Jordahl: Inquiries and reports from the public?

Welsh: I do have one thing. Later on you're going into work session to discuss your comprehensive plan?

Jordahl: Strategic plan.

Welsh: Strategic plan. And I would like to suggest respectively, that you add one which is to work collaboratively in addressing the needs of the citizens of Johnson County. Since I have been related in any way to the county, the Board of Supervisors have always taken the lead in addressing the needs of persons. One thing that has been consistent, regardless of who served on this board, even back when it was a 3 member board, has been its long range commitment to meeting the needs of the citizens. I think that it is surely appropriate that you identify that as a strategic goal. I commend that your working on the area of housing now in the county. The sheriff had been concerned in the area of nutrition, the area of transportation... Surely you know the multiplicity of needs, and I guess I'm just asking to consider in your discussion elevating that to be one of your strategic goals. Thank you.

Jordahl: Thank you for your suggestion. Yes Pat?

Jensen: I'm very interested in hearing your discussion on your strategic planning but I would like to remind you that there is a citizens committee that addressed the computer needs (inaudible) several years ago. They made a comprehensive report, and particularly Mike and Carol have not read that. They might want to go back and take a look at it. I would point out particularly the executive summary and the recommendations for how technology should be implemented (inaudible).

Jordahl: Carol has read the plan, the other night.

Thompson: Very enlightening.

Jordahl: She apparently reads really fast. And Mike I have that available if you want to.

Lehman: Good suggestion.

Jordahl: Either on disk or hard copy. Thanks. Yes, we do need to keep in mind the many, many months of sacrifice that you folks put in putting that document together. It's highly valued, and we are moving forward with implementation.

Thompson: Reading it at this point, I could see a lot of things that have already been accomplished that were recommended.

Jordahl: I don't know if you're aware of it Pat, but we have in this 2000 budget, set aside money for a Geographical Information Systems needs assessment. So that we'll have our feet on the ground about how to proceed with that. Then we'll be able to make a commitment one way or the other to it. Make a commitment or not to it but we'll have a firm foundation for doing that. All right. Reports and inquiries from members of the Board of Supervisors.

Duffy: I'll just give one. We had an Emergency Management meeting last night to help the Sheriff's Department. Well attended. So I've got all kinds of information if you want to read it. But one thing I'd like to touch on that... This is a Y2K they call it. And when this first surfaced, some people thought, well this will never happen. But evidently now the state and some of the federal commissions are just getting a little edgy that this could be more serious than some of them thought, less serious on the other side. Emergency Management Division of the state of Iowa is planning technical assistance workshops, sponsored by the Iowa Emergency Management Division, Hoover Street office building Des Moines, Iowa. And evidently to sum it all up in simple language, that these computers were just programmed to the year 1999 and when the computers break down the whole United States could break down on some of these things. But our workshop here will be on the 9th of March, that's one of our meeting days, at 10:00, and we expect several people from the state, I think it's a 13 county one. But I'll just read you the first paragraph here. The challenge, local government faces a unique challenge. Not only will the Y2K problem require that they test and repair all of their mission critical systems, they must ensure that critical functions continue to operate. Now we're talking about long range planning. It looks to me like somebody really goofed up here, because this things is really serious. Now if we make a mistake like that, I think we'd a lot of people but...

Jordahl: Well Sally was talking to Jean, or going to talk to Jean about getting us an update on where the County's at regarding Y2K.

Duffy: Well this is the ones here to do it. We should attend this.

Thompson: Will Jean be able to attend it? Can she be invited?

Duffy: Well sure she can.

Jordahl: Would you inform her about that Charlie? Make sure that she is?

Duffy: Yes, I'll give her (inaudible).

Jordahl: Yes one for everybody, well good.

Stutsman: And Jean did know about that meeting. I think she is planning to attend.

Duffy: See, the state put this on and the feds are...

Stutsman: And Jean did say that she would come into the Board and give us an update about where we are on the county as far as...

Duffy: It has been a kind of an experiment. They took a computer and updated it to the year 2002 to see what would happen, and it blew out a transformer someplace.

Thompson: Not here.

Duffy: No it wasn't here that was just...

Jordahl: Our is a...

Thompson: I think Jean feels that we're in pretty good shape. I asked her about that the other day.

Stutsman: Yes, but I think it's good to tell people.

Jordahl: So this is 10:00 a.m. right? The 9th of March. Which is a what?

Stutsman: Tuesday.

Jordahl: Tuesday. Well we'll have to have a real short meeting to make that one aren't we?

Duffy: Well some parts in eastern Iowa, they are concerned with because there's different firms that produce electricity. Like say a smaller one it would really hit them, they would go down, there would be a blackout. So if they hook on a larger electricity company I guess you'd call it, then you might have a brownout because you can't drag electricity from one electrical company into another one, that's what... But anyway they talked very seriously about it so I...

Jordahl: It may be a serious question and we need to do...

Duffy: Well maybe and it might not.

Jordahl: Exactly, but it's better to be prepared than thinking you're (inaudible) the problem.

Duffy: But anyway they expect us down there.

Jordahl: Well we'll have to...

Duffy: Talk to Jim McGinley.

Jordahl: ...really be efficient for what we place on the agenda for Tuesday the 10th so maybe you want to note that Carol. We're going to have an incredibly short informal meeting that day. Maybe we want to meet down at the fairgrounds, I don't know.

Stutsman: Oh dear.

Duffy: Idea.

Jordahl: Well sorry. We need to try and get through our reports here. We still have strategic planning this morning here so if people will be brief.

Thompson: I have no reports.

Jordahl: Not that brief.

Stutsman: I'll be brief too. I'll dispense with my report because I know we're all anxious to get to strategic planning.

Jordahl: Boy Mike, say something.

Lehman: I'll just jump. I have an E911 public hearing on Tuesday to go over our budget. We passed it as it had been approved. For the public I guess be aware of your phone, you are assessed a fee that goes to the 911 use. It's for communications which involves (inaudible) our emergency with fire, police, sheriff and the mutual aid fire departments. And it's quite a considerable bit lower than what a lot of other counties charge. Our budget pretty well consisted of cash flow since our money comes in over a period of time what we felt we needed, prioritizing our needs and as Charlie mentioned the Y2K that's a real big concern for us in our communications. There's been quite a bit of work and correspondence being done with our suppliers. And then Charlie and I attended on, I think it was Monday evening, at the Farm Bureau. We were invited out, they had some questions of the Local Option Sales Tax and as Jonathan will probably follow up, there's a lot of misunderstanding out there and a lot of no understanding and no information but I'd like to encourage everyone to vote but before they go that far I'd like to have them research what they're voting on. Each jurisdiction has their own ballot and it's very interesting how these ballots will interact under different municipalities and unincorporated areas. We had a lot of good questions, not that Charlie and I profess to be experts on them, but they had a lot of different wrinkles that people like to know about and I think the papers will be covering a lot more information here although the ballots are now available for the early voting. Jonathan, if you can follow up on some of that too.

Jordahl: Yes, I was in Coralville at a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters to address some of these questions. We had the mayors of all the, well a lot of the cities in the county there, and myself and Mary Neuhauser giving the history of the Local Option Sales Tax law. And I did my best to explain how the Local Option Sales Tax language of the county meant what it said and what it implied and also how things might turn out under different scenarios if the tax passed in the cities and not in the county. For example, the county of course encompasses the cities but in this case the rural voters, the voters in the unincorporated area, will be voting as a unit and the cities will vote as separate units even though we have jurisdiction also over the cities in a variety of ways. In this case the rural voters are separated, so our language focuses on meeting some needs in the rural areas, although there are some countywide things, particularly the space needs questions that we were addressing earlier this morning. If it passed in the county and not in the cities we could turn around the next day and rescind it so we wouldn't have to have a situation where rural people had to impose the tax and the cities didn't have to impose the tax. If it went the other way and it didn't pass in the rural area, it passed all in the cities, then we would have to appeal to the kindness of Iowa City if we wanted to say get a piece of the action, to get some of that money for the rural area we would have to get it put back on the ballot again and we can not do that ourselves. We would have to have Iowa City request it because they have such a bulk of the population. So if you would like further details about that, I've put together a piece and I'm still requesting consent from the Board to do something specific with it, whether to send it to the newspapers or what, or revise it. We need communication about this.

Lehman: It is something we need to make and act, and maybe get a hold of because the early ballots are out there.

Jordahl: Yes.

Lehman: I'd like to have, I hate to have people vote one way or the other without fully understanding.

Jordahl: Yes, that's what I've been telling...

Lehman: Or not vote at all because they don't understand it.

Jordahl: And the thing I've written attempts to give enough of a basic understanding of the situation to allow people to vote with a modicum of understanding, in the rural area what the ballot means. And I guess I'd request that, if you haven't seen that you can look at it again and let me know how you feel about it. We need to... What I would like to suggest is that we send it as a letter to the press, or as a press release or some such thing.

Stutsman: A letter to the editor?

Jordahl: Yes.

Stutsman: Uh-huh.

Jordahl: So let me know.

Stutsman: OK.

Jordahl: OK. Also Barrington Heights, I spoke with Coralville, Kelly Hayworth and Jim Fausett yesterday afternoon about concerns that many people have expressed concerning Coralville's annexed area that abuts Dubuque Street up in River Heights. And construction proposed there of a church, is a planned unit development kind of approach to this whole very large area where the county had originally proved 2 smaller subdivisions and 2 accesses on the corner of Dubuque Street. And a number of questions are involved there and I think the sense coming out of talking with those 2 gentlemen was that in our work on the Fringe Area Agreement we will approve, I hope, a plan that says we're going to work on a joint transportation plan and in that joint transportation plan we will address questions not only of Dubuque Street but also of First Avenue where there's a quarry on one side that probably will stay rural for a long time and also 965 or Deer Creek going south where Deer Creek Road is going to stay as a rural road for some time. And maybe, they are also going address questions of something related to impact fees because Coralville has been able to get Oakdale Boulevard built by having the developers who own land along it and want to do development to build Oakdale Boulevard as they develop their property nearby, so it hasn't cost Coralville to do it. Some sort of arrangement that would help to defray the cost of upgrading Dubuque Street to handle the additional traffic that it's going to see now that Oakdale Boulevard will be effectively connected to Dubuque Street, would be a nice piece of that transportation plan to see. Because there's clearly going to be an impact from the much more dense development that's being currently proposed by Coralville that will access on Dubuque Street there. I wanted to kind of open up that Coralville. We need to kind of decide how we're going to systematically approach that question in the more formal discussions. GIS (Geographical Information Systems) needs assessment meeting this afternoon at 1:00. That's kind of a subcommittee to look at getting an RFP (Request for Proposal) designed for the needs assessment. If people are interested in that, that's going to be taking place here in this room I believe. And I wanted to let members of the public know that we've begun interviewing candidates for the Mental Health Developmental Disabilities Director's position and I for one am quite pleased with the quality of the candidates that we have to interview and the interviews that we've had so far. So I'm very hopeful that we're going to have good leadership for the MH/DD department. We're kind of aiming for April 1st. We'll see if we actually can accomplish that. So we will finish the first interviews on Friday, tomorrow, and look forward to calling people back if necessary for, and either we will have second interviews probably the middle of next week, I think we're aiming at Wednesday the third, and shortly after that should be making a decision to offer the position. I hope. Anything else that's crossed anybody's minds?

Stutsman: Well I might add that the Empowerment Board meets this evening at 6 o'clock at the Mercy Medical Center.

Welsh: 6:30.

Stutsman: 6:30? Thank you. Continue work with that Transition Board and implementing the grant for the Empowerment Area and working on the details to moving into a permanent Empowerment Board and planning for that.

Jordahl: 2 more calendar items... the Business Fair at Carver Hawkeye Arena is taking place both Friday night and Saturday this weekend. There will be a lot of opportunities to meet local business people there. Members and elected officials will also be there. On Saturday you have bowling for kids. At 9 o'clock Saturday morning, the League of Women Voters is holding a forum with our local Legislatures so if people want to get a chance to talk to their State elected officials, they can do that Saturday morning in the public library at 9:30, actually the business matter will start. You can arrive a little early for coffee. That's probably enough delaying of our strategic planning work session, don't you think? I guess we'll move to that portion of the agenda after a short recess.

Recessed at 10:50 a.m.; reconvened at 10:56 a.m.

Thompson said the Board of Supervisors should work with Strategic Planning Facilitator Tim Shields on what should happen at the next Strategic Planning work session. Jordahl said they should review the goals that came out of their strategic planning work session.

The Board discussed the Technology Committee. Thompson said this was an important goal. Lehman said he would like to know more about this goal. Jordahl said that he and Lehman would work on this committee. Stutsman said they should work on the subpoints of the goal. Thompson said they should add the recommendations made by all of the Technology Subcommittees as subpoints to the strategic planning goal, Technology Committee.

The Board discussed their strategic planning goal Economic Development. Jordahl said this has been a strategic goal for the past 2 years and is also in the Comprehensive Land Use Plan. He said they need one Board member to work with Duffy on it. Duffy said he was glad they have ICAD. He said Johnson County falling behind. Stutsman said this goal might not be as critical in Johnson County as it is in smaller counties. Duffy said he thought it was important. Stutsman said she did think it was important but that Johnson County doesn't have all of the demands of smaller counties. Thompson said that Economic Development was related to land use and maybe those 2 strategic planning goals should be combined. Jordahl said there were housing issues related to the Land Use Plan as well. Stutsman said Economic Development was important but that the Board hadn't done a lot with it.

Jordahl said they could simplify the goal and move some of its subpoints into other areas such as land use and social issues. Jordahl said that Economic Development means working with ICAD, and the Chamber of Commerce, to define the County's role in Economic Development and to work with Workforce Development. Stutsman said it may not be their role to do this and asked if it was a viable effort to take on. She said they could work with other entities. Jordahl said they could be proactive and do things such as when approving zonings, designate interstate changes commercial because of access to infrastructure.

Duffy left at 11:14 a.m.

Stutsman said the Board's role is to make sure when a business wants to relocate, that the Board has policies in place that makes them able to do that. Thompson said they would work with cities and entities to promote planned economic growth. Stutsman said that Lehman and Duffy should work on this. Jordahl suggested that Lehman also work on ICAD. Stutsman questioned whether they should have Economic Development as a goal.

Duffy returned at 11:18 a.m.

The Board went on to discuss the strategic planning goal Fiscal Management and Planning. Stutsman said that Thompson and Jordahl should work on this. Jordahl explained that this goal entailed a committee that consisted of the Auditor, Treasurer, Thompson, Jordahl and Administrative Assistant Deana Pillard.

It was decided by the Board of Supervisors that Thompson and Stutsman would work on the Space Needs Strategic Planning goal.

Jordahl said the Board should all work on the Comprehensive Plan and Land Use Policy strategic planning goal. Stutsman said they need to nail this goal down. Jordahl said they should have a work session to discuss this strategic planning goal.

Stutsman said she would like to work on the Citizen Relations goal. Thompson suggested the Board merge the goals Board Effectiveness and Citizen Relations. Jordahl agreed. Thompson said they should call this goal Board Effectiveness/Public Information. Stutsman said she would work on this alone and involve the Board when needed. Lehman suggested they put Pillard on this committee also.

Jordahl explained that the Department Head Supervision goal meant to what level or degree do the department heads want to have supervision by the Board of Supervisors. Thompson said they should assign one Board member to work with new Department Heads. Stutsman said they need contact and communication with all of the department heads. Thompson said they could build some of this goal into the Fiscal Planning goal. Jordahl suggested they put this goal under Board Effectiveness. Stutsman said one on one meetings with the department heads might work. Jordahl said they could take turns or rotate meeting with the department heads. Thompson said she would help Stutsman set up a schedule of one on one meetings between a Supervisor and department head on the goal Supervision.

Stutsman suggested the Board talk about where they're at on their strategic planning goal monthly. The Board agreed and Peters said she would put it on the agenda monthly. Jordahl said they have too many details on the Technology Committee goal and that they need to be broader. Thompson said the County Mission Statement should be somewhere on the strategic planning summary report. League of Women Voters Representative Pat Jensen said they should give a sentence explanation of the strategic planning goals on the report.

Adjourned at 11:53 a.m.

Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor

By Casie Parkins, Recording Secretary