DAUPHIN COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
WORKSHOP MEETING
NOVEMBER 14, 2007 10:00 A.M.

MEMBERS PRESENT

Jeff Haste, Chairman
Dominic D. DiFrancesco, II, Vice Chairman
George P. Hartwick, III, Secretary

STAFF PRESENT

Chad Saylor, Chief Clerk; Marie E. Rebuck, Controller; William Tully, Esq., Solicitor; Randy Baratucci, Director of Purchasing; C. Doran Vance, Esq., Solicitor's Office; Dan Robinson, Director of Community & Economic Development; Gary Serhan, Deputy Controller; Kerry Stackhouse, Work Release Center; Carolyn Thompson, Court Administrator; Mike Yohe, Director of Budget & Finance; Leila McAdoo, Solicitor's Office; William Struemke, Solicitor's Office; Steve Suknaic, Director of Juvenile Probation; C. Jeffrey Patton, Juvenile Probation; Scott Burford, Commissioners' Office; Faye Fisher, Personnel; Dave Schreiber, Personnel; Melissa Wion, Personnel; Kim Robison, Director of Domestic Relations; Mike Pries, Director of Security; Brenda Hoffer, Commissioners' Office; Jena Wolgemuth, Commissioners' Office; Diane McNaughton, Commissioners' Office; Amy Richards, Commissioners' Office; Kay Lengle, Personnel and Richie-Ann Martz, Commissioners' Office

GUESTS PRESENT

David Dodd, Mary Krysokowski and Garry Lenton

MINUTES

CALL TO ORDER

Mr. Haste, Chairman of the Board, called the meeting to order at 10:00 a.m.

MOMENT OF SILENCE

Everyone observed a moment of silence.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

Everyone stood for the Pledge of Allegiance.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

Mr. Haste: We have three sets of Meeting Minutes that will be taken up at next week's meeting.

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

Mr. Haste: We are the point in time in the meeting for public participation. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to address the Board at this time? (There was none.)

DEPARTMENT DIRECTORS/GUESTS

1. Kerry Stackhouse, Work Release
   1. Work Release Staffing

Mr. Stackhouse: Commissioners, at the last meeting you had asked that we re-examine our proposal and redraft in a way that we might enable the clerical staff.

Mr. Haste: Who's best determination?

Mr. Stackhouse: That is my best.

Ms. Thompson: He actually presented the Court with three different options and these are best for providing proper coverage.

Mr. Hartwick: Cost effective?

Mr. Stackhouse: Not necessarily. Option 1-1 is the revised proposal. Essentially the items in red are the vacant positions that we want to add versus the Option 1 Best where we ask for 18 positions. We also changed eight of the full-time position requests to POA position requests, because they do primarily clerical type activities, but they could still, as a POA, participate in certain things that we need them to do to assist the POs with the performance of daily activities in the Work Release Center. If you look at the two proposals side-by-side you will see that the floater positions were moved to the full-time positions and two of the part-time on-call positions were moved into full-time positions as well.

Mr. Haste: Didn't you have in one of your emails the dollar amount?

Mr. Stackhouse: I do not recall having dollar amounts.

Ms. Thompson: Mike is working on that.

Mr. Yohe: I did run some numbers. On this proposal as it stands now, it would add about $650,000 to next year's budget. That is what was presented at the Public Hearing. I just want to point out that there was $140,000 worth of equipment that was requested that was not included in any of these numbers. That $650,000 does not include any of that either. There were cars, etc. Kerry can touch a little bit on that.

Mr. Hartwick: That is what was presented and does that stay as Option 1? You will have to explain to me the transition.

Mr. Yohe: At the Public Hearing I took out everything. It was just status quo.

Mr. Haste: Option 1.1 is your $650,000.

Mr. Yohe: Yes, that would add $650,000 to what was presented at the Public Hearing a month ago. At the Public Hearing we didn't add any new positions. We took out everything. Now, we are going back and if we add these positions it would be $650,000 plus whatever equipment may be granted. We didn't talk about that.

Mr. Haste: How did we figure on coming up with dollars? Remember we had also talked about how creative Terry has been in the past. At least to this point in time he has chosen not to share those dollars with Work Release?

Mr. Yohe: My notes show that in the discussion there was $400,000 that was outstanding from PFA and Summary Offenses that we were going to try to stay within. Obviously this proposal is higher than the $400,000 that was given at the Public Hearing.

Mr. Haste: Those are the fees that we met about? Is there $250,000 in Terry's budget that we could redirect?

Ms. Thompson: I would have to check with Judge Lewis. I know Supervision Fees must stay with the Adult Probation Department. Again, one of the issues here is the inadequate staffing of the Work Release Center, which from the beginning was never properly staffed with full-time people. The bottom line is that we have to have that if we are going to have security within the County.

Mr. Haste: I agree and that is one of my goals too. That is one of the issues. The other issue is minimizing the cost to the taxpayers. If there are other revenue streams that is what we want to try to get. If the wrongdoers can pay for it, we want the wrongdoers to pay for it as much as they can.

Mr. Stackhouse: There are some things that I want to do at the Center to create some revenue, such as GPS monitoring whereby the residents would pay a portion of that for the rental of the equipment.

Mr. Haste: Now is the time to get as much of that identified as we can, because if we approve the budget and we say that we will deal with that in the first or second quarter, all of us get forgetful. There is now a timeline and an urgency to do it. The more we can identify now the more comfortable I would feel.

Mr. Hartwick: Do we want to go with Plan 1.1 and discuss the revenue side of this, as well as the expenditure side and the other thing is to define where those pots are in order to try to offset the expenses to the extent that we can?

Ms. Thompson: I think we have to do that.

Mr. Hartwick: We see the expense side in front of us. We don't have the revenue side in order to make that evaluation.

Ms. Thompson: No, and I don't know how much additional revenue there will be out there. We need to examine it. That is the part that I'm not that good at projecting. Mike has a wonderful expertise at that, but I don't. Of course we will work diligently with the President Judge and you guys.

Mr. Haste: Mike does in areas that he has been able to have his fingers in to look at. Terry has been very protective of those in the past. We only knew what information he would share with us. I'm sure Mike may know a little more than us, but I'm sure he doesn't know as much as we would like him to.

Ms. Thompson: You often spoke about the transparency in your commission and I believe we are equally transparent and we welcome Mike's assistance. In fact, we would like his assistance in trying to figure out what we can do.

Mr. Haste: Why don't we do this for next week, because next week we have to put the budget on the table. We are leaning toward 1.1. We know we have $400,000 sort of earmarked towards that. That leaves us $250,000 in staffing and $140,000 in equipment for another $390,000 that we need to attempt to try to find a revenue stream for.

Ms. Thompson: We will put our heads together.

Mr. Haste: Part of that may be General Fund, but we need to take a hard look at all resources. That allows us to act on that next week.

Mr. Hartwick: Could you share some information and maybe you need to get together with Mike so we can have some information prior to the final consideration next Wednesday?

Ms. Thompson: I don't want to come here and give it to you for the first time. You need time to digest it.

1. Dan Robinson, Director, Community & Economic Development David Dodd, Advanced Communications Mary Krysokowski, Administrator, SmartMarket, Inc. of Southcentral PA
   1. Findings/Year-in-Review of Team Pennsylvania Business Retention Program for Dauphin County

Mr. Robinson: I have with me David Dodd of Advanced Communications and Mary Krysokowski, our Regional Coordinator for Team Pennsylvania. I want to briefly give you an update on the last three years of our Team Pennsylvania Business Retention and Expansion Program. (A packet was provided to the Commissioners.) These are the surveys and outreach we have done since inception for over 1,000 businesses within the County, ranging from companies that have five employees to over 500 employees. The data for the past three years, we have learned that Dauphin County business is striving. 80% of the companies visited are projecting sales growth over the next 12 months. The manufacturing sector, which is somewhat stagnant in terms of growth, still employs the bulk of our workers. Government service industries are beginning to take the place of some of the manufacturing jobs and the service industry good or bad is one of our largest employers in the County, as well as government. Some stats I just wanted you to digest. Of the 475 companies we interviewed from July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2007, 85% of them are headquartered in Pennsylvania, 14% are women owned companies. The largest, in terms of annual sales percentage-wise, is 20% fall within the range of $1 million to $5 million in annual revenues. A lot of the companies, which is part of the purpose of these surveys, none of the information that we retain is used against the companies, 22% gave us confidential answers on annual sales. They are not all publicly traded companies obviously. 80% project growth in the next 12 months. That is compared to 17% that are either going to be status quo or no growth. Obviously being here in Harrisburg, Dauphin County, 41% are doing contract work for the government. We had looked at some opportunities with the Airport, but still a large number of our companies, 61% are not exporting any products. On the technology side over 80% are using email and marketing through websites.

Mr. Haste: The information that I have is just opposite of what you have.

Mr. Robinson: On the growth?

Mr. Haste: The one I have has the numbers.

Ms. Krysokowski: This was flipped upside down. So, it should be 80.62% growth, 17.73 status quo and 1.65 declined.

Mr. Robinson: Sorry about that.

Mr. Haste: When you are done, please see that I get a corrected copy.

Mr. Robinson: Will do. Under the Site and Facility page, 64.48% of our companies indicated that they own the building versus 35.52% lease the building. That is one of our charges when we are meeting with companies - are they looking for space to expand, are they leaving Dauphin County or looking for new sites; things where we can actually place them. You will hear a little bit about that later with David Dodd's presentation.

Infrastructure, even with all the negativity we all get in feedback over 70% said our roadways were excellent or adequate and 14% define them as poor. Over 67% thought our airport was in great shape. 30% didn't have a response, so the converse to that was that they weren't against it.

Our energy/utility rates over 80% said it was adequate or excellent. We may see a change in that number over the next three years as utility caps come off. I just attended a breakfast this morning with Secretary Yablonsky where we are probably looking at anywhere from a 50% to 70% increase in energy transmission charges over the next two years. Public transportation, 50% said it was adequate, 32% didn't really have an opinion and 9% said it was poor. Significant factors facing businesses, the top three and this is not unusual for our County, as well as the State, competition, which is a national trend and the cost of healthcare, which is also a national issue, 20% said that is one of the significant challenges. Obviously with an unemployment rate of 3.7% currently, our workforce was another challenge, 13% said that they have trouble finding workforce that is not already employed, which drives up the cost of the wage rates. In terms of workforce, positions that companies expect to fill in the next 12 months, 25% came back and said it was going to be administrative or clerical and obviously we don't interview under this program State, Federal or any type of governments, but that number is even more significant with recent retirements and downsizing of government, but also new hires in that area. Another significant thing under workforce where there are many choices that the companies can pick from basic motor skills to personal and teamwork skills, problems you are having with the current workforce, the actual high number was none. People that have jobs, the employers seem to be relatively happy with what they have. Under the question of "Why do you think you are having trouble retaining employees", again the top response from our business community was 60% are not having trouble retaining employees. On the second tier 16% said when they have trouble retaining as you know in County government wages was a top rate on that. Things we can do a little better, what we found through the survey, 70% of our businesses are not aware of the Workforce Investment Board so we are going to try to do a little more outreach to let people know obviously if they are having trouble retaining or recruiting employees. 56% were aware of the Team Pennsylvania Career Links System, but 43% were not, so we want to focus on that and let employers know how to plug in their available job postings. It is the year 2007, not 1907, so the union presence is about 8% within the County, 91% is not unionized. That doesn't seem to be a factor, at least in our County.

Within your packet, I hope you received the Annual State Report on PA Business Retention Program, which is all ten regions, all 67 counties. Our success story, which encompassed a good public/private partnership with Advanced Communications and I will let him talk about that, David Dodd, the proprietor of that.

Mr. Dodd: Congratulations on the Election results. I'm very pleased that all three of you will still be in office when we complete this project.

Commissioners: Thank you.

Mr. Dodd: I wanted to provide a brief update on our project. We are constructing an office and manufacturing facility on Cameron Street. We have reached roughly 50% completion on the project and are moving forward. I wanted to refresh you on the project that we have a site that is confounded by two issues, both Brownfield and floodway on the same site. With your support, through the County's Economic Development Office, we were able to overcome those challenges. At this time at 50% we have gotten over those two serious hurdles and are now completing the building. (Mr. Dodd provided the Board with a picture of the site looking west towards the Capitol and how it looked for about 30 years and the current status of 50% completion). The County's funding has been expended into the project in raising the entire structure 2,000 square feet, about 12 or 13 feet to bring it out of the floodplain and also to encapsulate all the Brownfield soil that was previously on the site.

Mr. Haste: You may want to talk to Joe Link at the City. We may have helped with the flooding a little bit. We just last week announced with the Mayor the Morning Glory project up at Wildwood Park, which is to help with the flooding along Cameron Street.

Mr. Hartwick: When?

Mr. Haste: The Mayor sent out a press release last week, Monday or Tuesday.

Mr. Dodd: That would be very helpful. At this point in the project 50% of all contracts have been let, with the exception of one PennDOT contract. So, we are projecting our completion date in the second quarter of 2008. At this point we are turning our attention now to the job creation efforts that we have made our commitment to. We are creating 86 jobs at our new facility, as well as retaining all existing jobs. We have also begun leasing efforts on some excess space that we have in the building and am happy to report that many of the prospects that are looking at our building are from outside Dauphin County. So, we may be recruiting additional businesses into the County. With that said in 2008, aside of the unknown PennDOT release to put a traffic signal, we anticipate sometime in April 2008 you will definitely receive an invitation to our ribbon cutting.

Mr. Haste: Where is the traffic signal?

Mr. Dodd: On the corner of Goodwill and Cameron Streets.

Mr. Hartwick: I have a question as it relates to something that Dan had brought up with the survey. A large percentage of the businesses are unaware of the services that are provided by the Workforce Investment Board. In your job creation piece are you working along with the folks at the WIB in order to identify any training dollars or Workforce Investment dollars that may be able to be utilized for job training and recruitment for your new positions?

Mr. Dodd: We are just starting that phase of our project. We may look into learning more about it. I will tell you that at this point we do have four or five employees that have been attending management training sessions of the Workforce Investment Board. We have begun utilizing that, at least at a management level, to learn how to train in certain areas and I think there might be some additional benefit as we add more entry- level employees and trade employees.

Mr. Hartwick: On those lines, I serve on the Southcentral Employment Corporation Board, who actually is the finance side for the Workforce Investment Board. It is made up of eight county commissioners from eight different counties. Is there any way that we could use some WIB dollars, because this is an issue with not understanding what services are being provided. We have done a lot of streamlining with the WIB, giving the businesses a lot more authority over the elected officials to be able to match up the actual dollars with the actual workforce. The challenges before — a lot of the dollars that come through are earmarked towards some population that may not be individuals who need the job skills. We sort of changed the way that works. Maybe getting together with the WIB Director in defining what services are provided and maybe a mailing to all the businesses in the survey to let them know and be real clear about the services that are provided and contact information and how they can access the information. That may be helpful.

Mr. Robinson: Mary is the Regional Coordinator for the eight counties. If you have any questions of her, feel free.

Commissioners: Thank you very much.

PERSONNEL

Ms. Lengle: Are there any questions on the Salary Board requests? (There was none.)

In the Personnel Packet I have a couple changes to dates. Change #19, the correct date is 12/3/2007. Change #25, the date should be 12/31/2007. That pay will be the first one charged to 2008 and that is what we were going for with that, even though it is the second pay. Do you have any questions on any of the items in the Packet? (There was none.)

PURCHASE ORDERS

Mr. Baratucci: You should have received your Packet yesterday. Are there any questions on the Packet?

Mr. Hartwick: On Page 17, was that something that was budgeted? I don't remember if that was part of last year's budget.

Mr. Baratucci: It was. I talked with both Edgar and Mike and they said that money was put in there for the vehicle. I don't know if it was originally budgeted or if it was money that was moved. Mike, do you know? As you know people move money in their budgets to fund equipment purchases that were not originally budgeted for so I'm not sure.

Mr. Yohe: They carried a vacancy since April. That freed up money and they requested to buy a vehicle with the savings.

Mr. Hartwick: I just remember that they requested more money this year because of the additional positions that were created.

Mr. Yohe: Since the Public Hearing they have revised. They have taken several items out of their budget, but this is something that they wanted to purchase out of the 2007 budget; due to a vacancy I believe since April.

Mr. Hartwick: This won't have any negative impact for the amount that they may be over? Are they still going to be under budget for this year?

Mr. Yohe: Yes.

Mr. Baratucci: Any other questions on the Packet? (There was none.) I also wanted to point out that I included two of the Remote Access Requisition approvals, both for Victim Witness. They were approved by Mr. Guenther. These are the items for access outside of the office.

TRAINING PACKET

Mr. Saylor: We need action on Items #3 and #4.

Mr. Haste: Number 3, Carl called and apologized.

Mr. Hartwick: Number 4, I got an apology from Elke as well. I'm also supportive of that even though it is not timely.

It was moved by Mr. DiFrancesco and seconded by Mr. Hartwick that the Board approve Items #3 and #4 on the Training Packet; motion carried.

ITEMS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Transfer of (Capozzi case) files from Alpern Rosenthal Law Firm to fraud expert Karl Jarek, who is leaving Alpern Rosenthal. Mr. Jarek's hourly rate of $230 will be reduced by $50 from his present rate of $280 an hour. (***A VOTE IS REQUESTED 11/14/07***)

Mr. Haste: We need to take action on Item A.

It was moved by Mr. DiFrancesco and seconded by Mr. Hartwick that the Board approve Item A under Items for Discussion; listed above; motion carried.

SOLICITOR'S REPORT - C. DORAN VANCE, ESQ.

Mr. Vance: I don't have anything specifically unless you have questions. (There was none.)

CHIEF CLERK'S REPORT - CHAD SAYLOR

Mr. Saylor: Commissioners, I have one item to bring to your attention to put on the record. Richie is working to nail down next year's schedule and I just wanted to put on the record that our current plan is to keep our meetings on Wednesdays at 10:00 a.m. Without objection we will work on that and get that schedule out. That is all I have unless there are any questions. (There was none.)

COMMISSIONERS' COMMENTS

Mr. DiFrancesco: Today is the date for the 2nd Annual Dauphin County Wellness Fair for County employees. The Wellness Committee has put a lot of effort into this to make it even better than it was last year. The event itself runs between 11 and 2 and is being held in the Jury Assembly Room, lower level of the Dauphin County Courthouse as opposed to last year where it was in the Lobby. There will be vendors set up to present information to employees. There is going to be food and door prizes. It is going to be a real fun event and an educational event. They will be highlighting healthy foods, nutrition, stress management, blood pressure testing, food scans, safety information all kinds of different topics. I really want to urge the employees and department heads to urge their employees to take advantage of this. This is something really good that the Wellness Committee works hard on to make sure it is a good event for the employees and we certainly hope that it is well attended.

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

Mr. Haste: We are again at the point in time for public participation. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to address the Board? (There was none.)

ADJOURNMENT

There being no further business, it was moved by Mr. Hartwick and seconded by Mr. DiFrancesco that the Board adjourn.