 Welcome to Sheboyton County government working for you. My name is Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Tom Wagner and as you know every month we strive to bring a different department or some key programs and services to talk about what good is happening in Sheboyton County and some of the very good people involved and today we are so pleased to have our Transportation Director with us Mr. Greg Chanel. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Greg has it been 10 years or close now? It'll be 10 in October. 10 years in October. 10 productive years. A lot going on in the transportation department and that's what we're going to focus on is a little high end overview. You may have read in the paper that there are some key initiatives underway with our transportation department or system and let's get right into it. Let's talk a little bit about the miles of roadway Greg. I think you shared with the county board just last week that we have 450 miles of county roads in Sheboyton County to take care of fifth largest amount of all 72 counties. That's correct. Talk a little bit about the roads and what's involved. Well there's a every other year on odd years we have to do a rating system. It's provided to us by the state of Wisconsin called the Spaser system and that's how we determine what that road needs whether what kind of surface if it's going to need a seal coat an overlay or a pulverizing pave. So as we stand today we need about 70 or 272 miles of paving that needs to get done on our county highway system whether it's an overlay or a pulverize or in pave that's where those numbers are. The rating system goes from one to 10 one being the worst 10 being the highest and that's how we determine where we're going to go and what needs to what needs to work and what type of work. So I get that questions periodically you know how do you determine what roads to focus on how do you establish priorities and it's this system that's really you statewide is it not? That's correct. We have to every other year we have to submit that to the state so they know what types of conditions our roads are in so every municipality throughout the state of Wisconsin has to submit that every year. One being the worst 10 being the best. That's correct. So what would be the example of a one or two that's really in rough shape? Where you see a lot of the alligator cracking where the there's potholes and some of the materials lifted out where there's water standing after a rain in the wheel rutting those are things that we're going to start to look at if their shoulder is real narrow that's a that's an indicator for us as well we're not supporting asphalt that's there and a lot of times we start to lose that the the integrity of the shoulder of the road and because of those issues. And with 272 miles of roads that need resurfacing that's the number you just used right? That's correct. 272 miles out of 450 we can't do that all in one year how do you establish priorities on which ones you're going to address and how much we can do? Well it's it's one of those things where when we look at the the roads we look at ADTs the where's the traffic going what type of involvement is in that road are we supporting businesses are we supporting large agriculture is the road getting worse as it's staying in that kind of condition sometimes we need to invest in our newer roads before we invest in those really bad ones because we need to support what's there and before it goes the other way. So when we're looking at doing those types of criteria we look at drainage water is one of our worst enemies we'd like to keep that off the surface out of the ditches so it runs and gets away from our base so it doesn't get sucked into the base of the road and cause soft areas. So we'll look at that we'll look at safety conditions and then we'll look at the the average daily traffic ADT and if we're supporting that business that has a lot of trucking traffic and just to get their employees in and out in a safe manner that's how we'll establish some of that criteria. I imagine most of our viewers have been reading in the newspaper about the needs for maintaining our transportation system not only in the city of Sheboygan, Sheboygan County but statewide. If we have 450 miles of roads that means we need to service on average about 30 miles a year to keep up how much does it cost to resurface just one mile of road? An overlay that's about 24 inches wide. Two and a half inches thick is going to cost us approximately $120,000. Depends upon how close it is to the plant. 24 feet wide. 24 feet wide is the top that's the surface of it and then it's a two and a half inches thick. What we do is when we look at that road and we check out the the wheel running on it we're going with a half inch layer to level up the road to get the proper slope on it and then we'll cover that with the other remaining two inches so we're filling in the lower spots in order so that we have a full depth of pavement all the way across. So to recap if we have 450 miles of just county roads and we have to do on average about 30 miles a year to keep up and it costs just for the overlay $120,000 for each mile that means just to maintain our surfaces we're talking $3.6 million a year. Correct. Is that right? Yep. And I think as most people appreciate in addition to county roads we also have a number of bridges in the community. How many bridges is the county responsible for? We are responsible for in my job title we're responsible for all the bridges in Sheboygan county that are on the state and not in the state but on the county and local system which is 152 bridges 73 of those are owned by the county the other 79 are owned by the municipalities the townships villages and cities. So there's a lot of road work out there to take care of and as one of the largest counties with the fifth highest number of roads people can begin to appreciate why we have some serious financial concerns with how we're going to maintain this transportation system. Last question before I turn it over to Chairman Wagner if you don't keep up with this you know you painted a picture earlier well if we do this you know 30 miles a year just the overlay $120,000 per mile or $3.6 million for the 30 miles a year if we don't keep up with that and as you know in Sheboygan county and across the state because of limited resources we are falling behind what happens? The next the next course that we would take is where you got to pulverize that road so we bring in a big tiller if you will and we till up all the asphalt that's there and we get into the base bring it all together and then we find grade it make a fresh new base out of it and then we'll come with four and a half inches of new asphalt over the top of that that ultimately is going to cost us about $250,000 a mile in order to do that. Now we're starting out with a fresh brand new level of asphalt of four and a half inches thick but that's 400 or $250,000 a mile. So 120,000 for one mile of just a new service two and a half inches on that surface $250,000 for one mile if we have to pulverize and pave which isn't unusual right and then the third and final step that I know you've shared is that if we have to completely rebuild that same one mile of road because we've just pushed it off what's that going to cost taxpayers? $1.2 million to reconstruct fully reconstruct and that's all new base all new ditches all new drainage system new gravel and new asphalt is $1.2 million. Thanks for the open Greg. You're welcome. Thank you Adam. Welcome Greg. As you know the transportation department in the county is the third largest one following our public safety and health and human services you've got I believe about a $14 million budget. Could you give us a little overview on how that's allocated? Sure we a lot of our $14 million we have it we've allocated about $7 million of that is allocated towards wages and insurance that type of stuff benefits after that we have to take out all of our fuels our utility costs our building upgrades you name it the rest of it gets lumped in there as well as the paving so there's not that much to go around after you fix 600 pieces of equipment if they all need some work take care of utility utility bills fix your doors and do some of the potholes and patching and snow removal all that stuff is rolled into the the whole entire $14 million our revenue revenue then on the other side of that comes from we get about four and a half million dollars worth of tax levy annually that includes our equipment purchases we get $2.5 million in general transportation needs it's provided by the state we also incorporate about $1.2 million that comes from the townships that we the work we do for them another $2 million that comes from the state when we do their work as well so when we take care of their work for everything that we do on their work road whether it's materials trucking the labor those costs are all covered by those entities be it the towns or be it the state just one thing if you could just repeat it again I think that's a really a fairly large number how many pieces of equipment do we have in about 600 ranging from a weed eater to an asphalt right that's a lot of pieces of equipment obviously they're not all running at the same time because we don't have that many people working for the county correct but that's still a lot of pieces of equipment it is without question well thanks as you know the county is considering implementing the half a percent sales tax and 62 counties have done that already and we're going to address our transportation needs with this and could you give a recap about why you think that proposal is important well it's it opens up another door for some revenue and get some some work done that we've just all talked about it where we pave on average about 18 miles a year we're falling 12 miles short of our 30 miles that means we're deferring 12 miles annually that's getting added on and added on and added on as I indicated earlier 272 miles out of that 272 miles there's 130 of those miles that need to be pulverized and paved those are the ones that cost you $250,000 per mile there's also some reconstructions in there as well but there's a backlog of work that we need to take care of and this proposal is going to provide some some some help in order to get that done as well as take us off of the borrowing system so that that can also be in turn put to the taxpayers as far as relief and debt service and provide a little bit of payment for our municipalities who are hurting as well as far as their infrastructure and transportation needs go beyond our situation I've been reading recently how deferring some of these major projects I think they had one in Verona or whatever on the interstate there that they had estimated the DOT a four-year delay it increased the cost about 65 percent that seemed rather large but I know deferring these different things we don't have those kind of major projects but deferring the maintenance in the end cost the taxpayers money absolutely that's what drives us to get into the situation where we have to go into a complete reconstruction it's no different than if you look at your home you're going to make that investment if you're not going to annually do things to upgrade and protect your base and protect things around it protect the rough you're not going to protect the insides so if we don't protect the rest of our road and our base similar to your home it's going to cost you more money in the future to make those types of improvements and and maintenance needs to do thanks I know one of the other things in the half a percent sales tax proposals that would just be unique to Sheboyin County and the other 62 out of the 72 have the tax do this but we're looking to share some of this with the local municipalities the cities towns and villages and just wondering if the condition of local roads and bridges are part of the reason why we're doing that any thoughts you want to add on that absolutely in our department we we have a contract with 11 out of the 15 townships plus the state of Wisconsin we have a contract with them as well so we have our fingers and a lot of our fingers other than county business and a lot of the advice that is given to these townships and what they can do and try to save money and and and make their roads last a little bit longer comes from our department so we heard the other side of things and what their roads look like and the challenges that they're up against and and some of the things I've heard about listening to the from the heads of local government is you know we can handle our fire situations we can handle our fire trucks and we can handle the rest of the stuff that's coming to us one thing we can handle is the amount of transportation needs that we're all faced with right now and being a lot or being a little every municipality is going to be helped out by this and and every little bit counts and helps in this situation yeah I'm guessing in some instances some of those roads are carrying a lot bigger equipment and heavier equipment than they were probably originally designed to carry to in some instances absolutely some of this stuff was laid out back in the 1860s and years ago when they didn't have the materials that they currently produce they just rolled the top saw in and then they put some pavement over the top of it that's not going to support a 28,000 or 28,000 pound tractor anymore back in 1916 when roads were built tractors weighed 9,000 pounds so it's taking a lot and you know one thing we can't forget is that not every manufacturer or farm is on a state highway where it's built to handle load they still have to get there and they get there from the local road to the county trunk to the state road in order to move those products thanks and could you just talk about a little bit about that we're into the summer construction season and the orange barrel season without question some of the projects that you have going on this summer sure this is one of the first in the 10 years that I've been here that we don't have a large earth moving project however we do have some other projects we'll be doing a road extension on county trunk idon and adel working with the village and extending it out a little bit further one of our major paving projects is county trunk c starting at state highway 57 heading east to sunset road what we'll be doing there is milling off the asphalt that's there breaking the concrete that's underneath there because that was old state highway 23 and pulverizing or mobilizing that down to three inches and then we'll be putting the material back over to top and then paving that it's about a million dollar project that we'll be working on there it's about four miles of road we'll make a little wider make a little safer because there's a lots of traffic that goes between falls and and plinth and there's been some shoulder issues that we're trying to resolve with this paving project as well so we're going to handle some safety concerns at the intersection of m and c put some curbing radiuses in there fix the drainage so it's a larger project for us so we're going to focus our resources on that and we have a lot of state work some of you may have seen it on state highway 57 we did 22 miles of seal cody right off the beginning of june here that was a state project where we were able to do it for them and it turned out to be about a 450,000 hour project so we ran a very good year this year and we got a lot of municipal work to do as well and thanks adam thank you tom let me just set three captains and share a few facts directly with our viewers today because obviously bragg now is well aware of the proposal as his chairman wagner and former chairman roger distruity who's a strong advocate of it our transportation lady many others the fact is our transportation system is critical for economic development and supporting our quality of life in shingles that's a fact the fact is that over the last decade costs associated with maintaining our transportation system more than doubled the fact is that the state has imposed a one size fits all property tax cap on most units of government and therefore raising property taxes is not an option frankly even if it was an option most people see the property tax as one of the least desirable taxes they receive because that big old bills shows up right around the holidays we have to take care of our transportation system our parents and grandparents built these roads and bridges and i think we all have a responsibility to continue that investment and take care of them take care of them it's also a fact that if we don't if we continue to push this off kick this can down the road we are all going to pay far more because that 120 000 turns into 250 000 a mile versus 1.2 million a mile it is fiscally responsible to take care of our roads today then push this off and let the next generation of people worry about it so personally i really commend german wegener county board greg and others who have put this proposal together it is dedicated toward our transportation system a dedicated funding source 62 of 72 counties have already implemented a half person sales tax we're not reinventing the wheel and we're not doing it just because they have we're doing it because we have a need and it's time we will reduce our borrowing as a result of doing this and that will provide direct property tax relief so there are a number of things going on with this proposal including as we discussed a few minutes ago sharing some of the revenue with other local units of government to help them with their with their challenges so big initiative for the county board we're going to have a vote next month on this and again greg i want to compliment you and your team and the leadership that you put into this thank you uh in addition to this proposal to maintain our transportation system and this is where we'll end there's also discussion about a new transportation complex and some people have gotten these two a little confused and the fact is that the county has a five-year capital plan the county board has a five-year capital plan we've planned for this new transportation complex now for years we've purchased the property and one of the beauties of the proposal is we're going to be consolidating three facilities into one we're consolidating three facilities into one so it's a tremendous investment in new infrastructure a new building a new transportation complex to take care of all this equipment that you have to have to run a highway department but the plan was to bond for that to borrow for that as we generally do for major building projects the half person sales tax is not to be used for the new facility and again we're consolidating three facilities into one so with that said with that background talk a little bit about why this transportation complex is important and why the county board is pursuing this now well it's an opportunity we uh back in 2014 i believe we had we'd looked at the facilities at plymouth and elkhart lake and we looked at what kind of money we'd be needing to invest in the next 10 to 15 years and the number was starting to grow we were close to a million bucks or so between the two and as those conversations had taken off um we started to think back to a decade ago when the new transportation complex was was considered as well and it was in in the five-year capital plan and we talked about so we thought let's take our opportunity and get us all underneath one roof those three facilities and consolidate less than our footprint and have less buildings to take care of so that's what started the conversation and now today led to having 37 acres at the intersection of j in third and state highway 67 we are into design um we uh i guess years ago when when when the buildings were constructed back in 1947 in 1983 nobody really knew that we'd be plowing with a quad axle truck that measures 54 feet from front to back with a plow and a sander on it so our space is getting cramped our facilities are getting older and at this time it's a it's a wise time to invest and it's going to reduce our footprint and put some other valuable properties on the market i know we had an operational review of our transportation department a number of years ago and i think at that time we had seven highway sheds and we reduced it by one that's correct yeah correctly if i'm wrong i'm building this from memory so we've gone from seven to six and then in this situation now we would be reducing our footprint even further the main headquarters in shabuigan the old main department headquarters would uh we would be able to return that to the private sector put it back in tax role yes the facility implement and the facility in elkhart lake so again consolidating three facilities into one you just touched on the age of these facilities and could you walk through us through that again quick elkhart lake is was built in 1947 the first piece of it then there was a fire at one point and they they came back in 1995 or 93 i'm not exactly sure on the date and they put up another stand alone metal shed uh plymouth it stands on a almost an 80 acre parcel and it's built in 1983 it's got a couple salt sheds with it and square footage is about 28 000 square feet um our manatoir i'm sorry shabuigan facility is on 8.35 acres and it's right near the police station as well as the shabuigan clinic so very valuable properties it's located next to an office complex so i think there's a multiple things that could be utilized there all of these uh facilities what year was that 1954 54 1954 correct so they're all in in in pretty decent condition for the condition they're in and for the ages they are um but very marketable slots you know you can see the one implement from 23 so it's got a nice location and the elkhart lake is on state highway 67 so um i think the timing's right it would be great to get us all under there are going to gain some efficiencies by having just the the general communication between my staff instead of having everybody spread out over those three facilities it'd be our administration our shop all the overhead cranes all of that it's not just a garage the housing equipment that's that's the place where we're going to be putting everything together and fabricating things that we need to have in the field so i think it will be a great opportunity for us to communicate collaborate and gain some efficiencies as well travel time for our workforce to come back and forth to the city of shabuigan which may have made sense in 1954 but doesn't anymore correct and as you know and german wagner knows we already have a offer to purchase the property in elkhart lake and we have some interest in plymouth and i know we'll have interest in our facility in the city shabuigan because it's fine for development whether they continue with the building or add something new so anyway it's solidating from three facilities to one and uh there hasn't been a lot of public discussion about it because the press hasn't really covered that but from a standpoint of being in the plans and discussed by transportation committee and and board members it's been in the works for years correct we're now we're pretty far along uh as far as the the design goes we publicly we haven't put anything out yet because we really haven't put our support all into one um site location but we have reduced the square footage from the day one we started down to today and i think we're probably going to be in that 125 000 square foot range which is a huge huge building um but i think that we're going to put the nice the nicer look to it so it fits the landscape better and it doesn't just look like a big box out in the middle of the field and that's our challenge we've looked at other transportation facilities and they tend to look very what's precast it's precast cement and yeah they can't they don't look real pretty but we wanted to at least be sensitive to the neighborhood there and and i'm sure there'll be a decision made by the county board and what's the right answer there but uh major investment how long will the building like this last the community we're looking at 80 plus years that's what we should be getting out of it so the return on our investment should be there and it should be a facility that we can all be proud of as well as our our next generations can can utilize for a long long time well great overview gregg i just have so much respect for you and your staff thank you not only do you have a tremendous amount of responsibility taken care of our transportation system but you're doing it with less workforce than ever before when we had that operation review done a number of years ago we actually downsized our our highway department as well as many other departments through the course of the last 10 years at one point i think you had 117 117 today we're used to have 117 and now you're closer to 90 at 90 yeah i mean we're a leaner yet our level of responsibility has gotten greater and then i also wanted to uh come back full circle to tell them what you said about these escalating costs you've got an example that you read the other example that i think everyone in our community is aware of is highway 23 correct i mean this was enumerated decades ago budgeted some time ago has been held up due to a lawsuit and while this has all been going on people have been injured people have died we have key community leaders who have been saying we need to get this done and i think the cost has gone from what in the 40 millions to well over 100 million over this course of time it's remarkable what's happening for maintaining or improving our transportation system it is it's unless you have your own wings it's getting more costly it is you know we've been told even with the building project that you know the longer you put that off your talk anywhere between three and five percent a year just in just in material cost only that's not labor equipment and everything that's associated with getting that structure at that facility built so yeah it can add up in a very very fast time to millions of dollars the more and more delays we get okay just one quick that there are two quick things on highway 23 i used to travel that road a lot from plummet the fine lack and still do a little bit i just find it's a dangerous road unfortunately i've seen some accidents and certainly read about them and seen some near misses so i eventually will have to wait out the the judge will make his ruling and i'm hoping that will progress and also one of the other things i want to point out on the half a percent sales taxes at about 18 cents on the dollar will be paid on people coming outside of our county that we don't recoup at this point and i think there's some value in that to the county taxpayers yeah excellent point when all these folks are visiting the other 62 counties that have a half percent sales tax they're helping support their transportation infrastructure and law enforcement or whatever they may be applying it to them we're not capturing that so excellent point time also we have a lot to be proud of here that people can come and see and then check out so absolutely thank you for your leadership 10 years 10 years hard to believe how quickly the time is gone you should really go back to 10 years ago see oh i looked that yeah i know we both have a few of us right here thank you for your leadership thanks teamwork that you provide through your department a lot of good things happening and thank you for joining us today a lot of significant challenges going on in county government and at all levels of government particularly with transportation and there's some folks out there concerned with all the barrels up and navigating through our community right now i mean there's just a lot going on but a lot of good people and play helping make this community wonderful so thanks for joining us if you have any questions suggestions don't hesitate to contact any of us or your county board supervisor next month we're going to have wendy our finance director here and she's going to be talking about the budget process so until then thanks for joining us