Survey Analysis
The Public Policy & Administration Program worked in cooperation with the Office of the Secretary of State, the Iowa League of Cities, the Iowa State Association of Counties, the Iowa City/County Managers Association, and the School Administrators of Iowa to survey all local government units in Iowa regarding their use and satisfaction with 28E agreements. The survey package was sent to the central contact point for each type of local government, either the county auditor, the city manager/city clerk, the school superintendent, or the fire chief. The survey package included a CD with two types of files. First, there were multiple TIF files (e.g. L006615.tif) that were scanned copies of each of the 28E agreements for the LGU. There was also a single PDF file on the CD that contained individual surveys corresponding to each of the 28E agreements (i.e., the TIF files). The LGU contact was asked to ''distribute each survey and its corresponding 28E copy to the person who is responsible for managing the 28E program or project, if you are not that person.''
We mailed or delivered 4949 surveys to 98 counties, accounting for about 3485 of the 28E agreements. We personally delivered another 425 surveys to the Polk County Auditor's office, the largest single source of 28E agreements in the state. We mailed surveys to 677 cities in Iowa, accounting for about 5796 of the 28E agreements, and personally delivered more surveys to the city of Des Moines (single largest source of city agreements) accounting for 252 agreements.
Table 1. Sample & Response of Surveys and 28E Agreements.
| Local Government |
Number with at least
one 28E |
Number of 28E Surveys |
| Counties |
99 |
5,374 |
| Cities |
678 |
6,048 |
| School Districts |
206 |
719 |
| Fire Districts |
135 |
135 |
| Total Distributed |
--- |
12,276 |
| Total Returns |
--- |
1,305 (11%) |
Approximately 1305 surveys were returned from about 10,800 that were sent to all four types of LGUs in table 1. Surveys were only sent to an LGU that had at least one agreement filed with OSS between 1993 and May 2004. The response rate as of December 2005 is 12 percent.
An index of service codes was created to categorize agreements by the type of public service (Appendix A). Codes were creating by amalgamating services provided by a ''full-service'' city of 50,000 population and a GFOA award winning budget (Ames, IA) and services provided by a professionally managed county government with a GFOA award winning budget (Scott County, IA). Each of the 11,797 agreements filed between 1965 and July 2004 were coded as providing a single type of service. In some cases, agreements included multiple services (e.g., mutual aid response for fire and ambulance) and these were coded for the first service mentioned in the title.
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