 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name's Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Vanerstein. And hopefully you're at home and comfortable and weren't recently out on those roads. Of course it's that time of year when it can be a real adventure driving the roads in Sheboygan County but we're fortunate to have Mr. Greg Schnell with us today. The Highway Commissioner to tell us a little bit about the highway department as well as give some tips on how to improve your safety. Greg, welcome. Thank you. Greg and his team have been doing a remarkable job. I think this winter keeping those roads clear and safe. We thought we got through a difficult winter in 2008 and it looks like 2009 may bring on the same. Greg, how long have you been the Highway Commissioner? I started in October of 2006. So I've lived through the couple of the toughest winters that we've seen in quite some time. And when we talked about seasons, there's really two primary seasons with the highway department. Please start by sharing a little bit about what the seasons are for the highway department. We like to call to two seasons. Everybody else goes through four. We go through to construction and winter. Those seasons can vary and obviously one goes into the other. We've been running into that that our construction season has been getting more and more longer and getting closer to winter and a lot of the equipment that we use for construction we need to use for the winter. So it's a unique time for us to make that transformation back from construction to winter every year. And it's always sometimes be as a challenge is trying to get all of our work done and complete and ready for everybody's driving conditions into winter and into summer. So for most of us, it's winter, spring, summer and fall. But for those of you at the highway department, it's the construction season or it's the winter season. That's correct. How would you to go about describing, give our viewers a flavor of what those two seasons entail? Well, it's always a prediction for us for the winter as far as how we plan for our operations. And I mean, as far as having enough salt and materials to provide those safe driving conditions as we need to throughout the winter. Those plans go into place in July. We check our inventories that's left over from the year before. And then we gauge our salt inventories on what's left and what we're gonna need or what we're forecasting for our winter. As we swing out of the winter and we prepare for the summer we obviously have to have our barricades in place and our traffic control procedures in place for our construction projects and have the materials that we need to do our maintenance and our construction throughout those two seasons. So when you move from the construction season which ends approximately? We go right up until deer hunting at this point. This year we just got done in time. They get everybody away from deer hunting and make sure everything was okay. And then is there a big changeover of the equipment that you're using, putting plows on? What's that transition entail? We have to mount our trucks. We have tri-axle trucks that haul our gravel and asphalt in the summer months. We make those into snow removal equipment so we put a plow sander and a wing on. We have to make sure all that stuff obviously it's been sitting all summer along the wing in the plow so it has to be operable and going through the hydraulics and the lines and all that stuff. So, and we also have graders that are utilized in the summer and also need to be used in the winter. So we have to add on their attachments to take care of the winter also. And when the winter ends, take it all off and start all over. Start all over. From time to time, Mike and I'll get calls. I'm certain you do about, you know, boy, what's our winter budget like and do we have enough salt left to take care of things adequately? On average, you know, I don't know if an average snowfall is two, three inches, what roughly does that cost to Boyden County taxpayers to get that snow removed in those roads safe? Depending on the timing of things, obviously if it's on a weekend, which would generate a lot more overtime involved, you know, those storms could run anywhere between 50 to $60,000 and depends upon how much salt is used. We track a storm. Everybody else tracks a storm as far as when it starts to snow and stops to snow. We track a storm as when the storm starts to when the wind stops blowing normally, which is after the snow comes. Now we have to go back and it entails drift control and widening in order to make room for additional snow. So it can range even larger than that if we have to bring out the larger pieces of equipment such as the graders and ultimately if we need the Oshkosh trucks, which we have 12 of those in our arsenal also to do the heavy widening or the heavy lifting, if you will. So $50,000, $60,000 on a weekend. What about during the week? You could get by probably about $35,000. So it gives folks a flavor for just how expensive it is. I know years ago when it snowed, for me it was, you think about how pretty it is or getting home and sledding with your kids or whatever, but now I find whenever it snows I'm going cha-ching because I just know that's gonna be expensive to clean up and you hope that it doesn't happen too often on the weekends. I know when I was an operator years ago we used to call a penny from heaven when we would look for that stuff to come so we could get some of that overtime money. So your pattern changes as a highway commissioner now you'd rather not see it come on the weekends it would just as soon as snow at six o'clock in the morning and end at three o'clock in the afternoon or you go about their business but that's not the case, we can't control that. Depends on where you're at. That's right. Salt usage, a lot of that's been reported on the news that some communities have run out of salt or salt costs have escalated tremendously and it seems to me in your short tenure you've got your pulse on getting salt making sure you've got adequate supplies. In fact, I know you've even helped some other communities if they're in dire straits. How is it that you're planning so effectively for getting salt here and how are you getting the best price? We base our salt usage on a five year average. Obviously these last two years have taken their toll and we were in a position last year where we had to go and purchase some other salt from different counties also but this year we felt we were gonna bring our inventories to where they should be and then we added some vendor reserve. We have this opportunity afforded to us through the DOT which does a mass bidding for salt. Every municipality that would have those, that the need for salt could get in on the mass bid for the entire state of Wisconsin to incorporate that all into there so they can get the best bang for their buck. There has been some communities that chose to go on their own and felt that they were gonna get a better deal that way and when the state put in their mass bid or mass order from last year because everybody's reserves and inventories were down so far, they pretty much purchased up every kernel of salt that's go from here to Minnesota and into Canada. So it put a hardship to the people that weren't done on a state bid and in turn made their salt cost go from $47 a ton to $125 to $150 a ton. So we were fortunate to get in underneath that bid and lock our price in for $47 a ton and that's delivered to our sheds. We monitor our inventories on a weekly basis and obviously it might be even more if you have continuous events after event after event so we can get our orders in. We do not have the capacity to store all the salt that we use in a year. We have the capacity for about 7,500 tons currently. So we watch those inventories and we have to make sure we get our orders in in a timely fashion because obviously if we're using so are the communities around us and so we're all asking for the salt at the same time to be delivered. So we try to plan it and obviously now we got into a little bit of a law where we're not using it so we put our order in already for the next round because we have room to get it in so we're staying a little bit ahead of the power curve if you will in order to get our salt in on a timely fashion so we're not scrambling like we did a little bit last year. So you've been good in that regard. The question that comes up from time to time when you're interacting with friends or family especially if that snow storm just came through is how much salt to use? Everyone's got an opinion and some people think we should use less. Some people think we should use more. Mix sand in, what are the general temperatures that salt is most effective and then how do you go about determining whether you're gonna use a lot of salt versus a little and if you do mix sand or not? Through the training of some of our employees we, because we maintain some of the state roads also there is a certain criteria that the state would like us to use. We gauge the salt usage on pavement temperatures and a lot of people say well how do you know what the pavement is or is there a big difference between the pavement and the air. Our superintendents have pavement sensors in their trucks that shoots an infrared ray down onto the pavement to tell us how cold the pavement is. You may have air temperatures at zero degrees on a sunny day and you may have pavement temperatures if that pavement's just a little, if it's a fresh black top you can get that up to 20 degrees on how it becomes more effective to use the salt. We'll gauge that on that. Obviously the colder the pavement the more salt that's gonna require to get that pavement to bear it up. We gauge our salt also on the wind conditions. We can create more of a problem for ourselves if we're going out and salting in a windy condition because when you lay the salt down obviously when the snow blows across it'll stick to that salt and all of a sudden we start to get a hard pack and hard pack's harder to get off and you take other pieces of equipment to get it off or you have to burn it off with salt which in turn is gonna require more salt. So sometimes it's better off for us to leave the salt off and let the traffic slow down and hopefully they can get through it and eventually that'll start to wear off itself but in some cases we may need it and then we have to go back and revisit those places because it is gonna be a drifting or a hazard eventually. My bet is a lot of viewers didn't know that you actually take the temperature of the black top or concrete rather than just what it happens to be that day on the temperature gauge. Interesting. What about using alternatives to salt, sand, a mixture of both. You've even heard some communities using beet juice. What's your perspective on that? The sand years ago was effective when we were not required to bear up the roads as fast. Through some state regulations there were some promises made that we were gonna do a better job with snow removal to increase commerce and keep people moving. About that time is when we made the switch from sand to salt. The sand required us to go back and revisit those spots more often than it was with the salt. So that's why because the first three cars that drove over it kind of dissipated the sand, got it to the side and it was not effective anymore. So there was some tests done and they thought it was more cost effective just to go with pure salt and try to clean it up the first time instead of having to revisit and revisit and revisit. Two more questions and I'll turn it over to Mike. How many miles of road is the Highway Department responsible for? We have 450 county trunk miles. We maintain 170 miles of state road and 465 miles of township road. So if you add it all together and you go by lane miles it's about 2,200 miles of road that we have to take care of. Repeat that please because I'll bet you we have viewers going wow. That's 2,200 miles of one-way traffic basically per mile that we have to take care of. And how much of that is county, town and state interest? 450's county, 170 is state and 465 is township. So if you're not going by somebody's house two times that hour there's a reason for it. There's a lot of stuff that has to happen. We take care of the state, county and then we move into the towns. So when our state guys go out typically so do our county people and then we just spread out from there. And then final question again by the time our viewers see this it'll be likely February. We're taping this in mid to late January. And of course the roads we're still going to have winter storms and some slippery conditions out there. What advice would you give travelers on how they can improve their safety as well as your operators? I guess be patient. Give us some time, we'll get it done. We don't want to be out there any more than what you want us out there. Obviously there's a reason for us to be there. If you can't see that driver when you're behind him he can't see you. So give us our space. The next thing is is that I'd sooner get there late and not get there at all. So give yourself enough time and just be patient and then be safe. Don't follow too close. And it's very difficult to drive into a whiteout condition. So if you can avoid that type of scenario then stay away from the snowpaw altogether. If someone, and I said it was my final but if someone does see something dangerous out there a real slippery intersection or something that you know they're worried the next person that comes through may get in a serious car accident. What number should they call or how should they raise that to someone's attention? Notify the Sheriff's Department. It would not be a 911 call. They have a number and I don't have that with me. Notify them and they'll in turn get a hold of our superintendents which we're on call 24 hours a day. We'll get somebody there to take care of it. Excellent, thank you Greg. Well Greg let's move past the winner a little bit. I can appreciate that. And let's talk about some of the other things that you do for other municipalities. Could you give us a little background on the services that you supply them? As I said earlier, we're the maintenance agency for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. We take care of all their state roads and that could require anything from pothole patching to shouldering to crack filling to sign repair to center lining, drainage, adding culverts, replacing culverts all the way down to paving a mile or two of road with asphalt or even reconstructing some of their ditch configurations and such for the state. We do that same service for any municipality that would ask for our assistance besides the fact that we take care of out of that 465 miles of township, there's 11 out of the 15 townships that we service that we just purely do all their service. When they call us and we'll take care of it otherwise we'll just send some guys in there and take care of the things that are required to get taken care of as far as their maintenance goes the grass cutting, the brush removal, those are the agreements that we have with those people now. So basically anything from soup to nuts, if it has anything to do with transportation we can provide it. Now what's the advantage to some of the municipalities in Sheboygan County if they have you do this work rather than handling it different way? First of all, if they were to have their own people and employees they would have to pay that person and the wages and the benefit that would go along with it besides the fact of having to purchase the equipment that the county already owns. Salt sheds for the salt storage, buildings and all those maintenance that goes along with those are all high cost items that when they hire us they're gonna pay for it by the hour, time and material basis. So there is no profit attached to it. Our profit is that we work off of our system anytime that we can work off of our county system reduces our reliability on the tax levy. Now Sheboygan County produces a lot of asphalt and gravel. Tell a little bit about that operation and how many tons we do produce on an annual basis for your projects. We produce about 80,000 tons of asphalt a year. It fluctuates, last year we were at 79,000 and it had something to do with the supply. We were running, the suppliers weren't producing the liquid asphalt that we need for our product and there was such a demand for it that they couldn't keep up with those demands. So we got closer to the end of the year and they started to pull back on what we had figured for our estimate. So we were a little bit short of what we wanted to be but we still maintained a very good year as far as asphalting goes. Our crushing operation we produce about 200,000 tons of aggregate a year. Those aggregates are used in our asphalt operation as the sub to the asphalt oil. We also crush our road gravel and also some thicker base material that's called three by five that we use in the area that could be soft to build up the base. So our product lines are like a three H inch gravel, half inch gravel, three quarter inch, inch and a quarter and go all the way up to three by five. Those products are, when we sell those to our municipalities they can use them. So those, that's what we provide with our crushing operation. And then what kind of procedures are in place to make sure that we're being properly reimbursed for these products that are being used in the different operations? Each year we go through our costs. We initially, in this time of the year we will go out for bid for our asphalt oil. So once we can establish that, that gives us the largest percentage of our cost as it goes into the oil. From there we take and break down what the equipment costs are, what the labor costs are, what the fringe benefits that goes along with those labor costs and we roll that all in. Besides the fact of having permitting, paying royalties on some of the gravel that we purchase, all that stuff gets rolled in there and to get the bottom line pricing. We're fortunate here we have the aggregates that we need and we can produce those aggregates so we don't have to purchase a lot of that stuff outside which in turn adds to the cost and the trucking of that material. We recently went through a study, operational analysis in our operation and they did check specifically if we were in recouping all the costs that are going into it and it was very favorable that we were. Okay and currently when we overlay a road with asphalt, what kind of cost is there to do an average mile say of asphalt overlay? Depending upon what shape the road is in currently, I mean we have some roads that are starting to get a little bit more wheel-rutted where the traffic is traveling constantly into certain areas and they're starting to get little divots there. If we need to get that in place, we could be talking any place between 80 to $100,000. And that would be getting the road into shape, going over the top of it, giving a nice leveling court, shoulder in it and center striping it. Okay and how much does the County Highway Department spend on maintenance and construction of just the county roads during an average year? Annually just in our maintenance and that would be summer and winter combined would be about $5.7 million. Construction could be equal to that every year and in construction when we rebuild a road that's everything from purchasing the right-of-way, cutting in new ditches, adding all the new base and paving it. So a lot of times we're taking our roads from a 66 foot right-of-way which is our clear zone and we're taking that out to 80 feet. So we're widening the road considerably, cutting in new ditches and ensuring proper drainage. We were fortunate this year that the Finance Committee let us allow it to bond for some of our larger construction projects which in turn gave us more money to put back into our overlays of our asphalt and our county highways. And about how many miles are we overlaying currently on an annual basis? In 2008 we overlaid, I believe it was just over 20 miles and our reconstruction was just over three miles that we did. So you can add those into as far as the overlay we paid about 24 miles this year. Okay, Adam, anything to wrap up with? Well, soup to nuts. I think we've got a new mission statement for our transportation department. There's nothing we can do. We can do it all from soup to nuts. That's the way we feel. I like that. Speaking of nuts, you've done some good work with big projects out there. And some people might sometimes think the county's a little nuts for just how involved we get with some of these big projects such as the town of Sheboygan. The rotary there. Roundabout. Roundabout. Thank you, the roundabout. There has been some controversy about roundabout. And I know some folks frankly don't like them. What is the state essentially position on roundabouts and what's the last one that the county did? What's your feelings about it? They provide a very safe intersection. I know it's not what everybody likes, but when you have a stop and go light and a four-way stop and those types of elements, there's always that hesitation. There's always that potential for large t-bone accidents and this and that. With a roundabout, when you're controlling the speeds between 15 and 20 miles an hour, your property damage is very minimal and loss of life is almost 100% and it's not going to happen. So they're a very safe improvement. The state obviously is buying into them. I believe I heard that there's gonna be 195 of them in the state of Wisconsin by I think 2011. So they are going in all over the place. We witnessed three of them going in up on 42. The last one that we just installed was over at the intersection of Wilgus, 40th Street and Superior. When I got here, I was told it was never gonna happen and it's currently in and it was not easy. We got it accomplished by some cooperation between a lot of different agencies. It took us purchasing buildings and raising them and taking them down and moving the intersection and working with property owners and commercial property in order to get it all done with the road gut built. I think it's gonna be a functional piece of highway. I haven't heard a lot of complaints about the roundabout. Our force has built it. We worked with the property owners along there to make sure that everybody could get into the businesses. Obviously we had some delays some days but for the most part it went pretty well. So we're not nuts. No, no. It's a good thing to do. In fact, in Europe, I think it's very common. Yes. Is it not? Yes it is. I continue to hear from people that they don't care for it or it slows down traffic too much but from a standpoint of safety, the evidence has shown it is a safer form of transportation and it's more cost effective than having lights. Is it not? Yes it is. I mean the maintenance alone, you don't have to have anybody going back there to, you know, they have to paint the poles, they have to change the light bulbs. You always have that opportunity for somebody to run it over or get hit by a snow plow. That has happened. The maintenance isn't there anymore. We have to light them. I mean we have to have street lighting around them but those are things that are a necessity. It's not something that we have a lot of control over. So as far as the maintenance goes, we plow them, we keep up with them. I haven't heard any issues with that. And you're going to see a lot more of them coming. We are planning one for our county trunk, OK and EE. It's been an intersection ever since I've gotten here. I've had a lot of correspondence with people that they'd like to see improvements done there. We feel it's going to be warranted and it'll be a very good place for one. Now you've mentioned, you've just talked about a critical project in the town of Shaboy again. You're OK in the future. How do you go about determining where you're going to invest your limited resources? I mean we can't do it all. How do you plan that out? Traffic patterns are developed and you try to improve the sections of road that obviously have greater potential to develop. You need to rely on the traffic counts that we get from the DOT in talking to other individuals that know the county a lot better than I do, tell me that this is starting to grow and we need to do something with this piece of highway. And we start to develop a pattern. We go by traffic count is what it is and what the condition of the road is. If the pavement is getting to the point where it's starting to deteriorate to a point where we need to make some improvements, let's do it right. And if it needs to be widened and rebuilt and improvements need to be made as far as the drainage, we should take care of it and that's how we do it. So very quickly in a couple of minutes we have remaining for the past year in 2008, what were the key construction projects that the county highway department completed? I know that we did probably more work, more work than our average year. We did. We rebuilt 2.4 miles of county trunk V from county trunk I to the town of Linden town line, which was about a three and a half month project for us. We relocated a road over at the airport, Metal Arc Road for the runway expansion and we rebuilt county trunk O from Taylor to I-43. There was numerous other projects in between there that we had taken care of, but those were the most time consuming that we had to get out of the way. And then for the year ahead? We are looking to build a phase of county trunk O from State Highway 32 to Woodland. We have some work to do for the planning department on the old planning trail. Rebuilding from Range Line Road out to 32 where we intend to get to there. We have some Betterman projects for the towns of Plymouth and the town of Holland, and there's others. Sure, sure. One that you didn't mention, but I know you've certainly helped a lot with is the Morgan aircraft development going out at the airport. You and Chuck, the airport, the highway department, just a tremendous good working relationship there. And I think as we speak, you've got a crew out there at the airport getting the ground ready for them to break ground on their new facility, the spring date, huh? That's correct. With the county-owned airport, the county's responsibility is to get that hangar site to a certain elevation so that it meets the rest of the drainage course that the airport has set forth. So our departments out there raising that to the proper height. And from that point on, Morgan will hire another contractor to do their other earth work and potentially hopefully start building in March, which we're on schedule to do right now. We should be finishing by mid next week with the parts that we had to take care of. So it's been a cooperative effort and then everybody's worked together real well and I think it's gonna be a great thing for the future of Sheboygan County. Just prior to this meeting in fact, or this taping of this program, Chairman Van der Stee and I were at a meeting talking about economic development and that we need to be planning accordingly and of course with the state of the economy, both in Sheboygan County, throughout the state of Wisconsin and nation, we need to gear up in the Morgan aircraft development at the airport. It's just a tremendously exciting opportunity, up to 2,000 jobs in the future and the work is underway. So it's really encouraging and good cooperation from the highway department, our airport department and the community. Well, Greg, thank you for joining us today. Appreciate the nice overview on the department and your roles and responsibilities. Next month we're gonna have another important department head with us, Charlene Cobb from Veteran Services. Charlene is a new name and a new face to Sheboygan County. As you know, certainly those of you who have followed this program over the years, we try to focus on a different department every month. We have 22 departments, about $139 million budget, 1,000 employees and a lot of very good leaders in place, such as Greg. Greg, I think the highway department has what? 114. 114 employees, so a lot of responsibility. Well, the Veteran Service Office is the other extreme. It's a two-person department and Charlene Cobb is our new Veteran Service Officer. She follows on the heels of Jim Riesenberg who was a long-standing and very good Veteran Service Officer. So we're looking forward to Charlene being here. You can get to know her a little bit better and I think she's been on the job now for a little over three months and hearing very good reports about the service she's providing. So looking forward to introducing her to you. So until next month, and on behalf of Mike Van der Steen and the Sheboygan County Board, thank you for joining us.