Reconvened on February 25, 1999 at 9:37 a.m.

Jordahl: Perhaps, Pat, business from the County Attorney regarding the following...

County Attorney Pat White: I do. I have actually 2 items I want to report to you on and obviously invite questions or comments or guidance. Cheryl Whitney is here for whatever questions you have of her as well. As you'll recall a couple of weeks ago, you authorized us to negotiate a lease arrangement for units 9 and 10 at Eastdale Plaza with the plan being to relocate the Department of Human Services Income Maintenance Unit into that space, which is just a little more than 3,000 square feet. We had probably a 2, 2 and a half hour, meeting yesterday to begin to try to put the lease in form that you can act on it. The schedule we're on would probably bring that to your agenda within the next 2 weeks, as soon as possible. But the next 2 weeks would be our goal. The tentative schedule that we've negotiated would be we would take possession of the premises on April first. But the landlord would agree to give us April and May rent free and then we would begin to pay rent on the premises starting June first. The theory behind that is obviously is it won't be ready for occupancy until the remodeling is done and we simply had to negotiate a way whereby once we took control of the premises we're at least paying some fair share of the cost of the remodeling that we want to do. The tentative negotiated arrangement is we'll legally take control of the premises April first but we won't start paying rent until June first. I didn't get time yesterday to make contact with Dwight to see where he was in terms of the plans. We know he's been at work. His original schedule envisioned, albeit, often optimistically that he would have plans for you to review and approve by today and obviously we're not quite there yet. But I would think again within the next week, or 10 days, or 2 weeks, we'll be back to you with the plans he's prepared for your review and discussion. The schedule that he originally outlined for you would have had substantial completion for occupancy by July 26th. One of the things I have explored... I visited with Cheryl about it. I visited with Jack Tank about it. I'll bring you... If this turns out to be a viable option, I'll certainly bring you a lot more detail in a more formal recommendation than I have today but I want to at least alert you to this. That is that I think it's not impossible that we might be able to find a way to do the construction at a lower cost than Dwight's tentative estimates. We obviously don't have a final estimate from him but given the we're going to be remodeling space that we're going to be leasing... As I've visited with Jack about Eastdale and his interest in the facility and his experience there, it was clear to me fairly quickly that he has supervised some construction out there. He knows the building. He has an ownership interest in some parts of that building, other than the ones we're going to be leasing. He's dealt with some general contractors and electricians and plumbers in the work that's been done for Iowa Workforce Development and for Goodwill. So the question that I raised with him as we've started to discuss the lease is whether instead of the proposal that he made just to defray part of the construction costs, whether he would be willing to increase that into actually doing the construction on a cost sharing basis. Part of the lease... This concept would be that we would negotiate a lease that would say well here are the plans. This is what we want done to the space and instead of going into the market place with 30 days for a public hearing and 30 more days to solicit bids from anybody who wanted to submit it, whether we could try to utilize his existing knowledge and expertise about the space in a way that would save the tax payers a little bit of money here. I don't know that we'll be able to achieve a savings but I just felt we ought to at least look at whether a slightly different approach to the construction had the potential to save us some money. The reason I think it does is because there are subcontractors whom Jack has worked with who know the building, who have been in it and who will probably be able to bid lower than somebody who's not been in that space before, not worked in it before. The way that would play out, if it's OK with you if we explore that, is as soon as Dwight is ready to present plans, and we'll get here to show them to you so Cheryl can make recommendations to you and you can say yes, that's OK or no, we'd like to do it different. That would be a point at which we'd need to make a decision whether we're going to utilize the procedure and schedule that we'd originally talked about or whether we'd have the ability to negotiate something with Jack and Sue Tank to get the construction done more quickly and at a lower cost. What I would probably recommend is that we take... Once Dwight has the plans done, it might take us a week to let Jack look at them and make a judgment whether he has any interest in doing that. If he doesn't than we go back to the original schedule but we'll elaborate on that as soon as Dwight is ready to present the plans to you. We'll see if that's a viable option. That pretty much summarizes what we've done in terms of negotiation. I've asked Bob Saunders to take a look at the insurance clauses. I asked Jack for a lot of additional information. I need to review the condominium documents. I need to learn a little bit about the Eastdale structure itself. I think we should be able to get all of that done within the next week or 2 weeks by the time we're ready to get back on your agenda. I think it's fair to say at this point, we have not any impediment to proceeding. We should be able to negotiate a lease along the general lines that were previously presented to you. I think we're on course to get that done fairly soon. So I invite Cheryl to add anything to that that she has.

Department of Human Services Area Administrator Cheryl Whitney: The only thing probably I would add is that every day it feels like the space crunch is worse for us. I think we will be getting some additional State staff, DHS staff, which will allow us to do our jobs better, to serve people better, in a more timely and effective way. But when that happen, we'd have no where to put them at this point. It's really important that we be able to move forward with this. I really believe that it's a good plan because of the co-location with Workforce Development. Jay (inaudible) told me this week that they should have money in the regional office budget to buy the server. Remember, we've had some discussion about that.

Stutsman: That was pretty expensive too so that would be great.

Whitney: It was $17,000, right. So timing is relatively good related to that. I will talk more with Mark Edwards about the telephone so I'll know a little bit better about that. So we'll continue to work on some of those cost issues. I really appreciate being able to hopefully continue to move forward with this.

Jordahl: This just goes to show what happens if you ask.

Whitney: Yes, sometimes that is true.

Stutsman: Did you get that in writing?

Whitney: Well...

Jordahl: Asking in writing might be even more effective. (Inaudible).

Stutsman: That additional State staff... Is that in IMU Unit?

Whitney: And (inaudible). Our workloads for the State programs have actually been among the highest in the region, as what we see, or among the highest in the State. We're in the highest tier within the State. We have certainly an advantage in that our office does not have the turnover that some offices have. That is a great thing for us and how we can deliver services.

Stutsman: Turnover in staff you mean?

Whitney: Right. Yes. If you're constantly training new staff, you can imagine the impact that is has. That's very good but there just comes a time. You've heard me talk about the increase in family foster care and those kind of things. There comes a time when you just can't hold it together any longer without additional staff.

Jordahl: This item seems to be intimately related to the next item.

White: Well, it's at least related, which is viable. I wanted to put it on the agenda. I can just go ahead to that item and then we can talk about the other relationships. The Mall Drive site... The Space Needs Committee brought you a recommendation probably late last fall actually, which we had been discussing. As I recall sometime in December, with discussion in executive session about potential price and in open session about the potential site acquisition, the Board authorized us to proceed with negotiations to acquire what would be approximately 160,00 square feet on the east side of Mall Drive between Lower Muscatine Road and First Avenue. I've certainly had discussions with the real estate agent for the owner probably by telephone 3 or 4 times since then. We've continued to do some market research. I've used a local real estate appraiser to do some consultation on prices. I'm at the point now where I would be ready to reduce to writing an offer to acquire there but I just wanted to come back to you before I took that step for a variety of reasons. One, Carol was not a member of the Board and didn't hear any of that discussion. 2, Mike was not actually a member of the Board but he was present at the last discussion, both in executive session and in open session and would be aware of more than Carol would be. The other thing that happened was discussion of leasing units 9 and 10 at Eastdale came to more serious discussion after you had said go ahead and submit an offer to acquire that real estate. One or 2 of you at the time allowed us how you'd probably like to discuss that before we pressed on and at least one member of the public suggested that maybe we wouldn't be going ahead with that. I think it's still Cheryl's feeling and mine that all of the arguments that existed for that site acquisition still exist. The fact that we're going to be entering into a lease for units 9 and 10 at Eastdale for 10 years doesn't negate the permanent need that was identified when we talked about it before. At least at the staff level, we're still ready to proceed. The reality of the real estate acquisition, the pros and cons are, yes, we're looking at a lease that would provide 10 year relief to DHS. The lease we're going to negotiate though would give you the flexibility to put anyone in that Eastdale space that you want. It will be leased by the County. It wouldn't have to be DHS Income Maintenance. It could be another County function. We could actually probably sublease it if we needed to. I don't think in terms of the market there's any disadvantage in proceeding with the acquisition. The location is one that if in 3 years, or 5 years, or 8 years, our plans were to change, the value is certainly not going to go down. It's a fairly attractive site, which is part of the reason that it's more expensive land than some other options that we've talked about. In essence, the report is I'm ready to submit an offer to acquire that. That doesn't mean we'll end up successfully acquiring it. I don't know whether we'll end up negotiating a mutually agreeable arrangement. In any event, as I've said before, the procedure would be I would negotiate an agreement to purchase, which would be subject to formal Board of Supervisors approval. At the point at which I had an agreement with the owner, than we would bring it back to you and put it on your agenda for final decision as to whether you wanted to proceed with it. There's no particular risk in proceeding now, by the same token, I wouldn't want to invest the time and effort to do it if you had a preference that we hold up or not go ahead with it. This is pretty much a status report inviting reaction or guidance either today or whenever you're ready to give us reaction or guidance.

Jordahl: Would members of the Board like to react or guide?

Duffy: Where's the money going to come from?

Jordahl: There's a reaction.

White: That's part of the negotiations. I've got to negotiate a purchase agreement that is realistic. We're talking about contract purchases. It might run anywhere from 4 to 10 years.

Jordahl: So we have the money in the capital projects budget to pay for this cost or at least assuming that we continue to lay aside the money that we are.

White: I take as part of my negotiating guidance that I've obviously got to negotiate something that would work within the budget.

Thompson: Are we eligible for administrative cost reimbursement on land that we buy for future building?

Whitney: We have to be in the space. That's one of the things we checked out recently. Yes.

White: But that will be true of the Eastdale site.

Thompson: Yes.

White: We'll be eligible for reimbursement once we get in there. Both for the rental cost and, it appears, to amortize the construction cost.

Whitney: We just have to get that rent (inaudible).

White: To illustrate budgeting and cash flow issues, I think it's quite possible that we can, with State reimbursements amortizing some of the constructions costs for Eastdale, that ultimately will help us use other funds for DHS or Department of Health or jail or some combination. The reality certainly still is between a building on the Mall Drive site or somewhere else and the jail, we're looking at still very unspecified but certain multi-million dollar projects, which are going to be 5, or 10, or 20, or 30 year efforts depending on how we choose to try to finance them.

Jordahl: What is the word to paraphrase Bill Clinton in mean?

Whitney: To occupy.

Jordahl: Do we occupy a building when we build something to occupy... Pat was saying that we could amortize the cost of remodeling. We wouldn't be in the space while we were remodeling it.

White: No, we need to set the function up. Whenever the employees are at work. For purposes of your question, in would mean we're at work and open for business at that location. There will be a couple months that we're not going to get reimbursed.

Jordahl: But that's for rent. But for the remodeling which would be occurring during those months when were not in the space...

White: My understanding is we'll be able to amortize the entire cost once we're open for business.

Jordahl: Which...

White: But we'll do it over the 10 year period.

Jordahl: OK. But that then leads to the question of the cost of the other space that we're proposing to purchase, the land.

Stutsman: There's no reimbursement for that until we actually have a building built and we start taking calls at that location.

Jordahl: But at that time the cost of acquiring the land and building the building would be analogous to the remodeling costs that we're proposing to similarly be reimbursed for.

White: I don't know.

Whitney: That's a good question though. I can ask that. It would be County owned and hopefully paid for property at the time we would move in.

Jordahl: But it would have been purchased for the purpose of you moving in there. So to me it's only a question of how dilated the time frame is between the time we spend money and the time we are in the space.

Whitney: No, I can ask that question though, Jonathan. If we buy land and have it paid for the moment that we move in, we've already made that investment so can we take that past investment and spread that forward with as well as with the building costs that we will incur?

Jordahl: Given that the only reason we made those expenditures was in order to provide that overhead.

Whitney: I don't know the answer to that but I can ask that question.

Stutsman: You can ask, right?

White: Do you have any recollection of post mansion?

Thompson: I think the reason they went with a private developer was that very thing. The developer could amortize the costs into the rent but the County couldn't.

White: That was one of the reasons. That was my fuzzy recollection too is that if it's our building, there's probably not the same reimbursement available but that was a long time ago.

Whitney: Some of that has changed over the years I think. There's been some things come out about County-owned facilities because County has made some argument. If we go ahead and purchase because we think that's the best thing to do, it's not fair. But I don't want to...

Stutsman: It sure doesn't hurt to ask and get it clarified.

Whitney: Yes.

Stutsman: Getting back to the thoughts about whether to go ahead with this purchase of this land, I, and the Space Needs Committee too, had in their mind that this Eastdale location was just going to be a short term situation. We knew immediately we couldn't do any large project. The space needs at Department of Human Services are pretty critical. This was going to be a short term or Band-Aid affect, with the idea that we would continue to look at some long term options. I see this Mall Drive as long term. I think it's probably in the County's best interest to go ahead with the idea of purchasing this land. I think our space needs are not going to diminish. They're just going to continue to grow. DHS is one but we know in the background Health Department is looming. We have needs here at the County Administration Building. So I think those things are just going to continue to grow. Any demographics I hear about the State of Iowa, it seems like it's Polk, Story County, Johnson, Linn County are the growing areas of the State. I think just based on that alone, we know that sooner or later we're going to have to continue to address these things.

Jordahl: From the point of view of the Space Needs Committee's charge to look at the needs County-wide, we have something here that seems fairly aggressively to address the needs of the Department of Human Services. I think we've had the discussion on the question that I'm about to ask. Previously we've talked about this but I'd like to hear it rehearsed, please, perhaps briefly. How this proposed expenditure of our money from the capital projects fund stacks up against the needs of the jail for example.

White: It was the sense of the Space Needs Committee when if started that DHS was the highest priority with the jail a close second. The jail has experienced crowding greater over the last 3 to 4 months than it was experiencing when the Committee made that assessment. There isn't a formal vote or recommendation that would say this but my sense is the jail is probably in equal priority at this point but we don't yet... We're not at the point where we have a plan to act on. The effort with the jail to identify space now is... a consultant working with Dwight is going to make a square footage recommendation and tell us whether that location will work, hopefully develop a footprint that will work. Then at that point we would go to the University. We'd be at the same point at which we're at negotiating with the owner of the Mall Drive site trying to negotiate the additional space necessary, if some is necessary. I expect it will be. The principle goal in the short term was to get the necessary space reserved for future construction and our thinking was that we would have budget resources available to do that. We certainly acknowledge we don't have a financial plan either to plan a DHS office building, with or without the Department of Health, or the jail. Once we firm up sites and know it's doable at these locations, that would be the next step.

Stutsman: Well and I...

Jordahl: Pardon me, I'd like to pursue the line of questioning here just for a minute. That is we have pressure at North Dodge at the Department of Human Services where we want to relieve that by moving into Eastdale. So OK, we do that. That's a solution for DHS for the time being. It relieves something. If the jail space is of an equivalent urgency to the DHS question, before we resolve the DHS question to some extent by renting space in Eastdale, it would seem to me that priorities might shift. The Space Needs Committee perhaps ought to address this question in light of renting this space. Has that been done? I'm thinking that if we commit to spending our capital projects money on land for DHS, having already given DHS some more space, that we're kind of putting all of our eggs in one basket.

Stutsman: I think the Space Needs Committee has approached this with not really pitting one project against the other and avoiding putting if we address one, we're taking away from another. I think these are all needs that we need to address and we just need to figure out how we're going to do it and not say if we do one, we're not going to do another. We have to put the other off. I guess that's my feeling about it. I think we make a mistake by saying if we do DHS, then we're not going to be able to do the jail. I think we have to look at the whole picture. Some things you can put off like the Department of Health. That's not urgent. But it is something that we are going to have to address at some time. I think we have to approach it with the idea that we've got an number of very important space needs and we just have to figure out how we're going to address them.

Jordahl: But doesn't the urgency of the DHS situation diminish if we have the relocation of the Income Maintenance Unit?

Stutsman: Yes.

White: Yes, it does.

Whitney: I would say the urgency, the immediacy, of it does, Jonathan. But on the long term, that building was built in 1974 and so something will have to change. It will mean more money from the County one way or the other. Where's the best place to invest that money? Those kind of questions... We know that we will be faced with having to do something within this 5 or 10 year period. So how do we lay the ground work for that is how I view it.

Jordahl: The having to is the piece that I think we need to be responsive to. I think we have a pretty substantial have to in the jail. We have a temporary answer for DHS in the short term. If we've got a situation in the jail where we're coming to a have to then I'm questioning if it's prudent to spend out capital project dollars on land for a project that's 10 year down the road.

White: Well that's the right question and that's precisely the balancing that needs to be done. That's what the policy question is. It's our feeling that if this site is as attractive as we think it is, it won't be there at some point. Then we'll still be looking at a permanent site but it will be one other than the one there's general agreement is the best site we've seen for the future. If the budget considerations here could... this sounds strange but the amount of money we're spending, we would spend, to acquire the Mall Drive site over 4 or 10 years is such a small part of the need that it's not going to be that significant. Land cost here will be somewhere between $1,000,000 and $1,500,000. If you spread that over 10 years, you're talking about $100,000 to 150,000 a year plus interest. Construction costs, it would depend on how big of a building you built at one time, but if you built the square footage that's been identified as needed for both DHS and the Department of Health, you'd be spending $3,000,000, $3,500,000. We're not even in the ballpark for having a plan to do that right now.

Jordahl: The 3.5 million would be for the building on top of the land?

White: Yes. That's a very crude estimate. So all this recommendation is designed to do is identify a site and try to firm that site up for future planning.

Jordahl: You say 100, a $150,000 a year, would that be borrowed then or on contract?

White: No, it'd be cash. A contract purchase and then we would just pay it out of our ongoing capital projects budget. We would have the flexibility to do it as short as we wanted. I started out assuming that we were going to need 3 to 4 years and then to be honest, as the jail surfaced as a more imminent problem that it was when we started these discussions, I started to say we ought to at least explore whether we could spread Mall Drive over 8 or 10 years to try to lower the cash flow in case we need something quicker with the jail.

Thompson: I think this is the value of having a long term plan. It allows you to sort of juggle apples and oranges at once. You solve your immediate needs and at the same time you plan for your long range ones.

Jordahl: Yes, but is the jail a long range need.

Thompson: The jail is an immediate need but you can't solve it by moving some prisoners to Eastdale.

Jordahl: Well I guess I didn't suggest that.

Thompson: It's not a comparable thing. I think that the Sheriff is making some efforts to solve the jail problem by doing that home detention program.

Stutsman: Every department is. Every department is doing what they can but after a while you run out of options. Sooner or later you just have to face the music that this is going to be some pretty costly expenditures. I really...

Jordahl: So, when you talk about seeing the big picture and these needs together and stuff, am I correct to interpret that saying that we want to do both of these things at the same time?

Stutsman: Well what we found with this space needs thing is that timing is never all coordinated with these things. Just like this piece of property is available now, well as Pat said, 5 years from now... Somebody's not going to hold this for us while we address one need and get another one together. You don't always have those options of doing one and having good timing to wait and do the other. I think these are some opportunities that are available. I think we've looked at them and my feeling is I think we need to plan long term and then we need to figure out how we're going to pay for them. That's the clinker. How are we going to pay for them? But we've put off a lot of these things for many, many years and I think they're all coming due at once.

Duffy: Sally, I don't agree with that. I think the Supervisors in the past have done a really good job with space needs and the property we have owned has really cost us a lot of money.

Stutsman: But we haven't really done anything to put money aside to address the space needs that we knew we were going to have to do.

Duffy: Well we can't say... The law have been changed. I know the jail... I was going to make a report on it under reports but prisoners are sleeping on the floor right now at the jail. I was just wondering, on the way in this morning again at the... Pardon me, I have a pretty bad cold. The State... now it's up to $100,000 or a $100,000,000 surplus. It started out like $770,000,000 surplus, led by Maggie Tinsman, a very good person who's one of our elected officials that we sent to Des Moines. She's really putting the pressure on some of this surplus to help out with human service needs. I'm not so sure that when we do go up... Is that on the 8th?

Stutsman: Uh-huh. March 8th.

Duffy: ...that another group should really talk to these people. Say look it, we'll go along with what the State says on running the buildings for Human Services but also we need some dollars to purchase some land. A land purchase might be in there. Being that this is a new thing, it might work. Or a grant, say we're in trouble. We don't have the money to buy this land or something like that. But I think we're kidding ourselves that... I don't think everyone has to live in a new building either but this is kind of aristocrat down there on the Mall Drive. Like Pat said, it will never go down. It will probably go up. I think we ought to look around Des Moines for a grant. Just talk. You'll be surprised what you can do when you talk to different people.

Jordahl: Cheryl talked about her computer server, and by golly, we might get a computer server for free so you're right.

Thompson: Pat is only talking about making an offer to see if it gets accepted. It would still be pending our decision.

Lehman: I think what Pat is asking for is to keep our options open. He's saying that if this does materialize and we purchase this ground, our needs may change down the road, but it's an investment. We should get our money back plus the interest we would have gotten had we had the money sitting there. But if we don't pursue it, we'll never know what may have come down the road here.

Jordahl: That's a good point, Mike. We should be able to renegotiate this land if we change our minds about building on it.

White: Yes, first of all, whatever I negotiate, you're going to have to say yes to. You'll have the opportunity to say yes or no in public session once you see precisely what the cost is, precisely what the terms are. The owner will understand that unlike most real estate sales where you negotiate and close, the County doesn't do it that way. Although I'll negotiate, we won't close until it comes before you in public session and you say that's OK. We're a pretty tough person to deal with in terms of things like leases and land purchases for that reason.

Lehman: I guess I'm not proposing that any extra money, or money that we have set aside, that invest it in real estate as opposed to having our Treasurer invest it in other sources for us. But we need to pursue this as being possibly an opportunity to cut some costs down the road, if that's what we're looking at doing, needing to purchase some land for building site.

Jordahl: Right and what I was trying to say is very similar. I think you're not proposing that we look at it as an investment, but rather we look at the investment of it as a kind of reassurance about the wisdom of going ahead and doing something.

White: It may well be, for example, if we knew we had a site for DHS and a site that would work for the jail, it might well be at that point, we'd say you would say the jail is a higher priority for construction. That will probably depend in part on how well the home detention works and some of what we can negotiate with the jail inspector about the double bunking and trends. The truth is trends continue to be up in terms of jail population.

Jordahl: We haven't heard from the State about this double bunking question?

White: Well we haven't actually made a formal request yet because I don't want to do that without being able to put that in the context of a plan. Again, the first step relative to the jail is let's find out what can be done at this site and then we'll talk to the University to try to acquire the site. Then we'd be prepared to present a construction plan to the jail inspector with a request to retain the double bunking.

Jordahl: Is our jail consultant also looking at the County's other land as a possible site for the jail?

Stutsman: Uh-uh.

White: No. We certainly can do that but the first task is to try to decide whether the current location will work. Everyone says if the current location will work, it's obviously economically advantageous to stick with the whole, that we've already invested in that. The jail, the Sheriff Offices, the control center, the...

Jordahl: Uh-huh.

White: It's just such a significant investment that if you can retain it, you're going to spend less in the aggregate than if you started all over again. I'm still optimistic that...

Thompson: Pat, can you time it so that we make a decision about the land after we have a chance to consider the jail recommendations? I don't remember what the time frame was.

White: Yes, we probably could. The time table that we've asked Dwight and the jail consultant to work on is that we'd like to have something in advance of the Local Option Sales Tax Election so that would be another piece of information that's out there for people to weigh. Our hope is to have a report within the next couple of weeks from them.

Jordahl: It would have been really handy last night when I was answering questions about the Local Option Sales Tax to be able to throw out a number. I hesitated to use the Scott County number that I had been given because I wouldn't want to be accused of being that far off the mark. But I bet it's going to be a pretty number anyway.

White: I hope it won't be that number. That one's pretty scary.

Jordahl: But we do need a number. Yes. I think you raise a good point. It would be nice to make this decision after we've gotten some report from the consultant. Do we know when that will be?

White: We don't know specifically when it will be but it should be soon. They agreed they would be able to give us a report in advance of March 29th.

Duffy: Jonathan...

Jordahl: Yes, Charlie?

Duffy: Again, I hate to dig up the past but I was just thinking the big thing used to be help with Mental Health because we had to fund Mental Health. 3 years here, in 1997, 1998, and 1999, we got $7,133,000 from the State to help with Mental Health. It helps being funded by the State at least 50%. But it wasn't like that back in the good old days. But still as far as the growth, there was greater growth from the mid 80s to 1990 in Johnson County, who ranked at the top growth in the whole state, about 17%. From 1990 on, we've kind of slipped. I think Benton County... I think we're 7th or 8th. But when you own property again, like privatizing Chatham Oaks, I happen to know that the air conditioning alone cost $138,000. We put in almost a half a million dollars in that building. I think they were looking ahead but it was more difficult then because, indeed, mental health was the big thing to raise property taxes.

Stutsman: So have we given a straw vote for Pat to go ahead and...

Jordahl: We've had discussion. I don't think Pat feels real directed yet.

White: At this point, I don't feel I need to pack it in. My sense is that I should press on and...

Stutsman: Uh-huh.

White: I understand all of the questions and you'll have to vote it up or down in the end.

Jordahl: Uh-huh.

White: One of the reasons that we're a difficult buyer is the person who owns this land, assuming we reach a negotiated arrangement, is going to tell the whole world what he's willing to sell this for without knowing whether he's going to get it sold for that and that's a really awkward position for a real estate seller to be in. It's a little awkward for us because we would negotiate a price and the terms would be publicly announced when you have to decide. Then there may well be people out there who would say oh, if County's going to pay that, I can beat that price.

Jordahl: There probably will be.

White: On both sides of it, people who might want to buy it if they knew they could get it for what we were offering to pay. Certainly, as you've already seen, there'll be people who hear what we're talking about who will say I've got a better deal for you. I've got a different location. You're paying too much money. The approach that I've always recommended is certainly we need to look at anything that somebody thinks is out there. I've fielded a number of phone calls. I've looked at some other sites. Cheryl has. My guess is many...

Stutsman: I've looked at some others too.

White: ...of you have had the same thing since we started talking about it.

Jordahl: Yes.

Stutsman: I guess we're considering all of our options.

Jordahl: But I hear then the sense of the Board being that you should forge ahead and we'll make the decision, ideally, in the context of having some further information about the jail.

White: It's not a commitment to buy it but just receptivity of looking at that option, once I can get it in a form that you what the costs are and the terms.

Jordahl: OK. Would members of the public like to enter the fray here?

Welsh: Just on the whole space thing. I sure am very supportive of that Eastdale (inaudible). I think that does help us solve the problem. I think again, long range. I would encourage you to have a long range vision and let me hold up a couple for you. One is that you would have a consolidation proximity of the County campus where you would have all of your County offices in very close proximity. The most obvious solution to that is what you've all discussed is the Armory and the County Farm and proceeding very aggressively on that. And I know I keep hearing, gee that's a long range picture. Well, I think that's what you do need to look at, is long range and not lock yourself into other things. I hope that could be that whole process would be sped up. I think that would be, at least from my perspective, having a county campus make some sense. That could be further complicated or enriched if you talk about even some consolidation, sharing of space between municipalities and the county. But beside the county campus, another concept I would hold up to you, is that of a human services campus. And for either of those 2 issues, your low drive would probably be too small of either of those 2 concepts, both of which I think are probably... I hear what Pat's saying about if you don't use it, then you could probably sell it for at least as much as you're paying for it. My guess is that's probably true. Besides those 2 concepts of taxes let me raise with you another observation. It seems apparent that there's a real possibility that you might have many existing buildings that will add up some space. Those of you that have to do a review of the listings from the applicant (inaudible) position on the Board of Supervisors will know that one of the suggestions that was made was that there's going to be space available, this person thought, at Veterans Hospital. Whether or not that would be true or not, what that whole future is, who knows?

Jordahl: Well that would be a heck of a county building wouldn't it? Stand right out on the road there.

Welsh: I guess all I'm saying is I would hope you all would look at those larger fund steps and explore those as you're looking at long range.

Jordahl: I appreciate that. I like long range concepts Reverend Welsh. Pat?

Jensen: To pick up on that, I'd say when you're looking long range, that you look at creative and different options for funding. I think to believe (inaudible) to find within your yearly budget enough money to address all the space needs is not realistic and that you're going to have to give serious consideration to bonding .

Jordahl: Yes, I'm glad you said that instead of me, but I agree with you. I think we need to look at that. It was nice in the Local Option Sales Tax discussion last night to be able to say we're not in debt, but I don't know how much longer we are going to be able to say that.

Jensen: Bonding is not all the levy, you are having future generations pay for some of the facilities they will be using. So you need to look at in (inaudible).

Jordahl: Yes, part of that, we need to be paying part of this freight out of our current budget. I am very proud of the fact that we are putting money aside in capital projects, I think a significant amount. We really made that a centerpiece of the budget process this year and that's got to be a part of it too. I'm not content just to say hey we'll bond and they'll pay for it later.

Stutsman: And that's a commitment the whole Board makes for putting some money aside.

Jordahl: Uh-huh.

Duffy: Bob, we kind of talked yesterday here at the Armory. I'm going to say something and it's not a political statement but if we listen to Supervisor Steve Lacina here a few years back, we might have had that building bought including the (inaudible). A serious mistake because he did have something going over there.

Jordahl: Eastdale you mean?

Duffy: No, right over here.

Stutsman: Well Charlie I don't think that is out of the question. I think that's a long term process and it's something that we are looking at.

Duffy: Yes but we had a real chance there and we really didn't listen to him, including myself. But is that a dead issue you think?

Jordahl: Not at all.

Stutsman: Not at all.

Lehman: No.

Duffy: Well then how come we're...

Jordahl: Maybe a long range option...

Duffy: There's the place...

Jordahl: Maybe 10 years, like 10 years.

Duffy: You mean a long, long range option.

White: Yes, they've estimated 5 to 8 years is there time table

Duffy: Well I know that but then I might have a problem, unless they want to sway some of our county farmland, I didn't think that... Last time I was over there it seemed feasible but they might not want to do that.

Jordahl: We're kind of wandering off the agenda. I don't mean to specifically highlight your comments Charlie.

Duffy: No one is talking about space needs and space needs...

Jordahl: It's definitely there to talk about the space needs, because all of these things are intertwined but the agenda really refers to the Eastdale lease and the mall drive purchase. I think we need to have a wider ranging discussion of that, perhaps the Space Needs Committee could report and we can get into the more general questions in more detail because I'm interested in the Armory (inaudible)...

Stutsman: And a letter was written to the Armory. We haven't heard back from that letter. Pat is going to do some follow-up to see where we're at. So we are actively pursuing that and certainly are very interested in working out any kind of arrangement that we have. But it is our understanding too that anything that you want to do with the armory goes all the way up to the federal level, so it's not something that falls into place real quickly. A prediction of even 5, 10 years before anything could be worked out.

Jordahl: It has been mentioned in regard to bonding, I think, that the Treasurer has pointed out that this is the time when we have historically low interest rates and might be able to do well for the County by taking care of some of these space needs in that way. So that's got to be on the table and probably has got to be on the table pretty quickly.

Welsh: Can I make one other comment?

Jordahl: Yes.

Welsh: Has the county contacted Representative Jim Leach and a few senators in terms of their behalf to speed up that process? I always...

Stutsman: Bob, we're not even to that point. It would be premature to contact them now but we certainly will be doing that when everything is in place to do that.

Welsh: I guess when you cough out 5, 8, 10 years down the line, I guess I'm saying I would use shortcuts I think.

Thompson: All that was really on the agenda this morning was to discuss the Mall Drive purchase with Pat.

Jordahl: Well there's other here and I guess we're kind of under other here. What I'm suggesting is that we can get more detail on our other if we make it an agenda item so let's do that. OK. Besides we've got to get to strategic planning later on here, and hopefully not much later on. All right is every... Pat do you have what you need?

White: I do. Thank-you. Thanks for your time.

Jordahl: Thanks Cheryl, thanks Pat. Thanks Reverend Welsh and Pat Jensen. Reports and inquiries from the County Attorney?

White: Nothing further.

(Continued in Part 6)