 Welcome to Shebaugin County Government, working for you. I'm Dan Lamyhu, County Board Chairman, co-host of this show with Anna Peane, our administrative coordinator. We bring you this monthly show to bring you the services and departments of Shebaugin County and the services that we provide to the citizens of Shebaugin County. This month we have with us Roger Lamyne, our Highway Commissioner, and we're going to be talking about the Highway Department a little bit and we're getting to the time of year. We're taping the show in December, but we're going to be showing it in January. Hopefully we'll have some snow by then for some people. Some people think hopefully we'll have snow. Others are just glad we don't have any yet, but I'm sure sometime this winter we're going to get some snow and a good portion of our half-hour show today we're going to talk about the job that the Highway Department does with snow removal. But first of all, Roger, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and the position of Highway Commissioner? Okay, thank you, Dan, Adam. I've been Highway Commissioner since 1987. As you know, the Highway Commissioner position is appointed by the County Board Supervisors. It's presently a term of a four-year term. And so I've been able to convince you guys to keep me around for a few terms here. And the role of the Highway Commissioner, of course, is to direct the operations of the County Highway Department. And the Department itself just give us just a short overview of the mission and roles of the Department. Okay, the role of the Highway Department, of course, is to maintain the county roads. Now some people confuse when they see our equipment out on the roads, on the state and the town and on the county roads. The primary responsibility is with the county roads, which are the roads with the letters. Of course, the state roads are the ones with the numbers and the town and village roads are the ones with the names on them. But to maintain, for example, plowing and picking up trash and mowing and overall maintenance, be it black-topping or any maintenance associated with the county roads, that's the primary responsibility of the County Highway Department. And how many employees do you have in the Department? And how is it organized in others? Do you see these sheds all over the county? And how do you organize the Department? We're organized into... We're broken up into six maintenance areas around the county. Folks listening probably know that we have... The main shop, of course, is in Sheboygan on 23rd Street, where the administration offices are. And the vehicle repair shop and all the supplies and things are at that location. And then the outlying garages are... There's one near Howard's Grove and Elkhart Lake, Plymouth, Cascade, Adel and one along I-43 south of Sheboygan. And when we're talking about the snow removal part of it, about each of those district garages is maintained in total about 185 to 210 miles during their winter operations. So if a highway employee works at one of those sheds, that's her who reports for work every day and works out of that shed? Yes. During the winter months, that's the way it works. During the summer, we, of course, have various construction crews and then we kind of split up into the different crews. Of course, as everybody knows, we have two seasons, winter and construction and they see the orange burrows. Fortunately, this year we've been able to extend the construction a little longer. You mentioned the number of miles that each shed would cover for snow removal. How many miles of county roads do we have that you take care of? We're 452 miles of county roads. Total in the county for all roadways is about 1,500 miles. But with the arrangements we have with the other municipalities, we maintain about 1,150 out of that 1,500 total and the rest, of course, will be city and village streets and there are some townships we don't do winter maintenance for. How does that compare to other counties? Is that high or low? Well, other counties, as far as the number of miles of county roads, Shabuagon has one of the higher numbers of county roads that are still maintained by the county. And most other counties have more local roads or township and village and city. And you mentioned contracting for plowing some of the roads for the municipalities. Could you just expand on that a little bit, the work you do with the municipalities and how that works? Let's start with the State Department of Transportation. Our area is directed by the Green Bay District Office. And when you go over the line in Ozaki County, that's handled by the Waukesha, which is District 2 of the State Highway Department. And the State Highway Department works on a, coordinates with the counties and pays the counties to maintain, do the routine maintenance on the state and interstate roadways. So we act as a, for lack of a better term, contractor with the State Department of Transportation to maintain their roadways, like I mentioned, for routine summer maintenance, mowing and whatnot, and snow plowing. And with the townships, it's a similar scenario where most of the townships, we do work for 12 out of the 15 townships when it comes to their snow removal, their sanding, salting, snow removal, and their routine maintenance. So it's on a time and materials basis. How do you say routine maintenance? It seems to me that you actually build roads. You're not just filling potholes around the county, but you actually build roads right down to the bay. Some of the operations that we have, other than routine, when I mentioned the summer work, we have a gravel crushing operation. We produce our own asphalt and blacktop. First we have our marking and sining crews to put all the signs up and mark the center lines and the white edge lines. And bridge maintenance and bridge inspection, concrete repair like on concrete state roads where the joints have a problem, we go in and repair those. And of course, paving and everything. So we basically a full service county when it comes to providing the services to the municipalities and ourselves and the state DOT. Dan mentioned at the time of the taping of this program we don't have any snow yet and I think a lot of us are glad to see the shovels still collecting dust in the garage. Many of us are hoping for a white Christmas and the snowmobilers and skiers I know are anxious to get out. You're gearing up, you've been gearing up for the snow and the weather conditions that we're going to be dealing with soon. Tell us a little bit about what it takes to gear up for snow plowing and salting. It's interesting in that the way we're set up with the utilization of equipment for example, the trucks that we use for hauling gravel and asphalt, we extend that as far as we can and still allow time to mount the snow plows and the wings and the sanders. So usually about the middle of November we'd like to have that transition all made to be able to set the things up for snow. Fortunately this year we've been able to extend the construction season a little bit and get some additional color ditching and some other earth moving things taken care of this year. And of course the money we're saving on salt and whatnot is certainly going to help the year end budget. You mentioned earlier about 450 county roads, miles of county road and out of 1500 miles of road in the county about 1100 are serviced or maintained by the county highway department. That's correct. How many snow plows will you have operating at any one time or at least ready to get out there when we get in the snow? Well keep in mind now that 1100, 1150 miles that we maintain, that's just one way. And so you've got to double that and unlike on the I system and on the four lanes, of course you have to take that times four. So that's a large amount of miles that the guys have to cover. Now generally the normal shift is 7 to 330. And then of course you're staffed basically for one shift. But when it comes to let's just take an average snowfall for example if you want to call an average like one to two inch. We have 37 column plow sanders that go out on that cover this amount of miles. And hopefully it would be nice it would just snow and then you could plow it off and it would be all done. But we all know the different conditions, the wind and the temperature. You might have rain that turns to ice which turns to snow and back again. So but to use an average say it was six hours, seven, eight hours to come in and do it once and go home. It runs about $15,000 in order to do that in that one shift of a one to two inch snowfall. Excuse me. You mentioned 37 plows and sanders combined. Yes. And if we get a one to two inch snowfall and I'm sure people don't have any appreciation for what that costs county taxpayers. $15,000 a shift. Yes. To get out there and start clearing. Yes. I'll be darned. Now if we have a larger storm where you have to you know wing the snow back or push the snow back. We have we have 12 graders which we would take out in addition to that. Which and then times the amount of time it takes to keep the roads open and you know provide safe travel for the for the public. And of course when it gets real bad we still have some of the heavy duty trucks say that what we call the Oshkosh four-wheel drive. They're still there that are can be used for the severe drifting and and a clogged roads. Unfortunately we haven't had too many of those in the last number of years. Now we're getting some real relief the month of November December with no snowfall to date. But on an annual basis approximately what are you budgeting to to take care of the winter season. It it it'll all average out but on an average about 1.1 million is what the if you historically you go back through through time it'll average about 1.1 million. 1.4 the equipment the staffing the salt. Correct. And labor machinery materials. What about just salt alone. Salt alone we purchase on an average of about 10,000 ton of salt each year. Now keep in mind that's for not just the county roads but all of the roads that we serve except the state the state purchases their own. And that cost is about $275,000 a year just for salt. How's our salt supply looking for this this winter thus far. Very good. No problem getting a hold of it. Right we for example we bid our salt with the state of Wisconsin and they go out to bid in June. So they saw went up a little bit. But not as extreme that I've learned that some of the other counties and areas of the state we were fortunate dovetailing on with the state of Wisconsin and we had our salt sheds filled up in September October. So we haven't had to open the doors yet. So when your crews are out there working the roads and I know that can be some dangerous work especially at night or when there's a lot of traffic what are some of the common concerns that they have. Well I wish I could get some of the public to travel with for example the plows that are on I-43 the amount of traffic the speed of the traffic it's dangerous up there. You know on with the plow driver you know he's driving and shifting is a wing and a plow and you know we have a lot of lights on the vehicles but just because you know the snow that comes off of the plow you know the snow cloud that comes off and everything it's hazardous up there. But the worst for the drivers is I mean for our drivers is the speed of the traffic and because if say we have to make turns and what not it's hard for them to make the maneuvers sometimes because you have traffic right on coming right up behind you. So speed and the volume is probably the worst and of course backing is another problem when we have to clean up an intersection you just can't go around an intersection. You have to back up and do it once or twice because some of the larger intersections and when people sometimes have a tendency to pull up right tight behind the snow plow and the drivers just simply can't see them in their mirrors. How about mailboxes? I recently just put a new brand new mailbox up on a county road and I looked around at other mailboxes and how close or far they are and what happens out there with mailboxes is generally a problem when removing snow? The worst problem it's not so much that they get hit but the force of the snow that comes off of the plow or the wing or if it's a wet snow for example and it rolls off the wing that's a tremendous force against the post and the mailbox. But I did give specific orders that the district garage leaders are to stay away away. Don't the drivers put notches on their steering wheels for every mailbox that they take down? Not that I'm going to admit. Something tells me I'm going to be replacing one this winter. So when your drivers are out there you mentioned the speed of travel, people following too close. If you had some recommendations for our listeners what would be some of the key things you would ask them to do to make sure that we get the snow removed quickly and safely? The biggest thing is patience especially on the two lane roads and even the four lane roads. The plows will go say 25, 35 miles an hour, say 35 miles an hour. And if you consider like your destinations only say 10 or 12 miles have patience because that difference in time between trying to pass that plow and the actual time you get there is not that great. Plus it's dangerous when you're passing because with what I call whiteouts you just don't know what's in front of you that's oncoming. So just simply patience and once again with our plows because you have to plow one lane at a time you still have to clear that center line. So when a snow plow is approaching just simply slow down and let the plow go by rather than trying to maintain your speed. It's just patience is the best I can say. And as people approach intersections or strike out in the morning or home and they see a slippery intersection or have a concern, who do they call? Who's attention do they raise that to? The best is like most people will know the area garage that services them. The best is to call them if there's a problem. We work very closely with the county sheriff's department and say, for example, it's off hours or say before 7am for 3.30 type thing. That if there are problems they call the sheriff's department. We of course have radio contact constantly and are talking all the time. Where there are spots for example that have a problem and we have supervisors on call, we talk all the time as far as locating these areas. So area shed, sheriff's department and then would you like to give your home telephone number as well? No, not at this time. Thanks Roger, very good. Maybe we could talk a little bit about construction projects that you do. In between seasons now we finish the construction season. But before we get into the construction projects, are there any laws that traffic laws that pertain to plows as far as passing or anything like that? Or should that be better asked of the sheriff's department? Well there's one law that was just signed by the governor a day or two ago about following snow plows, snow plow following law. And I'm not exactly sure on the wording how that's going to shake out or how the enforcement or how difficult it's going to be to enforce that law. The way I understand it, when a plow, let's choose an example of like a two-lane road where the plow is going say 35 miles an hour. And you're right tight behind that plow for like say over a mile or more. I guess the idea was that it was for the safety of the individual that because of these whiteouts and whatnot, that to stay back I believe it's a distance of 500 feet to allow for that white or whatever to dissipate before you would pass. Passing a snow plow, for example when you're plowing you may have bare pavement for a while and then you have drifts across the road. And if you would attempt to pass a snow plow one time it's clear and sure enough you're going to hit a drift and you're going to get that whiteout. So it's serious enough that they're starting to possibly pass legislation to make it harder to and more restrictive in passing plows. Correct. Get back to the construction season. We've passed our budget. You pretty well have planned what you're going to do next year. Could you just maybe fill us in on a couple of the projects that in the summer of 2002 that you'll be working on? Sure. Let me talk about some projects that are around the county in addition to the county work. I know many of the viewers will know that State Highway 57 in the south-central part of the county from the Ozaki County Line to Random Lake. The northbound lanes were reconstructed this past summer up to the village of Adel. The finish work or the final man of Blacktop would be put on that in 2002 and then they will pick up from where they left off at Adel and continue to rebuild the northbound lanes up to the village of Waldo. By the time it's all done I believe it's going to be about an eight mile stretch of the northbound Highway 57 that will be rebuilt and then that will basically complete the reconstruction of Highway 57 from when it was originally built in the late 1920s, early 1930s. So that's one of the big state projects for next year. That's a state project that you will not be involved with? Correct. Another project next year which will involve the city of Sheboygan that I'm a little bit aware of is from Highway 28 or Business 28 when you come in on the south side of Sheboygan, Washington Avenue, starting at Taylor Drive going east to what we consider South Business and north up to about Union. That's going to be, they're going to mill the Blacktop and some of its concrete and then put an asphalt overlay on that, on those portions of the roadway. In anticipation of I believe the year after then the segment of South Business from Broadway, an area of Broadway, the Broadway overpass and whatever, that's going to be constructed by the state DOT. Another project that's what will be going on on a county level next year, County Road PP just west. It's in the city of Sheboygan Falls from Triple P or near Richardson Lumber. Westerly passed the Bemis Corporation to just pass County Road TT and that road is going to be rebuilt next summer. It's a project, there's federal funding in it, federal state funding and it's a joint project with the city of Sheboygan Falls and of course Sheboygan County. It's County Road PP. Another thing that will be rebuilt next year, if you're familiar with West of Sheboygan, intersection of County Road O and Y, O is Superior Avenue and Y runs north out of Kohler. We have also a grant or some money, federal money coming in for signalization of that intersection. That's a high traffic area. Superior Avenue carries a tremendous amount of traffic out east west out of Sheboygan and then of course County Y feeds Kohler, Village of Kohler, Kohler Company running north and south. So we have a signalization project scheduled for this coming summer at that intersection. In addition, the County Forces will be constructing County Road V from I-43 Westerly to State Highway 32 through what we know as Six Corners. That's two and three quarters miles that we will also be rebuilding next year. So there's quite a few things going to be going on and then 2003 and 2004. What is the status on the road by the airport? That's going to be, I'm assuming County Road O, that's going to be a 2003 project. Not next year. Not next year. That'll be 2003 and that relocation of County Road O will accommodate the extension of the, I call it the north-south runway for the airport ultimately. Another project that we've seen in the news for a long time and we will continue to see for a long time before we get completion is Highway 23. Could you just fill our listeners in a little bit as to what the status is of that project and what we can look forward to in the next few years? Sure. There's a couple different phases to that particular project. As you know, the four lanes of Highway 23 go to, I'll call it County Road OJ at this present time and where the four lanes are. And the short, the two projects, the four lanes are scheduled to be extended from OJ to County Road P or just past County Road P in about 2000, maybe late 2003, 2004 and possibly five. With the budget the way it is, it very well could be 2005. But the bigger project which was worked on by many local officials and businesses and Chamber of Commerce was the ultimate four lane extension to Fond du Lac. And there's been a lot of work done between the business people and the community leaders in Chaboy County and Fond du Lac County to have that ultimate four lane extension of Fond du Lac enumerated. That major project is in its infancy right now. They're just going to be starting what we call a corridor study to look at the proper alignment for that ultimate four lane extension. And it ties in with ultimately the 151 bypass of Fond du Lac which will be done earlier or sooner. This ultimate four lane extension of Fond du Lac is they're discussing possibly starting to buy right away or the design in 2008 and that could extend through like 2012. You mentioned a corridor study. Who actually does that study and if citizens want to give some input to that, who would they talk to or how does that process work and deciding where the actual highway is going to lay? Sure. What that entails is the Department of Transportation, we had one initial meeting just to alert all the local units of government when they're planning their smart growth, putting together their smart growth plans and ultimate when people want to come in to build to DOT has just now started to make them aware of okay, this is not going to be a viable project here. It's out there a number of years. But keep this in mind with your planning and give input to the Department of Transportation on for example what your plans are for along a corridor. Say generally figure a corridor to be a mile either side of the existing alignment and they want to solicit input from the local communities and the local citizenry as to any plans that they may have to give that information to the Department of Transportation and that will certainly all part of consideration for ultimate alignment decisions. Taking into consideration wetlands or historical buildings and once again the growth of the local townships and communities. If a citizen is interested or concerned about his property being adjacent to that or part of that corridor, how will he be made aware of when these meetings are, I assume there will be public meetings or public hearings on this? Certainly, yes. How would they find out about that? Well, I guess a couple of different ways. Of course if there are public meetings that will be advertised in the local papers and whatnot but I would say either call your local town chairman or with the other municipalities or myself and I can get you the numbers of the people at the Department of Transportation that you can talk to and give your input. As part of that project on 23, the intersection of C and 23 on the west side of Plymouth I know there's been some talk about making an overpass there. What is the status of that and what's probably going to happen there? Excuse me, originally of course the four lanes were going to be extended and in fact all of the right-of-ways purchased from years ago to extend the four lanes out past Coney Road P like we had indicated. Because of the growth since the road was built originally, the two lanes that are there now, there was basically an effort between local officials, business people. They had a concern about the safety at Coney Road C and 23 and the amount of trucks going on and off Highway 23 and if you're familiar with that area, if a truck comes up to the intersection once it can be spawned there's a gradual climb up on Highway 23 but the idea was to in order to make a safer intersection because of the amount of traffic and the type of traffic was the idea, the local officials approach the Department of Transportation of what some alternatives were, how to improve the intersection just other than being at grade. And so the idea was developed about an interchange but ramps and then the various cost alternatives were put together and right now a decision has been made to proceed with that design. With the overpass. Well thank you Roger. I've been prompted that we're down to less than a minute. We had hoped to get a segment in and Santa Claus in this section but we're not going to be able to do that. We'll have to hold that for next year I guess. What a shame. We're all going to be disappointed with that. Next month we're going to have Terry Burke, Family Court Commissioner with us and we'll be talking about his role as Family Court Commissioner and we just thank you for listening into our show, watching and if you have any comments please call my office, County Board Chairman or the Administrative Coordinators Office with questions or comments for future shows. Thank you.