 Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the annual meeting and economic outlook breakfast for the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce. Our first order of business is to introduce our Treasurer, Max Shire. So Max, it's all you. All the folks, if you like. OK, we'll make this quick. So I'll call this meeting or annual meeting to order at 806 Caroline. I think all I need is one vote for a slate of new board members, second term, and then also a few resignations. So our first term board members, Paul Griffin, Sam Spirny, Paul Kaplik, and Claudia Kropsky. And our second term that needs a vote is Kristen Stearns, Kristen Lippert, and Jamie Schram. And then also the three resignations, which are Mark Shoe, Barb Hammond, and Paul Blackley. So I need a motion and a second, hopefully, from you guys. So moved. Thank you. And a second? Second. All right, thank you. Any discussion? All in favor? All opposed? All right, motion carries. And the meeting is adjourned at 807. Fastest one ever. All right, thank you so much, Max. So for those, if this is your first time with us for this meeting annually, we clearly bring the slate of board of directors and then ask for a vote from the membership so that you all get to be a part of this process. So thank you, Max. Justin Sully is our board president beginning this year. He unfortunately had other obligations, so he's not able to join us this morning. So we had Max in his absence. So I am Deidre Martinez. For those who don't know me, I am the CEO of the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce. Super excited. This is a much larger group than we had last year, so it's great to see so many faces. Also, we've had a spring-like winter until we decided to have a fairly large event. And then there was snow. So thank you for those who braved the icy roads. But I will say that when we come to Pine Hills, and if you turn around and look behind you, there is not a better view of winter wonderland in Sheboygan County. And I think I see an animal running across the snow currently, so there's that. That's interesting. All right, so first, certainly, again, want to just welcome you. I also want to say thank you to Prevea Health. They continue to sponsor programming like our executive series and our economic Outlook Breakfast. And without the generosity of Prevea Health, we would not have an opportunity to provide programming and updates like this. And sadly, Dr. Rye had intended to join us, but coming from Green Bay, he didn't feel it was probably the best idea to drive through the icy roads. But if you happen to talk with him, feel free to say thank you. He would appreciate that. And we will get right to the fun part. So I generally just go through the Economic Outlook Survey results. So for all of you who participated in the survey, I want to say thank you. My portion of the program is generally kind of a little dry, so I apologize. And I will try to make it as exciting as possible. We will finish today with Mayor Pullman. So the good news is that you're going to have him later this morning, and he's a lot more funny than I am. So you have that to look forward to. But with that, we had a really good mix of respondents for this year's Economic Outlook Survey. So obviously when we present this survey to the membership, we want as many people as we can to get involved and answer the questions. And we certainly want to see a mixture. We saw that the mix of age range actually shifted this year. Generally, it's the 55 to 64. That is kind of our audience that takes the survey more than the other groups. But as you can see, that's some of the 45 to 54 and 35 to 44. So those young professionals or next generation of leaders are really stepping up and getting involved in programming like this. We had a decent mix of employer versus employee. So we get the information from both perspectives. And then you can see the size of businesses, small businesses account for the majority of respondents. But then we jump to that 51 to 100 range. So we kind of get that small and then a larger space. And then we go back down to the 5 to 10 employee count. So just so you guys all have an idea of who participated in the survey and where this information is coming from. So first, let's talk about attraction. It is no secret that we continue to have lots and lots and lots of jobs available in Sheboygan County and not enough people to fill those roles. So it's important that we continue to have that conversation and talk about ways to attract and retain talent to Sheboygan County. So this year, roughly 61% of organizations expect that their workforce will grow over the next 12 months. This is up about 1% over the previous year. We also look at these numbers in comparison to the survey that Wisconsin Manufacturers in Commerce puts out annually. And then they take a look at across the state, what are the needs. So when looking at WMC's results, their respondents reported about a 62% expected increase in workforce as well. So really, Sheboygan County needs are really right in line with the state of Wisconsin as a whole. The top three positions that you reported that we will need this year are in the finance and IT space, business management, and then manufacturing and production. I don't think that there is a big secret in that because these are certainly skills that we are constantly seeking and having conversations about. So the top three over the past few years actually haven't changed just the order in which they're being reported as being changed. So those top three for the last few years have all stayed the same except for a kind of flip-flopping first, second, and third. We also asked what Quake K-12, I can speak, initiatives your company actively participates in on an annual basis. So as we're talking about attracting and retaining workforce, we know the importance of working with our K-12 partners and getting elementary, middle, and high school students involved in the process so that they can explore careers in Sheboygan County, fall in love with Sheboygan County, and hopefully not leave us. Or if they do, they choose to go off to college and come back after they're done. What we have found by asking this question is that guest speakers at schools onsite career experiences and our friends at Inspire Sheboygan County are the three top opportunities that our businesses are taking advantage of to engage with our next generation of leaders. We also look at the top three efforts that our businesses are utilizing to attract talent. So right now, we're looking at employee referral programs, digital hiring, and then the someplace better website. So with our friends at the SEEDC, they launched a new someplace better website, which they will maybe talk about a little later. But we're glad to see that that is in the top three of options that our business community is utilizing. It means they've done a great job and we're finding value in that. So this is a little concerning. So if we go back to the previous slide and we see that employee referral programs are the number one option or opportunity that our business community is utilizing is that referral, and then we look here and we see that under 80% of our respondents would likely recommend a friend or family member to move to Sheboygan County. So why that is scary is that if less than 80% of the people in this room would encourage their people to move to Sheboygan County, then relying on employee referrals is probably a little bit of a nerve-wracking opportunity. So I think this is something, and we began measuring this a few years ago, it has gone down over the previous year, not by a whole lot, but it has gone down. And so I think that collectively as the business community, we need to really be talking about what do we need to do in Sheboygan County to really make this a place that you would tell your friends, your family members, your cousins, your wife's family, whatever that might look like, that they should move to Sheboygan County and grow roots in this space. Next, we'll talk a little bit about retention. So there's the attraction piece, getting folks to Sheboygan County, and then obviously once we get them here, we wanna make sure they're happy and they're immersed in our culture and they don't ever want to leave us. So when we look at what employers are doing to encourage their folks or to retain their folks, the three top opportunities are flexibility, so flexibility in the workplace, increased wages and offering part-time employment opportunities. So rather than making everybody a full-time employee, offering some of that part-time employment. So employee recognition did move down the list and increased wages moved up from previous years. So where as in the past, a lot of our folks said that the increased wages wasn't really the option that they were utilizing and offering some of those other incentive programs was more in line. We're seeing that as now transitioning and our employers are in fact using wage increases to retain talent. Remote workforce, and I kept the previous year's information up here just so you can kind of see the transition. Obviously with the onset of the pandemic, many of our employers started to make very different decisions as it relates to remote workforce. And we kind of expected that that would fall back post-pandemic to bring everybody back into the space. If we look at this information, we still have a large chunk of employers that are offering remote work options. So about 45.8% of current respondents reported that some of their workforce is currently working remotely. This did drop about 8% over previous year, but it's still a large chunk. Of those offering remote options, roughly 23% offer full-time remote options and about 23% offer one day per week as a remote option. So it's either all or one. So both sides of the spectrum. Similarly, we looked at the WMC results and they found that roughly 37% of their respondents across the state of Wisconsin are offering some remote work hybrid opportunities. So we are almost 10% above what the rest of the state is doing. Expected percentage of wage increases. We talked about the increase in wages as being an opportunity that we utilize to retain talent to the area. So more than 42% of our respondents have forecasted a wage increase of three to 5%. This is down a few points over the previous year, but more than 65.5% have budgeted for a wage increase overall, which is down 5% over the previous year as well. In the most recent WMC report, 86% of their respondents reported a wage increase of at least 3%. And I think it's important that we pay attention to that because if employers in surrounding counties and throughout the state of Wisconsin are increasing their wages, we want to make sure that we're staying in line with where they're at so that we can attract them to Sheboygan County versus sending them to other places throughout the state. Growth and sales increase year over year. And so we've kept starting in 2015 all the way up through the first three quarters of 2022. More than 64% of respondents reported an increase in sales over the previous year. Certainly not surprising as we are post-pandemic. And another almost 20% reported no change. This is very promising for businesses in our county that the vast majority are reporting positive progress, especially when we think about supply chain issues, inflation, all of the things that are discussed on a daily basis if you turn on the news or look at social media or what have you. So with that, to see that our businesses are still finding success and their sales growth is increasing is very promising for our community. All right, so optimism in Sheboygan County. Who's ready to be optimistic? Woo-hoo, thank you. So we ask this question annually, how do you believe your business will perform over the next 12 months? And you can kind of see the transition 2019 all the way through 2023. So currently almost 12% of our respondents expect significant growth in 2023. This is an 8% decline over the previous year. But it does show that we still do have a number of our businesses that expect significant growth. And then you go into that moderate growth, which is the largest chunk of information there. But really, very few of our respondents believe that there's going to be a decline in their performance of their businesses. So I think that is certainly something to feel good about in Sheboygan County. 60% believe that Sheboygan County's economy overall will also improve in 2023 compared to 80% last year. So it is down, certainly. But for more than half of our respondents to believe that the economy of Sheboygan County is going to improve throughout 2023, again, is another celebratory opportunity. It means that we are doing a good job and our business community is feeling good about the direction. Obviously, significant concerns include inflation, supply chain issues, and workforce shortages, and housing shortages. WMC actually reported that only 45% of their respondents expect the economy across the state of Wisconsin to grow. And only 29% expected growth across the US in whole. So we are certainly more optimistic from an economic standpoint in the county than if they are across the state and that we are across the United States. So this is our bubble. Let's get more people here, right? We also asked what keeps you up at night. Our mission for what we do as a Chamber of Commerce is to make sure that we're providing tools and resources that you, as our members, will find value in. So when asked what keeps you up at night, talent recruitment, we talk about that all the time, so there's no shock there. Impact of inflation is certainly a concern for our folks, and then competition. This looks different than previous years. If you notice, the cost of health care dropped dramatically from to 10th place, where in previous years that was number two on the list. So things are kind of shifting when we're talking about what are concerns that our business owners are facing. Health care is no longer in that top three. And certainly inflation, of course, we know that that is going to cause some concern. But competition is not something that's been at the top of that list in the past. So we must be experiencing some of that. And to talk a little bit more about health care, changes in the cost of health care will impact more than 42% of our respondents. This is down 8% over the previous year. So the good news is that the cost of, again, health care is not debilitating for our business community this year. So that's something to be excited about. And then what professional development opportunities are you guys reporting that you need from the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce or any of our partners throughout the community? And this year, leadership and management came in at 68.75%. Networking and relationship building at 61%. And then almost 43% are looking for social media professional development. And that does look different than previous years. Social media hasn't been at the top of the list for quite a few years, in fact. And I would guess, and I wouldn't even know if it's an educated guess, but as we have transitioned to doing a lot more online, a lot more with technology since the pandemic, clearly businesses are finding the value in utilizing social media as a way to connect with their customers. All right, so top issues, this is where you guys get to fill in what you believe are the top issues. And if we could tackle collectively three things in Sheboygan County over the next year, this is where you would like us to focus our efforts. So of course, workforce development. This includes attraction, retention, and DEI programming and development. And then countywide collaboration, I thought this was actually very interesting. We hadn't seen this in quite a few years, but we had quite a few comments and suggestions from folks that they're looking for the chamber, for the EDC, for other community partners to collaborate and really live out that better together mindset. And so that is something that we will be paying close attention to and hopefully proving to all of you that we are collaborating and making things better for the community as a whole. And then business support and financing for small businesses. Business support, encouraging major employers to support local and then also seeking financing opportunities for businesses. So that would be number three on the list of issues you would like us to tackle or pass on to our friends in those spaces. All right, so what are we doing to hopefully fill some of these gaps and provide some of the stuff that you guys are looking for? From an attraction and retention perspective, the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce does continue to mail out welcome letters to new residents, knowing the importance of being welcomed into a new community. These letters encourage folks to come into the chamber, ask questions, have a friendly face, someone they can ask questions of, and then also to receive additional information about our communities and our members. This past summer, we were blessed to host 106 interns and co-ops in person throughout the summer, including, we hosted several activities and events to give them an opportunity to learn more about Sheboygan County and build relationships with other young professionals in the area. So we know that we've seen that this cohort style when they come in as groups, and if we can get them immersed in our community, they fall in love with our community, and when they are ready to graduate college, then they wanna come back to our community. So this was a collaboration between the Chamber of Commerce and a number of our larger employers in the area, and we are excited to host this program again in the upcoming summer. You know, again, you told us talent, attraction and retention was important. So we shifted gears, we talked a little bit about this last year, but we hosted our Explore Your Future program with now seventh and or eighth graders, versus in the past, we were focusing more on the sophomores across the county, but we, you know, in talking with our education partners, we found it more valuable to provide this opportunity for students to learn more about careers and what do those look like at a younger age before they participate in their ACP or academic and career planning. So prior to them choosing their classes for their first year of high school, we wanna have that touch point so that they can make more educated decisions about their future or things they're interested in learning about. We also hosted our first STEM Fest that we hosted, so we've had a STEM Fest program in the county for a number of years, and some of our partners said, hey, this is really a lot of work and we as volunteers can't do it all, so can you guys take on some of the brunt of that? And of course we said yes. So we had roughly 1,000 fourth and fifth grade students join us at University of Wisconsin Green Bay Campus this past year, and we had a number of STEM activities for these students to participate in. These are wonderful opportunities not just to engage our youth in the area, but they're really a lot of fun. So I know sometimes I wanna just, you know, kind of walk away from, you know, work and do something a little bit different and going and engaging with fourth and fifth graders, it really kind of fills your cup and makes you wanna go back to work and do bigger and greater things for the community. And I know, Claudia's like, Deidre, you've got six kids. I know you're kidding, right? But they're all older. When they were in fourth and fifth grade, I liked them. Just kidding. I still like them. And we also partnered with, you know, obviously a number of our major employer or employers in the area, I should say, and also a group out of Milwaukee to bring the MoneyPath program to high school students throughout the county. So this is a free program. We know that financial literacy is extremely important. We know that not all students graduate high school with financial literacy understanding. So we wanna make sure that we are providing them with every tool or resource they need to be successful as they leave high school and move on to whatever the next phase of their life is gonna be. All right, last year, you guys had shared with us that diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging was at the top of the list. So throughout 2022, the chamber staff and board participated in DEI strategic planning. So what this did is it allowed us with the help of consultants to take a look at our strategic plan that was developed and really look at every decision we're making from a lens of equity and inclusion so that we, as an organization, can lead, of course, in Sheboygan County and ensure that the decisions we're making truly do have that DEI background ingrained in them. Our 2022 workforce development symposium this past fall also focused on psychological safety and DEIB in the workplace. And I am glad to share that we will be launching our creating inclusive workplaces, a professional development opportunity, our first session being February 8th. So we have secured a number of speakers throughout the year. They're gonna come in and talk about different topics. This is really an important piece from the workforce development perspective. If we want to attract and we want to retain talent, we have got to do things maybe a little bit differently and encourage people that maybe aren't from Sheboygan or haven't had quite the opportunities that maybe some of us have had to feel included in our workforce and in our communities so that they can too can be successful. And for the first time, we also offered the Sheboygan County Community Guide in both English and Spanish. So we saw that there was a pretty significant need. We've got a number of Spanish speaking folks that are being recruited through some of our employers and we wanna make sure they have access to those resources and it has been widely popular. So we expect that this year we will actually be ordering more of the Spanish guides to make sure we can support that. Additional business support. You guys also have told us year over year that you're looking for additional business support. So this past year, we actually sold more than $610,000 in chamber cash. This was $50,000 higher than previous year so that's super exciting. Why it's exciting is because 100% of those chamber cash sales go back into our business community. That means they can't go online. Well, I guess, we do have some online retailers in the space but they're not on Amazon and they're not on Coles.com or whatever the case may be. These are dollars that stay right here in our community. There are no fees. Any of our members can participate in the program and it's completely free of charge. We also hosted roughly 250 meetings using our free conference room space. So we did a major overhaul of our conference room to support the need for a meeting space for businesses and also making technology and the hybrid model more accessible to all of our business members. And the first year I think we had 50 guests or 50 groups that came in and used the space and this past year it was more than 250. So it's wonderful because we've got groups just coming in three, four and five times per week, sometimes three and four and five times per day and taking advantage of that space so we're glad to provide that value to the community. We also launched our strategic plan. I know we talked a little bit about how DEI played a role in this but just to kind of give you a better idea, the mission of the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce is think big, betterment, improvement, growth and influence local. And our vision is to provide expertise, fostering dynamic organizations throughout Sheboygan County. And these are the anchors that we are going to be putting a significant amount of effort into over the next couple of years. So if you have any questions or would like to know more about our strategic plan you're certainly welcome to reach out. A new question we asked, there's been a lot of discussion about the rainy day fund, the significant surplus in the state of Wisconsin. So our respondents would like to see that surplus be given back to taxpayers as number one. However, I will note that between talent recruitment and give back to taxpayers, there is literally I think only a one point spread. So it wasn't overwhelming that people want it to be given back to taxpayers. It was really quite close, moving down to infrastructure, education, housing development and then talent recruitment. So really our respondents are hopeful that the state of Wisconsin will decide to disperse some of that funding to help support a number of different causes throughout the state. And lastly, we are better together. So we understand the importance of collaboration and continue to grow the partnership between the chamber, government, our friends at the Cheboy County Economic Development Corporation and in a number of other community organizations. I'm glad to say that many of our community partners are in this room with us today and participating in this presentation. And we are very thankful as we know that you guys have shared that that's important to you. And so we wanna make sure that we're living that out in our values and doing exactly what it is our membership is requesting of us. And we think you've noticed that we've been doing some things really well. Membership over the past year grew by 62 members and retention looks great at just under 89%. And of course, we're not finished yet. We've got some new programming on its way this year. We are launching that creating inclusive workplaces, professional development opportunity. It is free to all members so we wanna remove any barriers to access. And we just want you to get sure folks signed up to come and participate. We are also excited to be launching our junior leadership Sheboygan County program this upcoming fall. So we have a leadership Sheboygan County program that has gone on for roughly 40 years. And actually in this room today is our 2022, 2023 leadership Sheboygan County group. So if you guys wanna wave, yes, all of you wave. Yes. So these are all leadership participants for the course of this year. This is a great opportunity to provide leadership programming and help people grow in their skill set, but also to immerse them in Sheboygan County more so than maybe they already are so that they stay here. And in conversation over the years, we've learned that providing a junior leadership program would be a great opportunity to do this with high school juniors and seniors. So we will be launching in partnership with Sheboygan Area School District for the first year. They are providing this as a class. So it's incentivized by giving school credit for those who participate and successfully graduate with us over the 10 months. And it is completely free to students and their families. So again, removing those barriers to access. We don't want these opportunities to be out of reach for any of our students in Sheboygan County. So if you wanna get involved in programming such as that or you're interested in learning more about the leadership program in whole, please feel free to talk to one of our current students. We've got a number of graduates in the room too. And that is it for me. So I hope it wasn't too boring. And next I am going to invite Elaine to join me in giving another update from the County perspective. Good morning everyone. My name is Elaine Krause. I'm the Deputy County Administrator for Sheboygan County. I have been working there for just over 10 years. I'm pleased to be here this morning presenting to all of you on the state of Sheboygan County. So for those of you who don't know, the County has just over 850 employees in 19 different departments. We have 200 programs and services that we offer and that is everything from A to Z that you could possibly imagine. Everything from law enforcement to social workers, to parks, to healthcare and nursing. We've got a little bit of everything. The total budget for the County is $182 million. Of that, $53 million is property tax levy. The balance of the budget comes from state and federal revenue as well as private pay and fees for services. I know this is probably a little hard for those to see, especially we're on the perimeter of the room. But this is showing the breakdown of our budget. So on the left hand side, that is the property tax levy and the breakdown of the major departments. And on the right hand side, it is the total budget and the breakdown of the department. So you can see the difference between which departments rely more on tax levy versus other revenue sources. The largest four departments are Health and Human Services at $45.2 million. The Transportation Department at $28.6 million. The Sheriff's Department at $24.2 million. And Rocky Noel Health Care Center, our nursing facility at $15.9 million. And those four departments alone comprise nearly two thirds of our budget. Next, I'm going to go through some of our major accomplishments and milestones from the past year. There were a lot of successes to celebrate in 2022, but we couldn't possibly go through all of them today. So I've narrowed it down to about the top 10 things that we are most proud of. And these are in no particular order. So first up is the Alternatives to Incarceration Expansion at our Detention Center. For those of you who don't know, we have a Detention Center on the south side of Sheboygan. Last year we added a addition to it to the tune of $1.85 million. And this is to enhance the programming that we have for our Alternatives to Incarceration. So that is day reporting, electronic monitoring, other wraparound services that we offer to reduce recidivism and also keep our inmate population low. So as you can see from the schematic here, the addition added a secure reception area, eight offices, additional storage, and bathrooms to conduct the substance testing, which is often a requirement of those programs. And so like I said, this alleviates the population on the Detention Center and also is helping us to avoid a far more costly addition to the Detention Center to the tune of about $30 million if we needed to add on more bricks and mortar. And that would just be the cost of the infrastructure, not to mention the ongoing operational cost if we had to staff it. So we're very proud of this and proud to be offering different programming to those who are incarcerated. Next up is the Stream Restoration at Amsterdam Dunes. For those of you who don't know, we recently purchased a parcel on the southeast side of the county. It's just over 328 acres on Lake Michigan. And last year we completed a stream and coastal wetland restoration. And that is to enhance water quality that goes to Lake Michigan. And this was just over $600,000 and it was all paid for through various grants. The Sustain Our Great Lakes, the Fund for Lake Michigan and the Natural Resource Damage Assessment Fund. So we are very proud to have this property and to be restoring the ecological integrity of the area. And there's some nice drone footage here. It might be a little hard to see, but you can see the work that they completed to get those streams improved. Next is the Rubin Cutting at the Kohler Center for Marsh Education. So Shawayton County owns much of the land at the Shawayton County Marsh on the northwest side of the county, just past Elkhart Lake. Last year we built a educational facility. The cost of that was just over $2 million of that the county's portion was about $350,000. And this was a really great partnership between the county, the Friends of the Marsh, the Kohler Company, Camp Waikota, and many others. So the YMCA Outdoor Skills Center for Marsh Education offers programming every year for about 1,000 students. Previously, they were working out of a very old trailer that was donated by Sargento and had seen far better days. So we're very excited to have this brand new beautiful building to offer that programming for the students in the area. So one wing of the building houses the educational program, and the other wing of the building is new showers and bathrooms for the county campground. And this facility, we had a ribbon cutting in October to celebrate it, so you can see a picture there from the ribbon cutting. And when the building is not being used for educational programming, it is available for rent. So if anyone would like to host a gathering there, please feel free to give the county a call and we'd be glad for you to utilize the space and so we can showcase it to the community because it is really quite a beautiful building. It is LEED certified and many of the materials were locally sourced and in fact some of the main support structures are from whole trees that were harvested from the property at the marsh. So it's really something quite extraordinary to see. The next is the Economic Support Services Relocation. So previously we had our Economic Support Services located out of the Job Center just up the road here. And we recently remodeled the space in our Aging and Disability Resource Center. If you can see the picture on the left, it's a little dark, which is what it actually looks like in real life or used to I should say. Our staff are very glad to see those green avocado counters are now gone. We've completely renovated the space and brightened it up and added offices so that we can have our Economic Support staff there. And this allows for more collaboration between that division as well as our elder services and veteran services which are now all in the same building. We have a lot of clients that use all three of those divisions so this enhances services to our customers as well as significantly improved part of that building that needed a major facelift. In addition we are realizing about $80,000 in financial savings by co-locating these departments together. The American Rescue Plan Act Task Force Initiatives. I think many of you have probably heard other presentations on this. So the county established six task forces based on priority areas of concern and that is affordable housing, behavioral health and crisis response, broadband, child care, transportation and workforce development. And in June the county board approved a number of initiatives that came out of the task force. And so we are very glad to see those programs are getting underway and we're excited to see the impact that they have on our community. The county received just over $22 million in ARPA funding and to date the county board has obligated $18.5 million and we have until the end of 2024 to obligate the remaining $3.8 million roughly. Rocky Null, we own and operate the Rocky Null Healthcare Facility which is between Plymouth and Elkhart Lake. Due to the pandemic we have been experiencing ongoing staffing shortages and that's a national problem. I think everyone in the room is probably aware of the shortage of nursing staff. But we're proud to say that despite all of the challenges we face we continue to maintain our five star quality rating. This is something we are extremely proud of and it just shows the commitment to quality and the dedication of the staff that we do have at the facility. We've been putting in a number of enhancements to the facility both physically to the space making a lot of renovations and enhancements to make it a home like setting with quality amenities. We've also been enhancing the recruitment and retention efforts for our staff. So we have a lot of great programs including on-site childcare, tuition reimbursement, student loan repayment, sign on bonuses, premium pay, paid training, the list goes on and on. So if anyone knows anyone either in the nursing field or wanting to get into the nursing field please check out Rocky Null. There's a lot of great things going on there. We've also been enhancing our partnerships with both LTC and Lakeland University and there's a couple of representatives here in the room and offering employee training programs to get people trained up in the nursing field right on site at Rocky Null. The Highway 23 expansion, I think we are all very familiar with the picture on the left and had been living that for years and years seeing barrels. Every time we were on Highway 23 we're very proud that that project is now complete. The Portion Inch of Wayne County was completed last year and most recently the portion all the way through to Fond du Lac was completed and so there was a ceremonial ribbon cutting in October for that. You can see the picture on the right is, we were joined by the secretary of the DOT and the governor there for the ribbon cutting in October. So we're very glad to see that project completed because as we're all aware that's vital to economic development and improving safety on that highway. In addition to the four lane expansion of the highway itself the old Plank Road Trail that runs along the highway was also expanded and it's now a 30 mile trail running from the city of Sheboygan all the way to the city of Fond du Lac. So that's very exciting as well for non motorized transportation. The County Airport, so we own and operate the Sheboygan County Memorial Airport just outside of Sheboygan Falls. That is a very busy airport. For those of you who don't know we have a lot of air traffic there especially when there are major events in the community. At the Ryder Cup at the golf tournament we saw about 1200 flights during that time. So it is an incredibly busy place. In this past year the County Board authorized that the County will be offering FBO services at the airport. We have a lot of people that fly into the airport whether it's for business purposes whether they're coming to go golfing, events that rode America, et cetera and we want to make sure that when they come to the airport that they are receiving the highest quality of service and feel welcome at the airport. So we will be offering services at the airport and in addition to this another goal is to reduce the property tax liability that is required to operate the airport. So we're very excited about this in the coming year. And then finally another graph that I know is a little tricky to see but it really illustrates our fiscal track record. So the County has a very, very strong fiscal track record. We have healthy reserves. We have an excellent bond rating. We're very proud of this. On the right hand side is the tax levy trend for the last 10 years. For 2023 there will be 1.66% property tax levy increase. And on average for the last 10 years that increase has been just 1.29%. The chart on the left is showing the property tax rate. And for 2023 the property tax rate will be $4.37. Which is an 8.28% decrease over last year. And this is the seventh consecutive year that the property tax rate has gone down which this graph illustrates. And in fact this is the lowest property tax rate since 1985. So we are very proud of our track record and fiscal responsibility. Our finance department for the last eight years has earned the excellence in financial reporting. And so we're very proud of that track record in history. And then last but not least for those of you in the room who don't know, our county administrator Adam Payne bid farewell to us after 24 years. I know this is a really great picture. So the one on the left for those of you can see is a very young Adam Payne when he first started at the county. And then on the right is his most recent head shot. So he announced his impending departure in September. And those of you who may not know, he is now the secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. So very proud of that accomplishment and wish him nothing but the best. We had a chance to recognize him on Tuesday night at our board meeting. He came back and gave a presentation and was filling us all in on what he's been working on at the DNR in the last two weeks since he's been there. And we were able to thank him for his service. So very thankful for 24 years that Adam gave to the county. And the county is currently in the process of recruiting a new county administrator since Adam had notified us back in September. He was leaving that process was already underway. So we are hoping to have a new administrator in place soon. Next up, I'm going to talk about some of the things going on in partnership with the Economic Development Corporation. The county has been partner with the Economic Development Corporation since its inception. And every year we ask them to compile a list of some of the past year's most notable achievements. And every year the list is pages and pages long. So I'm not going to go through everything in detail because otherwise we'd be here all day and I know there are a lot of other speakers that are eager to present. So I'm just going to go through this quickly. But there are a number of expansions and remodels planned. In addition, various business and community developments. And again, I'm just going to quickly click through these because I don't want to be up here all day. I'd love to touch on all of these, but we just don't have enough time. In addition to acquisitions and mergers, new partnerships and agreements, a bunch of new openings, which is very exciting. And these span all across the county. So I know there's a number of things here that we can all be excited about for these new openings. Various grants and awards that have been received for various entities. And for those of you who receive the Economic Development newsletter every Monday, some of these probably look familiar to you. And if you don't receive that newsletter, I encourage you to sign up for it. And then various things that we can celebrate and success and different designations. And then last but not least, upcoming developments. And so for those of you who are able to see some of these on the list, as I quickly paged through them, many of these companies have been here for decades and their continued growth in the area just shows their commitment to the community. And we're so grateful for their investment in the community. And to Deidre's point earlier, about the 20% who are not likely to recommend friends and family, just keep this list in mind because these are the things that really set us apart from other communities. And we can all take pride in the things that have happened both in 2022 and then our plan for 2023. And none of these accomplishments, both the things that I touched on from the county specifically, as well as the economic development corporation list would be possible without collaboration and partnerships between the business community, local units of government, businesses, nonprofits, et cetera. These are all only achievable when we work together. So we're very proud of this list and look forward to another great year working together. Thank you everyone. Thank you Elaine for all of that wonderful information and certainly, again, a lot to celebrate in our county. We've got some pretty phenomenal things happening. Next, I would like to welcome Mayor Meyer from Sheboygan Falls. Well, thanks for the invite again this year. I appreciate it. I guess before I get into maybe some details of things that are happening in Sheboygan Falls, first of all, I was trying to recognize nothing happens without a great team. We have a great team in Sheboygan Falls. My administrator, Shad Tempest, to our council, to our plan commission. I think if you talk to any businesses that have worked through the whole process of, they'll say, boy, that went really smooth and really quick. It's almost like Mayor Meyer and Shad Tempest had everything prepared for us, because we did. It's really that simple. So we try not to let surprises happen. The other thing too is the spirit of cooperation in Sheboygan County still remains at a very high level. Started with, I always like Mayor and St. John Rogers, because he really started the first agreement that we all signed on to, cooperation agreement. Cooperating, cooperating. He's just saying he had a cooperation, yeah. All right, he's cooperating now. But that spirit of cooperation remains high. I mean, obviously, my first priority is I want the best for Sheboygan Falls, but right behind that, I want the best for Sheboygan County. So if we find a business that just doesn't right fit or we can't find the right fit or place for them Sheboygan Falls, we're always talking about Plymouth-Uisberg, Sheboygan, Elkhart Lake, Random Lake, Town of Sheboygan. So we really are very proactive on making sure we don't talk to them by any places outside the county. Because let's face it, if every municipality succeeds in the Sheboygan County, we all do better. I mean, that's really a simple philosophy that we carry forward. So getting a little more specific what's happening in Sheboygan Falls. Well, Vision Park, which was just a dream of mine that I started when I first became Mayor 20 years ago, is really now near full. If you have a business that wants to expand, we still have one or two spots left, but it's pretty full and we're actively talking to three businesses right now to start there. Most recently, Polyvinyl completed their build last year. It's a really nice addition. And we just ink deals with pros for technology to create their dream space in Sheboygan Falls. And Bill Pruso, I've known him for, he's over 10 years. So it was nice that that was the first one I did where it's like, boy, I'm kind of almost working with a friend here. So that always feels really gratifying and also feels gratifying that you've laid out all the network and all the framework for working. So it's not like you're doing that friend any favors, you won't have done a new person that you'd never met before. So that area is definitely filling up, but we always have room. We will have to pivot to trying to define where our next business park will be and we'll start working on that. As far as residential development, we've very proud to be working with the SCEDC on building a subdivision. They're gonna build, once all the details get straightened out, which I think we're in the process of doing in the next few months, probably about the start of summer, you're gonna see houses going up like crazy out by our Plank View Green, kind of Highway 32, 23, that area. They're gonna build 54 homes in 18 months. And I believe now, from what I'm hearing, there'll be 25 duplexes included in that 18 month timeframe. So I'm generous, I'll call it two years. But I mean, that's really gonna be an incredible feat to watch. 54 single family homes and 25 duplexes going up. And again, through forward thinking on some of our largest employers in the area, Kohler Company, Sargento, Johnsonville, Sartori, and the county really is making this possible, making those houses as affordable as possible. They're not gonna be, you're not talking 100. I was campaigning one time and I said, you can't build a house for 100,000 anymore. And someone said, yes, you can. No, you can't. So I mean, they're not gonna be like super, super low, but they're gonna work to get that price point down to help attract new people coming into the area to provide good employees for our employers. We also are in the process. We accepted an offer from Warner Homes to purchase 36 acres that the city owned. It was originally bought to create a giant park. But 11 years later, the giant park never materialized. So now we're gonna create a subdivision, I think 80 lots with Warner Homes and also think some parks out there as well. So we won't get the giant 36 acre park, but we'll probably get 10, 12 acres apart plus a real nice subdivision with Warner Homes. And I've really enjoyed working with Warner Homes over the years. They actually, we were having a difficulty about 20 years ago, they were starting a new thing and they put a pond in and some existing people's backyards and people were very upset about this and stuff like that. And we're like, well, gee, what are we gonna do? And also Bob Warner said, I'll move the pond. So that just earned a giant amount of credibility with me when Mr. Warner moved that pond at his expense, not city expense, and the neighbors are happy and suddenly you look like a hero because the pond got moved and really the only hero was Bob Warner. But sometimes, you know, sometimes I take criticism I don't deserve. So sometimes I'll take some praise, I don't deserve too. It's all about wearing the mantle, I guess. So we're really excited about that single family development. Unfortunately, we had a subdivision off of PP that it's all annexed in the city. It's completely platted as a 48 unit subdivision, but it's on hold right now. But I always look at the positive like we have 24 acres in the city now, completely platted for a subdivision, just waiting for the right opportunity to start. That's better than not having 24 acres in the city and not having a fully platted subdivision. So I'm always looking at the positive because I look at Vision Park for a while, we bought that land and then it just kind of sat for a while. And right as we came out of the recession, I listened to the SCEDC and I finally put roads in. They probably wanted me to do that five years before that. But as we came out of the sudden, put roads in and now we have a full vision park. So you're always thinking as mayor, at least I'm always thinking, is this a good short-term decision for the city? Is it a good long-term decision for the city? There's what happens short-term, what happens long-term? Like when Vision Park had nothing in it, I constantly told people, don't worry, it all cash flows with nothing. And someday it will be something. And now we're to the someday. So I always look at those things as what opportunities are we creating? Can I make the next mayor's job easier, the next administrator's job easier? And no, I'm not looking to step away anytime soon. But I just think of some of the challenges that I took over and I'm like, how can I make this less challenging for the next person? Because I'll tell you, there's no shortage of challenges when you're a city. Used to be when we were recruiting a police officer, you'd have 50 plus candidates apply and you'd be like, boy, we're gonna narrow it down to 10, but boy, there's another 10 that would be really good as well. Well, our last hiring process went through it. We had maybe 10 or so apply. Six never would have qualified. Center down to four, you find problems with two. So you bring two forward to your police and fire commission, one of which is dating someone's ready on your police force. So that's really not a great fit in a 15 person police force. So you're really down to one candidate out of 10. That's, you know, I know when I tell a story, it's like, yeah, that's kind of funny, but you know, it really does tell you that safety component is really, really crucial. And I don't know how we get back to where we had 50 applicants for one open job. I know part of how we got there at one time was a big recession. I'm not advocating for that, but that is a challenge. Both providing public safety and the police side and the fire side just remains a big challenge and it really is a big cost of our budget. So we're constantly trying to work with the state and saying, hey, you want to still provide quality life here in Wisconsin, you know, you keep cutting our shared revenue from years ago. It's keep little pie, little pie, smaller pie, smaller pie. Let's increase the size of the pie so we can continue to provide the services that our people want and the safety they want. So that's just one thing I'm advocating for as well. We are hoping to, the DNR let us know in recent times that, hey, you got that cap landfill of about 20 acres for years, we thought we could do nothing and now the DNR identified as one of the top 10 places that solar could be put on. So we're trying to work through some things with our partner, Alliance Energy, where we buy our electricity from for our sporting falls utilities to how can we put solar panels on that cap landfill and take 20 acres of unproductive land and make it productive. And there's always a few issues, but I'd rather work with my existing partner than find a new partner. So we'll work through those issues and identify how we're going to make that happen. You know, we did apartments in Sheboygan Falls, we did the Tannery Falls Apartments right on the river. We did section 42, which is kind of for lower to mid income levels with our old middle school. We also did the Plank Trail Apartments. These are all apartment complexes we did in the last three to four to five years. So me personally, I'm not actively looking for more apartments. It's not that I'll, you know, I'm not kicking developers out of the city or threatening them or putting them in some big wrestling hold for my wrestling days, but I'm not really actively looking for that. I really am looking for a single family. And I believe with the SEDC development and the Warner Homes purchase that we accepted, of course, a lot of details be worked out there because the real key to economic development, in my opinion, is the developers agreement. I mean, you come to an agreement in principle, now you got to spend all this time writing things out on paper and what happens if this happens? What happens is who's paying for this? Who's paying for that? Because if you don't have it down in writing, now you're having disagreements later. So now we're to the stage where we're working through a developers agreement with Warner Homes and I'm very confident we'll come to a successful agreement because we're both very good partners. But that's really the key. And Brian Dowden, I can probably tell you, you know, we hammered through the developer agreement with SEDC and there was a couple of times where we may have disagreed a little bit, but we worked through it so we could do things better for Sheboygan Falls and Sheboygan County. And really that's at the end of the day, it's about cooperation and creating synergy and really connecting things for today. And Sheboygan Falls, we like to say, we honor our past and plan for the future. So we continue to have a very productive downtown or downtown has, I believe, one vacancy. Yeah, it's kind of interesting, I had a good friend and an ally and partner and Cheryl Brunig at our Chamber Main Street office and she retired and now I have a good ally and friend there because my wife Tammy is the new director of our Chamber Main Street program, but Tammy worked very, very hard to get that. Some people are like, well, she got that because you're mayor, right? I'm like, no, actually she had to work harder to get it because I was mayor. So, but good partnership continues. And that's really what I think Sheboygan Falls comes down to is cooperation, coordination and partnership. And when we do have a problem, we collectively get together and figure out how to solve the problem. So we're doing very well in Sheboygan Falls and encourage you all to visit. If you have a business, you wanna build a new facility, come there. Our Forest Avenue Business Park, I think continues to be the incubator to the county. Lots of businesses got their start in the Forest Avenue Park. Some expanded in Sheboygan Falls, some expanded other places like Viking Mass Packaging. That started a little operation in Sheboygan Falls and now they're a great client in the Usberg Park. So lots of good things going on. I could spend a lot of time talking about Sheboygan Falls or talking about a lot of other things, but I know I have to talk to leadership group later so I wanna save some. So thank you for your time today. I really appreciate it and have a great day. Thank you, Mayor Meyer. And next up, I would like to invite Ryan Doudna, Executive Director of the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation. I almost said Chamber of Commerce because well, that's a... Thank you, Deidra. And normally I stay behind the scenes because we are a great technical service and technical assistance partner to all the municipalities. But because of the subdivision, we thought it would be appropriate for us to talk a little bit more about what's going on and the partnerships that we are working on. I also wanna just mention that Deidra and I started the last year meeting on a weekly basis. Well, most of the time weekly basis, our schedules don't always allow, but we are committed to really aligning our services and making sure that the touch points between economic development and the Chamber of Commerce are as aligned as possible so that the customer experience is truly seamless. So that's our commitment to you. As far as our efforts, I just would start off in 2023, we're gonna be launching a brand new website with a lot more data. And I know it's hard to believe because Dane was the best at data collection and gathering that I've ever seen in this field. So I'll just give credit to Dane on the efforts that he's put together over time. But what we will be doing is more on the retail trade areas. We will have every community. I have 18 shopping areas in the community. So we will have detailed information on why you wanna locate in that specific area. And then secondly, we'll have a building as a sites database and that you'll be able to go to our website and as property owners, you will be able to list your own properties. The forward fund in the mirror talked about this. So I'll just recognize those corporations again because the housing initiative would never happen without the support of these companies. And we're always open to additional companies. You don't have to invest $2 million to be part of this group. But what we are looking at is a housing strategy that is needed to grow the population, grow the economy and grow our companies. I also wanna truly recognize Sheboygan County for their investment of ARPA dollars. That will be coming into the EDC in 2023. And we really are looking at that not in the construction of the houses just because that would invoke Davis Bacon regulations and everything of that nature. So the cost of the homes would go up, but very definitely on land acquisition and partnerships. And we will be talking about that in seconds. Our strategy, 600 to 1,000 single family homes in the next five years. So 104 homes, the mayor mentioned 104 in 18 months. We will be hitting that target and there will be financial repercussions if we don't hit that with the contractor. When we started this process, we wanted to be under 225 for home prices. We have gone out to bid. We are hopefully announcing the contractor in the next couple of weeks. We will be between 220 and 245, including lots. Three bedroom, two bath, two car garage with basement. We are creating a unique value proposition for why you want to be living and working in Sheboygan County. The parcel the mayor talked about, and I want to just stress that the mayor is correct that we had disagreements on some very, very fine points, maybe two, but all right, three. I forgot that one. Not exactly, but I did have to buy a raffle ticket. But the reality is is the city really stepped forward on this development because the reason why we're getting to this price point is because the lot costs are going to be very, very low. And that's because of the partnership that we have in the development agreement. And I just want to recognize the city council, the mayor and all staff at Sheboygan Falls for making that feasible. But you can see the location right next to Quick Trip, the 54 units will be on the lot number one, number two will be zero lot line duplexes, and lot number three, long-term we wanted that to be a daycare facility. We did not get the grant funding and with that we partnered with United Way to try to get funding for. But we are keeping that in, I guess, in pending on what we will do. That could be a, again, daycare, could be a commercial use, could be a pocket neighborhood because it's 1.88 acres. Here's the lots that we have. 60 foot frontages, just to give you a sense, Kohler is between 60 and 50 foot frontages in their historic area of their downtown. Again, for the side-by-side duplexes, because we have wetlands on the property. But our commitment is that we will be making these available to people relocating to the marketplace as well as local residents. The target would be probably 20% for local residents, 80% to people relocating to the marketplace. We will be implementing something very similar to, and we're still working through the legal stuff of this, so please, if it modifies, just advise me that the legal counsel told me I couldn't do it. But we are very similar to San Francisco, a live-work preference where housing prices are beyond people's ability to pay. There will be no income criteria to these homes. These are open, but they will be advertised and marketed through someplace better. So our talent recruitment website will now be where people can sign up for a housing lottery to relocate and or locate and achieve their dream of home ownership in Sheboygan County. Someplace better, and I will just say that was a major undertaking in 2023, 22, and I will just give credit to my marketing staff, Brenna Bitzler, who's on leave right now, but I also want to recognize Brittany Wagner in here just for commitment. Sorry, I just know how hard they worked. Entrepreneurship, business idea challenge. If you're not familiar, we used to do a pitch competition, but now we do year-round where you are able to submit product ideas or business ideas and take that to market. It's not just a pitch competition, we will work to make sure that we protect your wealth and we generate wealth. So it's about taking ideas and concepts, somebody that's working in the garage and taking that to market. This last year we had 40 plus applications our Innovation Council narrowed it down to nine that they thought had market potential. So I mean, that's a pretty good summary of the quality of the applications. So we'll give five $1,000 technical assistance grants, so patent pending technology prototypes. We will fund that at zero cost to the entrepreneur and then they pitch for a $7,000 cash award to put into their business and a second prize in 23 gets 3,000. Accelerate Shboygan County, A-C-C-E-L-S-C dot com. And then starting February 21st, we'll have our first ever seed accelerator where we will be providing $10,000 to companies to take it from their prototype of business to go to market strategy and get them investment ready. So I just want to commend Lakeland University and their new person, Stephanie, for being the lead. We've received $100,000 grant to make this possible and we will be looking to continue to advance this. We had 29 applications from across the state. Our Innovation Council is narrowing that down to the final six. The engagement model for the Economic Development Corporation, again, it takes a team and our team is you, the business community. So what we have done is created an engagement cohort where you can engage with us so that every single quarter we're touching base with you and saying we need to pivot. So someplace better, our marketing team will work with the HR directors in the county saying here's where we're marketing. If there's a mass layoff, someplace better will be there. In-house training departments. What's your training development? This last year we submitted four applications to the states. I will say we got over a million dollars of training dollars coming into Sheboygan County. All were successful. Then we worked with our lenders and by the way I want to say thanks to our lenders on the housing project because they're making it financially feasible even in the world of increased interest rates. Imagine building 104 spec homes. And that all will be done locally. And I would say that all the homes as of right now 100% will be done by local contractors or subs. And then our innovation council. And the last thing I would like to do is ask my board of directors and anybody that's in a cohort of the SEDC to please stand just because you're my team. Please. Thank you so much, Brian. And I will say we're gonna switch over technology and hear a message from Mayor Sorenson here in just a moment. And I talked a little bit about Sunplace Better earlier being one of the top three things being utilized by employers. And Brian talked a little bit more about the revamp of Sunplace Better in history that was initially a collaboration between the two organizations. And we could not be more pleased with the direction that the EDC has taken it and the new product that they've developed. So thank you for putting that hard work into that space. Good morning, everyone. Mayor Ryan Sorenson here. Sorry I'm not able to be there today in person. However, I still wanted to share with you all the exciting projects that we're working on in the city of Sheboygan. First, thank you for being here and being active members of the Chamber of Commerce. Community engagement makes communities so much stronger. Sheboygan we all know is one of the best places to do business in the Midwest and the city is focused on keeping that true. Affordable housing is fundamental for strong and vibrant communities. This past summer, Sheboygan got national coverage and was highlighted on NBC Nightly News for just how important affordable housing is for our community. As companies grow and expand, housing for their employees and families is so important to recruit and retain top talent. That is why the city plan commission recently approved a plan for a new housing development on 14th and Illinois Avenue. This project will be known as View 14 and this project will be for 48 new affordable units. We will be moving forward with a new neighborhood revitalization program at the old Jacobs Hall property. This location will be another location for housing as well. Another project is related to housing is acquiring 200 acres on the far south side so that we can build new neighborhoods and create new housing for our city. Additionally, we're updating our comprehensive plan and working towards modernizing our zoning codes. This will ensure that we can diversify our housing opportunities throughout the city and we also be working towards increasing housing density, making the city more walkable and even more bike friendly. This year, we celebrated the opening of our new senior center, Uptown Social. This was an exciting revitalization program which converted an old grocery store into a community center. With phase one complete, we are looking forward to expanding this project in the further future. So stop by and check it out if you haven't seen it yet. We are also excited that our friends at Old World Creamery have expanded their production plant right here in Sheboygan. They'll continue to make cheese and butter to supply many retailers around the Midwest. They were able to do this with a half a million dollar business loan. As many people know, downtown is the heart of a thriving city. And 8th Street has been busy this past year. Downtown now has a new bookstore with Word Haven Bookhouse and Word Haven is so much more than just a bookstore. They also offer classes and open mic nights as well. Nature's best is growing and expanding from the riverfront to its new downtown location. This grocery store opening up will be in the Old Wisconsin Bank on 8th and Center Avenue. This will be a great asset for many more food options available in the city center. We were very excited this past summer to also partner with a community development block grant program with Above and Beyond Children's Museum to build a brand new downtown playground. This is an all abilities octopus themed playground. So this will be a great location in the heart of the downtown for kiddos and young families to enjoy. Thank you to everybody who was involved in this program to make sure that it happened. We also have a few things popping up on the south side. The old pick and save building on South Business Drive is now open and has been converted to an Ashley home furniture and decor store. We also recently had a groundbreaking in our new South Point Business Park. Consolidated construction began a new spec industrial building. This will provide more business options in our growing business park and will continue to make progress and be adding more in the near future. Sheboygan also has many local businesses and entrepreneurs that have made significant commitments to our city. The Sheboygan pasty company which was last year's chamber star culinary of the year has now grown and expanded to provide pasties for all over Wisconsin. If you hadn't had the opportunity to have a pasty you definitely need to stop by and check it out. Additionally, the South Pier district by Blue Harbor added a new addition, ebb and flow coffee house just opened up as well. This cool coffee house is right on the water and has some amazing locally sourced food choices. So when you have your next coffee meeting, check it out. The city is committed to growing our South Pier district as we move forward and continue to activate our waterfront. Now I wasn't able to cover everything today such as Hobby Lobby opening up again, Johnson's Bakery Manufacturing Plant expansion and many other businesses that are popping up all over Sheboygan. Even with global issues like supply chain delays and inflation, we are not slowing down. We have so much more work to do ahead of us and we still need to build more housing, diversify our housing stock. We need to recruit more folks to our community and make sure that we're making key investments in our infrastructure. So let's continue to move Sheboygan forward together. Thank you. So Mayor Sorenson, city of Sheboygan wasn't able to join us. He is in Washington DC this week, representing the city of Sheboygan. So next I would like to introduce and welcome village president of the village of Usberg, Alan Rubel. Alan. Well, I won't take too long today because I know the mayor of Plymouth still has to speak and knowing Don like we all do, I'll make sure that I make this fairly short. Just kidding, Don, just kidding. I wanna thank the chamber for inviting me here today. What I'd like to go over is just some of the things that are happening in Usberg and some of the challenges we face like every other community. First of all, our subdivisions are full. I think we have one lot left in one subdivision and maybe two in the other. So there's a new subdivision called Settlers Point that's opening up on the east side of Usberg. It's gonna be a combination of apartments, condos and single families. It's about 75 lots altogether. So that is the infrastructure is in, half of it is in now and they're starting to sell lots and the apartment buildings are gonna be starting in spring. So hopefully I think it's like everybody else in the county, there's a shortage of housing and I'm sure what's happening in Sheboygan Falls and Plymouth and the city of Sheboygan and in Usberg hopefully we meet the needs. Also our industrial park has had a great year considering the inflation we've had and everything. We had a quick trip that opened this year. They started construction in May and opened in September. They bought five acres from us. Culver's is supposed to start construction this year. They hopefully to start in April and open in August. That was another three or four acres they bought from us. Preheat which is they do its heat converters. They bought another three acres for their expansion for 2023. Viking Masek has been a great company to deal with. They bought another six acres from us for expansion. Oshkosh Cold Storage bought 14 acres. They're building a 254,000 square foot building. They hope to open that this summer. Masters Gallery. They just completed 110,000 square foot addition. They now have 285,000 square foot product company has in Usberg right now. There is also three 23,000 square foot buildings that are going up in Usberg for different companies. Two of them have been spoken for already. And one they're going to build hopefully another company will come in. So that's 23,000 square foot buildings that are going to be started this spring also. We also have an offer to purchase on 10 acres for another manufacturer that is wants to build in Usberg. I can't tell you who it is yet. We do have an offer to purchase and we're working through a developmental agreement as the other mayors know is quite a task sometimes. What the problem is now is our industrial park is full. On our north side, business park is four acres left. On the south side is 12. We're looking to expand that. The problem is it's mostly farmland and so when we go to the farmers, they always ask us, well, where else can we go? You know, there's a shortage of farmland especially it seems like in a southern part of Sheboygan County. So hopefully we can eventually work through that. As we move forward, we have challenges. Our big challenge I think in the future is infrastructure like Mayor Meyer from Sheboygan Falls said. Our infrastructure in Usberg is old. We're gonna spend about $5 million this year taking care of roads, curb, gutters, sidewalk, water, sewer. As the mayor also said, our shared revenue has gone down. Our transportation, they gave us $20 more than they did a year before. It's hopefully that the governor and the legislature can get together and not be like last year where they do nothing. They didn't, you know, it seems like the governor doesn't wanna give the legislature credit. The legislature doesn't wanna give the governor credit. It's about time they got to get together and help the communities. We have found working with businesses that they look for housing, available land for purchase of their businesses. And that's why I was glad to hear what Sheboygan Falls is doing, what the city of Sheboygan is doing. And I presume the mayor of Plymouth will also have some information. We have kind of a saying when we talk to the different businesses, why not Usberg? Why not build in Usberg? Why not build in Sheboygan County? I bet you we have two to three businesses a week that contact us wanting some land that's available or questioning what we have. So we always try to tell them to go to, you know, Sheboygan Falls, city of Sheboygan, because their industrial park is, well, it's kind of a suburb of Usberg, we always call it. But so we always try to tell these companies to go to the different industrial parks. Again, I want to thank the chamber for inviting me. I'm not running, well, I said that last time too, but I'm not running again for president. Somebody else is, I decided not to run. I just took over when there was a medical emergency with the other president. And I just got appointed for about a year and a half. But I find these meetings informative. I enjoy talking to the other businesses. I enjoy talking to people from Sheboygan County, Sheboygan Economic Development Corporation, the different mayors and village presidents. So thank you again. I would like to introduce, we've kind of been giving him a hard time all morning. It's cause he's just, he's so fun and he's so good at accepting all of that. So Mayor Pullman from Plymouth. Thank you, Debra. And welcome to all of our community partners on this sunny, beautiful day in Pine Hills. The cooperation that we receive year in and year out goes back a long way. And we couldn't do this without our business partners, Lakeshore Technical College, SEDC of course. And we go back 12, 14 years with our first partnership between the city of Plymouth, Plymouth High School and LTC. We can see the advantage of partnering that continues every single day amongst all of us in our community. Plymouth purchased a couple of years ago 67 acres on the Southwest side for housing improvement opportunities. We just exercise another option for 40 acres on the other side of Highway 67, trying to expand housing again in our community. We'll be closing our TID 4 in 24, payout coming in 25. We're hoping to generate about 1.4, 1.5 million in excess funds to be distributed to the four taxing authorities. That money can be used any way that they deem necessary. And those are of course estimates at this point. All of us I think have benefited from our Highway 23 expansion completion that has been 26, 27 years in progress. That's a welcome sign because the phone is ringing. We've got two national restaurant chains that want to locate in our community because they require highway traffic count. We now have that. We're working with a 54 unit hotel chain to help put another hotel in our community. All of this has helped us in the long run. We received our second upgrade from Moody's. We're now AA2, which will help us tremendously going forward with our borrowing ability. We have a lot of cap room that we can exercise. The benefit of that of course is lower interest rate saving millions of dollars for the community. We have a couple large projects in our community that are going to require a lot of work and putting together. One is our dam site that Corps of Engineers and DNR wants us to take it out. Or we fix it. Either one is probably eight to $10 million. That's gonna be hard. So how do we finance that? Well, our upgrade is certainly gonna help us with that in our bond rating. We have a phosphorus problem on runoff from our agricultural and other areas into the mill pond and the river. We have to spend significant dollars to renovate and do some new construction on our Plymouth Utility Building. Those two projects could be $15 to $20 million. As many of you have heard today, small communities don't have a pot of gold in the backyard. We have to balance our budgets and it's very hard to do that. If we didn't have the partnerships that we have with both the federal government, the state government, county, SEDC, none of that would be possible. So we continue to build on those efforts. For two years, we've put off the expansion and completion along the river. We call it on the west side of Stafford Street between the Mill Street buildings and the river in their backyard. We've got that slated for 25. We hope to put that into the kind of shape that on the east side of Stafford Street where Lion Stair Park is along the river and the significant improvements that we've made there. So there's continued efforts to partner with all of our businesses, profit, nonprofit, county organizations. None of this would be possible without everybody buying in and pulling in the same direction. And I'm always pleased to hear the cooperation that we have with the county and the other communities because we can't do this alone. I think our development agreement from 14 years ago really spells that out on how we tried to do this. So keep up the good work. Thank you all for participating, for wanting to see the community grow. And last but not least, visit Plymouth Cheese Capital of the World. Thank you all. Thank you, Mayor Pullman. So that concludes our program for the two day. I wanna say a couple more thank yous to Prevea Health for sponsoring this program annually. Our friends from WSCS are recording this so that we can make this available to others through a recorded version on public access television and of course YouTube and all of the wonderful online platforms that they want to use.