 Hello, welcome to the Donahue Group. We're delighted that you can join us, whether it's in the evening or the afternoon or the morning. It's a wonderful summer day and we're enjoying the weather. We have a slightly smaller crew here, a little bit different cast because of summer and vacations, but let me go around the semi-circle today and introduce Ken Risto back from Lakeland College where he's learning how to do whatever it is that he does as the social studies curriculum and assessment coordinator for the Shawagon Area School District. That was really close. That's as close as you've ever gotten. Yeah, I'm working on it. And but at any event, Ken's a familiar face. Dirk Zeilman is joining us today. Dirk is a familiar face too. Dirk has a whole lot of titles lately, has just been elected chair of the town of Mosul. Our claim to fame is our population is less to date than it was in 1860, so a growing, vibrant community. And Dirk is gonna continue that onward trend. Dirk is also chairing the Non-Motorized Transport Committee, and I know that's not the complete and correct title, but in any event, we have lots of good things to talk about today, so glad you're with us. And I wanna start Dirk because you're here, Tom Pineski is on vacation and Cal Potter is in the yard. I think most of our viewers know about the really very, very substantial federal grant that Shawagon County is getting for Non-Motorized Transport. Tell us in 25 words or less. Okay, 50. All right, 100. Take your time. Take your time. What the committee is and what its goals are and what it's up to these days. Thanks, Marilyn. As you said, Shawagon received a substantial grant, 25 million over four years or six and a quarter million a year. And the purpose of that grant is to try to get people to get out of their cars and either walking or biking. It's as simple as that. Sometimes I think when it was first announced, people thought we'd be building all these like old plank road in the country where people just on a weekend would ride or bike for 50 miles. But that's not really what it's all about. It's somebody that lives two blocks from a convenience store, needs a quart of milk and we're trying to come up with ways that that person will say I'm gonna walk or I'm gonna bike over there rather than take my car. And just if we do that cumulatively, it can make a difference and it's a pilot program. One of four communities in the United States that are doing this and if it works well, it would probably be expanded to other communities. Well, now it seems to me at $6 million we could afford a bike for everybody in the county or sorry, that was sassy. Are you making your pitch now? We'll put it under consideration. I know that you have a grant process and that you've had some struggles. It's a huge committee, isn't it? It's a 30 person committee and it's a great committee. People are just very enthusiastic, very knowledgeable. A lot of them are bikers and actually that sometimes is a bit of a problem for us because we always revert to biking and we have to remember that pedestrian walking is as important or maybe in this kind of a climate more important than biking. I mean, you can bike four, five months, six months fairly comfortably, but you can walk. You know, there are nice January and February days where you can still walk. Although I do have to tell you that I had lunch with Dirk at a local restaurant. It was in November, it was bitter cold and an Ichabod crane figure is pedaling down the street with a helmet and gloves and so forth and it was Dirk and it was about 20 degrees, maybe a little warmer. Well, when I was elected chair of this committee, my wife Sue and I had not ridden bikes for probably 20 plus years, but I figured we better get bikes and I better start biking or in the first meeting they'll throw me out the window. And we kept track of it. The committee was formed last June, July. We got our bikes in August and from August to the end of November, Sue and I biked 895 miles and so it can make a difference and sometimes people say, wow, it doesn't have any impact, but even financially. I mean, that's some dollars saved in gas and it's good exercise and it's something that I encourage Shibuya County residents to try. Give us an example of the work you're doing now. You receive proposals. We receive proposals, but we have changed it a little bit and we're in the middle now of building a comprehensive plan. The first year or so we set it out for applications, receive proposals, but our concern was that at the end of this process, unless we made it a little bit more organized, you'd have all these good projects all over the place, but you wouldn't have a connected network. So now we're going out there and we're being a little bit more proactive. We're searching, from comments, we've had something like 11 public hearings over the last year and we're always soliciting input from the community, but we're taking that input now and we're trying to identify areas that we think can really make a difference. And then we're going to the communities where those areas are and saying we'll work with you, but let's together put an application together. Dirk, you mentioned biking and walking. Is there any place in the grant to allow for encouraging people to use mass transit as opposed to their individual cars or is that outside the bounds of this grant? That's outside of the parameters of this grant, but we have one proposal that we've already approved. It's putting bike racks on buses. It's the so-called multi-modal approach. And in Shebaik, and you know that in the morning, it's beautiful out, but you look at the weather forecast and they say chance of showers in the afternoon. You say, okay, if I take my bike, what if it's afternoon, I've got to get back and it's raining. Well, now what you can do, you can take your bike in the afternoon if the weather turns in climate, you wait for the bus to come by, put your bike on the bike rack on the bus and take it home. And we're hoping that that will help biking, but it will also increase bike or bus ridership. That's interesting. Are you dividing money or looking to divide, I presume in a proportional share around the county? That's something that really has been one of my mantras. If you talk to the people in Washington, they say that that is not necessarily yet. Just go out there and find the right projects and wherever they are, so be it. But I think the reality is that you at least have to be cognizant and that you have to make sure that it gets divided fairly equitably. If you just look at our population and if you were thinking we'll probably spend about $15, $16 million on capital projects, that works out to about $130 per person. So under that scale, in theory, city of Sheboygan should get six and a half million give or take. If you've got a smaller community of 2,000, they should be getting somewhere around 260,000. Now, are we locked into that? Absolutely not, but I keep arguing that we should at least have that as a broad benchmark so that we aren't real disproportionate. It is a county grant and we should make sure that all residents have some opportunity to benefit from it. And your committee's pretty balanced too. And our committee is big, 30 people, but it's from all over the community. We have elected officials, we have doctors, we have attorneys, we have business people, we have just people who are avid bikers. It's a great mix and there's been a lot of energy on that committee. Now you mentioned sort of two criteria as I was listening to you, Derek, you were saying that there's sort of a commitment to at least at the beginning try to create a proportional funding mechanism across the county so that money doesn't all go to the city of Sheboygan or whatever. And then secondly at the end, you'd like some sort of coherent plan and the pieces fit together. Are there any other kinds of considerations? Well, as we put the grid and how we analyze any project that comes in, we look at population density. That's important. We look at connectivity. For instance, we might be out in the country, but if we're connecting, let's say, Howard's Grove in the northern part of Sheboygan, you're connecting two destination points and that's something that we'll look at. Cost benefit is very important. We just can't spend a million dollars for something that's gonna have two walkers per day on it. So give us an idea of some other projects that you have funded. You've got the bike racks. We have the bike racks. The other thing that is somewhat minor, it's not real costly, but we're putting, well, the bike racks on buses, but then we're also putting bike racks, for starters, we're putting it in front of, by every county-owned facility, but we'll be expanding that and trying to get it in front of retail and industrial. I rode in to downtown Sheboygan today to a restaurant and ended up blocking my bike to, I don't know what it was, some post, and that's not real conducive to encouraging additional biking. So getting bike racks around and then we're just looking at places that aren't perceived as being safe. The one that probably has come up more than any other street in the county is Eisner Avenue on the north side of Sheboygan, where you have, it's right on the boundary of the town of Sheboygan, the city of Sheboygan, so neither side has been real active in taking care of it, but it's getting more and more traffic. You've got apartment buildings there, you've got schools closed, you've got stores closed, and it all kind of just combines at that area, and we're saying that that's one that we have to look at, that came up time after time, as a trail or sidewalk. I think that's a great idea. I mean, that road is in terrible shape. The only advantage to that is that it's really hard to drive more than 25 or 30 miles an hour on it. We've heard that already. There are so many potholes, it keeps the traffic slow. It really, it does, it absolutely does, but that's interesting. Well, one of the main controversies, but points of discussion I think, and you can just set it straight for us, is the pedestrian bridge that has been proposed across the river, connecting South Pier with the better half of the city there, and I personally think it's a terrific idea. Is it within the purview of this committee and this kind of money, or is that just kind of silly? I have had discussions with several Sheboygan officials, and we are going to be getting an application in September from the city, and we'll look at it. And my commitment is that we will look at it fairly. One of the things that I think there's some concern on the committee, it's a fairly costly project. It's over 5.2 million dollars, and so that cost-benefit segment will have to be looked at very closely. The other thing, and I think initially the city was saying, we need this for economic development. Again, that's not the purview of this legislation. What they've got to do is go out there and convince us, and then ultimately convince the county board that it's going to have a lot of pedestrian traffic. That's the selling point for us, and not just that it's people that are going to be mingling around, but it's people that are on the South Pier, they want to get to the north side, and otherwise they jump in their car and they drive around. If instead we have them walking across, that would be what our monies would be for, and that would work. But if they just come in and say, we need economic development, they got to come up with criteria that match the selection process of the legislation. Right, so city people, if you're listening, that's what you need to do, but it seems to me to go hand- We've given you a hint. A big hint. It seems to me to go hand in hand though. I mean, I think that the South Pier is that whole area of the city, what I think is to say vibrant is an understatement, and the density I think is growing terrifically when the capsule building is eventually condoized and the rice building, that's happening, and then the place across the street from Stephanos, and I don't even know the name of that project. And the problem that I see from South Pier, because we've actually, my husband and I like to walk, to walk around the peninsula there is a hike, and it's a good hike, but nonetheless, if you want to encourage people to walk, that's a big start. I mean, that's a good long crossing some traffic, and this, that, and the other thing. I think for both economic development and pedestrian traffic, which I think would tend to go hand in hand. I think it's a terrific idea. And I agree with you, it goes hand in hand. I mean, if they can convince us that tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, whatever the numbers are gonna be walking across that, that meets our need. If it creates, or it's conducive to economic development, that's fine. I mean, we're not gonna say, well, because it creates economic development, we don't like it. I can't believe it. A Dirk Dubella Grant allow you to, say, fund a portion of that project under the guidelines we've talked about in the city. I'm not suggesting the city would be interested or even have the ability to do this, pay for another percentage of that in order to get the deal done. That's an option. And not only the city, but also potentially, the private sector. They might want to raise some dollars. If they choose to look at it as a real economic development issue, they could put some money in that would get that cost-benefit analysis a little bit more in line. Let me ask you one real question about projects. Is there been any discussion or any projects talking about ways to think about, as I sit and look at the hundreds of cars in the South Island parking lot and show equal numbers at North to have teenagers, especially our high school students, using cars less, granted we just built huge parking structures and parking spaces now. And that's a challenge. We live in a society where people without giving it a second thought will jump in their car and go two blocks. And I think what we're hoping to do at least give it a second thought. At least say, well, should I get in my car or should I walk to the convenience store? Or if I live three blocks away from the high school, do I really need to have my car in the parking lot? Why don't I just walk over there? And it's going to be working with kids. You know, you can force it. And this is not something that we would necessarily advocate. It would need to be done by the school district, but you simply can say to the kids, you know, we're not going to allow you to park or maybe we'll allow you to park in the parking lot but you can't park in the surrounding streets. And so you either get to school early or you walk or bike or take the bus. Yeah, with the new construction there's plenty of parking spaces. And I think that was a political calculation is to get the student cars off of the surrounding neighborhood areas, both at North and South because that has been, as you know, when you were on the board, probably a source of some friction between the neighbors and the students. North, at North a lot, lots of kids are on the street. Still right here in the street. You know, in the cemetery, that street that abuts the cemetery. And if, right, if you're living- I imagine they're not complaining. No. In the cemetery. But if you're a resident there and you're- No. Not that I know of. And you have a guest coming over and there's just no place for your guests to park. That's not fair to residents. Exactly. Well, that sounds interesting. How long is your chairmanship ten years? I don't know. I may have signed on for the duration, so I'm touting out here when I'm 80 years old. But again, we need to have the money allocated by the end of 2009 and then we'll have the projects completed by 2010. So it's about a five, six year window. And right now, and this would be, I think, maybe interesting for your viewers, but we did a survey and we said how many people will actually commute by bike to work and the number was 0.7%. And then we asked how many will walk to work. The number is about 3.8%. Now there's a little difficulty with that because it's got a margin of error, plus or minus 5%. So we couldn't be in the minus 4% area. Call me a cab. But we're working very hard. But we're working very hard and we want to be able as much as we can to quantify it because at the end, if we've spent $25 million and you say, well, did you do anything? We say, well, we think so. That's not good. So we're gonna, we'll just have in some place, we'll have physical counts where every six months or so we'll have somebody standing out there from let's say seven to nine in the morning or four to six in the afternoon just counting the number of bikes and pedestrians that go by and get a kind of a longitudinal study and hopefully the trend line will be up. Well, how come? It'll be quite embarrassing if it goes down. And the allocation of monies is ultimately decided by those 30 members? No. And thank you, Ken, because a special committee of the county board was created. It was the old resource committee and the transportation committee. So somewhat surprisingly, it's called the joint resource transportation committee, but it's nine members and we actually report to them with our recommendations, but then they will sign off and vote on it. But the county board has actually given that committee the authority. So the nine person county board committee is the ultimate authority here in deciding whether or not these projects are gonna be allocated. No, just to clarify that end process so that people don't get up in arms, when you make a package recommendation of we're gonna spend the money doing this, this, this and this, is that a straight up or down vote by that county board group? Or can they pick and choose? Right, they will look at each project and we actually will present, not as a package, but per project. But we're working very closely with them because it would be kind of silly for us to just kind of go off in our own direction if we knew that it wasn't going to be approved by that joint resource transportation committee. On the other hand, they have been very good in working with us and pretty much have told us, if you do your homework, there might be some situations, but if you do your homework, by and large, we're gonna look at it with a pretty approving eye. Okay. And that makes sense. I mean, there should be some due deference to the expertise of your committee. Well, that's interesting and we'll watch it and I got my hopes pinned on this pedestrian bridge. I hope whatever the design is, is that it's not ugly. And if we gain a reputation of being very bikeable and very pedestrian friendly, that's good. I mean, when you think of places where just in a vacuum you like to live, it's Madison, it's Portland, it's Boulder, Colorado, it's Seattle, these are all places that have great biking and walking facilities and maybe in five years, they'll include shaboying with that bunch. Well, one thing we're gonna have to do is we're gonna have to really work with our citizens to understand that when a pedestrian steps into a striped pedestrian walkway, you actually do have to stop. That pedestrian has the right of way. I get a chance to, I walk from central to, you know, the various restaurants to meet and have lunch with our fine hostess here. And the only cars that will stop in that one small little pedestrian crossway are out of state. But yeah, if I step in there, my life is in line. Ken, are you sure it isn't you? It could very well just be me. Thank you, Derrick. It could very well just be me, I don't know. That's an excellent comment. Well, we're gonna put you out there as a controlled experiment. I'm sure just quite a few people in the school district if we gave them the opportunity, but would willing to. I did dodge the superintendent's car the other day. I thought it was a coincidence. Okay. Well, I think, I often say to my husband, I have the right of way. And he says, I'll tell your estate that. And so let's just switch to a little bit of other city business. I know you're in the town of Mosul, but connected. A growing town of Mosul. The growing town of Mosul. Even the golf course, huh? Well, in any event. Not too many permanent residents in a golf course. That's true. That's true. Are you pitching tents to the sand traps merely? Well, or just living in the basement, I don't know. In any event. Dirk, you're a well-known political bon vivant and maven of the local political scene. So this is just to, you know, make you feel really comfortable here and delivering some opinions. Just to show off your French is what I think. There we go. There we go. Yeah, tiny little issue, but Mayor Perez gaveled Henry Capatillo out of order for using the word disingenuous. Here's my pitch on this. The school board, Dirk and I of course were on the school board and you of course are at least temporarily still employed by the school district. And we had a policy. We did have a public forum, which I think is an important key piece of municipal life. But we had these guidelines, which were very clear and they were read at the beginning of every public information or public forum. No hitting, kicking, punching, spitting. And really just a plea for civility. A plea for civility, exactly. And that translates really to no personal attacks. The city council needs to do this. Absolutely. I have watched, and I'm not gonna comment on what happened on that particular evening, but I have watched some of those public forums where people have been to say impolite is putting it gently. And to me that's unacceptable because even though our elected officials know what they're getting into, they're trying to do what's best for the city and to have to just sit up there and have people saying things that aren't very polite. They shouldn't have to endure that. People can make their points without making it personal and if they can't, then they probably shouldn't be speaking. I agree. And so it's my hope that the council really, I understand that there's some move of what to do this, but I think it needs to be done. I think it needs to be enforced. And I think once you set a tone, I mean, to be honest with you at the school district, we really rarely, rarely had any problems with that. And you and I both served as presidents. And those news, I mean, we heard people would come up and they would be passionate, but they would not be personal. Yeah, or angry. I mean, you could be angry. I'm not saying not have, you know, not subdue your feelings, but just no name calling. So I hope that does change. I think what the public doesn't know often is during those public commentary times, by rule, the members, the board members or the aldermen or older women are not allowed to respond. So you sometimes have to take these public whippings when they do happen and you really don't even have an opportunity to respond. Yeah, and so, and we don't pay these people very much. We really pay the school board almost nothing, but even the older people, they just, they don't make that much money. And I mean, it's really, in most ways, a volunteer activity, so here's hoping. There is still a little bit of fallout. In our last program, we talked about the ambulance service and how quickly it went and what would happen. I talked to the mayor and I said, yeah, this is, you know, what's going on? He said, and I just wish that there would be more political, or I'm sorry, public explanation. He said, you know, we don't have any money. We need to look for non-traditional sources of revenue. And he alluded to Mayor Crawford in Manitowoc. Kevin Crawford's a great guy and, you know, as happy as Mayor Perez and they sell water, not bottled water, but they sell water to various utilities and so forth. And just, you know, the tax, when we get our tax bill, it's got a lot of stuff on it. It has the county, it has the school district, LTC, the recreation department. Nobody complains about those to the extent that they complain about the city bill, which is a pretty small portion. It is a non-traditional source of revenue and on that basis alone, depending on how it goes. Well, and- I think it's supportable. I mean, the proof will be in the budget, but- Here's an old cliche. My dog is in that fight a little bit because as Chair of the Town of Mosul, the concern that we have right now is that in theory, if nothing else happens, as of December 31st, Town of Mosul residents in Town of Sheboygan and City of Sheboygan Falls and Village of Kohler do not have ambulance service. Now, there are some discussions going on at Orange Cross, might be able to service those areas without the city. There are events, there's a potential that those areas might contract with the city. But my concern was the process, that it happened so fast and really critical partners. This was a 15-year partnership. Critical partners were not even given any forewarning that this was coming. It was just kind of thrown out there all of a sudden and left for people to react to. Well, that's, I think, the part, as I talked to a few people who also were outside of the City of Sheboygan and positions of leadership, not Dirk, by the way, true, I didn't talk to Dirk, who were saying this, you may have made money or make money, X number of dollars, whatever it might be here, but now that really, now that decision and the way it took place and the way it unfolded really calls into question other areas of cooperation that may have saved the City of Sheboygan even more money than what you're making on this ambulance service. And they were, one particular individual wanted, took me aside and said, you know, the whole idea of a shared dispatch is really up in the air now. The combined dispatch seemed to be moving forward. I don't think it's dead yet, but I think, at least now, the momentum is broken. That, in theory, could have saved City residents. And part of the reason City residents don't really have a clear view is that they are essentially double-taxed. You know, City residents pay for county services that they have no benefit of and the primary one, of course, is the Sheriff's Department. And so that is one of the reasons City taxes are higher than County, you know, people who live outside of the City is because here in the City we do pay twice. I don't think that the potential for shared services is dead by any means. I think it has taken a blow, whether that will recover or not, just to make sure to, County residents are not without emergency services, they're without an ambulance. I don't know of a town or a village volunteer or fire departments that are not trained first responders. Is it equal to a paramedic? No, it clearly is not. And so it is interesting, it'll be interesting though to see if it makes money for the City. And I do think City revenues and the Mayor's Pledge to keep a zero-based budget really mean that you have to be looking at doing things differently. Well, I think you have to look at other things and you have to start thinking outside the box and you have to start thinking creatively. In my mind, this was not creative thinking. I mean, to me, as a person who was in business in the private sector for most of my career, for instance, you mentioned mandatory law. One party says they make money, the other party says they don't make money. Now, typically what we would do is say, well, let's try to figure out who's right. What it seems the City said is, well, we like the fact that they say they make money, so let's just accept those figures. And that's, in my mind, is what was wrong with the process. It just went too quickly rather than really saying, let's have this thing open. And you're right, Mary Linda, it's fair for the City to be looking at this, but they forgot they had partners. And I'm not sure they thought they had partners. I mean, I'm not sure that construct is there and we're almost out of time, but again, the Mayor should not be out alone on this. Remember, that was an 11 to five vote. Oh, sure. Many of the new business people who are on the council were among the strongest supporters. Which is interesting because if before the election, I mean, people voted for some of those new business people thinking that if it were a question of expanding City Service or contracting it, that those business people would be at least more interested in giving a good hard look to contracting it. So that was an interesting dynamic on the council. And again, I think people are excited about it now. I really think that we're gonna work this thing through. And on that happy and positive note, thank you for listening and we'll look forward to hearing you again.