 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 seek to bring another department, department program to give you a better feel for the roles and responsibilities of your county government. And generally every month we have a department head here who gives an overview of their role and the department's role. And this program, I'm pleased that we have a new face amongst us. Many of you knew Chuck Mayer. He was our Sheboygan County airport manager for 25 years and in fact was with Sheboygan County for 41 years. Well, Mr. Tom Boyer who is now our airport superintendent has been with us for about 41 days and we're really pleased to have Tom aboard. Welcome, Tom. Thank you, glad to be here. We recently are, frankly we're in the midst of a consolidation in Sheboygan County. We've consolidated, streamlined a number of areas over the years and the most recent one that Chairman Distruty and the county board is considering is consolidating our highway department with our airport department to create a transportation department. It really isn't gonna change a tremendous a lot amount of work out there, what needs to be done. But Tom now will in all likelihood rather than being a standalone department head working with Greg Schnell. And again, Tom, we're glad to have you aboard. We know you're not a new face to Sheboygan County. Please begin by sharing a little bit about yourself and your role and responsibilities as airport manager. Love to, I've been flying for about 34 years now. In fact, I have my private license out of here with Cliff Berry back in 1981 out of Sheboygan. So no stranger to it. Also worked for the Wisconsin Bureau of Aeronautics for a number of years. I was also a corporate pilot for the Kohler Company for about four or five years as well. Ran a business on the airport, Western Shore Aviation as well. So yeah, no stranger to Sheboygan Airport. So glad to be here. Oh, it's good to have you aboard. And when specifically did you start and what's your impression been thus far in your new position? Well, as you said about 41 days, real close to that. And I hope to have 41 years in like Chuck and had the experience and the great job that Chuck did. I hope to have that as well, 41 years from now. But my experience has been great so far. Everybody at the airport has been very welcoming. Everybody at the county has been very welcoming. And it's a great airport to be working with and I can't wait to keep improving the airport. Well, please set the stage for us a little bit. How long has the county had a county airport and tell us a little bit about it? Yeah, actually the airport was built in 1958, construction started. I was finished in 1960 and then in 1963 or 62, traveling aviation took over and ran that they managed the airport until 1987 when Harry Chaplin retired. After that, then the county took over and has been running the airport ever since at that point. And size overall facility, what's the airport all contained? All right, total size, it's just over a thousand acres. Now, inside the fence area is about 737 acres. Outside of that, no, the 300 outside for air rights and that sort of thing. It's a very big airport in terms of real estate is concerned. And I see you brought a nice photo. I did. You want to just give a little overview of the layout? Sure, absolutely. Our camera can zoom in there. You bet. And you can see it takes up again over 700 acres in our fenced in area. Our main ramp area right here and right here. If you came to Wings and Wheels event, you probably noticed that this whole area up here was covered with corporate aircraft coming in for events at Road America. That's not uncommon in the summer to see that, especially with the golf events as well. We have two crossing runways. The white one here, the main one is runway three and two one. We'll talk about that in a little bit and its extension project that it had done on it. And of course we have runway one, three and three one, which is our crosswind runway. We have area over in this area here for private tenants with their own aircraft. And this area over here is more for the industrials, the corporate aircraft as well. And just at the county board meeting Tuesday night, we had the chance to honor Chuck Mayer for his years of service. And Roger Tostruti and I were commenting how when he started as the airport manager 25 years ago, I think there were three tenants there and now we have closer to 50. Yeah, actually about 34 private, a dozen corporates, commercial operators as well. We've got, as far as the commercial operators, we've got of course boroughs aviation, which is the fixed based operation out there. We've got air worthy aviation, air worthy is aircraft maintenance. If you need maintenance on your aircraft or inspection done or annual inspections done, they're the people on the field that you go to for that. We have Hertz runner cars out there as well. Of course we've got the final approach restaurant and we've got the aviation heritage center, which is located right in the middle of the ramp area. And again, for wings and wheels, that's where you had the pancake breakfast, that big building. Also for banquet facilities as well. So it's fantastic facility to have right on the main ramp itself. Excellent, so with all this activity going on, tremendous airport, a lot of expansion over the years. You mentioned about a hundred, all right, what, a thousand acres? Yeah, over a thousand acres. Fenced entire, you must have just a huge staff to work with, Tom. Could you touch on the number of employees that work with you and then also what your operating budget is? Sure, right now we're looking at probably the smallest of the 20 departments in the county. But in terms of real estate, I believe we might be the biggest in terms of real estate. And like you said, our people that we have working for us, we have three, three full-time staff, myself and then two others that do maintenance. And when it starts getting in the busy season, snow season with snow removal or in the summer with grass cutting, then we will bring on an LTE to help out as well. But all that maintenance, just done by two maintenance techs and myself. Which is, I know we've held the line of staff for a number of years even with the tremendous growth out there. You mentioned we do have a fixed-based operator, line of work used to be in. They obviously have an important role responsibility. How does that, what is their role? To many of the corporate operators, the FBO operator is the face of Sherbrooke County Airport. When they pull in, that's what they see is Burroughs Aviation. So again, that's what their impression is of the airport. And if you think of an FBO or an operation like that, it's one-stop shopping, full aviation services for corporate aircraft. They do aircraft fueling, catering, laboratory service, that sort of thing. They might make hotel reservations, rental car reservations for the crew and sometimes the people that they're carrying as well. So again, it's one-stop shopping for all aviation services for corporate aviation. And how busy is our airport and could Paris send others? You know, that's an interesting question. The state of Wisconsin splits up our 98 public airports into four different categories. There's of course the large commercial airports, the Appletons, Milwaukee's, Green Bay's, Madison, that sort of thing. There's eight of those. The next category is considered large general aviation, which is where we fall in with 14 other operators as well, 14 other airports. In that 14, we're right in the middle about seventh in that group as well. What does that mean in terms of operation? Right now we do approximately between 55 and 60,000 flight operations per year between the corporate operators, the general aviation airplanes, the student pilots out there as well. It totals up pretty high, actually. Outstanding. And final question before I turn it over to Roger, and you touched on it briefly. What kind of tenants do we have at the airport? I think some people might be a little surprised to know just how important the tenants are to our local economic development. Absolutely. We touched on the commercial operators just recently with boroughs and of course with all the other ones. There's 34 private tenants out there with their own hangers and their own aircraft. And right now there's about 12 industrial, what we call industrial, and that would be companies like Kohler and Windway Capital Corp, Richardson, Brain Associates, and Bemis, that sort of thing. There's about 12 industrial tenants out there as well. So quite a few. Excellent, so important. Now obviously they see the growth and that we're able to accommodate their needs because everyone's flying, it seems like larger and more expensive aircraft than they were years ago. Yeah, and actually a new addition to this would be Lakeland College just got added to this mix just last year. They've teamed up with Frontline Aviation as another commercial operator. They give flight instruction at the airport. They're based out of Green Bay, but they run a satellite operation here at the airport. They've partnered with Lakeland College to have a four-year aviation degree with a minor in aviation here at the airport. What's fascinating is a person can walk off the street and start and literally end their career here at the airport. You could start taking lessons, get a bachelor's degree right at this airport, and literally if there's an opening, you could work for a corporate operator and end your career at this airport itself. To me, that's just outstanding that you can do that. You know, it's very rare to see that at airports these days. I've come a long way. Excellent, thank you, Tom. In addition to upkeep and maintenance responsibilities, your department takes an active role in capital projects. Tom, please tell us about the airport long-range capital improvement plans and the process. The process is something that Chuck had spent a lot of time just really improving. And how that works is the airport master plan, which is more of the blueprint for the airport itself, was updated back in 1996. And you think of the master plan as more of a strategy for short, mid, and long-term planning projects that we want to do at the airport itself. Again, that has to be updated. And again, we use that as a guide for continual improvement and modernization of the airport itself. From there, then we also had to do environmental and economic impact studies. Environmental studies, of course, any project that we're planning, what's gonna be the impact on our environment? And if there is gonna be an impact, what's gonna be the mitigation strategies we're gonna use for those as well? Then we also have to impact economic impact study. Is it gonna be worth while doing these projects? What's gonna be the benefit to the county in terms of economy for them? Those studies have to be completed. Once, because we have done that so well, we then, at that point, we petitioned the Bureau of Aeronautics down in Madison, who is the project manager for most of our projects? We get into their planning cycle as well. And then from there, we get our projects approved. As far as the county is concerned, what we do then is take those project and put them into a five-year capital planning process, which we've been doing, I think, for 25 years out here now, 26 years, we've been doing that, so. Who provides the input and guidance to the department? Well, I tell you, it takes a village and it's something you cannot do by yourself or certainly I can't do by myself. So I get guidance from the Sheboygan County Transportation Committee. It's a five-member committee made up of board members of the county. I take my guidance from them. We also have a nine-member airport advisory committee. And those are made up of tenants on the field and leaders in the community here in Sheboygan County. And they deal with matters for the airport itself. And anything that might get referred to the airport advisory committee, that means the Transportation Committee is looking for advice on how to handle certain matters. They then give advice to the Transportation Committee. Again, that's who I really listen to is Transportation Committee. Then of course the county administrator as well, providing him with any information he may need for better decisions. And what are some of the most recent improvements that have been completed at the county airport? Well, I tell you, if you go back to 1960 when this airport was first built, our long runway, the white one that we showed you right here, the longer one, was only 3,600 feet long. And at that time, you really weren't thinking some of the long-range transcontinental airplanes that you had right now. Just a couple years ago, that runway itself, the long runway was extended to 6,800 feet long. The length is nice, but we wanted to make sure that it could take those longer, the weights of the bigger aircraft. That airplane is now, or that runway is now stressed to 98,000 pounds. So it's a very thick amount of concrete. And we had to do that because of the requests from our users for the longer range aircraft. As a matter of fact, even today, I got a request of a person that wanted to bring a plane in coming in. He'll be leaving Sheboygan with full tank of gas going overseas, and he was concerned because his plane was 97,000 pounds. So of course, our runway can certainly take that now. Also, along with that runway, it wouldn't make sense to have 100,000 pound runway if your taxiway couldn't support that. So the parallel taxiway to get you out to the end of that runway was also improved to have the increased bearing capacity to 100,000 pounds as well. So that's taxiway F. About two years ago, our crossing runway, the black one here, runway 3113, that was also strengthened with an increased bearing capacity. That one, at the time, back in 1960 again, could only take about 36,000 pounds. It's been stressed now to hold 76,000 pounds. An increased length of 5,000 feet. And if you think about it, in most airports in Wisconsin, a long runway for most of these airports is 5,000 feet long with 76,000 pounds. That's our shortest runway right now. So we're at a great advantage right now. And what are some of the projects you're working on now? Well, right now what we're gonna be working on is engineering this year and the construction for next year of, if you can see here, this darker portion of our main ramp. Again, if you're at Wings and Wheels or have been in the past, it's usually where the smaller planes are parked right out in front of the Aviation Heritage Center, that black piece of asphalt. That asphalt has been around since the airport was constructed. So it's over 50 years old and of course its bearing capacity has failed and it does need to be replaced. So that will be, it's on the books for next year, we'll be replacing that. I had mentioned before that our crossing runway, runway 1331 was also increased and its load capacity increased. That taxiway paralleling that will be replaced in 2014. And how about describing some of the projects that you're going to be working on in the next few years or contemplating working on? How we secure funding for that sort of thing? As I mentioned before, our airport, as far as the Beaver Bay are not as concerned, is really looked upon as more exemplary. We have really got our things, our projects together. And what I mean by that is our airport master plan is updated continuously. That's a requirement for federal funding. Our airport layout plan is updated. Our economic impact and our environmental studies are always up to date and always ready at a moment's notice. Because of that, whenever we petition the Bureau of Aeronautics for funding, usually we get right into their program cycle. And when the time comes for them to determine what projects or prioritize their projects, we are usually right on the top of the list. There's no delays getting our projects done or our funding done as well. Just to give an example, most of these projects, almost all these projects out here are funded by the FAA 95%. 2% to the, 2.5% of the state, 2.5% of the county. So to put that in perspective, if a million dollar project out here at the airport would only cost the Sheboygan County taxpayers $25,000 for that million dollar project, that's pretty good. There still is an investment from the county taxpayers. What kind of economic benefit are people in the county getting back from that? You bet. Our last economic study was done just a few years ago. In fact, we need to update that in the next couple of years. Just looking at some of the statistics from that when I looked into it. Let me just give you some information here. Again, they look at the economic impact directly and indirectly. The effects of this airport on the state and local economies. What they showed was the airport, Sheboygan County Memorial Airport provided 27 million in state and local sales. That's indirect and direct. Supported 291 jobs in state and locally. And also 10 million in wage income on a state and local level. That's outstanding actually for an airport this size. So that's pretty good. Well, you certainly have covered a lot of ground in a short period of time. And as we've talked about the airport and all the improvements that have been made, as you know, we had 9-11 come our way and a lot of security issues and concern. And what has happened at the airport the last decade or so to really improve our safety and security? Absolutely, yeah. And safety and security is a big thing at this airport. And again, part of our duty as airport administration is to make sure this airport is maintained and operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As you've probably seen at the airport, it's not just Cessnas and Piper's flying around. These are planes going international from this airport into this airport. So this airport has to be maintained and secured 24 hours a day. And part of that was the fencing that goes around. There's 6.3 miles of fence that goes around this airport. And when it was first put in, it was simply just to keep animals out and keep wildlife away. Prior to that, we didn't have a fence and we had issues with deer. So yeah, we put the fence around it. In fact, on the outer edges, the outer parts of the airport, there's about 17 gates. On the terminal area where all the tenants are, there's about 18 gates. And in the past, we always had access gates you could just drive your car up to and the gate would open and go through. That was prior to 9-11. Again, we weren't as concerned with security as we are now, of course. After 9-11, Homeland Security has been a tremendous funding source for us and has beefed up that gate with bar boy or fence. Every one of these gates now for passengers to go in and out are key fob access only. So because of that, we can track exactly who's coming in at what time they're coming in or leaving. Also, each one of the gates has video surveillance and recording going on it as well. So that was all through Homeland Security that we can track that. So that's also going on. Tremendous amount of improvement. And certainly that all has expense associated with it because you need to maintain that fence and maintain those gates. And I know we were just at a transportation committee, the two of us a month or so ago talking about repairing one gate for the cost of $25,000, $30,000. This is not inexpensive security infrastructure. That's one of what 30 gates you just mentioned. And as we said, the main ramp that's gonna be reconstructed next year, part of that will be also increasing or replacing four gates. I believe that was around $120,000 for those four gates alone. So you mentioned the fencing, the enhanced hire fencing with the barbed wire, the gates, the fobs, the surveillance. What about as air traffic is just coming and going? How's that monitored? You know, and this is a nice thing about Sheboygan. We are considered a non-towered airport. No, we don't have a control tower. And this is one nice thing about Sheboygan. I heard this recently from a corporate operator. He flew in here recently and he looked around the airport and he said, you know, it's a very big airport, but it feels so small. In other words, what he meant was, it's got every amenity any large airport would have. Long runways, great instrument approaches coming in, very nice, stressed runways to handle bigger, bigger or larger aircraft. But when you land here and start talking to everybody, it's got a nice small town feel to it. Still does have that. He still sees Sessons and Pipers and student pilots flying around. And what's interesting is we are considered non-towered. We don't have a tower here. All of our coordinating is done through just use of radio and standard procedures, standard accepted FAA procedures that have been around for decades. Only about 12 airports in Wisconsin have a tower control. The rest are non-towered. So again, any procedure we do, it's done through coordinating between ourselves in the air with the radio and relying on standard procedures for entering and exiting the airport. That's about 99% of the time. The 1% of the time we do bring a temporary tower in and that of course is for any major sporting event, say for instance, the PGA or USGA events going on at the golf courses in the area. In that case then, because of the increased traffic, then we will bring in a temporary tower with the FAA. We locate a tower on the west side of the airport. There's a little pad that we actually roll a tower, a control tower and it's a small little thing, but with FAA approved traffic controllers, we have procedures in place for getting in and out of this airport for those major sporting events. Again, so that's the one time that we will have a tower control going on at that time and it only makes sense because when we have those major events, this main ramp will be completely full and this runway usually gets shut down to park planes on that runway. That's how many airplanes we'll get here for major sporting events. So you can see the increased need for traffic control. Most of our viewers have never been a pilot. Perhaps most have been in an airplane, but for those who have never been a pilot, self included, give us a sense of, well, how does that work? You're approaching the airport, who are you talking to and when do you know it's clear to land and to depart? Sure, I always looked at it like coming into a small town when you just have stop signs. If you came up to a four-way stop and all four people are staring at each other, we have a certain procedure, maybe the person of the right's gonna go first or whoever arrived first gets to go through first through that intersection. Honestly, it's not that much different in the sky. When we arrive at this airport, usually 10 or 15 miles out or even more, we've been listening, we have a radio frequency that transmits all the information about the airport, the direction of the wind, the height of the ceiling or the clouds, visibility, that sort of thing. So we already know what runway we're going to be trying to land on. About 10 or 15 miles out, we will start radioing our intentions to the traffic in that area on a certain frequency. Other traffic are monitoring that frequency as well. So when I announce my intention to come and land, other airports or other airplanes usually get on and just start saying, hey, I'm in this position, where are you? Well, I'm over in this position over here. Then we start working it out who will get in first. Larger aircraft itself are moving much faster, so we have to accommodate that as well. But a lot of it is just done through those accepted procedures that we have with the FAA. They have certain procedures and a certain pattern that we have to fly at these airports and a certain altitude that we have to fly as well. So we adhere to those standard procedures. But again, when traffic gets so congested, at that point yet, then we bring a control tower in and then the controller will do that directing for us. It's kind of like going to a bigger city when you have a traffic cop standing on the side of an intersection. He'll let you know when you can go. Excellent analogy, excellent analogy, very good. So as a pilot and now as an airport superintendent, are you still gonna get an opportunity to get out there and fly and utilize the airport from that vantage point from time to time? I'm actually also a designated pilot examiner. Now, what that means is if you ever take in your driver's tests and you have to go to the guy at the DMV that gives you your test, I do that for pilots. So I'm the guy you go to when you take your test. Or I'm one of the few people that can in the state. So I still get a chance to go fly. So, and I've been flying corporate and worked with Midwest Express for a few years. And so I've flown bigger aircraft, but it's still a thrill to get into a small airplane with a student pilot. And I still remember that 34 years ago, taking that lesson and getting that license with that examiner sitting next to me. So I still get a chance to go fly with him and do that sort of thing. It's a lot of fun actually. Nice, nice. Well, we only have a couple of minutes remaining. And on the onset, I mentioned that we're, you know, about to embark on a consolidation here. And of course, you're on the front line of that. And working with Greg Schnell or Highway Commissioner to work through that. And of course, anytime we consolidate, it doesn't happen magically. It takes people to work toward it and determine what the pros and cons are. What do you see thus far benefiting the airport and the county as a result of the consolidation? What are some of the good things associated with it? Other than the savings, of course, because there will be some savings associated with it. You know, I think it's a natural transition. I think it's a natural thing that should happen. If you look at this airport and look at the expansion that's going on, again, look at these airplanes that are coming in here. The longer runways means more maintenance, the more grass, more plowing, that sort of thing. We're no longer just stand alone by ourselves. We will need the assistance of a highway department. And that's where it can come in handy for us. We want our operators seeing seamless, seamless transportation. We don't want them having slow downs because we couldn't get or getting the runway snow remove. So if one of our pieces of equipment breaks, we can certainly just call the county. We have those resources now for trucks or personnel that can help us plow that runway quick. Cutting grass and maintaining that airport. Again, if one of our pieces of equipment breaks or if one of our men can't be there, I can call the highway department and they can help get somebody out here or help fix that equipment very quickly, very rapidly. So from that standpoint, it's fantastic. The operators might not even know what even happened. All they know is that the runway was clear, the grasses were cut, the FAA administrative mandates were complied with, the approaches were all maintained and are all operating. They may never know that all those things behind the scenes got done. But I think that's where we're gonna see the greatest advantage of being with the highway department. All the things you might not notice. Outstanding, outstanding overview. Well, if this is your first impression of Tom Boyer, I'm sure it's a positive one and you can see what we saw at the interview table. He really has hit the ground running and of course because of his outstanding background and experience has such a good command of this. But what I'm just personally impressed with as our first TVA interview is how much he's really gotten to handle on the airport and all the good work that's ensued and just his command of it in his first 41 days or so on the job. So Tom, thank you for your time today and an excellent overview. We look forward to having you back. Great, thank you. And until then, as you know, every month we'll bring a new program to you. Next month we're gonna be interviewing our HR director, Mike Collard. Mike's been real busy with developing policies and procedures ever since. The state really changed the rules of the game with human resource type procedures, policies to follow, whether you're a bargaining unit or not. As you know, there's been a lot of changes and Mike's gonna be here to talk about that very good work. So again, until then, on behalf of Chairman Roger Distruti and myself and the Full County Board, thanks for joining us.