 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 Van der Steen. And as you know, if you've been following these programs for a number of months or, frankly, for the last eight, nine years that we've held it, every month we try to focus on a different department and their roles and responsibilities. Today we're pleased to have Greg Schnell with us, our Highway Commissioner. Thank you. Welcome, Greg. Thanks. Thanks. Glad to be here. It's good to see you here instead of back in that plow like you do. Yeah. It's been one of those winters starting out so bad. It's not so bad as it was the 2007 and 2008, but still coming around. So far, so good. Greg is one of our newer department heads, although not so new anymore. How long have you been with us now? Three years. October 2nd was my, started my third year. So. All the time flies. Oh, yeah. Well, today we're going to talk about the roles and responsibilities of the Highway Departments. And Greg, please set the stage by sharing a little bit about the primary responsibilities of the Highway Department. Obviously, we're in charge of the State Highway Maintenance. We have our 450 miles of our own county trunks that we have to maintain, plus we also maintain and responsible for 465 miles of Township Road. So that requires everything from plowing to snow, cutting to grass, shouldering, patching, maintaining the signs. We do bridge inspections for townships. We do the minor bridge maintenance for those also and on our county trunks. So it's quite a responsibility and it's everything from top to bottom. We have a well-diversified group of people that are efficient at what they do and do a very good job of it. You have an excellent staff and how many employees do you have at the Highway Department? We are budgeting for 108 for 2010. When I got here in 2006, we had 117. So we've been slowly going down in staff over maintaining the service levels that we had in the past. Has that been through layoffs or through attrition or how is it that you're decreasing your workforce a little bit? It's through attrition. We had a relatively, right now we're at a position where over the next few years we'll be able to continue to reduce the way we are without having to dive into the layoffs if you will and still be able to maintain a very good comfort level in our service that we have been providing in the past. Recently you had our great editorial in the Sheboygan Press about the work your staff did clearing the roads. Winter's upon us. Folks are out there making that adjustment and many of us think they're being four seasons in a year but for the Highway Department it's two. What are they and why do you refer to always having two seasons if you're a Highway Department employee? The two seasons are construction and winter. It seems like in Wisconsin we're so compact on what we can do in a certain amount of time in the summer months. It just seems as soon as the weather breaks, the orange barrels go out, the roads are closed and we're into our summer activities, building, constructing, paving, doing all the things we need to do to maintain the level of service that we have. All of a sudden time flies and we're into November and it's changing gears. We're mounting our graders and our trucks with the storm removal equipment and getting them ready to take care of the beast that we've been dealing with every year at the same time comes winter. And it can be an expensive time of the year, removing snow especially on the number of miles you're responsible for is no small feat. What's the investment the county has to make in both equipment and just budgetarily to do the job that you're responsible for? Obviously there is no crystal ball of what winter could cost. It's mother nature dictates what the cost is going to be and how much time you have to spend on it but just an equipment alone, a road grader with a wing, everything equipped on it cost us about $300,000 and we own 12 of those, obviously they range in age from summer back in the 70s all the way up to we recently purchased one in 2008. We do have two new, three new trucks coming in 2010 and the larger trucks that we can use for our winter and summer operations cost us about $210,000 a piece. So as you can see it adds up quite a bit. We have 40 trucks that go out in the snowstorm so the numbers get up there. We need to have those trucks ready, able and in working good working condition. Over and above that we have the materials that go along. We've seen a 27% increase in salt this year alone, $60 a ton for a ton of salt where you look at asphalt is about $40 a ton. That's something you can see stays there for many years, the salt is gone in spring so the investment is wide and I think we spend nearly about $800,000 a year just in salt alone. And when you said a 27% increase in salt that's just in the last year or over the course of the last few. That's over last year. Just over last year. Yep. And that's an interesting point you know we're always striving to hold the line on property taxes, maintain the quality of the services we provide yet yet another example of the challenges folks like Mike Van der Steen and the county board has. 27% increase in salt alone. We've seen significant increases in fuel and oil, many of the things associated that your department has to do. It's difficult to hold the line and not have an increase when you have those kind of challenges facing you. And on that note you've also absorbed some hits from the state have you not? We are taking about a $200,000 decrease in our 2010 winter or routine maintenance operations and that's everything that's included their mowing and litter pickup so it's something that we're going to have to grapple with and the whole state of Wisconsin is dealing with it but I think we have a pretty good handle on how we're going to handle that and obviously there could be some or we have seen some reductions in the service level as far as they aren't doing as much mowing and aesthetic type things like cleaning up the garbage that's those are the least priority that the state has put on it so they aren't going to do those types of activities or not as much of them as they had in the past. So you'll see us working on the safety things, the stuff that requires a priority but we'll be backing off on the least priority stuff. So millions of dollars of infrastructure and equipment, salt, fuel, all the things that go along with that but for the average snowfall you know if it's no Sunday three to four inches what on average does that cost Sheboygan County cost the taxpayers of this community to clean those roads up so Monday morning they're ready to go and folks can safely get to work. The true cost is hard to get your hands on and the reason I say it is that we look at a storm everybody says we get the three to four inches and it stops just don't stop but we deal with that and is trying to clean that up and then we all know what happens after the storm we get real cold temperatures and we get wind so the storm for us could drag on but to answer your first question the three to four inches just looking at some numbers before I left three to four inches would cost us anywhere between twenty eight to forty thousand dollars depending upon when it falls if it falls on a weekend and we're dealing all over time those get awful costly if it happens during the week we're in pretty good shape we could run on a weekend sixty seventy thousand dollars for a snow storm very easy and depends upon how much salt is going to be used also the colder the temperatures we usually don't use as much salt so there's a lot of things that go into it and as I mentioned before it's hard to put your finger on it because when I walked into the shop this morning there were six trucks that were broke down from what we dealt with with that heavy wet snow we had some plows and frames and stuff that were sprung and so there's when you want to get your fingers around what the storm cost it's escalating into week after week after week after a lot of factors come into play that's correct so Monday morning everyone gets ready for work or a lot of people certainly do and they had out the door and you've had a significant snowfall on Sunday how do you prioritize what areas you're going to address first our focus is state and county roads first as I mentioned earlier we take care of four hundred sixty five miles of township road also what our focus is going to be is our state guys will go out and our county trunk our county truck guys are going to go out about the same time we start detaining upon what the storm when it came in we may go out at four o'clock or if it's a if it's a heavy heavy snow throughout the evening we may start at three o'clock so we can make our round by the time we're done with that it gets to be about seven o'clock now we have all of our main roads opened up our state and our county roads open up now we'll start getting into the townships and the villages that we that we take care of now we do have some additional pieces of equipment to fall back on that we could maybe send a greater in these townships a little bit earlier to help out and just open things up but our priority is state and county first and then we fall off into the lesser travel roads are the ones with the lower adt now if there's a real dangerous intersection or approaching you know some curve in the road or something like that a town or county road do you want people to be contacting you should they be contacting the sheriff's department if they want to bring that to someone's attention because of how dangerous it is it would be spend upon a time of it during normal operating hours you can call our office that's anywhere between seven and three thirty we do have staff there earlier than that but depending upon where they're at in the building they may not be able to answer the phone anytime outside of that they can call the sheriff's department and we do have staff that's on 24 hour call to take care of situations like that now speaking of contacting your office I know that it's never intended but personally I came home one evening and my my mailbox was laying on the side of the of the ditch and I thought dog gone at that plow driver you know knocked it over wasn't being careful I later learned that actually it was never hit by the plow the weight of the snow was so heavy that as the plow came by it just smothered the mailbox and knocked it over in any regards from time to time that happens it just happens whether it's human error just the weight of the snow how do you want that handled if someone has that happen to them do they contact the the highway department or what's the process to get that addressed they would call our department and then we would have our staff go out and take a look and investigate was it physically the plow that or the the truck that caused the damage and if it is that and we bust the post up we will replace that with a standard mailbox and a standard four by four post if it's the weight of the snow we would hope that it would be up to the individual property owner to take care of their own mailbox you know if I can offer any advice I know there we see a lot of nice plastic ones with the plastic hood and it goes all the way down you know it may take a little extra time but you might want to take that in in the winter months and put up a little cheaper model because inevitably when that plastic gets cold and some snow hits it is a good potential of cracking and breaking those types we will not replace if it's if it's a specialized mailbox we're going to offer you at the same as we do everybody else it's a standard mailbox very inexpensive and we pick them up just at Fleet Farm and Menard just like everybody else could do I know I went to Fleet Farm and I think I replaced mine for five or six bucks wasn't a big deal I think I put in a stronger post to make sure it was good and secure but I also know that your drivers even though every now and then you get a call from someone who's pretty upset I think your drivers do a fantastic job and folks I don't think have any idea how challenging it is to reverse those roads and make sure you're not hitting those posts or mailboxes or park cars or whatever it is but especially when it's a whiteout I think your your crew does a fantastic job thanks and I share that also they they're a bunch of dedicated employees that are willing to give up their Christmas time with their families when the call comes they they go and as you said earlier it's not it's not their intention to to bust anybody's mailbox there's a whole lot of things they can go in they may need to meet another car if it's a narrow piece of road or the other car might be over the center line there's no other place to go and obviously you're going to take the path of least resistance and and go that direction so there's a lot of things that come into it and they don't do it intentionally so last question before I turn it over to Mike speaking of safety you mentioned some tips there on mailboxes what about people's driving out there when they see a plow certain distances they maintain what safety tips would you offer stay at least 200 feet back when you're behind a snow plow if you can't see the man up in your mirror he can't see you so if you if you can keep your distance give us enough time we're out there trying to get everything cleaned up so everybody can get the work at a safe time allow yourself enough time to get there you know pay attention to the weather in the road conditions the media likes to give you all kinds of tips as when the snow is going to come and when it's going to hit pay attention to those things and you know we're going to take care of things as fast as we possibly can we just want to get everybody to work school and and to their activities at night this as safe as we possibly can take your time allow enough time to get to where you need to be very good thanks great in addition to plowing our our own local roads and in our state highway systems you do a lot of work for municipalities could you give us a little flavor of the types of services you offer to our local municipalities sure as i mentioned earlier we take care of their maintenance the shouldering the mowing the center striping we do all that over and above we can provide services such as paving a mile a road or overlaying a mile a road reconstructing putting in new culvert pipes we have a wide range of equipment that can offer it a lot of services we can be there at the pick up a telephone to get there it's not like you have to municipalities can can call the highway department and just say we need this work done that's a intergovernmental type thing that they can control on on their own so we do some concrete work as i mentioned earlier also we do bridge inspection and minor bridge repair so we offer a lot of services really do what kind of priorities do you establish and and and use that to set the roads or pick the roads you're going to work on each year we have a system that was established by the wisconsin department of transportation called the whistler system it's a it's a road rating system and each spring we go and we rate our roads from 10 being the best road you can have to one being the worst road you can have and that's how we base our priorities if we see that these roads are are starting to deteriorate we know that we have to get them into our our five-year plan as far as paving goes and what we need to fix up obviously sometimes the rating doesn't in doesn't dictate it may be a little rating but we have to also look at the ad t the average daily traffic on the road if it's a if it's a lower volume road and we have a higher volume road that needs to be fixed up and maybe doesn't have a lower rating but it still carries you know a lot more traffic we may have to play with that a little bit and and put one off or due to some minor repairs and and limp it along if it doesn't need the drastic change right away now to keep the roads up shabuagan county owns their own asphalt plant where is that located and how much asphalt do you produce each year the plant is located out in green bush we call it the thackery pit and we own a portion of that that pit and it's also owned by the thackeries we right now pay royalty to them because our portion of the pit has has seen its useful life so our asphalt plant is actually stationed in a county pit and the backside of that pit is is owned by a private individual we pay royalty to our average year is about 65 to 75 thousand tons of asphalt this year was down a little bit we produced about 60 000 tons and we had to also purchase another additional 10 000 tons with some funding that we received from the state so along with that we also have a crushing operation and that crushing operation supports our asphalt plant by producing the aggregates that we need to to produce our asphalt and we normally run about 200 000 tons of of aggregate crushed aggregate through there now that's some of that goes into the road mix for the asphalt and the others use for the base for the our new reconstruction of roads okay and what advantages do we get as a county operating our own asphalt plant and crushing operation when you have your own operation we we go out every spring and bid our oil so we're in control we know how to establish and and set our costs for the year we roll in all the cost of what it takes to maintain the labor and the equipment that's out there so we're in control of our own destiny we're in control of our own cost when you establish that at the beginning of the year you know where you're at and you can budget for that i've heard horror stories of individuals that didn't have an asphalt plant that in the mid-year all of a sudden they had a huge swing like we had in 2008 with the oil cost they had to add $15 a ton to the asphalt coming off the belt so that took their paving program and diminished it for that year and also isn't you're in control of your own schedule when we in the past when we did have to purchase asphalt we would call a day day in advance to tell them that we were coming well they may have some other companies buying asphalt from them at the same time so there's a possibility that you may have to wait and when you have a wait and you have a paving chain parked out on a road county trunk a b or c and they're waiting for their materials that becomes very ineffective and cost and not cost-productive okay and then what other type of surface treatments does your department do to keep the roads in good shape and well maintained after we do a paving job such as an overlay sometimes those overlays are inch and a half to two inches we'll try to get as much life for that as out of as we can and that usually is between 10 and 15 years from that point on we'll do some crack filling, maintain the cracks, seal them off so there are no moistures getting into the base and then we'll do a seal quote and we'll put on some fly ash it's a black fly ash we apply some oil first we cover it and then what it does is it seals off the any minor smaller cracks that we have and it provides another wear surface and we'll get about five to seven years out of that before we have to do some pulverizing and paving okay and how much your budget each year goes towards road maintenance and the construction of roads we about three million dollars is used for maintenance and an additional three million dollars is used for construction construction being overlays or if we're doing some some concrete repair on some of the concrete pieces that we do have like Taylor Drive that's a weak consider construction so out of that about 1.5 million dollars is used just for winter maintenance alone so it's you know it's it's hard to juggle and put a hard number on what that maintenance dollar is but it's it's all encompassed in the budget as far as what our needs are going to be and we're going to be providing the maintenance and the construction for that year. Greg there's been some questions raised about the highway department and private contractors and work that's done in different areas how do you look at that situation and and how do you respond to that well this has been coming up a lot of years even prior to me being here in my past employment at a different highway department it was the same scenario there's been a little bit more focus on it now obviously because of the downturn in the economy which everybody's well aware of in these conversations that we had everybody's available to do construction type activities but when you switch the season again and go back into your winter operations there's not a lot of people that are geared up the way we are to provide winter maintenance whether it be to the state the county or the townships so in order to do that the county in the past 100 plus years that's been providing these types of services has always supported having some type of construction activity so that their employees are supported throughout and there's a good swing you're taking care of your winter you're getting dual applications out of some of the equipment such as the trucks you can use them in the summer for hauling asphalt and gaining revenue from them there and you can also use them in the winter so there's a to me there's a perfect benefit to having that type of operation for a highway department and offer this type of service. With that I'll turn it back to Adam for some more questions on our construction projects. You did a lot in 2009 I know that you didn't take as much gravel out of the pit as you did the prior year for overlay and things of that but county trunk O was a major project for you. Touch on that a little bit please. We at the beginning of the year in spring we finished up what we had started in 2008 that was the first phase of O from Taylor Drive out to I-43 we had to do the top layer of asphalt and also the the landscaping the restoration so we got that completed we pulled off and did some stuff out for our county airport and we came back this fall and started from on O from 32 and started to work in towards the city our construction limits were from 32 of the 68th street. This year with the weather that we had in October we were was unfortunate we had to pull up a little short but we did start the first or that phase of it that phase or the the county trunk O construction will continue throughout this next coming summer also and hopefully by next fall we'll have a complete stretch from Taylor Drive all the way out to 32 with a nice piece of highway that has is going to be beneficial for cars bikes and walkers because we're using some of the non-motorized funds to assist in providing some pedestrian type facilities. I've had received some nice compliments on the work you've done out there and I know folks are anxious to see that extended next year particularly as you said with the pedestrian the biking path there what is it 12 feet wide 10 feet wide for this 10 feet wide and real nice and Mike I think in fact you went out there didn't you and tried it out yeah it's very nice and and the bike paths with our non-motorized program and of course you've had a leadership role in that that's really been a big emphasis the last few years we still have other projects ahead of us but as you look at 2010 and beyond where do you envision or where are you planning some further major construction projects including some extended bike trails we uh the planning department is looking at refurbing the old plant road trail from range line road out hopefully we'll be working on this this coming summer also the county trunk okay any intersection improvements should be happening this coming summer so that's going to be a bigger project for us and one that has created a lot of issues over the years ever since I've been here I've been hearing about that intersection and we do something about it so we're to the point where it's going to get done in the future we'll be working on we got county trunk okay from Camelot out that's in construction for 2012 out to the intersection and we work in a county trunk j in 2011 rebuilding from 32 out to Highland Road so we got a lot of bigger stuff lined up for the for the future and I don't have a lot whole list of asphalt that we're going to be doing but there's going to be a fair amount of effort 2010 also Greg's been one of our shining stars on our management team whenever we bring in new blood and he is new blood even though it's been three years uh it always brings a fresh perspective and Roger Lanning his predecessor did an excellent job as highway commissioner and Greg I think is taking it the next step and one of the things I mentioned earlier was the pressures we have on us as an organization to keep property taxes in check to continue to provide excellent quality services but not raise those taxes and when you have the challenges that we touched on earlier with whether it's salt going up or fuel going up or just wage and benefits going up it's difficult to do that and one of the reasons we've been successful the last three years and holding the line on property taxes and in fact reducing property taxes is because we've looked at some of our major departments and done an operational review the highway department recently did one and I know you're looking to reduce some staff as you mentioned earlier through attrition and another thing recently you've been focusing on is whether or not we could consolidate a shed or two to garner some efficiencies and cost savings there we only have a couple of minutes but briefly touch on what your plans are there we have a facility down in Adel that's one of our satellite sheds that and we also have one that's about five miles away in cascade that we're looking to combine the equipment and men and move them to either a salt site facility there's right off I-43 over to cascade and closing that facility it's probably not going to happen this winter but in spring we will be shutting that that facility down we should be garnering the savings of about a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars a year with labor and also not having to maintain and insure and and and heat that building so that is one of the things that we're looking at for 2010 to get that that facility closed and I know that's not easy to do whenever it's changed whether it's the highway department or any other it's challenging and the operation reviews have you know brought in a again another objective person if you would or team to look at our operations and make suggestions then ultimately we look at that and make decisions it's happened in the highway department we saved literally millions of dollars by privatizing Sonny Ridge and consolidating our health care center to Rocky Knoll we consolidated UW Extension with UW Sheboygan and this fine facility they're tickled with their new office here at UW Sheboygan we consolidated our health and human services aging and disability resource center now in the Sheboygan Falls site saving us about 200,000 dollars a year we consolidated our real property listing with our treasurer's office and certainly as chairman van der Stee knows all of these steps have helped us including the good work you've done at the highway department to hold the line in fact provide some modest property tax relief I think what we would all agree though is there may not be too many more of those opportunities ahead of us we're all striving to continue to gain efficiencies and get creative but at some point when you have the pressures that we do financially how long we'll be able to continue that track record time will tell Greg we only have a minute left anything else you wanted to share or share with our viewers oh I just want to wish everybody a very healthy and happy holidays and stay safe on the roads we'll do the best we can to get you where you need to be thank you Greg Schnell highway commissioner if you have any questions for the highway department's suggestions constructive criticism Greg's got thick skin and let me tell you it does a fantastic job don't hesitate to contact Greg directly or one of his staff and and certainly Mike and I are always open to suggestions for programs to focus on or any ideas you have and how your county government could be more effective so until then next month our land and water conservation director pat miles will be with us to talk about the good work he's doing and again until then have a merry christmas happy new year stay safe