 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government. Working for you, my name's Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Roger Distruty. And as you know, every month we strive to bring a different program or department, different services to your attention to learn a little bit more about the important roles and responsibilities of county government. And today we have a newer face. I don't know, Linda, have you done a TVA program with us before? Not with you. Not with me. Well, this is Linda Leader. What a great last name that is. Who works with our UW Extension Office. Welcome, Linda. Thank you. Linda just became a co-department with Jane Jensen, who has been with our Extension Office for 25, 30 plus years. A long time. You wouldn't know it looking at her. No. But a very knowledgeable and pleasurable individual to work with her. Their co-department heads now, every department has a leader that I look to. And naturally with your last name, you had to be selected. Well, it's good to have you with us today and we're gonna learn more and more about the roles and responsibilities of Extension. But let's start with just a little bit about yourself. We were talking off the air here a little bit. You're from Sheboygan County. Correct, correct. Just give a little snapshot about your background and when you got involved with Extension. I grew up in Sheboygan County in the township of Scott with my parents and they still live out that way. So it's very, very nice. I know the Extension program because I was in the 4-H program growing up, in a garden all the way through high school. I interned with Tim Tallinn as a 4-H intern one summer and I've been working with the Wisconsin 4-H Youth Development program within UW Extension for the past eight years over a couple different counties. And you said you graduated from Random Lake. I did, I did. So Jane Jensen knew my grandmother, my grandmother who passed away about four years ago. She was known as the egg lady. Her name is or was Bernice Toggy and she was one of the first 4-H leaders in the county or at least years ago was very, very involved. Does that name ring a bell to you or not? The furthest back I, Toggy. It's okay. No, not so much. She was in the Sheboygan Falls area. Okay, okay. Jane knew her through the years. So, well, pretty cool. Dealing with this, you know, being involved with 4-H when you were a kid, junior high, high school and then you decided at some point to make a career of it. Correct. Yeah. It's been fun. So how long have you been with UW Extension Sheboygan? Two years. Two years now. Two years. And give us a little overview. What's all involved with UW Extension? We may have some viewers who are saying, I've heard of UW Extension, but what do they all do? Well, I like to say that we are a small but mighty office. There are six educators and three support staff and we do 4-H Youth Development, Family Living, Agriculture, Community Resource Development and we also have a Food and Nutrition Educator that works under our Family Living program. So we reach the people of Wisconsin, wherever they live and work, however we can. And what is the mission of UW Extension? University of Wisconsin provides statewide access to university resources and research to the people of Wisconsin to learn, grow and succeed at all stages of life. Yeah. And I know that we co-located here a number of years ago, but some people might be wondering, well, what's the difference between UW Sheboygan and UW Extension? What is the difference? There's a tie, a small tie together, but we are actually very different. We are a branch of the UW system, and it's UW Extension. And by being part of the UW system, we have access to the specialists, the professors, the research, the resources, but we're different because we go out into the community. We work with people of all ages and stages in their life. It ranges from within farming communities to urban areas. So we're just reaching out to people wherever they are. So in addition to Jane Jensen, who has been with us again for years, Mike Ballweg, who works in the agriculture sector, and he's been with us for years. It's over 25 years now. Now he's the crop specialist or what's his title? Crops and soils. Crops and soils, okay. And then there was an individual, your predecessor years ago, who Roger and I are both fond of, Dave Such, who was the department head for many years and retired a few years ago, and he worked more with planning, zoning, and things that now Kevin Struck's doing, right? Correct, correct. Community resource development. So I recall, and I know Roger can recall, this was one of our more controversial consolidations. I mean, we have consolidated now. I don't know how many different departments, programs, whether they've been consolidated or co-located. And when the proposal came forward to consolidate UW Extension with UW-Shabuigan, I think for many of us, including the staff, you know, folks could see why it made sense, the synergy all being under the UW system, the savings associated, the ability to leverage resources associated. But with that said, it was a big change. It's scary. It's scary. And we had a nice facility in Shabuigan Falls that people were used to going to for years, including my grandmother. I remember where that is. And I know for some people, particularly I think in the agriculture community, it was tough to swallow. But now some years have passed. What's your read? What's the kind of feedback do you get from the community? Being that I grew up in the other office and now I'm working in this office, I do like being on the UW-Shabuigan campus. We have larger office space, more meeting rooms, excellent facilities to work within. Now with the brand new engineering building, hopefully we can get youth in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics project areas involved with the engineering and getting them interested. It gives you the whole campus really at your disposal, whether it's the theater, or as you said, what have you, it's yours as much as the UW-Shabuigans, really. How about your customers though? I personally have heard from some agriculture producers who have come to me and said, you know what, Adam? I was not happy when the county board voted to make that change. But now that it's happened, it's not so bad. You know, I've heard some bad. I'm glad that they could say it's not so bad. It's not so bad, right, right. How about yourself, what do you hear from people? Actually, I think it's been so many years that the volunteers have just really adjusted naturally to it, and once in a great while, we'll hear, oh, well, back at the other office. Kind of old news now. But it's not even mentioned. Now 4-H is obviously your key area of focus. And I hear so many positive things about our 4-H programs here. All the people involved, all the volunteers involved, tell us a little bit about 4-H, the programming, and just how significant it is to Sheboygan County. I share the leadership of the 4-H program with Sarah Tarjasson. She's our 4-H youth development program educator, and I'm the 4-H youth development program coordinator. We're working on registrations right now, so it's just an estimate, but there's about 950 to 1,000 youth enrolled in our traditional 4-H community club program. That is those that enroll in a 4-H club, take the 4-H projects, exhibit at the fair, that kind of process. We have probably close to 430 adult volunteers for a program that work with those youth. And those volunteers, they have to go through a new leader orientation. They have a background check done every four years. They register every year, agree to code of conducts and expectations and understanding their work with the youth in the 4-H program. So it's one to three, one to four ratio of youth to adults, very caring environment that we provide. Then we do outside of the traditional 4-H program, going to do after-school programs, doing food chef programs. And we try to reach out to youth in different ways, getting them excited about whatever life skills it is that they would like to learn. So nearly 1,000 youngsters are involved in 4-H, and about 430 adult volunteers helping leading groups are working with young people on the different types of programming that's provided. And touch on that a little bit. I mean, Rajah and I'll get to the fair, and we see all these proud 4-Hers with their chickens and their goats and whatever it may be, but it's more than just agriculture. It is, it is. Our number one project that the youth take is photography. Oh, me too. And that's not just with Incheboy and County, but across the state. It has just been a booming project that everyone is involved with. Our second largest is Horses, the horse and pony project. And the youth, even if they don't have a horse, they can be in the horseless horse project so they can work with somebody else's horse. Archery has become huge in Sheboygan County. We have an amazing leader and the youth look up to him and actually he's been able to generate more volunteers to help him out with the growing number that we have in that. Food and nutrition has become in the top five and also arts and crafts. I'll be darned. I'll bet you a lot of people didn't know that. Yes. That's pretty impressive. Well, thank you. A nice overview. I'll turn it over to Rajah. Good to have you with us today, Linda. I'm just curious that you mentioned about photography being a big issue because when I was growing up, a good friend of mine, his interest and it got to be his passion was photography and he developed that in 4-H, ended up getting a scholarship and he got to be very excellent in his field because he ended up working for National Geographics. And that's pretty well the top notch of the photography industry if you get that. So he went on archeological digs and well traveled because of something that started when he was interested in it in 4-H. So I just thought I'd mention that. I like that story. I might have to come back to you for that. We can give you some details if you need to sometime, but there are a lot of other things going on and I think a lot of people think of 4-H more as a rural community thing also, but the majority of them come from the cities and the villages of our township. Would you give a little overview of some of the other programs and the different courses that are offered to people if they're interested? Within 4-H or UW Extension? Yes, both, please. A little bit of a both and. As we work with people throughout the county, we do have as we said with agriculture where we reach out to the farms and that's with Mike Baldwin doing crops and soil science and water testing and then also with the 4-H and the youth development that we have there. Jane Jensen works with our family living program and she works with the strengthening families where she works with parents of young kids and parents of teenagers and parents who didn't take care of their parents. So she really works across the lifespan of a family. Really, and she does a lot within, she collaborates a lot with the community and that's where a lot of our urban work is. Kevin Struck, he is going out to all the townships working on land zoning and really getting into each of the nitty gritty of how to get each of the communities pulled together. And getting back to the point of agricultural, there's a big industry in our county that relies on the agricultural business. Would you give us a little feel for how much is devoted to that and how that affects our Sheboygan County economy? I would love to. As I was talking with Mike about this, I really, it was eye-opening for me. I learned that there are 8,662 jobs for the residents of just Sheboygan County that are related to agriculture. And with that, it's contributing to $739 million to the county income. And along with that, 101 farms generate $643,000 to the local economy for local food. So it's very exciting how much agriculture is based within Sheboygan County. And with those jobs I mentioned before, that could be from the farmers to hired hands, to veterinarians, implement dealers, factories such as Sargento or Johnson, like really getting into the food industry. There are so many different local food restaurants where they're working with. So it's good how involved we are. And our county has local zoning and county-wide zoning. And your department helps with that quite a bit with community growth management or to most people's zoning, what part fits in what area. And there's quite a variety of towns, villages and cities, they're unique. But how does your department help the people help themselves? Kevin Struck has really been making a focus on working with the townships of this. And it's something called the Wisconsin Farmland Preservation Program. And it's designed to help the local towns and landowners as they preserve their agriculture land, minimize conflicting land uses and promoting soil and water conservation. And through that he's able to help towns in the Sheboygan County area obtain local farmland owners and update their zoning ordinances to meet the often very complex requirements of state statues. And the UW also assists people that want their private well-tested and their water, a lot of us, that people in the communities that live in the cities and villages have public water. But how is that available and how can they access that resource? Since 2011 Kevin has been working with towns and officially he's gone to eight different towns and worked with the residents to have their well water tested for bacteria and nitrate, pesticides, arsenic, lead, copper, zinc, all those many different chemicals. And recently he went to the towns of Herman and Mosul and they tested 108 different wells. So they go there, they take the water bottles, they get those samples and Kevin will then partner up with the Water and Environmental Analysis Lab at UW-Sheboygan or UW-Stevens Point. And he runs all those tests and most of them have come back positive, which is negative, which is positive. And just if I can jump in on this one, Roger, because I know recently the Sheboygan Press had a series of articles about water quality and nitrates and pesticides and things that can contaminate our well water. And if you haven't had your water tested, particularly the rural areas, because as Roger said in the cities, that's done for you as part of municipal water. But if you haven't had your well tested, it's really a good thing to do. And if you're not sure what to do, either contact our extension office and ask for Kevin Strzok, although any of the staff can refer you to him, or contact our county planning and conservation department because they assist with this as well. As Linda said, we go out and work with usually a town at a time and encourage residents to come together and do it all in one shot. But if you're not from that particular town, still a good idea to have your water tested. And there are private opportunities to do so, but we can help you get in the right hands and make sure it gets done. Thank you, Adam. And the UW extension has been with Wisconsin for over 100 years and there's serving a broad variety of audience and people, but one that everyone can take access and take advantage of is the family living and nutrition program. Would you explain that to us? Yes, Jane Jensen, she uses university research and also collaborates with agencies and organizations around the county to provide education and leadership to strengthen individuals and their families. The most recent program she's really been working on and I've been hearing a lot of good things about is the strengthening families program 10 to 14. And that program is an evidence-based family skill building program facilitated over seven weeks and by trained facilitators. And it is for youth age 10 to 14 and their families and they learn together in a structured environment. And there's been research that shows that for every dollar invested in this program, $9.60 is saved in future costs related to involvement with the juvenile justice system, drug testing and lost future earnings. So there's a very nice tie together with the whole. Great, thank you, Linda, for being with us and for all the good things that you do, you and your staff do for all of the citizens of Sheboygan County. Thank you. I imagine some of our viewers are probably saying for goodness sake, this department does it all. We do. Conservation, agriculture, water testing, working with people in need from a standpoint of nutrition, working with our kids and all the programming. I mean, as you said, it's a rather small department but a lot going on. And I wanted to return for a moment to which you said earlier, almost 1,000 kids and just 4-H alone and 430 volunteers are thereabouts. And they're volunteers. Yes. I mean, if they were being paid a minimum wage or better, it's a substantial savings and a substantial contribution to improve our community, is it not? It is, it is. I've started doing a little bit of research on return on investments with volunteers. And I believe the average volunteer is worth $22 an hour, they say, right around there. And if the average volunteer for the 4-H program is 65 hours across the entire year, that is huge. But talking with our general leaders recently, I asked them, but how much time do they give in a month? And the general leaders are those responsible and in charge of our 33 clubs that we have across the county, they put in around 40 hours a month. Just for 4-H. So what the community is saving with the volunteers giving their time, expertise, skills, knowledge, just that positive caring relationship that helps youth foster and grow to be productive citizens is just tenfold back. That's one of the things I sure love about Sheboygan County. I raised my family here. My kids have all now graduated from Plymouth High School, but we raised them here. And it's just such a good caring community and you have so many people willing to give their time and talent to help others. And obviously you're working right in that area. I just, a shout out to all of our volunteers whether it's UW Extension or frankly, any of the not-for-profits or other areas. Here we're entering the holiday season and you just know there's gonna be a lot of people donating food to food banks and helping people in need over the holidays. And it's just a wonderful community. It is, it is. Speaking of wonderful people, one of the programs you didn't really touch on but I really think is neat from a standpoint of making our community even more beautiful are the Master Gardeners. Yes. Not only here at UW Sheboygan, but they did some work around the administration building, the courthouse. And I think they also work with the city, don't they, a little bit on Main Street and. I think they do, I think they do. I believe there's over 100 volunteers in the Sheboygan County Master Gardener program. They get the title of Master Gardener because they go through extensive training. They have multiple courses that they go through. They have to give, I believe, 24 hours of volunteer service a year. They come, they sit on campus actually and they will work with people as they come in with their plants and soil and bugs and say what's going on? Can you help me out? And trust me, I've even done it. They answer questions and they help beautify the area. As you mentioned, on campus I love walking around here because I really do see some great landscape. And of course you have Bookworm Gardens now right across the street and Chairman Distruty and the County Board granted that property. They gave it to Bookworm Gardens to lease for a buck for like 100 years or something like that and we did that not only because we knew it was just a wonderful vision that they had and what another opportunity to improve our community. But you get a lot of kids now coming up here, not only for UW Extension, but they see what UW Sheboygan's all about and it's not such a scary place after all. No, it's actually a very beautiful and nice area to be at. So of all these programs you've talked about, you know, let's try to wrap this up a little bit. Some folks might be watching this and thinking, well, how do we afford all this? It helps to have a lot of volunteer base but the state predominantly funds UW Extension. It's really a county, state, federal government partnership predominantly the state of Wisconsin and Sheboygan County. And so priorities have to be established. We can't be all things to all people. And recently if folks have been following state level there were some cuts to not only the UW system but UW Extension. What kind of cuts have we absorbed locally and how do we go about establishing priorities where we're going to apply our limited resources? Every year we don't just pick something out of the thin air because we ourselves have interest in it but we do need space assessments to see what is a priority that we should focus on. And by doing that, the educators we're able to work on plans of work and really come up with a comprehensive way of reaching out to the people and helping them through whichever necessary thing it is at the time. And then utilizing the research and resources from the state. And the state did reduce funding for extension county-wide, statewide by what? A certain, wasn't it? $3.5 million and that is not starting until 2017. All right, so we're not feeling it yet. We're not feeling it yet. And at this point in time, we don't have the most to say about what's going to happen. There's been a lot of assessments done, surveying done to see what it will be best for us as educators but also for the community and the people that we work with. And we are going to continue to have a strong local presence but it just might look different. Hopefully we won't be shaking it up too much in essence of the 4-H program. We'll still be the 4-H program. It's just who and how and where. We'll be sharing staff and potentially collaborating more with other counties. I know UW-Shabuigan, for example. It's one of 13 two-year campuses and they've just gone from 13 deans to four. Right. You know, they're sharing more of their administration staff to, again, to respond to budget cuts. So we'll have to respond as well. That's part of the type of work we're in. But again, back to establishing priorities and the programs you provide. You do have a county board liaison committee that oversees your operations and that's an opportunity to get input from the public and decisions are made there as well, are they not? Correct. Correct. We share with them, they share with us. It's a very open door policy of communication that we have. Well, we only got a minute or two left. You've covered a lot of ground. Anything else that you wanted to touch on or anything new that you're working on over the course of the winter and the year ahead that you'd like to share? Right now I'm actually working on training those new volunteers in. This morning I had a training and I had five volunteers and this afternoon, evening, I'll have a training with close to 20 more volunteers. So they are getting ready and excited for each year and giving their time. And speaking of giving time, I wanna thank you personally because I had the opportunity, I think for the second consecutive year with my daughter to volunteer at the 4-H food stand at the county fair. And you get that call and are you gonna take an hour or two and do so? And I found it so rewarding. I mean, the kids are great. You've got some 4-H leaders there, they're fantastic. And then you get to see all these happy faces come up as they're pouring those shakes and all the good food that they provide. But the kids are so impressive. I mean, as young as eight, 10, 12 years old and they just do a fantastic job. They're working the front line, taking the money, counting change, handing it back. Great experience. Exactly. And you're probably wondering, where does that money go, right? Yeah, where does it go? It doesn't come to me. That money helps provide, we have a summer camp that we hold that's five days and four nights that we offer at a very, very, very reasonable price for the youth to attend because of the 4-H Food Sand Fundraiser. We have scholarships for youth that are continuing on to college or scholarships for youth that would like to gain more leadership skills at different places. So we have educational trips that the youth are able to take going out east or down to Atlanta, Georgia or to Washington, D.C. And then we also are continuing on with that 4-H project development, always keeping it up to date. So going right back into the very kids that are helping her. And leadership development. We always want to make sure the leaders know what's going on. Linda, you've got a fantastic last name. Linda Lieder, thanks for joining us today. Thank you for your good work at UW Extension. Thank you for joining us today. If you have any questions, suggestions for improvement, don't hesitate to contact Linda or one of her coworkers or your county board supervisor. Next month, Greg Schnell is going to be here, highway or used to be highway commissioner. Now it's transportation director and he'll be here to talk about road improvements that have happened and what's planned ahead. Until then, have a wonderful Thanksgiving, a merry Christmas, and thanks for joining us.