 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name is Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrative Coordinator and co-host of this program with Chairman Bill Gehring and today we're very pleased to have our guest Shannon Hayden with us who is the Sheboygan County Planning Director. Welcome Shannon. Thank you, Adam. Shannon is going to talk about the non-motorized transportation pilot program that many of you may have read about or heard about that Sheboygan County is going to be embarking on here soon. We're going to receive up to 25 million dollars over four years and Shannon is going to be taking a very important leadership role in implementing that program but before we get into that Shannon please set the stage by sharing a little bit about yourself and how long you've been the Planning Director for Sheboygan County. Sure I've been with Sheboygan County for almost five years which when I say that out loud it seems strange it does not seem like five years at all and Ben with the I'm sorry the the department itself administers a number of programs there's a total of 19 programs that we administer one of them being recreational type facilities such as the old plank road trail then our urban trail some of the boat landings and the marsh which is at the heart of everybody most people in Sheboygan County I think and so with that comes the 25 million dollars so just to take a step back yeah so with the county five years you started as our assistant planning director and how long have you been the director the director for about three and a half years and in your department I know most people recognize well you have the the planning you know type responsibilities but you also have real property listing in your areas very briefly just what are some of the areas that you oversee sure real property listing which helps prepare the tax rolls so that the assessors can assess the values to your property and get the taxes collected so government can work the way that we need to for the residents we also administer the county shoreland floodplain zoning so if you live on a waterfront property on your river or a pond that's considered navigable you will need to come see us for a permit we administer the county sanitary ordinance so if an individual is on a septic system for their wastewater treatment then they will need to come and get they'll have some dealings with us at some point in time on top of that we have the planning there's some specific types of plans that we are responsible for administering smart growth which is more likely being referred to lately as comprehensive planning out to a rec and open space planning farmland preservation planning we administer the addressing system for enhanced 911 so we are issue addresses and if somebody doesn't have their address in the rural area posted properly the shared department will notify us and get a letter from us saying make sure that's up correctly then we also do tying a little bit into real property listing but land records management the geographic information systems mapping the digital mapping and it's all going out on the web now so people can look up information about their property there and i think that's that's pretty big broad overview of the types of things that we do and quickly gives our viewers an appreciation for the the breadth of responsibilities that you have there from like as you said land records and making sure that property tax bills are correctly dealt with from subdivision reviewing subdivision ordinances to wastewater what have you so all of that going on and you get a call uh what the fall winter of oh five august august of oh five i lose track of time and this phone call comes from congressman petri's office and what do you what do you learn um well congressman petri a staff member debbie gibhart asked would shaboy can count you be in a position to spend five dollar five million dollars so each of each of five years for a total of 25 million on um bike and pedestrian facilities and to be honest with you at first i thought that i didn't really know what she's talking about i thought maybe it was like a telemarketing call trying to sell me something and as i began talking to her a little bit more and um she explained what was happening in the transportation subcommittee and with this non-molderized pilot program um i realized that it was a real opportunity for us and started to explain how we might be in a position to implement it and uh she took that back to congressman petri and he put it out there um as one of four communities in the country to be um a pilot community for non-molderized or bike ped type um transportation as i want our viewers to appreciate that you have a lot going on in that department it's one of our leaner departments and certainly lean when you compare to other counties across the state uh you do an excellent job applying for grants whether it's for some of our bike trails would have you but this was a situation where we weren't lobbying for it we weren't asking for it and all of a sudden pretty much out of the blue landed this tremendous opportunity with as you set up to 25 million over a four-year period to improve our bike biking walking trails what have you let's get right into it for the viewers who haven't really been following this are wondering well what is this non-motorized transportation pilot program how would you describe it um it's a program to help change behavior for those people who watched george bush's uh state of the said we're addicted to oil and we need to stop that's one of the components of this um program and the thinking of the transportation subcommittee um namely congressman over star but this was a bipartisan effort between um congressman over star out of minnesota and congressman petri from um font from this area and um they worked very closely together i think it was a good example of some bipartisan leadership working together on a program um to take cars off the road i you know to be very straightforward and when i say that some people think that that's insane um but it has happened and worked in other um areas throughout the country and more less than one percent of our transportation budget is spent on non non car related facilities so non motorized facilities um so so when you look at it in the grand scheme of things our our spending typically on bike ped um transportation options has been very very limited and i think that congress at least the transportation subcommittee in light of our dependency on oil the um the air pollution issues we're starting to deal with more and more frequently and then also the costs of energy um going up starting to maybe rethink some of their spending and seeing if there's a way that we can kind of shift the way that we make transportation choices um so it's nothing else to give people more options everyone's so inclined to jump in the car whether it's taking their kids to school or going to work or going to the store and if we have a better transportation system that facilitates jumping on your bike or walking in a safe manner that we're going to see more people make better life child lifestyle choices that are going to be healthier anyway right right so you shaboy in wisconsin shaboy in county wisconsin one of four communities what are the other three um marine county california which is a bay community right across the san francisco bay from um the city of san francisco though the incorporated portion of san francisco is not in their county um it's a very unique place their median household price is 750 thousand dollars um it's relatively densely populated though and speaking to some of the um leadership in that area they have a lot of areas set aside for protection especially along the um pacific coast so it's um definitely a wealthy community with some aesthetic attractions to it minneapolis st paul which many of us have visited at some point in our life i'm sure given its location in the midwest they have had a long history of um commitment to bike pedestrian and then also with their light rail and public transit options there and i think um they were selected just to continue some of the work and maybe do some additional um connectivity between the st paul minneapolis city itself and some of the suburban areas um columbia missouri has a population of about 90 000 so it's a little bit bigger than the city of shaboygan but certainly you know not much bigger than the county itself but it does um also include two universities so they're a little bit unique as well um so from the discussions that i've heard when you take those four communities together you really get a nice cross section of the country as a whole and um from what we've been told if this program can work in these four communities the feeling is that um taking this as the as a model for the next step in starting implementing across the country is is likely to be successful now there's no question that congressman petri really deserves you know tremendous credit for bringing this to shaboygan county but uh the question's been posed why shaboygan county and how do you respond to that well i think that there's a a lot of different things happening here for example i received a call from dav cook hook yesterday from maywood and he said two years ago they had 50 people involved with this bicycle training program every monday night in the summer 50 people were leaving maywood on miller road which is a small railroad this last year they had a hundred so they doubled their program and that's just one small example where you have a group of people choosing to bike for recreational purposes we have a long standing historical commitment i think to the trails with the old plank road trail it's a very visible one from highway 23 and that came in place with a lot of vision and foresight by the planning department which i wasn't part of at the time but when 43 was developed and that interchange there really trying to push for that and that was successful and then the commitment throughout the county city of plameth has a good trail network as well as the city of falls city of shaboygan so i think that there's um kind of this people are first of all tours are coming to shaboygan to use these facilities and amenities that we have but also the residents use them frequently to get to where they want to go but also to recreate i mean they're definitely as a recreation component i think um to the thinking of having congress and petri choose us as a community and i know you've mentioned not only the planning that's happened in the past some of the trails that we currently have in place the interest from the community but another point that you've made that i think is a very good one is that a certain percentage of the population here perhaps higher than some communities live within what five or 15 minutes of the workplace can you clarify that sure um based on the census data 50 percent of the population in shaboygan county commutes 15 minutes or less to work which is significantly higher almost double of what um community rates in the nation i want to say it's about 23 to 30 percent of people commute 15 minutes or less so historically even if you look at a map of shaboygan county you have a more dense urban core and then you have you know your rural area surrounding it so people are really living pretty close to where they're working and if you're talking about a seven-minute drive to work let's say when we say 15 minutes or less that includes everybody who's you know driving a short trip um you know seven minutes for sure you can do that on a bike even if you're coming from the city of falls into shaboygan or something that certainly is doable but so i think right there we have a leg up and one of the things that is frequently discussed is mode split what section or what mode of transportation do people choose to take a trip and when you look at some studies that have been done by the federal highway administration the mode split for bikes and walking in shaboygan county is about six percent where nationally it's about two percent so we're already biking and walking at a higher rate than others throughout the country certainly i want to say a place like madison might have 10 but um that's where we're trying to head i believe with this program is to try to increase the number of people who are choosing to bike or walk when it's practical for them to do so um very good final question before turning it over to bill so in a nutshell what are the roles and responsibilities of the planning department sure to administer this program well there's recently been some legislation passed by the county board to make it kind of the a joint effort between the planning department and the highway department which i think is a logical solution um the planning department will be working on some of the up front um trying to get the citizen involvement working with the committee structure all of this of course being reviewed and approved by two county board supervisors committees the resources and the transportation committee um they they have final review and an approval of anything that the staff is bringing to them but coordinating the process um helping identify projects things like that um the highway department will certainly be important to be at the table through that entire process but you know one of their areas of expertise is when it comes to finding consultants to help with design and the contract letting and the whole grant um fiscal administration their accounting staff are able to deal with that because they do that every day so um making sure that the the planning side the touchy-feely stuff is kind of how i describe it gets done but then um the highway department bill will be responsible for the on the ground you know getting it done kinds of things too so excellent very good in addition to the resources committee and the transportation committee will there be any other county committees or departments that will provide any information or will it primarily be those two committees well you know for sure the two are very key but there have been other um departments just about every committee everybody this is a huge thing a lot of people have wanted to be involved with it finance certainly wants to be involved from a fiscal management and oversight standpoint we have had interest from our health and human services department from a health perspective we focus a lot on transportation but there is a health component to it as well and some of the statistics that i've been hearing since we got this are pretty shocking for example this generation of children is the first to have a shorter lifespan than their parents the ones that are you know considered school age now that's something that we haven't seen in and quite a long time because of obesity or what's obesity and then with that comes the type two diabetes another statistic that i find kind of shocking is that if you can reduce eliminate one case of diabetes that's a savings of a million dollars over that person's lifespan that's huge and if we can start targeting children to change their behavior i think everybody here it remembers a time when it was perfectly normal okay and just part of the day your parents kicked you out and you didn't come back to the first streetlight was on we don't do that anymore and we need to make opportunities where parents can feel that their kids are going to be safe so that they can not have to worry that they're going to get run over by a car or snatched from a kid by a kidnapper or something but also that kids have the ability to get out and they don't think of it as a punishment to have to walk to school it's just the way it is so there's a number of different models and programs out there that can help and i anticipate health and human services at a minimum being at the table but i know that from a research perspective there's a number of different aspects of it that people are interested in but ultimately this joint committee is what i see the resources and transportation as having the final oversight you know as you're going through that legislation there was a healthy discussion on the county board floor a good 45 minutes about there there were some county board supervisors who wanted all the projects to come before the county board for approval that didn't get amended in this legislation but perhaps that might come back but ultimately i think that the two committees the members on those committees take this very seriously and understand that it's a huge program and i think that they're going to make the best decisions for the residents of the county the longer i've been involved in government the more i feel that we really need to involve the grassroots citizens how will we involve the citizens in the planning i have some of my own ideas um and it's it's it's never easy i mean to just post an agenda and say we're having a public hearing and well geez nobody showed up that's that's not the way to go about it you have to get out to the community um there's a number of different things that you can do walking down the street grabbing somebody and not really grabbing them but say hey do you have a minute to talk to me about transportation or how would you have bike today or whatever there's a number of different um inventories and user perception mod tools out there that you can use our consultant that hopefully will help us guide through this process initially um i was talking to one who i think will at least be throwing their hat in the ring um but he said you know i've seen good public participation and i've seen bad the good gets everybody in the room from you know crawling to elderly and gets them having input and i'm looking for some expertise to help with that but i think that anybody who wants to have a say and maybe even some of those people who don't think they want to have a say um should have a say and getting school kids involved poster contest things like that any way that we can get um input from the public i think is going to be important because this is too important of a program to not take that into account how do you envision the project selection will occur sure um well last night the joint committee approved um roger and i and and and also add them to move forward with developing a request for qualifications for consultants and then subsequently in the future we'd come back to hire a consultant um excuse me there's a number of different consultants out there that have the ability to come up with a rating tool or have already come up with rating tools for projects so the hope is that one component that the federal highway administration is requiring us to to do is update our existing bike and ped plan um they're saying that's your first step so our consultant will help us with that the hope is that given the goals of the pilot program and some of the outcomes are still being worked on with a work group of the pilot communities but once those are formalized the consultant can take the plan and this rating and ranking tool that will be developed not just by the consultant but with input and guidance by the um technical citizens advisory and technical committee which the county board created um and then once that list is in place rate all those potential projects and from there i'm not real sure i'm going to be looking to guidance from the the citizens advisory technical committee and the joint committees to help tell me you know how they want that to go um so there will be a rating process it's not going to be just a well we think this is a good idea um and projects will be scored and um but the details of all that i haven't been worked out yet do you have any idea about how soon some projects might be selected it probably will be an ongoing process sure um we had put together a staff a tentative outline of how we want to move forward the hope would be to have a list of projects um by the end of summer um august september time because for any construction that's going to occur in 2007 we really need to get the design work started we are going to need to go through a environmental assessment process as part of the federal grant that takes some time and effort so we're going to have to work out with the advisory committee and the joint committees as to do they want to just select 2007 projects and then kind of have a ghost list of 2008 2009 projects i'm not sure how that's all going to work out but this is very in a very aggressive time period um for the pilot the the money is not required to sunset at 2009 that's the funding period of the bill but um there definitely is a lot of expectation that the dollars are spent um but spent wisely so um i think we're going to have to continue to be aggressive though thoughtful but it's going to go fast um and to to meet the the requirements of the program we are required to report back to congress in i think 2007 it's interim report and then 2010 for the final report so if we're only halfway done constructing we're not going to have a very good report so we're going to have to make sure that we move forward appropriately within the time frame um that we need to and there's a lot of people even though we didn't necessarily um lobby or you know try to persuade congressman petri to give us funding um we got lucky because at least two of the other four that i can speak of for sure we're actively lobbying um their congressman for a good year to year and a half to be on that list of four two of the other four communities yes yeah yeah um maybe i'll maybe three of the four but i know for sure two out of the four worked very very hard to be on that short list so um you know there's kind of fell in our lap but there are other communities out there that are saying you know this is we got to get it done so that we can prove to congress that this is important so um it's a big it's a big uh responsibility to to shoulder i think but i think that we'll we'll get through it good basically then our reviewers could begin our viewers could begin to see some projects being built in 2007 and then over the next couple of years the money would kind of be allocated but wouldn't all have to be spent in in one certain year some might carry over right right the other thing that's important to mention is that there are the dollars aren't just for bricks and mortar types of things um education and outreach one of the ones that you probably hear me refer to frequently is the safe routes to schools program um the pilot program which actually happened in marin county i believe was a three-year pilot it reduced vehicle traffic to schools by 13 percent each year and if you think about it in a tax payer's perspective that's less buses that you have to pay for and so right there is a great incentive to get kids walking to school so i think that's one program area that we may be able to look at implementing through this grant which would be eligible um but there are other things that can occur such as intersection treatments painting things that slow people down um and all of those things have to be looked at and i would think some of those smaller projects are this that's the buzzword is the low hanging fruit thing which kind of makes me laugh but um you know some of those are smaller and hopefully the right construction would start actual construction could start in 2007 and then carry out for the next couple of years thank you so let me recap summer fall of 05 we received notification that we may receive up to 25 million that has since passed congress uh been appropriated we will receive up to 6.25 million dollars a year for the next four years uh we the county board has established a joint oversight committee the transportation and planning and resources committees they've now combined nine members they'll be overseeing it they've established an advisory and technical committee that is yet to be assigned we have i think about 50 individuals so far that have expressed interest in that we have authorization to hire a consultant to help develop the criteria we have a authorization to have a couple of staff assigned to your department to help with the program development and administration and frankly 06 you know for those who are really chomping at the bit just can't wait for this trail development and things to happen out there really 2006 is going to be a year of gearing up preparing the criteria uh getting the projects um selected prioritized design work done and really 07 is when we're going to start seeing some projects go on the ground i think that's the most realistic approach i i think thinking that construction will occur in 2006 would be very aggressive so if people and i know that you've put out news releases in the past and recently there was a nice editor editorial in the shabuigan press about the program the opportunity and folks can contact you if they are interested our viewers who are watching this program if they're interested in learning more getting on a mailing list or participating what's the best way for them to follow up well within the next couple of weeks i hope to have um our web staff to have a special site on the department's county planning department's website that gives updates and all sorts of information and links about the program but in the short time until that happens because i i have no idea what the workload in the information systems department is at this point um if they they have any questions they certainly can give me a call um our number is 459-3060 and um you can look it up in the phone book if if you didn't write it down but certainly i'd be more than happy to talk to anybody about the program and so far my experience has been that people who have called have all sorts of great ideas i mean there's a lot of people out there who have spent time on a bike seat throughout the county and have seen things that they can share with us and the advisory committees and all the other people who are going to be involved so um i'm always of the thinking of the more we can get the better absolutely we want to definitely want to err on the side of getting as much input and participation as we can shannon thank you so much for joining us today we covered a lot of ground in a short period of time if you have additional questions please don't hesitate to contact miss hayden or a member of our staff 459-3060 roger landing our highway commissioner also is going to be taking a lead role with shannon and they both are just tremendous and i know they're going to do a great job with this so on behalf of chairman bill gehring the shaboydon county board and myself adam pain thank you very much for joining us and until next time take care