman: On Thursday you're asking to go ahead and approve this report or to and then from there to form this ad hoc committee and then come back with us with a recommendation to then go to the next step of forming a task committee once all these things are laid out and then we'll know which way do we go. That sounds good.

Duffy: Does this end up economic development? Like if we get a grant or ECICOG is one of the COG's. But there's information or maybe a grant through the Department of Economic Development.

Williams: Yes there is. In fact in one of the revised the revised action theme that I sent to Carol after our discussion I recommended that perhaps Johnson County make a pre-application to Iowa Department of Economic Development for some of their housing rehabilitation funds.

Duffy: Would that be the rural policy in economic development? Probably would. Well there's a Rural Policy Committee Counsel (inaudible).

Williams: Yes, the grant would be through the State Department of Economic development and the grant would provide up to 24,999 in rehab assistance money which is what I recommended to many of the non-metropolitan cities that they apply for it. The only reason that I didn't have it in the action thing for the unincorporated towns in the County was because of the lack of infrastructure in place. The Iowa State Department of Economic Development really doesn't look to favorably on putting that kind of money into the homes. However it's nowhere in their written policy that they won't. I spoke with them about it and if they continue to receive free application it won't be something that they'll be forced to address.

Stutsman: I think the ad-hoc committee looks really really good. Have you contacted those people to work on?

Thompson: Not yet. I thought I'd wait to see if you folks wanted to do it first.

Stutsman: I think it sounds good. I think it's a good way to approach.

Williams: Actually most of the people on that list contacted me to meet with them a few weeks ago about Johnson County we were talking about housing issues. Actually Maurice (inaudible) out of Iowa City contacted me and invited most of those other people so they're already have some sort of commitment to working with the County.

Stutsman: Oh good. You said and one other Board member?

Thompson: Yes. Does someone want to volunteer? If not I would be willing to just do it. I didn't know whether we always had to have 2 of us.

Stutsman: No, not necessarily. We can't have any more than 2.

Jordahl: It would sometimes assist in case of illness or conflict of meetings to have 2 Supervisors up to speed on the thing sufficiently to handle it. Depends on the degree to which the board is interested in taking action on the basis of this study on behalf of rural residents. The mayors and councils of the towns are going to be able to do things for people within their confines. But the question is how active do we want to be in pursuing this and if we want to be active in pursuing it then I would suggest that we have 2 Supervisors because that way we can make sure we continue to make progress. People don't have meetings for no purpose because someone has a conflict and so forth.

Stutsman: Are there volunteers? Otherwise I think Carol is, you know there's Graham Dameron from the County is available.

Thompson: And Linda. We have several other representatives besides Board.

Stutsman: Especially at this point when you're just putting together a committee.

Jordahl: Let's leave a seat there for a Supervisor that wants to attend why welcome to do so.

Duffy: I could probably attend, but I shouldn't get involved because I'm on the State Board.

Jordahl: I'm interested in everything which is a constant liability for me.

Stutsman: That's why I want to (inaudible).

Jordahl: I think if I volunteered Sally would probably wrestle me to the ground. So I guess maybe we'll go with one for the time being and leave an open seat there.

Stutsman: Anybody can always attend. But I think Carol has the responsibility.

Thompson: I'll put out an e-mail when the meeting's next so anybody who wants to go.

Stutsman: That's good.

Jordahl: If we wind up with more than 2 Supervisors there one of them can follow the tree stump theory and not speak. It's like a designated driver.

Duffy: Do you know what we mean by that? See with 3 there'd be a quorum. Yes that's a great idea.

Jordahl: Can't meet without an agenda. All right. You propose an ad hoc committee, we can't actually appoint that committee now. But we've sort of got our Board representative. Does this need to be on the agenda again because we're going to get a final version of this right. So we need to action on Thursday we've got that going. Anything else need to be done?

Williams: See mine was much quicker than (inaudible).

Thompson: We were ready.

Duffy: You messed that up Chair.

Jordahl: I really did. I really messed that up. Oh well.

Duffy: Are you going to charge us any extra?

Jordahl: Pain and suffering.

Stutsman: Thank you Angela for being patient and coming in. She doesn't need to come back Thursday does she?

Jordahl: Oh please no. Unless you want to.

Williams: That's OK. I'd just assume that complete draft (inaudible). Thank you.

Jordahl: Thank you Angela. I'll try not to let that happen again.

Stutsman: Business from the Board of Supervisors.

Jordahl: Rolling right along. We have just this morning had discussion of the Senior Center agreement. I've got a phone message during the break here I walked out to check from Steve Atkins saying that Ernie Lehman is going to be contacting me again about this precise form of a committee to review the Senior Center Agreement. The group that sat down to talk about it included representatives of interests that I think Carol and I and Mike Foster and Bob Welsh and Pat White thought were important to the County's primary concern of the Senior Dining Program and its needs. I don't know if that composition of the Committee is exactly what it should be.

Stutsman: So you're looking for a committee to review the Senior Center 28E Agreement?

Jordahl: Yes.

Stutsman: OK. It makes sense that Pat White should be on that and I guess the Chair, Jonathan. Carol would you be available to be on that?

Thompson: I would volunteer.

Stutsman: OK. I don't know if Mike Foster really needs to be on that.

Jordahl: This is the question. The governmental representatives, Pat wrote the original agreement. Does he actually need to serve on the committee or could he be kind of staff support to the committee.

Stutsman: I think his input would be very valuable on the committee.

Jordahl: Very valuable on the committee. And then from the City I think there will probably be 2 city representatives. Steve Atkins's response to my draft of a letter, he suggested a committee with one representative of the Senior Center Commission. I think in the meeting we had a couple of weeks ago we had discussed possibly 2 from the Senior Center Commission. But we had also talked about representation from Senior Dining from our Nutrition Committee. So that's where it begins to unravel into how many interests are we going to have represented here?

Stutsman: How big do you want the committee too? If you have one, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, that's getting to be a pretty big committee.

Jordahl: So if we had 2 City, 3 County. The City very well might want to have a person parallel to Pat, their Attorney or something sit also.

Stutsman: 2 City representatives. Are you talking about City Council?

Jordahl: Or maybe 2 council plus Steve Atkins maybe. I haven't heard from Ernie as to what the Council may have thought about this yet.

Stutsman: Maybe you need to sit down with Ernie first of all to get an idea of who they're talking about appointing.

Jordahl: Yes. I think that we're probably about a week away from getting this down. What we wanted to do here is have a little discussion about how broad we want this to be. Should this be a committee of the 2 governments and their agreed upon Commission only and then with inviting other people to attend because they have significant roles to play.

Stutsman: It seems to me like if you open it to Senior Dining then you should have a representative from Elderly Services and somebody from AARP and I think at this level I think you just want it to be pretty lean and just working out. I think all those people can represent those different programs there the people that we're talking about. So I guess I would suggest a couple of Supervisors and Pat White from the County and maybe one County representative from the Senior Center Commission.

Thompson: I agree because it should be the parties to the agreement which are the City and the County.

Jordahl: Yes. But then the Senior Center Commission is a kind of a child of the agreement, isn't it? That it's created as a sort of governing entity for the Senior Center out of the 28E Agreement. Do they have a seat at the table? If so, how many? You mentioned a County representative. There are 3 County representatives and a larger number is it 9 of members representing the Cities. Is it one to one? Do we have 2 representatives from the Senior Center Commission and thus giving the County 50 % of the weight. That's the kind of question we need to ask here.

Thompson: And one of the things that we talked about in our meeting was that our goal really is to formulate something that the City and County can agree to so that the City can more effectively instruct their delegates to the Senior Center Commission on the (inaudible).

Stutsman: I'm inclined to think that too. I think when you say that the parties that write the agreement, who are involved in the agreement should be the ones that write it. I'm going to limit it to 3 now: Pat White, Carol Thompson and Jonathan. That would be our representatives. Run that by the City and see what their feelings are and then we can reach an agreement.

Jordahl: All right. And then the spirit of the conversation is that this committee would listen with openness to presentations from people. This is the thing where it starts to bulge into a time commitment. It's one thing to talk philosophically about, can the Nutrition Program be specified as being more central to the operations of the Senior Center than some activity that could just as well be conducted elsewhere, something like that.

Stutsman: But out representatives can share those views.

Jordahl: Right. But the question of how the committee operates. Do we in a public input process that invites in every single interest group that isn't represented on the committee and go through a digest there, or are we looking at the 28E Agreement itself just in the context of our experience with the issues as representative of the public.

Thompson: I think the latter.

Stutsman: Yeah. I guess I would agree.

Welsh: Jonathan, if I could say, I would agree with that. It seems to me that what you're talking about at this point is a basic understanding between the City and the County and that those are the players at the table. That the basic policy and the Senior Center Commission your advisory Nutrition Board involve are to basically carry out your policies. I again would not think that Elderly Service Agency or AARP, those are agencies, that comes in a whole different level of consideration. Basic policy and your basic agreement between the City and the County. I think for what it's worth and I have a long standing interest in this subject. But I think that's the way to deal with it. As you all are talking about it at the County and City level.

Jordahl: It presumes a degree of familiarity on the part of those policy makers with the details of the operations of the Senior Center sufficient to allow them to formulate policy on the level. I'm not trying to get us involved in a series of 30 meetings for public input on this. But neither can this policy be crafted in a vacuum. People will want to talk to us I think.

Welsh: I would like to listen. But I think that can be a row. I'm not sure what information you'd need at this point.

Jordahl: We have to trust that the committee will well represent its constituents and go ahead. I think that's what we're looking for is basically looking at the 28A agreement. Does it accurately reflect what our intentions are. The largest open question that is going to come out of this, and you heard this morning from Mr. Honahan that the Senior Center Commission is expecting to have representation on this commission. If we're going to back away from that then we need to do so rather candidly.

Thompson: I can't remember whether Steve mentioned that in the meeting or not. He may have said in the meeting that they wanted to have the chair of the Senior Center Commission. Do you remember that?

Jordahl: What I remember from the discussion and I do have some notes from it, was it was kind of a shotgun question that I asked, representation of the City and County had talked about this. But then all of the people in that room, Mike Foster, Linda Kopping and Bob Welsh and Pat White all had experience with these issues. But as I said a few minutes ago, we were focused on the Senior Dining question in that room. This committee needs to focus on the 28E Agreement at a policy level and not get sidetracked into trying to fight out the Senior Dining question.

Stutsman: The space needs. Yeah.

Jordahl: But linked to that in the point of the construction of the ramp and our participation in the expenses for that that were being discussed here earlier. The formula of 20% is going to be a question that will be there on the table during the 28E discussions. Included in that will be some manipulation, I don't mean to use that as a negative term, some use of statistics on utilization of the Senior Center. That's kind of slippery business, too. There's lots of money involved in that decision. What am I trying to say by that? Well, this isn't just looking at the 28E agreement and saying all right let's put a little language in there about senior dining. There's a bit of a Pandora's Box here financially.

Stutsman: What do you want to do with this, Jonathan?

Jordahl: I think we've got a good set of people in terms of the governmental representatives. I would like in some way to limit the damage that could result from it. Obviously the Board's going to have to vote on any changes to the agreement. But I'm fearful of getting in there and winding up committed to an extra 15% of funding for the Senior Center or committed to an extra 30% of funding for the ramp or something like that.

Thompson: I think we would have to work those details out in the committee. Those are all important. But we can't solve them here right now.

Jordahl: All right. We'll vote to send us and we will vote to, not vote, rather suggest that this morning. As far as the Senior Center Commission I'll discuss with Ernie what the City's stance is on that from the point of view of they're being people who need to abide by the policy decision that is made between the governmental entities and see if Iowa City's in agreement with that or not. That'll probably mean coming back to the Board again if Iowa City's not in agreement with that. I want to make sure here that we are all in agreement with that. Should we or should we not include the Senior Center Commission or (inaudible) of the Senior Center Commission even one on this committee?

Duffy: I would have at least one on there.

Welsh: If you do that you should have someone from the Nutrition Board.

Stutsman: And here we go. That's the problem. Then there should be somebody from Elderly Services, there should be...

Duffy: Who's on that again? Is Linda Kopping on the committee?

Jordahl: No. Not now.

Duffy: Why isn't she?

Jordahl: Again she's employed by the city.

Welsh: The City could name her.

Jordahl: She's employed by the City to implement policies.

Duffy: Well she knows the Senior Center very well and is a very good person.

Jordahl: She might be the City's rep parallel to Pat White, for example.

Duffy: You know I spent over 10 years up there. I know the Senior Center pretty good. I see Senior Dining kind of going the other way. Going to have some real competition.

Stutsman: But we're just not talking about the Senior Dining Program with this 28E agreement.

Duffy: I understand that. But it all started with Senior Dining that we needed this space. And then the other people up there said well we need it too. And now sure they're going to ask us for, if we go through with this, I don't know how much it will be. Where's the money coming from?

Jordahl: That'll all have to be discussed. I think what we'll do maybe is have a meeting and see where people are at. It might be that we can do this relatively easily by doing a little clarifying to a fairly good agreement at the outset; or it may be that there's some controversial issues that we have to bring back to the Board. We'll bring back to the Board in any case, but I mean.

Stutsman: So our recommendations for the County is for Pat White, Carol Thompson and Jonathan and not have a Senior Center representative?

Jordahl: Is that correct? No Senior Center representative?

Stutsman: Not from our end anyway.

Duffy: They said they'd like to have one on there. I don't see how one person could be outvoted on it.

Stutsman: Well then 3 City representatives and then somebody from the Senior Center Commission.

Thompson: The Chair.

Welsh: Could you please include someone from the Nutrition Committee if you get out of your policy making group?

Jordahl: I think there's a real valid line that Sally has pointed to, there's the policy making elected officials kind of group on one side of the line. When you get to the Senior Center Commission they are appointees of these policy making bodies. What we're doing is we're talking about policy here. Talking about the 28E agreement between 2 elected bodies. I think it would be OK to have input as needed or desired from people who are not a part of those elected bodies.

Duffy: Who's on it again now? Carol and Jonathan...

Stutsman: Pat White.

Jordahl: We would invite the City to invite 3 similarly so we have a balance in numbers.

Stutsman: 2 City Council members and then either Steve Atkins...

Thompson: Or Linda Kopping or someone from the Commission. Let them decide. 6 members. 3 from us 3 from them.

Stutsman: Jonathan, we need to make some decision and some closure on this. Why don't you call Ernie tell him these are our suggested representatives.

Jordahl: OK. I'll do that. Further discussion. We've had enough. All right.

Jordahl: Contact person Item 6B, need for animal feeding operations. This is in response to 2 letter that we've gotten from the Department of Natural Resources. The first time we got this letter back in I think it was January, I contacted Rick Dvorak wondering if he would be the contact person and he referred me to the Department of Health. I called Kot Flora over there and had a conversation with her and I had not heard back from Kot when we got this letter and have spoken with her and we did have a conversation about this and I assumed I was going to get a person designated from Health. That didn't happen prior to February 17th. Now getting back to Kot, she is saying she would be the appropriate person that we can designate, so if we want to take formal action on that on Thursday's agenda we could designate Kot. Now I'll read you the letter here subject House File 2494 communication between Department of Natural Resources and the counties regarding both complaints and DNR issued permits. This statute provides opportunity for County input at situations regarding complaints against animal feeding operations and when animal feeding operation permits are applied for by parties within the County. The letter requests that each county determine a point of contact and an alternate for complaint investigations and site surveys. And they need a response by March first which is coming right along here. Kot will be our contact and I guess we it says we would also like for you to designate an alternate along with their telephone. I'll get that from Kot and we'll have it for Thursday's meeting.

Duffy: Didn't they postpone that for a year? Or am I thinking of something else?

Jordahl: February 17th letter.

Stutsman: Postpone what Charlie?

Duffy: I thought I read where they weren't going to do it for a year ahead.

Lehman: I think they just need a contact person.

Duffy: Can we get that bill? I'd like to read just exactly what it says in there.

Jordahl: Yeah. The Auditor's got a link to the website of the legislature and you can pull that down.

Duffy: Yes. I'll go down there before I vote on it I might like to bring up some things on it.

Stutsman: Thanks for following up on that and getting that taken care of.

Duffy: Was that 2590?

Jordahl: 2494. HF2494.

Stutsman: Everybody got a copy of that letter in the packet. It's in that letter Charlie, House File 2494.

Duffy: I want to read that. The whole thing there. Get it next week.

(Continued in Part 4)