 County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Banderstein and today we have a couple of special guests with us one from the Health and Human Services Department actually two from the department but one leading the pack our director and wonder Jim welcome in thank you and also from the department today we have Mr. Bruce Kress who's the environmental program health inspector let's get this right environmental health program supervisor correct good to have you with us Bruce thank you I'm glad to be here and we're going to start with you please share with our viewers some of the core program areas in your department of our 22 as you know it's one of the largest with a 31 million dollar budget so you're going to have to give a brief overview and you know I like to be short Adam so I will do that this time instead of talking about our structure I'd like to talk about the types of services we provide to keep it short so we have overall responsibility for individuals what I always say birth through death so we do prenatal care through our division of public health we do child and family services we do behavioral health services so we work with both children and adults with mental health issues or substance abuse issues and then we do the financial assistance programs through our economic support area so we determine eligibility for food share which used to be food stamps the Medicaid program also known as medical assistance so basically what we do is we provide services throughout the lifespan of individuals when there are pressing needs that they are eligible for and then as you know most recently we started our aging and disability resource center so that incorporated some of the former office on aging services into a one-stop shop for people so we also do the services for people who are elderly or people who have disabilities so that's kind of a short summary of what we do that's about as concise as I heard summary for department of your size how long have you been the director down the department you know I knew you're going to ask me that and I honestly don't remember I've been with the county in one capacity or another for about 25 years I want to say it's probably right around eight years that I've been the director so you've been having such a good time you don't even know when you started anymore absolutely flying along sometime in June of some year in around 2000 well he asked me I wouldn't remember the specific number of employees that work for your department about a 31 million dollar budget how many employees do you have and and brag about them a little bit I know you've got some good ones yes we do I'd like to bring them all along but they wouldn't fit in this room unfortunately we have about 198 staff at any point in time I think you know our table of organization is a little bit larger but given some vacancies that we have with budget concerns it's about 198 I really can't say enough about the staff they are the individuals who are out there working directly with the people that we provide services to we have nurses and the nurses right now are very very busy we have our immunization clinics our women infant and children program where we provide the vouchers for formula and juices and and allowable foods we have social workers and we have social workers both working with our adults and our elderly and social workers that actually go out and conduct our child abuse neglect investigations we have social workers who work with children who are in trouble with the large juvenile justice system we have psychiatrist on staff we have psychologists so we do counseling for individuals who have behavioral health needs and then we have this classification that we call case managers and there's no way to adequately describe what they do but they will be out with individuals in the community so if you might be an individual who is an adult and has a severe and persistent mental health issue they will work with you on your socialization skills help you with employment so there's just any number of staff that are out there helping people on a day-to-day basis in their homes in the community and in office so that's kind of what we do in terms of internal but then as you know we purchase services out of that 31 million dollar budget so there are individuals in the community who live with people in group homes and adult family homes physicians and doctors that we purchase services from so in addition to our 198 employees there are hundreds of individuals throughout sheboygan county that have employment due to our purchasing services on behalf of the people we serve and then you have such a good command over the department it always amazes me out of our 22 departments the complexity of programs and services but none more than the health and human services department you have such a broad range of important services that are provided and I think what our viewers are going to be particularly interested in hearing next is this is this statistic 198 employees and as you said also help from a lot of very important contract providers but how many folks are they serving throughout sheboygan county and you know for the first time I can give you an answer that is more accurate than I ever could before because we're migrating to a new information system and as we took information out of all our state systems we came up with 68 000 individuals that are individuals within that new computer system but I have to do the caveat that some of those individuals may have received services in their cases are now closed because we need to maintain their record for anywhere from three to seven years so by next year when I do this program I'll actually know how many are open or closed so our best guess yet in terms of actual individual people is probably right around 35 to 40 000 at any point in time and that doesn't include what Bruce will talk about later in terms of the breadth of people that are impacted by what we do which is a hundred percent of sheboygan county residents in one way or another so we have about 115 000 people in the county and at any given time 30 000 give or take are being served by this department and it's a beautiful transition to to bruce because bruce of course is out there making sure that those of us who and those of the viewers who like to get out and whether it's go out to dinner or uh swim swim go to the beach make sure that they're safe right bruce please share a little bit about first let's start with yourself how long have you been with the county and touch on your role and responsibilities well I worked in the city of Milwaukee for 31 years and retired from there and I was retired for two weeks my wife said by time you get a job so I applied for this job in 2001 and it's been very successful since then and we cover a lot of places the facilities in sheboygan county and the reason why the county went into the state agent status is because we could give better service to the citizens and to the operators other facilities and in sheboygan county we have 780 facilities we have to inspect at least once a year there's several facilities we check twice or three times a year last year we inspected 1200 and 38 different facilities throughout the county 1231 facilities right one year you must have at least a dozen staff no we only have one other inspector so it's myself and Dave roddiger who inspect all these facilities in the county outstanding so it gives us a lot of time to do this facility what are you predominantly doing we inspect the restaurants the taverns the schools the lodging facilities hotels motels campgrounds recreational facilities pools and rec camps tattoo shops we also provide services at all the temporary events that have food service we also check the non-transit and community wells so if there's a private well at a tavern or a school we check that we take bacteria samples and nitrate samples when we have those samples come back safe we tell the operator and last year we had two operators that on unsafe water and they had a sanitize those wells and we took further samples and then we okayed the water once it came back safe so if you're not out there doing that people are going to that facility that restaurant that bar wherever it is right and drinking that nice looking glass of ice water before their meal and in fact it's contaminated yeah well if it is contaminated then we close them down and they have to chlorinate the well but one thing I know you've been very successful in is really developing good rapport with the people you're working with and training them to make sure that they're meeting certain standards what generally do you see out there what's not uncommon that you have to work with people with um in general the restaurants and some of the other places that serve food we have the critical orders and the non-critical orders the critical orders would be safe hand washing to make sure they're handling the food safely with clean hands or with gloves they're not misusing the gloves last week we had a place that the lady had gloves on she was mopping the floor and the customer came in and she decided to make a sandwich while changing the gloves well you can't make a sandwich with contaminated gloves so I'd educate her you know changing the gloves washing the hands before she put on new gloves so that's one of the critical items another critical item is the temperature we make sure that cold food is kept at 41 degrees or less and hot food the minimum it should be kept at is 135 we generally like to see food hotter than that but that's the minimum that the state requires so we were like messengers we make sure that they are following the food code that the state and federal government has us to enforce is that one of the more frequent violations yes temperature not where temperature right temperature and hand washing hair nets um they don't like to wear hair that's when they prepare food but it is very necessary because hair is very dirty it could land into the food or onto the food contacts surfaces then some of the non-critical orders are the cleaning orders you know nobody's going to get sick off a dirty floor a dirty restroom but it just it's not a healthy presentation to the customer so we go in and we get a lot of complaints last year we got 36 citizens complaints varied from the restaurants that are dirty or utensil was dirty to garbage in the back room or a housing complaint that the house was dirty others garbage in the yard so we took care of that for the citizen so do you generally have a systematic approach where you're making sure you hit so many a month or throughout the year so you get through all of them plus you have to respond to complaints or how do you normally approach it well in the restaurants we have the low complexity medium complexity and high complexity the low complexity would be like a pizza in a tavern or a small store we go into that once year because it's it's already prepared all i have to do is heat it up and then we have the medium that might make sandwiches cold sandwiches so there's not that much going on in food preparation then you have the more complex menus like the american club or some of the other restaurants where they make food from scratch whether it be soups or stews or pies and there's more complex menu items and there's more possibility of a food contamination so usually check those two to three times a year and if we do write orders if critical orders we want them comply with immediately or within three days the non-critical orders such as cleaning or painting something we give them seven to twenty eight days to correct that and if they're not corrected we go back again and we try to insist and try to educate them and why it should be corrected and if they still haven't been corrected we call them in and they talk to the health officer and so far in the past eight years i've been up here we've taken away eight licenses we have not renewed eight licenses places went out of business then the new operator came in and that's when places were remodeled and brought up to the health codes i know you put on real good training as well you provide that can you touch on that very quickly um wisconsin law requires that there be a food certified food manager on duty anytime food is being prepared we teach this national sanitation foundation course it's called surf safe and we've trained over 600 food handlers in the county which is really great that's why it's cut down on critical orders dramatically and we have a lot of cleaning orders so it really is help and this certification is good for five years after five years we teach them a recertification course that's a four-hour classroom and we've trained over 300 people on that so it's really been successful i have such appreciation for the work you do from two angles one when i was in high school and college i worked at a big boy in a country kitchen and a couple of other restaurants to make money during the summer months and uh when you get a job in a facility like that there isn't a tremendous amount of training number one and number two it wasn't like you went through junior high and high school learning about food serving and handling and i think back to those days when i was a teenager and young person doing that and then also now where occasionally you'll get out to dinner with your wife or the lunch hour and it's nice to know that someone is checking in and providing that training and just making those making sure those improvements occur we had the opportunity a number of years ago Bruce you know to go out and i saw how you systematically looked at things and then worked with that owner in a very respectful courteous manner share with them some some tips and it was well received you know it's to their benefit i think our program is very well received you know we try to communicate with them and try to educate them because you know they can anybody can go into restaurant business without any experience right and i guess it's our responsibility to teach them and we've developed the food safety information manual for them so it talks on five critical items of foodborne illnesses we talk about allergens we talk about safe food facts about proper food handling proper glove use how to calibrate a thermometer so those are all things we go through with the operator so that they are educated and we also have signs that are posted in the kitchen or throughout the premise so whether it be hand washing so they don't have an excuse why they don't know how to wash hands or the temperature signs so that they know that and we've got quite a few places i'm on the no smoking coalition we have over a hundred places that have gone non-smoking the last eight years and the citizens of shaboy love it the families can go in without having the smoke bother them and it's really been quite helpful and the operators are liking that that they are going non-smoking they've seen an increase in business two final questions i'll turn it over to mike uh first if someone's viewing this and you know had an unpleasant experience recently with a restaurant or it happens in the future who can they call or how do they make a complaint so it's looked into well they can call our department and they get the number is 459-4347 and leave a message if i don't pick up the phone or they can leave a voicemail message and we'll go out there and we like to get their name and telephone number so that we can respond to them tell them what we found and that's so that we they know that we've have taken care of it outstanding and then finally tis the season by the time this this program runs i think christmas is going to be passed but new years and and uh just it's always important that we're handling food properly at home if you had a few quick tips for our viewers what do you think is most important to stress what should people be doing more carefully when they're handling food or preparing meals for their loved ones okay first of all be washing those hands you have to wash them thoroughly for 20 seconds in hot lathered soap use paper towel to dry them not on your pants or your sweat or something like that and then keep food separate keep your produce separate from your meat so that you don't have cross contamination with the bacteria figure you always have bacteria in your home place you have to know what to do with it so keep that separate wash your produce maybe wash the chicken and make sure that you cook the food to the proper temperature if anybody has any problem you can call our department and find out or we can mail you out something but it's very important that chicken is cooked to 165 degrees for at least 15 seconds your ground beef your hamburgers your ground pork a ground lamb up to 155 degrees for 15 seconds everything else about 145 degrees for 15 seconds so important and then not to leave leftovers on the table for hours and hours cool it down and put it in refrigeration and cover it so that you don't have any contamination of it and when you reheat the food make sure you reheat it fast so that you kill the bacteria that might be on that food cutting boards are a big issue folks will get the the chicken prepared on the cutting board and then they'll start their salad right absolute no no that's what you mean by making sure you're keeping that separate wash it rinse it and make sure that all that bacteria is off of that excellent thank you bruce well bruce i guess i'm going to scratch raw beef sandwiches thank you very much and state funding for your programs has been fairly stagnant over the last couple of years i know that there's been an increase in people that are looking for services and there's also been some new statewide initiatives could you describe some of those please sure and as always you know new state initiatives always don't come with new money so keep that in mind but i think many people are aware that badger care plus which expanded the medical assistance program to parents with children started early this year and we've seen a significant increase in the number of families in sheboyton county applying for and becoming eligible which is really great because now they can get funding towards their medical care so that's been an expansion and our economic support staff that i forgot to talk about earlier determine eligibility for that so of course they've seen their workload increase significantly but understand how important this is for the families that we work with the other thing that i think is exciting to me is we have the new department of children and families down in madison and they've been able to institute some things that i think are very very helpful to the residents of sheboyton county and right before i came i went on just to double check to make sure the website was working but if you go to our website and you go to links you can go to the state of wisconsin and you can actually get into the department of children and families website and you can actually get into the wisconsin child care search part so if you're a young parent and you're looking for child care for your child you can actually find a child care provider and by going through the steps and it's fairly simple you can find out has that child care provider been um uh recertified or re-licensed have they had any violations what were the violations for so it gives you a chance to see not only where you can locate child care providers but how they are regulated and where their violations are so that has been a just fantastic service and in fact being a new grandparent i told my daughter about it so she was able to use it to look for a child care provider in the milwaukee area so those are kind of two of the things right now that i think are not only exciting but ways that we're using technology to help people because even with the Medicaid program and food share program people can go into the state website through the department of health and through the asset system do a preliminary application and apply online that we can then screen that so more and more the state is starting to use technology to help us do our jobs also so it's been nice this year to see some positive changes that's great as you know the state mandates many programs for you to run and unfortunately they don't always give us all the money that we need to meet the needs that we find here in shabuagan county could you describe a little bit about how this is impacted us here in shabuagan well i have to say that from my perspective and i can't say this for every county because not every county operates this way but we have been truly um recognized as a leader in health and human services the county board has stepped forward even with budget targets many times to help us meet those state mandates because they're underfunded so for an example this past budget cycle the birth to three program which is a mandated program and we can't put children on a wait list the county came forward with some additional money through the budget process to help us maintain that program and serve these very vulnerable children who have delays whether it be speech or physical or occupational delays that can be worked with to really give them a head start as they go forward when we look at our child protective services system we can't say when we get a referral well we'll get you two weeks from now we have to go out immediately and within 24 hours at a minimum so the county has always put money into our child protective services and behavioral health right now we have the ad hoc committee looking at behavioral health services for adults there are significant county dollars that go into that behavioral health system so we're fortunate that the county board um and the residents of sheboygan county had recognized the importance and by doing this we hopefully offset deep end costs down the road in terms of children and corrections or adults with mental health issues and jails and that type of thing well the uh the winter is upon us and it came rather quick this year so we've got a lot of cold temperatures and uh are there some services that low income families can access to help them get through the winter months and keep their homes warm the wisconsin home energy assistance program it's called weep w-h-e-a-p uh is something that actually operates from october 1st of this year through september uh the end of september of next year and that's how that season always works i can tell you that um last year we had around 3000 households that were assisted based on that cycle already the latest report i had through the end of november shows 2000 households that have applied for that you can do that through our economic support unit and by just going to the sheboygan county website clicking on our department of health and uh our health and human services it'll take you right there that you can access the the weep program information uh much of that can be done through a mail-in application um in addition because so many families are just struggling with meeting so many needs we're encouraging people to at least take a look at would they be eligible for food share and i know there was one woman the other night that was on one of the milwaukee station saying it was only 14 dollars a month but 14 dollars could pay for someone's high blood pressure medication for a month if they could get that assistance with food so we encourage them to apply for any of those economic support benefit packages to see if they're eligible and how we might help them through public health and and bruce is a member of our public health staff we have the women infant and children programs so if you're a new parent or a pregnant woman you could apply for the wick program and that would help you out also okay and recently there was a news feature that said that wisconsin was ready for a health disaster at health and human services how does your department get involved and undertake programs to uh to alleviate these kinds of problems well i think you know ever since the um attack on the twin towers there's been an investment in homeland security and and public health um became a very important part of that and more recently as we began planning we also have to plan for our special needs population which would be our elderly our children and foster homes or individuals that we have in in group living settings so through the the lead of public health we actually do tabletop exercises so we can plan not only for a pandemic but also for natural disasters flooding as an example so we can do that through the tabletop and we work with our community partners to do that so we actually come up with a scenario and everybody around the table reacts in a way they would have to react and it's all condensed into a very short period of