 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name is 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 department, different focus for you to learn more about the important rules and responsibilities of county government and today rather than one guest we have two we have our transportation director Greg Schnell and we have our new airport superintendent Charles Sweet. Welcome gentlemen. Thanks. Thanks for having us. It's good to have you here. It's that time of year where the orange barrels are up and a lot of construction is starting to take place and drivers have to slow down a little bit and be a little bit more patient so we're going to talk about some of the county projects that are in play as well as give you a better understanding of all the important aspects of our transportation department. So Greg let's start with you please share with our viewers just a little bit of background about yourself when you started with the county and a high-end snapshot of the highway and airport as a transportation department. Thanks Adam. I've been with the county almost eight years now. It'll be eight years in October. We've seen a lot of different changes. We've downsized our staff just as much as a lot of the departments throughout the county along with the downsizing we also did a little consolidation with the airport which we did create the transportation department now airport and highway in as one so we can share some of the same details we have. They have airports to our air I'm sorry runways the plow and taxiways the clear we have roads the clear so we run a lot of same equipment grass mowers that type of stuff so it was good for us to bring that all together and realize some budget savings and I think it makes a lot of sense. If memory serves at one point I think our highway department now a division had as many as what 125 130 employees and now we're right around 89 or 90. Right with the consolidation we're at 90 our department when I started seven years ago was at 117 currently we're working with 87 so adding in the airport we're at 90 employees all together. And as you said it wasn't just the highway department it's departments throughout the county that have really streamlined a lot of consolidation a lot of you know working more efficiently to hold the line on property taxes and we've had a pretty good run with that. You brought a lot of experience to the table you worked in Manitowoc County prior to becoming highway commissioner right? That's correct I worked for 17 years in Manitowoc County 10 of those as a road superintendent so I've seen all the way from the bottom to the top plowing snow running operating equipment to managing staff and large projects. And just how large of an operation do we have with our highway department what's your budget and what are your key areas of responsibility? Maintenance of all county trunk highways as well as we have contracts with the state and 11 of the town of the 15 townships that are in Sheboygan County. Our tax levy is about $4.5 million and we operate with a $15 million budget. So we have 450 miles of county road 465 of township and 170 miles of state road that we maintain with the grass cutting pothole patching snow plowing you name it if it's on the road we're going to take care of it. And as you mentioned and I don't want to ignore Mr. Sweet seating here we're going to talk to you a little bit more in a few minutes but about a year and a half two years ago we consolidated the highway department with the airport department now a transportation department and that has you overseeing the airport a little bit but fortunately you've got a well qualified airport superintendent that's really dealing with the day-to-day operations. That's correct Charles has been a breath of fresh care for us. There was an interim time when the job was vacant so obviously I assume those responsibilities and roles at that point and it was added a little bit more to my plate than I probably could handle in some days but the airport division brings about it's about a $430,000 overall budget and it relies on about $202,000 with the tax levy here. It's got to be sweet to have Mr. Sweet in place and as I said we'll get back to you in a moment Charles Lane Miles you just mentioned that you're you're providing maintenance snow removal what have you for town roads, county roads, state and federal roads but you also have maintenance responsibility and construction major construction responsibility please explain for our viewers you know what's the difference in process or approach. We have a system that's provided to us by the by the Department of Transportation the State Department of Transportation called the Whistler system which is a rating system that we rate our roads and as we as the years progressed and the road started to deteriorate we look at whether that road could use an overlay and a lot of times that will depend upon the amount of asphalt that's currently there already so we'll test to see and put some core holes in there to see how thick that is. If we're getting to the point where there's too much asphalt there we may come in and do a milling operation. It takes a couple layers off of asphalt and put some new stuff on. If it's completely gone we need to add a little strength we're going to do a reconstruction and that'll pulverize the existing pavement knock it down almost under gravel and repave it again probably come along and do some ditching as well if we're really lacking on shoulder length with that type of stuff then we're going to do a complete reconstruction from right away to right away put in new ditches new piping but it's really gauged on that rating is how we're going to generate and get to that process of fixing up the road. We also have areas that we have safety concerns so sometimes we'll add a project where maybe there's a vision issue that type of thing where we could clean up an intersection and cut back some slopes make the ditches a little bit wider to clean that up and try to safer and improve that intersection. So you'll have an operating budget that's pretty consistent from year to year to take care of maintenance responsibilities but you also have significant capital improvements when you're going to completely rebuild a road what's the difference in approach from in budgeting. We the county provides us the opportunity to use a five-year capital plan and that opportunity makes us kind of guides us to have that plan for that five years so we know where we're going to be year after year and the money is allocated through that five-year plan. When we're getting into reconstruction of a roadway that's a million dollars a mile no matter how you look at it give or take depending upon the cost of the materials and how much cutting and filling we're going to have to do so our operating budget would would make it very very difficult for us to do those types of projects and keep up with the 450 miles of asphalting we or asphalt that we should be maintaining so that's a great avenue for us to utilize that and it gives us that opportunity to look into the future where our funds are going to be expended. Nice explanation final question before I turn it over to Roger. In addition to maintenance in addition to major construction or major capital projects I mean you need to be prepared for all sorts of types of emergencies or situations to respond to please give our viewers a little flavor for some of those things you need to be prepared for. As you can imagine when we're working in the construction and maintenance industry that we are in you know probably seven eight months out of the year we need to have the emergency preparedness for the chainsaws and loaders and the types of things that if you have at this time of the year we've been seeing around the country tornadoes come through that affects our department as well if we have a major accident similar to the one that happened out on the interstate probably 10 plus years ago and during the fall we need to respond we need to shift traffic to different areas so we also have emergency trailers in place to set up to control the traffic and on the federal highways the higher the I-43s the 23s along with all the gear that needs to send our people out with so it's not only winter that we could consider an emergency that can happen anytime flooding wind hail you name it we have to be involved in that. Thank you Greg. Greg and Charles great to have you with us and all the fine new work you do and I've been on the county board for quite a few years and I'm going to appreciate all that is done by the highway department in the airport division I know you touched a little bit about the levy and the operational cost where do some of the other funds come from that cover the cost that isn't on a levy. A lot of our outside revenue comes from the agreements that we have with the state through the routine maintenance agreement which we equate to about two million dollars a year that we get to maintain their roads as well as we get another couple hundred thousand dollars in discretionary funds. We also have a revenue stream from the townships that we have that I mentioned earlier that we take care of we take care of 11 out of the 15 that's included that revenue comes in and that helps offset the the the additional dollars we need to fund our department so they pay us for the time and materials that we spend in there in their municipalities. And a big part of the asphalt cost is affected by the trends of oil and fuel costs and how has that affected your ability to maintain our roads and asphalt for the county and for other municipalities. Sure as it affects our our personal when we put the gas in our cars and obviously that has petroleum based that type of thing it fluctuates just as much if not more when it comes to what we have to buy and a lot of the liquid ACs the stuff that we add into our asphalt has gone up considerably in the late 90s we were at less than 200 dollars a ton today we're at 577 a ton and that's just the liquid that goes into the asphalt that's not including the the materials as far as the aggregate and the labor to get there so all those costs have gone up considerably so it has a huge effect on what how much work we can perform annually. And a couple years ago we upgraded the asphalt plant and added a wrap component to the asphalt process you want to explain what the initials are and how that's helped save some money. Sure that's the recycling process that we the asphalt that we pick up off the roads as I mentioned earlier the milling we take that back to our asphalt operation running back through the crusher and into back into the asphalt plant itself it's a separate operation that drops in that asphalt at a different location in the asphalt plant itself and we can reutilize the oil that was put in there 30 years ago when the road was paved and the aggregates which has reduced our cost per ton by about three bucks a ton that that investment was about 300,000 and within the first year and a half of having it in it has paid for itself since then and the we used to fire our plant with with diesel fuel a locomotive fuel we've changed over to LP now and that has reduced it again by a couple dollars a ton making that investment so we're trying to stay competitive with what we are doing out there and being environmentally safe as well. And those are some of the benefits you can pass on to the towns villages and cities what are some of the other things that you do typically for those municipalities? The the benefit to having having us take care of those maintenance is I guess duplication of services if you will. If we own the equipment as the county we can use utilize that equipment more often and obviously the more production you can get out of it the more cost-effective it is it wouldn't pay for all of us to have the same types of equipment and doing the same thing if we can one can sponsor that for the rest and I believe that's where the biggest savings is we don't have to have duplication of salt sheds and moors and plow trucks and graders if we can maintain that with the staff that we have and the equipment we have and get paid for it that way that is I think that's a big benefit to the county taxpayers. As you mentioned the cost of equipment we recently replaced a couple of larger trucks you want to describe the trucks and how much of the replacement cost? Our investment in a quad axle truck which we use for plowing snow as well as hauling agregates and asphalt is about $300,000 investment that's with the the plow of the wing to sander the box and we're also going with underbody blades now that it does a little bit better job scraping so that we can get down to the surface and we're not utilizing as much salt. Years ago I would say probably five six years ago we were maybe investing maybe $225,000 in that truck and that's the amount of increase we've seen some of that's driven by technology our with GPS units and the computerized salters that's driving some of that cost as well so it's nice to be on the cutting edge but it's also expensive. And could you give us a snapshot of the the primary roads and projects that are slated for this this year? We have a huge project that's happening up in the town of Mosul, town of Sheboygan, town of centerville, village of Cleveland and the Anatoa County it's the LS and Dairyland Drive project or which I'll call Dairyland County Trunk DL now. It has relocation of the area north of north of Whithsling Strait's golf course that's gonna be we're gonna be moving the road west to avoid the bluff erosion as well as paving 18.25 miles of Dairyland Drive or DL and County Trunk LS and that work is currently going as we as we speak. Thank you Greg back to Adam. Thank you Roger and that's an eight million dollar project. That's correct. How much of that is county funded versus state versus the other local units of government you mentioned. The breakdown of funding is four million dollars from the from the state three million dollars from Sheboygan County and a million dollars from the municipalities that were affecting. So anybody watching this who wants to take a final drive along the lake on LS do they still have that opportunity or has it been shut down? You can go from MM North and you can go south down to Playbird Road but it's closed from Eisner to Playbird. Okay very good. Well nice background on the highway division now we'll turn our attention to the airport division and again welcome Mr. Sweet it's good to have you with us. I just I love that name Mr. Sweet we're gonna have more fun with this. Charles I know you have a strong background and airport related experience please give our viewers a little snapshot of your background and I think it's been about two months now with the county. It's about two months. I am originally from a small town we now side of Chicago graduated from a St. Louis University in airport management. I spent my time in the Air Force as a project manager or construction project manager and an airfield specialist and then I spent the past five and a half years in San Antonio, Texas doing air aviation consulting and engineering so then I came up to Sheboygan and here I am. Welcome to the warm temperature of Sheboygan County. Well we're pleased to have you here a lot of responsibility at the airport and strong background that you bring. What was your first impression of the Memorial, Sheboygan County Memorial Airport? First impression I had we drove up from Milwaukee and I stopped at the airport before I had my interview with Greg and I noticed the upside down jet outside and I was fairly unique but my first impression of the Sheboygan Memorial Airport was it's very big, very large. Of course you're talking about the flight or jet that's up on a pole it's a good-sized airport for a community of our size. Absolutely. And economic development we've had so much discussion locally about economic development of course that's a driving concern of the state right now and businesses. We have a number of manufacturing facilities here that are flourishing, that utilize our airport. In your 62 days or thereabouts that you've been here now what are you learning about the importance of our airport and economic development? Well it was an impact study not too long ago I believe it was two years ago two and a half years ago and it's due to come again for 2015 I believe. They said the 27 million state and local and sales you have 291 jobs and about 10 million in wages income so it's a pretty big impact for the size of the airport. A lot going on, a lot going on. I think for every dollar that we put in locally there's a $27 return or something like that it's excellent. It's pretty impressive most of us would like to invest in something like that. Give us a snapshot of the airport what type of clients do you have out there what's the makeup? The makeup of you have your commercial which is the FBO, Ron Burroughs Aviation, you have Hertz, you also have some, Lakeland is now out there with their Education Center and the Heritage Center that's commercial and then you have your industrials which names that you're all going to know, Kohler, Beamish, Richardson, Plastics, Windway and then you have about 30 we have about 12 industrial tenants and then 36 private hangers. And this airport is really handling continental type traffic around the world. So we're well aware certainly Chairman Tostruti is because of his 30 years on the county board and the investment he's made not only in our highways and infrastructure but at the airport but the last couple few years there's been a lot of capital improvements out at the airport obviously to make it more attractive and to further enhance economic development. What's been going on? You had your runway extension of 422 and then you also had the taxiways were also reconstructed to carry heavier loads for the international heavy aircraft and that's pretty much what you've been looking at in the last couple of years. Right now we're working on the apron reconstruction so that it can be all concrete it had a portion that was for general aviation which was asphalt now it's going to be concrete as a matter of fact we had our prepaid meeting today on it. So if someone drives out to the airport and if you've never been to the Sheboygan County Memorial Airport I encourage you to check it out it's your county airport and probably you may have been out there for wings and wheels or something like that but if you've never checked it out I encourage you to do so if they drive up there now what will they see what the park right there in front what are they going to be able to see? Right now you're going to be able to see a lot of construction work going on as we're wrapping up for this apron reconstruction you've got the Heritage Center that's front and center in there they're doing some development and working in there and a lot of changes going on there the FBO has moved from the front part of that taxiway or front part of the terminal airport to now the southern side so there's some changes going on there so it's getting a little bit busy so stop in and see us. And if you're looking to get maybe a quick view of a superstar or a professional athlete PGA or some event like that those weekends I mean we can see some heavy-duty jets out there and some superstars coming and going. PGA we have a 2015 we're going to bring in a tower out there because we we get a lot of jet traffic from for events like that. Fixed based operator who is the fixed based operator and what types of services do they provide? Fixed based operator is Burroughs Aviation and they do all of the corporate one-stop shop anything that a corporates really need they basically take care of from catering to anything that they need in their fuel sales so they take care of the corporate side of the aviation. And is it considered a full service type of situation? Complete full service for corporate. Right and I think Mr. Burroughs now and his team has been out there's have been four or five years or longer than that I lose track of time. I believe it's four years? Yes. Yeah okay very good. Security measures since 9-11 and and certainly just on the news recently we heard about some young individual who crawled over a fence and I think yeah I mean it's just shocking to me sometimes what can happen at the airport. Yes indeed. What have we put in place in Sheboygan County to make sure that we have good security measures in place? Well the entire airside is completely in fenced about 6.5 miles worth of fenced you got 18 gates. The gates on the terminals and to the access of the industrial side into the general aviation and the terminal are all fob access so that we can track activity. They're all monitored by monitors and we have a monitoring system in there so we we're up to stand in that our our fences are pretty good and we got barbed wires on it so I pretty much entails our security systems we're always looking to continually improve on that though and get as much coverage as possible. Some of our viewers might be turkey hunters and it's that time of year where the big toms are out there looking for hens. Do we get any problem with wildlife with deer or turkeys or other animals getting out on the airport? We have a wildlife abatement program and that's basically what the fence first started for was to keep the deer and the wildlife out there so we right now we haven't been running into many issues from when I say we have a little couple of geese issues but my team in the maintenance crew we get out there and try to get them off the fields. And I don't think a lot of people recognize this because most of them don't have to plow snow. Certainly we know it when we're trying to go to and from work or school and Greg's team is out there clearing the roads and you know some people get a little impatient if things aren't done quickly enough but the same things for the airport you have a team that anytime it snows any type of weather condition they have to be out there and de-icing and taking care of those runways. Correct. Now in order to accomplish that you must have a massive staff available to you to take care of that. How many staff do you have? We have a total of three including myself and when we get those summer times for cutting the grass and for the winter time when we have to plow we have a limited term in place so they keep up to date though we're moving but that's one of the best things about having the transportation department whenever we need help that's what they're there for. Yeah and that's worked up pretty well I know that's great teamwork there. So 24-7 operation, two runways, how many acres are there forget that's about a thousand acres and you have three staff out there operating that airport I mean I think people should appreciate that we've got some good people in place and working hard to maintain their airport in this community. Well welcome aboard it's great to have you here I hope you are enjoying your first impression and I'm certain you see all sorts of opportunities for improvement and we're looking forward to having you back on this program in the future to tell us how that apron enhancement went and other ideas you have. Absolutely. And let me transition to that a little bit as you've as you're getting your feet wet and looking around you and your experience at other airports any thoughts for the future a year, two, three, five out that you think you know what this is something I think we should consider doing it in Sheboygan County. There's a lot of room for developing on the airport we have a lot of space that can still be developed even on the private general aviation side we're always looking to increase our security measures and I think that's pretty much paramount at every airport that's kind of our duty is to make sure our airport is safe so those type of measures we're looking at for we staying consistent with the airport master plan so that we're developing and staying current and keeping all the users connected and communicating together so as we develop and as we sit down have conversations we'll we'll keep continuing to bring more business to the airport. As we think about the airport and we've got 19 departments and about a hundred and twenty seven million dollar budget of course the transportation department has the division of highway and the airport major multi-million dollar capital improvements have happened at the airport over the years I think like 40 million in the last 10 15 years yet you rarely hear the county board or do you or do you see an article in the paper about the significant investment that we're making for airport or maybe the struggles we're having with our airport and one of the reasons for that is as as we know is that about 90 95 percent of our funding to support that airport comes from the federal government could you just touch on that a little bit generally what's the ratio and how that works when you just spoken about the ratios typically 95 from the FAA and five 2.5 from the state and 2.5 local so if you're looking at a million dollar project that's a 25,000 per the county of Sheboygan so that's pretty significant right it really shows that we're getting a lot of bang for a buck and absolutely it's one of the areas where the federal government is actually making a contribution to our area in a significant way yeah well wonderful overview if you have any questions for either one of these gentlemen obviously you can contact or a highway division and talk to Greg Chanel and his assistant and Gatowski is always there and able to help and of course Mr. Charles Sweets at the airport or if you're not certain how to get a hold of them check out our website you'll see information there or contact our county clerk's office and Mr. John doleson or his staff are always willing to to get you in the hands of the right people if you have suggestions for this program or would like to see a certain department or area focused on don't ever hesitate to contact chairman Roger Distruty or myself and we'd be happy to to put something together or certainly discuss that with you regularly have a couple of minutes remaining here but I want to turn it back to you what did you say it's been now eight years yes you know I know Roger and I were noticing that you know eight years ago that was jet black hair wasn't it Roger it must be a little stressful working and being the head of a transportation department it has its days and moments but you know at the end of the day it's a job and we we look at things differently as as we get older and how we respond to things and our best interest is to keep the mortaring public and the people that use our airport and generally and visit our county in good shape and safe shape yeah well my girls are starting to point out my gray hair is more and more as well but very appreciative of the important role in the leadership you provide you've made a lot of good things happen at the transportation department under your tenure and I thank you and I think one of the very most recent good decisions you've made is is hiring Charles sweet so appreciate having you here again gentlemen thank you for joining us today thank you thank you next month we're going to bring another department another department head here and that's going to be Tom Agerbrecht our health and human services director Tom's been with the county a little shorter tenure than Greg I think about five years now but has made really good things happen for our health and human services department and if you've traveled by that building right across from Fountain Park you'll notice that there's some activity going there the county board recently supported a two point two million dollar addition to that facility it's a tired building and this is going to be a wonderful improvement not only for the hundreds and hundreds of clients that we serve but certainly our staff that work in that facility so next month you're going to be able to learn more about that addition as well as the good work of the Health and Human Services Department until then on behalf of Roger Distruty and myself thanks for joining us and have a good week