 to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name's Adam Payne, the Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Bill Gehring. And today we have a very special guest in light of the weather and the road conditions our Highway Commissioner, Greg Schnell. Greg, good to have you here. Thanks for having me. We're gonna talk a little bit about the roles and responsibilities of the Highway Department. Greg's been Highway Commissioner for about 14 months. That's correct. And definitely hit the ground running. And Greg, please start by sharing a little bit about your role as Highway Commissioner. Well, as you said, this is one of our most challenging times of the year as far as winter and making sure that everybody's got a safe way to get to work and an opportunity to get to work, obviously. We depend greatly upon that commerce. And the position of Highway Commissioner is a lot of times challenging and most of the time rewarding. You get to see projects start to finish and it then be evolved in a lot of different programs and get to meet a lot of special people in my position. And you came to this position with a real breadth of experience. You previously were in Manitowoc County for how many years? 17. 17 years. Yes. I worked my way up through there and worked my way into a management position and was fortunate enough to get hired on here and I really like being here. Now, many of our viewers might be thinking, well, Highway Department, how complicated is that? But there's really a lot going on depending on the season with the Highway Department. Please give a brief overview of what the Highway Department all entails. Well, our Highway Department is very progressive in construction. We like to build roads and maintain and we own our own asphalt plant, our own crushing plant, so we produce and lay down our own asphalt and aggregate. We construct, like I said, so a lot of our planning goes, it's three to five years out as far as our larger construction projects and some of the funding that goes along with it plus the seasonal things that go along with it and the maintenance to mow the grass and control the vegetation and patch and shoulder, all those stuff that goes into it. So it's just a year on a continuous cycle, year to year, it's the same things, but sometimes it's different roles that you go into. And at this time, most of the emphasis is keeping the roads ice-free and snow-free. That's correct. And we've been challenged so far, not challenged so much, we're putting our equipment to use, which we're not normally used to in December. It seems to be, has been a slow month for the last couple of years and now we're bearing its wrath early. So we're taking care of business and I think so far it's panned out pretty well for us. How many employees do you have and what's the general components of the department? We have 117 employees currently. 103 of those are union employees which have job classifications that they perform. We have six potline shed district supervisors and they keep control of the individuals or the employees that are in that area and send them out to their work functions. We have seven staff in the office that are arranged from patrol superintendents from an engineer to administrative assistant and bookkeepers. And as you said, right now folks are real busy keeping the roads clear. Well, we say that, what are we talking about? How many roads do you have to maintain throughout the year? Sheboygan County is probably one of the largest in the states as far as how many miles of road it maintains. We have a hundred and 450 miles, I'm sorry, of lane miles of road. We also maintain 170 miles of state road and 465 miles of town roads. So we do have a lot of responsibility as far as what we have to maintain and keep clear. Let's repeat that one for our viewers. So there's a total of 450. County miles. County miles. In addition to the 450 county miles, you also maintain, say that again, please. 170 miles of state road and 465 miles of township road. That's a lot of road. Yes, it is. Our responsibilities are our priorities are we maintain the state county townships and then we go into some of the villages that we also take care of. So we wanna try to make sure that the main connectors, the larger volume, ADTs, the average daily traffic is taken care of and from there we spread out and take care of the rest of the stuff. So if you interact with someone who has absolutely no feel for the highway department in a snapshot, what would you describe as the primary roles and responsibilities of the department? Our primary roles and responsibilities would consist of the maintenance, making sure that we're providing that safe and reliable transportation that people need to get to work. We wanna make sure that we don't have potholes that are causing damages or could cause accidents. We wanna make sure that the roads are free of snow and ice so that obviously we all can get to work and generate dollars and make sure that the goods and services are delivered on time so that we all have something to do when we get to work. It's not just the commuters that have to get to work at the school and get their social activities. We need to give commerce in and out in order to keep everybody busy, especially in this county we're very factory orientated that depend upon goods and services coming from without. And before I turn it over to Chairman Gearing, I know that your department is overseen by the Transportation Committee and the Transportation Committee oversees the airport, that department, and you and Chuck Mayer have an excellent working relation from time to time your crew is working out at the airport. How's that work? We, Chuck works with the Federal Bureau of Aeronautics in order to expand our airport and has been very progressive in doing that over the last many years with the airport expansion. And our crews are called on and we can, we are asked to provide estimates for cost and we can go out there and essentially help Chuck build and keep our services going along with that help and it's paid for partially by the federal government. So it's a win-win for everybody, helps us get our airport to the size we'd like it to be, to keep it growing and helping the industry that we're supporting here. Excellent, thank you, Greg. Greg, as you know, in my other capacity, I'm also a town chairman. I know that the Highway Department works very closely with municipalities, villages and the state. How do you coordinate all of those projects? It's, well, first of all, we have good staff. We have people that are willing to step forth and do what it takes to get the job done. That's what needs to get done at the time. We, at every different level, we have people that town chairman such as yourself can contact and get the job done. If it's not getting done, they can contact me and we'll make sure they get that done. The coordination level is, everybody knows what seasons we always come into and we go full circle. So depending upon the service, if it's no removal, we know that this is the winter season we're gonna take care of business. Summer season, when we do our paving and we do those types of needs or you have those types of things done, contact us, we'll get it taken care of. The communication is the top thing. It's key to making your township be progressive and stick with the planet you have in place and us communicating with the people that supply us with the building needs that we have and to get the job taken care of. Okay, I firmly believe that there's a benefit for a township, a village to contract with the county to do their work. Can you tell our viewers what those benefits might be? Well, if you look at the, as I mentioned earlier, we have six different sheds that are strategically placed throughout the county and from those sheds we can supply different services to the area, the township, the village that's in that area and get the service taken care of. Insane, that way the village, the township doesn't have to have a building to maintain their equipment, a salt shed to store their salt, even the equipment or the employee, if that's the direction they take that they wouldn't have to pay the benefits and the wages for, they can contract us. We provide the service and we feel we have provided an efficient manner that takes care of everybody's needs and you don't have to be maintaining that equipment day after day, you get a rental rate charged to you that we get established by the state and we pass that on. Okay, what is your total budget for your department and what part of that budget would be accounted for with the winter snow plowing and salting and those activities? Our budget for 2007 is 15, almost $16 million. Anywhere between $1 million to $1.5 is normally what we'd spend on an average winter. This year we're up a little bit. If we all could be back up and remember January, February, March of last year and the latter part of that, those months we've gotten really hard with the heavy wet snow, the stuff that's hard to get rid of and it causes more heartache and headache and sometimes it takes more equipment to get that off the road. Those dollars added up. This year we're a little bit higher than what we normally would like to be and now December is definitely not helping to cause. What is the variety of equipment we have out there to attack the snow and what would be the cost to handle the average two inch snowfall like we had a couple days ago? In that type of event we would send out about 40 snow plows and again they're taking care of the state, the county and the township. So those are, and once they complete their state routes and their county routes they're gonna go and assist in helping the town roads and get that stuff taken care of so everybody can get done at the approximate time or the same time. The average cost, it can vary depending upon the timing. If it's a weekend obviously the removal is gonna be done on the weekend but if it's during the week it would generate anywhere between 20 to $50,000 and obviously there's a lot of other things that come into play. If you're gonna get wind and drifting and all that stuff, sometimes after the storm is where the cost comes in when you have to try to get pushed that stuff back and it's a constant maintenance going back to that same drift because it's out into the middle of the road and you can't control it anymore because it's not getting caught up on anything. So it's kind of a loaded question and I hope I answered your question. Sure, kind of off the skift. Do we still have a couple of Oshkoshes and snow blowers, should it really get bad? Yes we do. We did get rid of some of the Oshkosh trucks. We had 20 of them and we're down to 12 and we have them placed at our outlying district sheds that we can still support. There is some areas in the county that the roads and ditches won't take the capacity of snow that we'd like to and there's a potential that they could get blocked at some time and those are the pieces of equipment we're gonna need to open that up. So we felt comfortable keeping two at each outlying shed to provide that service. And then is there new technology that the Highway Department is using to deal with the weather? The state has provided us with a contracted service that they notify us two hours prior to an event and they put a classification on that if it's got 30% probability of precipitation that could affect pavements they're gonna call our supervisor on a call to put them on alert that you have this coming and it could be freezing rain or it could change over at this time. So we have a person that we can contact basically it's a meteorologist that's gonna give us the information we need as far as pavement temperatures what the wind direction is gonna be what the wind is gonna be. That's a great tool. We also in our supervisors trucks the state has provided us with surface temperature gauges so that when our guys are out there and depending upon what the pavement temperature is can gauge how much salt we use. If the pavement temperature is up a little bit it's gonna take a little less salt to get the ice and snow off whereas if it's too cold or cold we're gonna have to put down more salt. So there's just a few of the things that we use and then to gauge how much snow we're gonna get throughout the year we usually go out to the marsh and check how high the muskrat houses are to see and gauge the depth of snow. Have the meteorologists been pretty accurate if they see it's gonna start snowing at 330 in the southern part of the county will it happen then? You know that's just like watching the news. They're all looking at the same radars some have a different take on it but our experience is that and what they have told us is very difficult to predict the late fall, early winter weather because of the jet streams and all that stuff once they get through January they can kind of predict how things are gonna go but for the most part sometimes we use the old adage wait until it hits the ground and we'll tell you what we're gonna get. Then do you have any recommendations for our drive result there how they can be of assistance when they come up to a snow plow? The best thing is is to stay back keep your distance obviously if you can't see the operator when he's sitting there and he's looking in his mirror he can't see you and give us time we'll get to where you want to be you might get there a little later but we're gonna get you to where you want to be so give us some time and some space. And then are there any resources that I could call if I wondered how the road conditions were in Trevegan County or Manitowoc County? 1-800-ROAD-WIS would be the overall picture of Wisconsin you can during business hours which are seven to three thirty during the winter at the highway department between Monday and Friday you can call us and we'll provide the information as well as we can as far as road conditions and we get a lot of calls for I-43 and State Highway 23 to see even if they want to see if our plows are out there and our services that we provide for the winter maintenance during the week we have pretty much 24-hour coverage although in the evenings it's limited to only two people that are on there taking care of the hotspots or just monitoring what's going on I think the hotspots is after we got I-C bridges and stuff like that that they can take care of but typically if we had snow overnight most of our guys would be in by three thirty four o'clock in the morning so we can make a complete round on all of our county and state roads by seven and then we start branching out from there. Well I'm glad you're in Trevegan County came to us from Manitowoc County you're doing a great job I appreciate that, thank you Bill. And I'm glad to hear that you're checking out the muskrat how soon do you want to know how deep the snow is going to be. I figured you'd like that. I haven't heard that one for some time. What can we expect based on that? I haven't physically looked myself. Personally haven't. I may have to do that yet. Have to get Ed Harvey out. That's right, exactly. And have him take a look. Well speaking of you know being relatively new to us 14 months out the time has flown but you followed the shoes of Roger Landing who was a well respected highway commissioner for a long time for Sheboygan County did a great job and you had big shoes to fill as you know and as Chairman Gearing mentioned you've made good things happen in your short tenure you've already shown a real command of the area and the operation and just in general what are your impressions of the Sheboygan County Highway Department. I love the growth. There's a lot of potential. There's building going on. We have great support from the county board and yourself Adam and Transportation Committee. It's great to be involved. Our department like I said earlier is very proactive in construction. I like that. That's a great thing. We have a lot of stuff to offer and there's a lot of stuff in Sheboygan that Sheboygan has to offer in Sheboygan County in general and it's a great place to even raise my kids. We're here now and we moved here and it's been nice and you guys have welcomed me very well and I appreciate that very much. With the back to the conditions that people are dealing with today the winter conditions I got up and drove to work from the town of Plymouth this morning and was anticipating things are gonna be a little slick out there with the freezing that occurred last night and that those wet roads were gonna freeze and that I might have to take it a little slower this morning. And I was pleasantly surprised that the roads were in good shape particularly Highway 23 coming all the way into Sheboygan. We know that's your route so we kind of did that. You make sure that gets covered, right? What's to give our viewers a feel for just what happens, your staff are out there at what, 5 a.m. already? Aren't they helping with the commuter? What's the general game plan in that day to make sure that commute is as safe as possible? We, well again, we go back to the monitoring of the weather making sure we know what's coming the night before and obviously in the off hours, on the weekends we're not providing that 24 hour coverage the Sheriff's departments are eyes and ears. They're gonna let us know call our supervisor on call and say we have some conditions out there that need to be taken care of. So in that respect, our supervisor are gonna check that out and see what size of crew is gonna be needed to take care of what we have going on. So we work hand in hand with the Sheriff's department in order to make some of those calls and to make sure that we're covering and providing it safe and way into work or way to the social event. Like I said, throughout the week we have people on 24 hours. There's a little lapse of the second shift from the first shift and a little lapse from second into third but we pretty much got it all covered and if we need more at night we bring in more resources. So literally people are plowing all night long and first thing in the morning? Yep, and in the off, when there's not snow to be removed we have plenty of equipment to maintain. There's 600 pieces of equipment at our department that need something done to them so we have, there's plenty of things to do. As you look at the last year and the initiatives, the projects, the different things you've been involved in, give our viewers a flavor for that. What have been some of the major projects that the Highway Department was involved with? We had finished up the, there was a county trunk eye in a village of Adel which is a section of road that turned into just a real nice piece of highway now. There's retaining walls, new sidewalk, new curb and gutter. It was a joint effort between us and the village. We reconstructed a county trunk PEP between Willow Road and 57 Joint Project between us and the city of Plymouth. We made the pavement wider so they'll accommodate bike traffic in the future for their industrial park. And then one of the major ones that we just finished up at the last part of the year, here's the Interurban Trail, the connection between Woosburg and Cedar Grove which has been utilized a lot by even Adam and myself. Greg and I had a chance to bike that and it wasn't a pretty picture but we certainly enjoyed that, about a three mile stretch. It's just beautiful if you haven't gotten out to the Interurban Trail again between Woosburg and Cedar Grove. Beautiful stretch of non-motorized. And that piece goes all the way through Milwaukee and all the way down to Interurban Trail as a long piece and it starts here in Sheboygan and we hope to in the future continue that through Sheboygan. You gave a nice overview of the areas your department's involved with but one you didn't touch on until just now is you personally have been involved with the non-motorized transportation program for Sheboygan County and the opportunity to improve some of our networks throughout the county. If I recall correctly, we're gonna have some improvements made to the old Plank Trail along 23 here next year, isn't that right? That's correct. There's a section that had not been rebuilt or hasn't been built to the standards that the section from County Trunk M to the West, yeah to the West was. And there's an opportunity here with, there's a major gas line that'll be running across Sheboygan County and they're gonna utilize some of that right away which in turn doesn't sound good but they're gonna wreck some of the trail that's currently there. So we're gonna get that built up to standards and hopefully continue to build all the way out to County Trunk M in the future with some of that non-motorized money. We also have some non-motorized money going to extending pay of shoulders on County Trunk A and M and we applied for some for County Trunk O in connection with our construction project that's gonna take us from Taylor Drive and eventually all the way out to 32. So it's gonna do a lot of good things. Some of it's a little challenging at this early start of it but there's no boiler plate set in stone we're a pilot program and there's a lot of things that are all learning as we progress through the process. Another activity that folks have been keeping their eyes on locally is just what's happening with Highway 23 and the kind of the ongoing saga when it's gonna become a four lane and will it be 2010 or 12 or 14 and there's been some discussions amongst legislators locally about that but where the rubber hits the road is the work that you and your staff do and I know that you've already been doing some work to prepare for that. I think some people are of the impression well nothing's really happened yet and things won't get rolling until after 2010 but what are some of the activities already in play to expand 23 from a two lane to a four lane? There's a real estate division at the DOT has been progressively buying properties and trying to buy the right away that's gonna be in need for expanding that to a four lane. Currently our department is demoing demolition on a barn that's on the right on the Fundal Action Boykin County line that was a fireman that was bought up by the state in order to enhance the road. So there is progression being made and I think it's gonna happen it's just that we have to cut through some of the red tape and get to the construction. What are some of the major projects you have coming up in 2008? 2008 is gonna be a tremendously busy year for our department. We, through the help of yourself and the finance we're gonna be doing some creative accounting for the construction wise we're gonna be building County Trunk V which is two and a half miles of rule road. We're building three quarters of a mile of County Trunk O from Taylor to I-43 plus with freeing up some money and doing some different things and in our capital projects we're gonna be paving about 25 to 30 miles of road. That's gonna be a very aggressive year and we have also some road to relocate at the airport so lots of construction next year we're looking forward to it and we're just in the process now of putting together our schedule just so that we have everything lined up so we can continue to flow. And none of that gets done if the County Board doesn't appropriate the dollars you need to make it happen and as you said the budget for the highway department looks pretty good for 08 and in part because of the sale of Sunny Ridge and some other things that allowed the County Board to move more resources to departments that the last few years it really had to tighten their belt more and more. And you touched on an area with the overlay I recall a report that your staff prepared a couple of years ago now where we weren't really keeping up with some of those maintenance or overlay responsibilities we're hoping to give that a little kick here in 08 as you just touched on. But what about the future? How do you see the cost of fuel and oil impacting your budget and your ability to keep up with this work? Well, it's a stretch it's gonna be a challenge and we're not alone. Everybody's faced with the same things and obviously if oil's going up on asphalt and it's going up for all of us to heat our homes and to drive our vehicles and what it does is it challenges us to find other alternatives or do different things in order to stretch that dollar and we're working at those where there's all our alternatives as far as using different types of oil like waste oil in order to heat your asphalt plant so you don't have to depend upon all those other resources that you have to buy and import it from other countries. So there's ways that are getting around it but it's gonna take a lot of time and bureaucracy to get to that point but I think in the future there's gonna be strides made in order to provide a cheaper alternative to what we're using now. In a sense everything goes up. Your cost of your equipment if the fuel is higher obviously that rental rate goes up and the oil price goes up so you just don't get as much done for what you have to spend and that's a challenge for everybody but I think we're making the right steps in the right direction as long as we can keep on that pace. As certainly the three of us know but some of our viewers may not be aware the county board adopted a property tax levy reduction which is the first one in 21 years even though they were able to provide for a property tax reduction overall most county departments including the highway department received at least a 3% increase some a little bit more but what continues to be very challenging for us in the county is when you have unfunded or underfunded state mandates many of which were responsible for providing at the local level and then you have the realities of fuel costs and oil costs going up a lot more than two, three percent which is what most people would like I think the line held on with property tax increases it makes it difficult and what we find at the county level is that folks certainly wanna see property tax relief or they want us to hold the line but they don't wanna see their services reduced or we don't get too many suggestions on what areas not to plow or what programs to cut back on so it continues to be a challenge and I hope Greg you're gonna be here for some time to help us work through that process I'm a young guy I'm not going too far so well thank you for joining us this month and I hope that you got a nice overview of the highway department and it's programs and services if you have questions or suggestions please don't hesitate to contact Greg Schnell directly our highway commissioner for Sheboygan County or chairman Bill Gehring or myself and we're also going into an election year in April we'll be looking at an election for the full county board there are 34 county board supervisors my bet is some of you out there may not know who your local elected county board supervisor is but trust me they're involved with making very important decisions about how your property taxes are spent so if you don't know please look into it and please get engaged in that process as we go forward but on behalf of chairman Gehring and the Sheboygan County board thank you for joining us next month Julie Glancy our county clerk's gonna be here to talk a little bit about the upcoming election process and how that works as well as some of the very important services she provides in the county clerk's office so again until then on behalf of county board chairman Bill Gehring and the county board thanks for joining us