Jordahl: Other than that, we have recognized the receipt of minutes from East Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium; the Space Needs Committee of the County, looking at building prospects and funding; and the Johnson County Decatagorization Project Executive Committee on file here for folks who may wish to review them. I think regarding the work session on strategic planning, because our topic is going to be financed and Carol is absent today, we’re going to defer that until she returns. Members of the public wish to discuss any items before we go to deal with collective bargaining?

Welsh: Let me ask you one question about your schedule during November. Are you not having a meeting next Thursday?

Jordahl: Actually, 3 Thursdays in a row, we’re not having a meeting. The 11th, 18th and 25th, the 25th being Thanksgiving, the 18th being the middle of the Iowa State Association of Counties meeting in Des Moines that members of the Board will be attending, and Thursday the 11th being Veterans Day. We have combined the informal and formal meetings each of the next 3 Tuesdays in the month, the 9th, the 16th and the 23rd.

Lehman: This Thursday will be the evening meeting, Bob. Televised.

Jordahl: All of our Thursdays, the next 4 Thursdays are all unusual.

Welsh: That’s what I was trying to… I think Charlie had a point in relation to the value of Mike attending the Economic Development meeting. I was just looking for a way of you doing County business at that time, getting that and whether or not you could even skip the night one and not have a meeting that week.

Duffy: Maybe there won’t be too much on it, Bob, but I did say… I’m going to read the agenda here, after a while.

Welsh: My point is I realize that one of the things you’ve asked Mike to represent you on, that could be an informative meeting, for what it’s worth I just raised that question. I wasn’t aware of your last meeting on Thursdays, so I guess my next question is, can you forego that meeting on the 9th and put that on for the 16th?

Stutsman: My only concern is that we haven’t given department heads adequate notice that we’re not going to be meeting. It has to do with claims and other things. We have changed meetings in the past. That’s not the issue. It’s just giving them enough notice that we’re going to do that.

Welsh: There’s another alternative, to have Mike and Charlie call you on the phone connection.

Jordahl: Yes, that is. That is an option.

Duffy: That’s out, Bob, because we’re going to be meeting part of that time.

Jordahl: Right, but if we had a short agenda for the 9th, we could in fact convene a meeting with one or both of the other members of the Board participating in a conference call. That has been done before.

Stutsman: Carol, is it an issue with claims? It seems like that has come up in the past, that if there’s been a problem when we’ve given short notice, it has to do with claims.

Peters: It can be a problem.

Stutsman: OK.

Jordahl: Well, you make a good suggestion. Maybe we could establish a quorum having one member of the group participate by phone. You’re suggesting we could move the meeting to Monday. I guess I’m just uncomfortable with moving the meeting around on such short notice. It’s an established time. People are accustomed to having us meet then. We should be regular, if we were going to cancel the thing we should cancel it with more notice than this.

Duffy: Don’t cancel on my account, but I don’t know what’s on this agenda so far. Again, usually, we all couldn’t be here and Carol will be gone too, I guess. It is better not to put a lot of important issues on it. The time before last, we had a meeting up there, the governor was there, the ex-governor, and 750 people showed up.

Jordahl: I don’t believe we can make a decision about canceling that meeting today anyway, because it would be an action of the Board, wouldn’t it, Pat? We have to do that on Thursday? Why don’t we get that hammered out by Thursday.

Welsh: Jonathan, all I’m suggesting is that you all work out a way that allows you to have a quorum, and allows both Charlie and Mike to do that which you’ve asked them to do.

Jordahl: That’s a fine suggestion, Bob. We’ll look into the agenda and talk to folks and see. One way or the other, we can have the meeting on Tuesday, and we can allow a member or 2 to participate by phone and still have a quorum. It’s doable. It’s mostly a question of how awkward is that going to be. But I think we can facilitate that if you want to go to Des Moines. Is that all right with you, Sally?

Stutsman: I’m just thinking, is this really worth the cost and trouble and everything else. I’m interested in seeing what’s on the agenda for the Economic Development meeting. If this is that vital of a meeting for 2 County Supervisors to go, then fine. I’d like some feedback when you come back from the meeting, what was talked about at the meeting, how this is going to impact County government.

Duffy: Sally, I’ve done it for years. Hardly anybody even listened to it.

Stutsman: I guess I’ve not heard the connection between what’s been discussed in Des Moines and what impact it has in Johnson County.

Duffy: Gee, almost every thing that comes through here…

Jordahl: This isn’t on the agenda, we can’t debate the merit of the Economic Development meetings. We’re talking about Bob’s suggestion, and even his suggestion isn’t up for debate. It’s a suggestion, and we appreciate it. Thank you.

Duffy: Why don’t I just go up alone, and Mike, maybe you could stay here. I didn’t know it would cause all this ruckus.

Jordahl: Your meeting’s not causing the ruckus, it’s the fact that Carol is absent that makes it awkward. She’s welcome to take a vacation.

Stutsman: I don’t want to make it sound like Carol’s causing the problem, either.

Jordahl: It’s not her fault.

Stutsman: I guess my feeling is that we haven’t planned enough time to discuss this. I think we should just realize that in the future we need to have these things well in mind the day before or the week before they come up.

Duffy: I said I was going to go a month and a half ago, but that’ll be all right, Mike. I just thought that the last one was a very good meeting, too.

Jordahl: Either way. Go or stay, they make phones.

Lehman: I would like to see the agenda, too.

Jordahl: Yes. Either you have the agenda on paper or they’ve got it on their web site. One way or another, we can find that out right after the meeting. All right. Other.

Jordahl: Members of the public want to raise topics? I think we’re going to wait with reports from the Board, since we’ve got staff that’s been waiting for this thing on collective bargaining. Do we need to have an executive session for this?

White: I don’t think you do, but you’re a better judge of that. We’ve met in executive session, we’ve discussed initial positions. You have in front of you a revised initial position for both the Administration Unit and the Sheriff’s Department. They’re short and succinct. I don’t think we need more discussion, but if you have questions about them, we should discuss those questions in executive session. If you don’t have questions about them, we don’t need the executive session.

Jordahl: All right then. If Pat’s happy with discussing these things in public, he’s the one doing the negotiating.

White: I don’t think we need any discussion.

Stutsman: Pat’s saying if we do need discussion, we need to go into executive session.

White: Right.

Jordahl: In other words, these pieces of paper here are confidential, and we’re just looking at them.

White: As soon as I sign them, we’re going to hand them to the Unit representatives.

Jordahl: They cease to be confidential at that point.

Stutsman: We did have executive session and discussion last Thursday. If we want to reopen those discussions or make any changes, then we need to go into executive session. Otherwise, if we’re comfortable with the way they are now, then we’re just ready to sign and go ahead.

Jordahl: All right. Does anyone have any questions? Lacking any questions, we don’t need to go into executive session. All we need to do is not discuss. Since we’re not discussing, we’ve already accomplished that. Presentation of Johnson County’s position for collective bargaining agreement. Admin. and Sheriff’s office. Discussion/Action. I’m not sure what’s envisioned there, Pat. Are we wanting to talk about that? It says discussion. This is all the same item, basically.

White: Yes. All that’s envisioned is that I sign the positions, Janet’s going to make copies and give them to the representatives for each of the 2 unions and anyone else who wants them, and we’re done.

Jordahl: We’ve had all these fine people sit here and listen to our jabbering for not a lot of purpose for a long time.

White: That’s right.

Jordahl: Well, you’re welcome.

Lehman: You don’t have to be that agreeable. Come on.

Jordahl: OK. That pretty well wraps things around, doesn’t it. We could go to reports. Anyone want to report, or should we run fleeing from the room and enjoy the day?

Stutsman: Well, no.

Jordahl: All right. Go ahead and report. Sally, do you have anything to report?

Stutsman: Well, yes, but I need to collect my thoughts. Let’s see.

Jordahl: Sally will collect her thoughts. Why don’t you go ahead and collect. Mike, do you have something to report?

Lehman: Yesterday I met with the County Attorney office with Secondary Roads, and R.J. from Zoning. Sally wasn’t able to attend. I’ll just give a little report. We discussed some of the road maintenance agreements with developments, stuff like that, how we want to handle that. We’ve had some existing ones. Some have worked well, some haven’t. RJ mentioned he had an application now where someone wanted to come on and piggyback onto an existing agreement. Who needs to control all that? Do we send the proposed developer to the existing one and work something out? What happens if the existing one falls apart and it comes back in our lap? We discussed personnel to try to bring this… The policy is probably going to start with Zoning. But we get into a legal problem, we get into the physical problem, Secondary Roads. We’re throwing all these obstacles out there and trying to see if we can address them without causing more. We had a really interesting discussion on the what ifs, past history, things we’ve had. One of the other things we get into where we approve a subdivision, according to the developer saying, we’re fine with a gravel road. As the lots are sold, residents say we want a better road. The developer agreed to the existing road conditions, and we get pressure from the actual people who move out there. It’s just one of the complications that we run into. We didn’t have a clear-cut answer to it, but this really open discussion makes everyone aware of the problems that we run into. We talked about impact fees. We wanted to talk to the Assessor about how the value of a home might differ on a gravel road versus a hard surface road. There are little things like that that maybe we’re not aware of, that prospective aren’t aware of. What would be fair to accomplish what we want to? The other question is, what do we want to accomplish? The less hassle, more clarity, those types of situations, so we’re not sitting up here and arguing with somebody who wants a better road after they’ve signed a road agreement, that the road was that condition and I agreed to it, now they feel that they’re entitled to something better. That was a very interesting discussion. Yesterday afternoon I met with the Finance Committee at MH/DD. Our discussion there was, as far as the Finance Committee to do anything about this year’s budget. We need to have the budget presented to us, but I think the thing we’re looking at is for the future, to make sure things are done accountably. We saw the expense part of it. We also want to look at the revenue part and see how they balance out. It was interesting to me, being fairly new to that, even though I’ve sat through the budget one of… The County has no way to dictate the amount. If you want to open the door where we get in and subsidize this thing, that’s something. There’s a lot of room for discussion there, but me being new, I’m not sure what we can and can’t do, if our hands are really tied on State-mandated type services. Elaine Sweet had presented a couple different scenarios. One was Linn County, the other was Black Hawk, that she said she spent an awful lot of time on writing, the policy had been approved. But it also said that if you did not qualify for service, it didn’t mean you couldn’t have it. Maybe you would have to help pay for it. That was kind of interesting. We’re looking forward to getting together and hashing more things out. It’s an educational type of process for the financing. It’ll be interesting to see how it ties into other committees. I guess we met with the Computer Committee. I’ll let Jonathan report on Computer Committee that was last Friday. That’s all I have.

Jordahl: Why don’t you ahead with the computer thing, Mike.

Lehman: I don’t have any information here in front of me, but it’s tied in with the technology of how some things, money was not spent in this current budget because we made some changes as far as the connecting lines between buildings. I’m a little fuzzy. I guess I don’t have my notes in front of me of what all was discussed. The GIS Committee met and made a recommendation. Is that the meeting?

Jordahl: Yes, I’ll go into that. Is that all, Mike? Go ahead, Sally.

Stutsman: Just a couple of things. The Space Needs Committee met last Friday morning. We’re to the point of having to make some decisions as far as what we want to do with Space Needs. We have planned a work session between the Space Needs Committee and the Board to bring everybody up to speed on where we’re at and the decisions that we need to make. We need to make some decisions, so we can start planning what we need to do as far as addressing these space needs. Carol, I’m thinking that meeting has been tentatively been scheduled for the 7th, after our budget hearing. I didn’t look on the agenda. Anyway, I just want to alert the Board to be prepared for a work session concerning the space needs.

Jordahl: I have budget written in 1:00 to 4:00 on the 7th. 4:00, then?

Stutsman: Right. I think there’s only one budget presentation that afternoon, and we would be done with the budget at 2:00. Probably from 2:00 to 4:30 would be a work session with the Board. Deana will get that information out to everybody, but I just want to alert people that that’s coming up. We went to the final meeting of the Johnson County Solid Waste Management and Recycling Task Force. We finalized the plan that we’re going to present to the different governmental entities. I just wanted to let the Board know that that will be on our agenda. I can’t say when, but some time in the near future.

Jordahl: Anything radical in there?

Stutsman: Not really. A lot of the same kinds of things. It’s always such an interesting discussion. But no, nothing radical was talked about. The good things that we have going in the county, and basically talked about the things that can be accomplished. There’s no sense in putting a bunch of stuff in the plan that won’t actually fly. All the different entities have to approve the plan before it’s submitted. There will be time for input on what’s in there and what isn’t in there. Marie DeVries from East Central Iowa Council of Government does a nice job in getting the group together and facilitating discussion.

Jordahl: I like the idea of facilitation, we ought to have a County Communications department that does facilitation or something and is helpful in a lot of circumstances. Charlie, do you have something to report?

Duffy: I’ll just give the agenda for the Iowa Rural Development Council.

Jordahl: Wow, that is a plan.

Duffy: Iowa Technology Showcase. Remember the last time Rich Varn was here talking about technology. Dennis Robertson, and he’s the American show’s management council, is participating in a showcase by assembling an educational tract for community leaders. The Technology Committee, chaired by Larry Bean, will give an update on the Council’s activities, and that’s worth a trip right there. Next on the agenda, Iowa 2010 Governor’s Strategic Planning Council update. Jim Crissenger, Iowa Department of Management will give that. I think people know that this is very important too, this update. They’re having town meetings all over the State. I have a whole list of those. By the year 2010, what the people would like to see Iowa be. The next one is 21st Century Workforce Council. Don Wilson’s senior staff, with Lieutenant Governor Sally J. Peterson. Workforce is very important. We talk about it up here quite a bit. The Iowa Workforce Development Richard Running is the director, and he’s invited to this, so that’s going to be another one that’s very important. Implications of change in agricultural, Paul Lastly, Iowa State University Sociology Department. That’ll be very interesting. Local Food Systems Task Force Flood Policy Council report. We have several of these that report back to the council. I used to be on the subcommittee myself. Deputy Secretary Brent Hauling and Mike Bevins, Iowa Department of Agricultural and Land Stewardship I know will do a good job, because I met with these folks before. Food, I think we eat that every day and it’s very important. There are some important things on there. That does go back to this more times than not when I sit up here. There are a lot of things that go through the Department of Economic Development. It isn’t easy getting on this committee. I’ve been on it for 10 years and it isn’t easy getting it to go through the Iowa Legislature. It would have to be important. I am going to make one other statement. I’ve been a Supervisor for close to 11 years and I was going to Ireland last year for about 9 days and that’s the only vacation I’ve had in 11 years. I do my job, I think.

Stutsman: I agree, and I think we all should be able to take vacations and go to meetings. The whole thing is the planning.

Duffy: I understand that, and I’m not complaining. People take vacations, Sally, but I kind of thought you gave me a hint that this wasn’t important, and it’s very important. There are things that go through here, and I brought back books on child care 2 or 3 years ago. It is very important to be there, and I think the last time was quite a meeting, wasn’t it, Mike?

Stutsman: I was wrong, Charlie. Those are very important issues that we need to know about. It’s just too bad that we got messed up on the meeting and when it was.

Duffy: I wouldn’t have brought it up, Sally. I probably shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s my fault. You can’t be here all the time, it’s just hard being a Supervisor. If you miss a meeting, you miss a meeting. But I wouldn’t miss one, unless it would be very important.

Jordahl: I think the question is advanced planning and the question is predictability. We’ve got a meeting scheduled, and balancing the job of Supervisor, being here so the Board can conduct it’s business versus being aware of things going on outside. It’s always a balancing act, but I think we’re going to need to discharge our duties here as well, and that’s possible. You can sort of have your cake and eat it too, here. I don’t think it’s a world-shaking issue. Is that all of your reports, Charlie?

Duffy: I guess. Good luck with their athletic teams, and West High and City High meet Wednesday night.

Stutsman: Is it Wednesday night?

Welsh: I’m for you, Charlie.

Jordahl: You’re rooting for Charlie? I don’t think Charlie’s playing this time, are you?

Duffy: No. Actually, I do. I follow the ball.

Jordahl: You walk up and down, or run?

Duffy: I’m not one of those who sit in the seat. I like high school sports. We’ve had some really fine teams in Johnson County, not only in sports but scholastic. They stand at the top of the list. But it’s a nice way to spend a few dollars, plus the popcorn is good.

Jordahl: There’s an item that we should have on the agenda, popcorn.

Duffy: It’s good popcorn. I’ve never gotten into any poor popcorn going into any ball game.

Jordahl: Regarding the computer meeting that was actually not last Friday but back on the 22nd, I think I have that down here. No, it was on Wednesday, the 27th. I reported to some extent on that last Thursday. But to reprise in as much as it’s been raised, we have been able to, for example, fund Lisa’s computer equipment for the SEATS buses and do the matching funds in part through savings generated by not laying fiber optic cable to buildings that we may relocate. That was a point that Mike was raising there. The GIS Committee recommended going with a slightly more expensive consultant who would give us a better product and found the funding for that. Again, within the Information Services Department, existing funds for the central technology and because of those same savings in the fiber optic cable, so the recommendation to the Board includes going with that consultant. So I’ve been out of commission Friday and this weekend and Monday, due to illness of my family and myself, so I don’t have items to report from meetings that I attend during that time, because I had other concerns. So as far as I’m concerned, that is about it for today. Everybody ready for a recess? I’m ready for a recess. Where did my hammer go? Recess.

Recessed at 11:00 a.m.; reconvened on November 4, 1999 at 7:20 p.m.

(Continued in Part 4)