 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government. Working for you, my name is Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with County Board Chairman Mike Van der Steen. And today, as we do every month, we have one of our directors of a very important department here, Aaron Brault, who's our planning director and with him, the leader of the non-motorized transportation program, Emily Vedding. Welcome. Thank you. Nice to have you both here. Aaron, please begin by sharing just a little bit about yourself and introducing one of your coworkers. I've been the interim planning director for roughly six or seven months. Prior to that, I worked on the non-motorized program specifically as a program manager and as a project specialist. Emily is currently the project specialist, doing a very fine job, and I believe Emily's been involved in our department for roughly a year now. Now, you are the non-motorized project manager for a number of years. Yeah, roughly four years. Four years. Was it difficult to turn it over to Emily and kind of give her the reins, or has it been a pretty smooth transition? We work well together, I would say. It's been a smooth transition. It's always difficult to give up the reins to something that you've been spending so much of your time in. And so, yeah, it was... There were some things that are difficult, but she's doing a great job, and I think things are going well. And you certainly continue to be involved with it. Yes, most definitely. Among many other things. Yep, yep. So, the way it's sort of worked out between the two of us, I still do the day-to-day budgetary things, contracting, working with the engineers and things like that, and Emily's been really taking an active role in the community outreach activities. Very good. Well, I know you two make a good team, and I imagine most of our viewers have heard about the non-motorized transportation program before. We've been working on this for a number of years now, Erin. You've been doing a fantastic job since Emily's been here. She certainly has helped continue to improve upon it and get people interested. But please set the stage. When was Sheboygan County selected? What is the non-motorized transportation program? Why is it important? Sure. In 2005, as Congress even back then started to delve into how we're going to fix our transportation system, there was four communities chosen to basically run an experiment. Would a targeted investment in those communities result in different ways or provide opportunities for other means of transportation besides the automobile? So that's basically the goal of the program, to see what kind of results that kind of targeted investment. The key word there is targeted investment in years past or in prior programs and prior grants. It was always one project and out. So you never had a complete network. And so that was one of the goals of the program was to, and our network won't be complete at the end of this grant, but we'll be much further on. So that was, in essence, the goal of the program. So we're a guinea pig. Basically. And we were one of four. There are three others. What are the three others and why were we selected? Sure. I'll answer the second question first. Congress wanted a very diverse range of communities. The other three communities were Minneapolis, Minnesota, Columbia, Missouri, Marin County, California, and then Sheboygan County, Wisconsin. And if you look at the four communities, four very different communities. Minneapolis, big, urban, dense community. Columbia, Missouri, big college town. Marin County, California. The suburban community. Bedroom community to San Francisco. And then Sheboygan. More rural, blue-collar type of workforce rather than white-collar. And so, again, four very diverse communities. And that was on purpose. They wanted to see what worked, what didn't, and each of the different types of communities. So, in 2005, it's been a number of years now. Give a snapshot of what's happened since. Sure. Going back to the other communities where Sheboygan County differed a little bit, is that we didn't have a comprehensive plan in place. So, early on, starting in late 2006, the county really got going on figuring out where we wanted to build facilities and we came up with a comprehensive plan. We had well over 100 in some different meetings. We had public input sessions in each of the, almost every incorporated community in the county just to get the public's input on what we wanted for our community and to really be good stewards of the dollars that came our way. So, that was early on. You know, the first year, year and a half, going through the planning process, getting that public input. And then we had open call for applications where communities in the county could apply to the county or to the grant for funding for specific projects. And those projects were then reviewed by a 30-person Citizens Advisory Committee, you know, very active group. Again, the chair of that committee attended well over 120-some-odd meetings. And most folks on that committee attended, you know, I'd say well over 50 to 60 meetings. Very, very engaged group, dynamic group, all different walks of life. So they gave a gut check to the projects and then ultimately our Joint Resources and Transportation Committee, Planning and Resources and Transportation Committee gave the final year and a on the projects. So, going back, that was really the first year and a half, two years. Since that time, starting in about 08-09, we saw a couple projects trickle in. It's federal money, so sometimes it's a little difficult to spend the money with all the requirements that they place on it. But now we're really starting to get going this year. 2011 will be a big construction year for us and 2012 will also be a big construction year for us. Excellent. I think this is probably the most active public participatory committee that we've had at least in my tenure in Sheboygan County. As you said, over 100 meetings. I have a shout out to Dirk Seilman. I don't know if he'll view this program, but certainly there might be some folks out there that know Dirk Seilman, who was the chair of this advisory committee, just did a tremendous job. He led by example, didn't he? Yeah, early on, he didn't have a bike at the beginning of this program, but he and his wife each bought a bicycle and basically said, well, we're going to lead by example. I don't know how many miles he's put on, but he keeps track. He's an old banker, so he likes to keep track of all the types of things, and I know they continue to do so. They live out in the town of Mosul, so they got a pretty good hike to get into town, and I know they like to take trips into town to go to their, grab some food at McDonald's now and again up on the north end of Sheboygan, and so yeah, they've been very active. I met with him just the other day, and I think he said it was a six or seven mile commute one way, and he frequently rides this bike to and from, so I give him a lot of credit. Well, he did a fantastic job, your advisory committee as a whole was very engaged, as you said. They had to develop a plan to determine where the network was going to be, how they were going to spend these funds. We received in the range of what, 20 to 25 million dollars? About 22 and a half million ultimately ended up coming our way for projects. And as you said, projects then were recommended by the advisory committee to the county's joint resource transportation committee. What types of projects did they select? What's underway? Well, currently, well, the monies were allocated for roughly 14 miles of additional sidewalk gaps. The committee felt those projects were important in many instances to try to eliminate school busing. It's a lot cheaper to put in a sidewalk than it is to provide school busing. So 14 miles of additional sidewalks, about 30 center line miles, so 60, I guess, ultimately of bicycle lanes and Cheryl markings. Actually here in mid-May, late-May, and early-June those are going in throughout the county, so about 30 miles of routes marked on the street. And then an additional nine miles roughly of multi-use off-street types of pathways and about 22 miles of paved shoulders to provide a bike lane basically on more of a rural section type of road where there's no gutter or curb gutter type of thing. Overall, including our non-infrastructure projects, because Emily will touch on this a little later, community outreach and educational types of programs are very important in a type of program like this. Overall, we had nine educational outreach types of projects that we did early on in about 27 different infrastructure projects, although that 27 infrastructure projects can be a little misleading because like the projects in Sheboygan Falls there's 28 different segments of that one project, so the net has been really cast far and wide throughout the county, and like I said 11 and 12 will be our big construction years we'll folks, we'll start to see these. 2011, 2012, so it's been five, six years later until people are really going to see infrastructure going into place it took some time to develop the plans and select the projects. It did. If you look at a road project we're moving quickly. I mean granted our projects are a little smaller in scale but general rule of thumb from what I've heard is about eight to ten years to get a road project through the necessary hoops and so we're in that respect I guess moving rather quickly but it still has been a little frustrating but it's a great opportunity for the community and the benefits far outweigh the some of the frustrations that we've had. Excellent, nice overview. Mike? Emily, since coming to Sheboygan I know you've been actively involved in the community outreach programs and you've got a real big event, the bike and walk to work week coming up. Can you tell us a little bit about what's planned who's involved and what's going to take place and what goals you're trying to achieve with this particular project? Sure, bike and walk to work we can tell June 4th to the 10th this year we have lots of really cool events going on I think. We're doing some of the same that we've done in the past and a couple of new things the event is going to start on Saturday the 4th we're going to have a wacky bike expo so if you've got a bike that you've modified or you've decorated or something like that we're going to award prizes, we're going to actually have judging for that and then a little bit later on there's going to be a scavenger hunt and the person who finds the most items on our list by biking or on foot is going to win a prize for that as far as some of our week long events we're having an employer mileage challenge in which you can go online and track your mileage and we award prizes in several different categories such as longest commute by biker, longest commute by walker there's also a general participation award besides that as far as week long events we have the bike to shop raffle part which is something that we've done this year the idea was brainstormed at a planning meeting we had a couple months ago for it and we're really excited about that we have around 60 merchants around the county in Kohler, Sheboygan Falls Plymouth and the city of Sheboygan and they're participating and the way that that works is anybody in the county you can bike or walk to your favorite store in the window indicating that they're a participating merchant and you go inside and you get a raffle ticket and then at our end of week celebration we're having a drawing to award prizes for those raffle tickets and we've actually had an overwhelming amount of donations come in from local businesses so we've got prizes in all sorts of different categories and this year for that in particular I'm really trying to encourage people that nobody lives too far away to participate I think sometimes people hear this sort of thing and they assume well I live in Elkhart Lake it's not feasible or based on time constraints it's not really the best option for me but I'm really trying to encourage people that even if you live too far away you can drive part way and say if you're biking you can bike the remaining 3 miles or if you're walking you can walk the remaining mile so everybody's really eligible to participate we're also doing commuter stations Monday through Friday which run from 6 a.m. to 8 30 a.m. the two that are going to be held in the city of Sheboygan will be having one at the Erie Avenue Trailhead behind Memorial Mall on Wednesday and then on Monday we'll be having one at Fountain Park so if you're biking or walking on your way to work or in the morning you can swing by for a cup of coffee or fruit and then finally on Friday night at Paradigm Coffee House in downtown Sheboygan is as I mentioned when we'll be having that drawing for the bike to shop raffle and there's also a bike in movie which is a bicycle related family friendly movie a lot of activities sounds great I really like the fact that you moved it back in the calendar year a little bit now what are the dates again June 4th to the 10th Saturday the 4th through Friday June 10th that'll be a fun time I know you've also been involved in some program with the schools and one of the programs is a walking school bus program that sounds a little bit odd but who's involved and how does that work? Well this program was first piloted at Grant Elementary in the city of Sheboygan and the way that it works is we've got about 20 volunteers most of them are from the senior center and they walk four different color coded routes on the way to Grant Elementary in the morning and as they're walking they basically pick up students along these different routes Grant was chosen nearly every single one of their students lives within a mile of the school and a mile is a 20 minute walk and nearly just as many live within three quarters of a mile that's easily a 15 minute walk and nowadays only a fraction of children walk to school compared to what it was and with this program we're really trying to encourage the obvious benefits like reducing congestion in the morning with all the cars from parents taking their children to school and the health benefits it's a great way to get some additional exercise before the school day starts but it was also neat to see we began this program in the fall semester at Grant and we ran it for the first 10 weeks of the school year and it's neat to see with some of these outreach initiatives the positive externalities that have really resulted the last day that the walking school bus actually ran in November for the fall session I walked one of the routes and it was neat to see because the volunteers really got to know the students along the way and that rapport that they developed I thought was really neat you know they exchanged some hugs and said you know a lot of the seniors said to the students if you need someone to walk you in the future I'll definitely walk you and we've had good feedback from that as well we're running it again the spring semester for the last six weeks of the school year so that's in process right now and that program has been very fun now we can see the infrastructure improvements we can see the bike lanes that are being painted actually this week in the county but why do you do the outreach programs why is that a necessary element of this whole program you know by having those infrastructure projects out there by having those sidewalks and the bike lanes and that sort of thing people have the tools to bike and walk and leave the car behind but until they know why they should do it and why it's important to do so and why it might benefit them people aren't going to just necessarily utilize those infrastructure projects just because they're going to see them in front of them of course that's the hope with some of these projects especially as we move along in the infrastructure projects that people are going to see more of them out on the ground and it'll give people that idea hey this is right here in my community I can do it easily as Erin mentioned before the issue with Sheboygan as a county being more rural and we've got a lot more rural communities where people might have a longer distance to drive than for instance if we were in a college town compared to some of the other bigger college towns where it just is quicker to bike or walk and that's a cultural mindset that people have there just because it's quicker to bike or walk than to be stuck in traffic whereas here we're in a cultural mindset that it's habit to just get in the car and drive to where you're going and a lot of times this is just because it's more feasible to do so for time constraints that people have with busy schedules but a lot of times people don't realize the changes that you can make with the short distances such as if you're driving part way and then walk to a lot of your destinations and by seeing other people doing it and by telling people why it's important and encouraging them to do so that's what we're really hoping we'll get the mindset the cultural shift there for instance the bike and walk to work week this is something that we're promoting people to do throughout the week out of the whole year but the hope is that by getting somebody out there and doing it just this first week they might realize well this is really good exercise right away while I'm going to work or with gas prices around $4 a gallon hey this is going to save me some money and we really hope that in that way it might lead for some lifelong changes and impacts and it's important also as we've been targeting especially school age children along the way the younger generation for instance with the walking school bus the industrial mine shift at that age and we've also got other school related outreach initiatives like the walking school bus or the walk to school days I'm sorry which is typically held in fall and spring and this winter we actually had our first ever winter walk to school day and that was held at James Madison and there were over 40 students that participated and it's neat because as adults we get kind of sick and tired of the cold weather here but the students you know they had some extra time before school and playing the snow and playing the playground and they loved it and they really enjoyed it and between that and the walking school bus it's just neat to see the extra social interaction that they get to have before the school day even starts and a lot of times it's making new friends in the neighborhood that they might not have had otherwise too that's great Emily how are we doing at getting people involved is that something that's plateauing or is that still are we still involving more people in the programs? definitely more people are being involved along the way and that's because of the fact that these outreach programs have changed along the ways you know we didn't just do something in 2006 and then continue that continue trying to approach or cater to a certain group of people or type of people for instance another example is a re-bike program and this is a group of people that we haven't targeted in the past so much because it really caters to for instance that need people this program is held nearly every Wednesday and what it is is we've had a number of bikes donated from very generous area residents the police department, the sheriff's department and we've also got four regular volunteers plus a few others that are down there on a semi regular basis at the basement of Paradigm Coffee House and basically anyone from the community can come down there and work on a bike so that they work on one for say two or three hours and since these are donated bikes they might not always be in the best condition and they work on the bike and they fix it up and then they can take it as their own and that's a really great way to encourage people to still be interested and encourage them to do this because we can have those tools out there we can have the bike paths and the sidewalks as I mentioned in the bike lanes and the sherals but until people have the resources to be able to do so people we've had some kids that come down there and everything until they have a bike to actually be able to utilize those things it definitely makes it more of a success I think isn't there one day of the week that you get together and people can bring things down which day is that and what time it's Wednesday evenings at Paradigm located on A Street in Sheboygan and it's usually from 5.30 to 7.30 during the summer it runs every month every week I should say it's an overwhelming participation with this we've given out by now I would say we've given out upwards of 100 bikes actually it's over 200 in the past less than a year over 200 bikes have been distributed a lot to the boys and girls clubs and big brothers, big sisters that's fantastic everybody can tell that you bring a lot of energy to these projects and these outreach programs thank you very much for that with that I'll turn it back over to Adam speaking of energy Aaron as well has had to have his hands and a lot of things at the planning department now as in the role of director and recently was asked to get out to Washington DC to appear before members of Congress to talk about our non-motorized transportation program and how we're doing how it's coming along please share a little bit of what that was like sure it was very interesting interesting to say the least the four pilots were invited out for congressional briefings on both the House and Senate side so Senator Senator Klobuchar from Minnesota provided the invite on the Senate side and Congressman Blumenauer from Oregon wanted to hear about it and the basis for going out there basically was they wanted to compared to other programs at the federal level our legislation dictated that we had to measure what our results were so that's very different from a lot of other federal programs so these past four or five years we've been collecting data to present back to Congress on what this investment did so we went out to Washington we had some congressional briefings where each of the four pilots got to state their case and in the instance of Sheboygan when we compare our baseline data in 2007 versus 2010 it cleans up about 22% and pedestrian use is up about 12% in our community that's on our local counts and it's also sort of confirmed by the the census the census takes counts through their American community survey every year and we see roughly the same percentage increase is going up in that as well so our local counts are also backed up by more national aggregate accounts and since we started this in 2005 biking is up 22% yes at least at our eight locations we took baseline data in 2007 versus in 2010 and then walking was about 12% I mean that's outstanding and that's before the infrastructure and many of the projects are even in place so that goes to show how important these education and outreach activities are to provide that sense of community that you're not out there alone and one of the analogies that we've always used touching on some of what Emily said is would you drive your car to a place if there wasn't a road or a facility and the answer is obviously no it's the same for bicycling and walking how are we comparing to the other communities because I know they don't have the winners that we do at least actually Minnesota Minneapolis was just ranked the number one bicycling city in the country so it goes to show you can do it in a winter climate the numbers roughly mirror ours Columbia, Missouri are similar to ours as well in Marin County, California steals the cake they beat all the other three and they're up quite a bit I think they've reported a 50% increase in their bicycling and 40% increase in their walking and looking at them they don't have the winters to deal with so some of their key projects were opening up old tunnels and which provided barriers there was only one main road running through and it was very congested and it's actually quicker for them to bicycle now than it is to deal with that what kind of impression did you get from the members of congress or their aides that you interacted with are they supportive do you see this trend continuing I think so I really do even in the media you hear about livability options and I think communities are realizing that this is not only from getting folks out of their cars it's a livability thing it's a healthier community it's a more attractive community to have these types of things so then it's easier to retain employees attract employees for employers so I think employers are supportive of these types of efforts that communities are making so I think as we move forward in the 60's 70's and 80's it was all auto based and I think we're starting to see some of the effects of that and now we're starting to say take a step back a little bit well even Emily was talking about so many kids today don't walk to school even if it's less than a mile and of course everyone walked to school prior to the 50's and 60's and 70's I think even then a lot more people are walking to school than are today and it's good to see that coming back yeah back in the 50's about 60% of kids announced about 13% of kids walked to school well you're both doing outstanding work and I think some people in the community have followed this and thought boy that's nice it's nice to see these trails being developed, people being encouraged more to get out of those vehicles and walk and bike I know there have been some folks who have thought why are they spending these kind of resources on bike paths and pedestrian paths when there's other needs but we really were blessed with the fact that we were one of four pilot communities that had this essentially fall in our lap and thanks to your leadership and Dirk Seilman and many others in this community we're making the most of it it's fantastic I definitely we're being good stewards of those dollars and we pick the projects I think that'll have the most effect for our community well thank you both for coming in today we appreciate the overview I'm hesitate to contact either Erin or Emily at our planning department I know they're happy to respond to questions or if you have any suggestions for improvement we always welcome that as well so thank you for joining us next month our airport director Chuck Mayer will be here to talk about the very important and good work happening at the Sheboygan County Memorial Airport and until then thanks for joining us