 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name's Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Vanderstien, who isn't to my left and hasn't been now for the last month. He is recovering from some surgery and certainly we miss him, but we'll be back with us later this year. Today, we're very pleased to have one of our important department heads with us, Mr. Aaron Brault, who is currently the Interim Planning and Conservation Director. Aaron, welcome. Thank you. Aaron, you've probably recognized from doing previous shows or certainly if you followed the Non-Motorized Transportation Program, Aaron's had a leadership role with that for a number of years now, but very recently was promoted to our Interim Planning and Conservation Director and a number of changes in the department. Aaron, why don't you start by sharing a little bit about yourself and a little background? Sure. Well, you touched on a little bit of it. I was previously with the Non-Motorized Program and still managed that program within the county. Taking a step back even further, I used to work for a private consulting firm called Vandal Wall & Associates, straight out of college. That's a private consulting firm down in Madison, Wisconsin. Originally from the area, I grew up in two rivers and then moved down to Madison for school and worked there for a number of years and spent three years in Indianapolis running my own business as well. Well, I was with Vandal Wall. We had the fortunate chance to work on a number of Sheboygan County communities, so I was quite aware of a lot of the communities in Sheboygan County, not only from having grown up so close, but also having worked for doing the city of Plymouth's comprehensive plan, working on that, also working on the Blue Harbor layout when I was at Vandal Wall and doing some of the comprehensive planning for the city of Sheboygan as well. So when did you first start with Sheboygan County? When did you come aboard? About four years ago now. Okay. And you're married family? Yep, married family. My wife's a pediatrician here in town. That's actually what brought us to town was her job and I have two fine children, one two and a half. He's Sawyer and I also have a daughter who is nine months old and... Very nice. Isabel. That's your hands full. Yes. Two rivers right now isn't sitting real well with me because they just blew the socks off Plymouth where my son plays basketball. Yeah. Pretty powerful basketball team this year. Yeah. From what I understand, the last few years have been a little rough, but this year they're doing all right. When I was in high school and I was a basketball player, Plymouth was our rival. I think my senior year, we split for the conference title, we each beat one another and that was it. All right. Well, they took it to Plymouth real well last week. Nice looking team. Good. Nice looking team. A nice community. That's a nice community. As planning and conservation director, what are some of the broad roles and responsibilities that you have or your department has? We have gameter programs. We touched on one, the non-motorized pilot program. That is a pilot so that'll eventually end. 2012 we figure we'll have a lot of our projects wrapped up on that. Some of the core programs in our department are the septic maintenance program that's mandated by the state of Wisconsin, so we oversee that. We also oversee all our recreational facilities, so the boat landings, the trails, the Marsh Park, Marsh Lodge, things like that. On the conservation division side of things, we have buffer strip programs, different farming types of programs to help farmers out in their land use and conservation efforts. Let's see, what else? All the county's mapping. We do a lot of the mapping for tax records, things, land records, things like that. I know probably what most people are familiar with with the planning areas, the shoreland zoning or if they're putting in a septic system, you have code administrators that are pretty active in that area. Those are two of our main core programs. As you know, we don't have county-wide zoning. The only zoning purview we have in the county is our shoreland ordinance. Anything that's going to be built within 300 feet of a lake or a stream or 1,000 feet of a lake, you come to our office if it's outside of municipality. If you live around anybody of water and you're looking to put an addition on or a new deck or something like that and you're within a few hundred feet, you want to call the planning department. I imagine we'll be interacting. Very good. A breadth of responsibilities, what about total staff, total budget? Well, recently we combined with the land and water department, so now we are officially the planning and conservation department. With those folks being added to our department, we have 15 full-time employees. The budget is a tough question because that varies year to year based on a lot of our grants, things like the non-motorized program, any other grants that we may receive, but typically it's about a million dollars or less. About 700,000 comes out of our tax levy to run our department, which is about down about 25% over the past five years. That can be said about so many departments in county government, obviously with the economy and all levels of government looking to hold the line on taxes and take on more responsibility with less resources, less staff. Many of our departments have consolidated or streamlined, and as you said, a 25% overall reduction in the planning and land and water departments. From the levy. Yeah, from the tax levy. From the tax levy. But your staffing, I think, is down as a whole as well, is it not? Yeah, I believe we are down four positions after we combine that department, or combine the two departments. And of course, with Aaron taking on the Interim Planning and Conservation Director, he is the department head now overseeing this combined department. So where we used to have two department heads, we now have one. So, again, a lot of changes in county government and all levels of government. As the new director, what are your key responsibilities and what are some of the key projects that you intend to focus on? Sure. Well, day to day it's overseeing the department, obviously. And again, I mentioned that I'm also still in charge of the non-motorized program. Right now we have about 27 infrastructure projects that are going through the state and federal processes that we have to follow. So that takes up a good chunk of my time just getting those through the process. We should, you know, a lot of the folks out there probably heard about this for three, four years now, and probably want to know when shovels are going to be in the ground. And we've had some shovels in the ground. County Highway O was under construction last year and will be under construction again this year. That was done in phases. And so that project is moving forward. Miller Road in the town of Sheboygan will also be moving forward this year. Come spring, couple projects in Usberg and Adele. Bike lane striping project is out to bid currently. So February 8th will be opening bids for that project. So that will add about 20 to 30 miles of bike lanes throughout the county. And a number of our other projects are in the engineering phase. So that's a lot of day-to-day interaction with the different engineering firms that we're working with and involving the other communities in the county that are involved in the project. So reviewing those projects. And some of the folks who maybe aren't real familiar with the non-motorized transportation program and just heard us talk about, well, geez, you just consolidated two departments into one, you're streamlining and consolidating throughout county government all levels of government. How is it that you're able to build a bunch of bike paths and recreation paths and perhaps just set the stage there a little bit? How is it that we're able to do this? Sure. In 2005, so like I said, three, four years ago, when times are still good or considered good or relatively good, 2005, under the Bush administration, the county received a grant for up to $25 million to promote non-motorized transportation. You're one of four communities in the country to receive that and to act as a pilot, basically to demonstrate to Congress what works in this kind of funding and what doesn't. So we've certainly seen some of the things that don't work and we certainly have seen some of the things that do work. Overall, positive reaction from the community. I think the biggest thing has been some of the time delays going through this federal process. And to be frank, you know, Sheboygan County, I don't think in the past has received a lot of federal money. So if you ask anybody in the federal level, they say six to seven years to get a project through the process and we're four to five. So I guess we're moving a little quicker. It's all relative. But I know you receive that question from time to time and I do as I interact with friends or family members or bump into somebody at a gas station, you're like, well, how is it they're able to put that new trail in right now? Times are tough and I know you've laid some staff off and it's because of that grant that we received way back in 2005. Yeah. I mean, that's the short end of the stick. Federal money moves a whole lot slower than local dollars. And speaking of grants, we also receive what CMAQ grants. CMAC. CMAC. That's the acronym. What's it stand for? Congestion, mitigation and air quality is what CMAC stands for. And I guess, unfortunately or fortunately, however you want to look at it, Sheboygan County is eligible for CMAC grant funding from the federal government. Where the non-motorized grants 100% federally funded, a CMAC grant is 80-20. So we do have to come up with some local dollars for CMAC grants. Going back to unfortunate fortune and how you want to look at it, because we have poor air quality in the County of Sheboygan. That's what makes us eligible for CMAC grants. The theory behind CMAC grants is to provide bicycle pedestrian types of projects, also transit, transit capital types of projects to try to get folks sort of the same goal of the non-motorized grant, get folks out of their cars and biking and walking and using transit and more efficient forms of transportation than the automobile to help improve air quality. How's that working? I don't know the statistics on if that's working or not, I can't comment on that. However we did receive two CMAC grants in addition to the non-motorized grants for the extension of the Interurban Trail from Usberg up into Sheboygan. Right now the Interurban Trail, you can basically go from Usberg to Chicago on a bike facility. Most of it's off-road. There are a few portions in Ozaki County and Port Washington area and in Milwaukee where you're on street on a marked route, designated route. But basically you can get down to Chicago on a bike trail. You're going to do that in one day obviously, no, that's more of a recreational type of focus. But the shorter trips between different communities, see your girl of Usberg, do have some utilitarian types of aspects to them. But again we got a grant for Usberg to Sheboygan, a CMAC grant on that. And then we also received for the Union Pacific Rails to Trails conversion. A portion of that project is funded with the non-motorized grant as well. And that's a section of rail line that's been abandoned in the heart of the city of Sheboygan. If you think of by the Walgreens on the corner of 14th and Erie, there's the old rail line that runs behind that, the bridge is still over the Sheboygan River. So that's the section about two miles, actually 1.67 miles of that rail line will be converted to a trail in the heart of Sheboygan, again using not only non-motorized grant, but the CMAC grant as well. And it's probably predominantly city of Sheboygan residents who follow this program, although I know it's broader than that. When can they expect that work to continue or begin and when will it be completed? On the Union, both of the projects that I mentioned for CMAC will be built in 2012. 2012. That's our hopes at least. The Union Pacific, I mean we're keeping our fingers crossed that it's 12. We're in the appraisal process right now. We still have to negotiate with the rail lines and that can be a bureaucracy in itself. I would say rail lines are almost a bigger bureaucracy than any government entity. So we're hoping we can get this taken care of this summer, get things negotiated and purchased, and then be able to start cleaning up some of the environmental problems that have been there. It's an industrial corridor through the city, or at least was once an industrial corridor. So there's some cleanup efforts we have to do and then get it built and get the bridge resurfaced and re-decked. And so we're looking at 12 for that. And I'm sure as our viewers are seeing, you're clearly an expert in this area and this is where you've spent most of your career in Sheboygan County working on this. Sure. If anyone has questions or suggestions, don't ever hesitate to contact Aaron Brault in our planning department or any of his good staff to get more information or if you have suggestions on how to make improvement. Let's turn a little bit from non-motorized program and trails for a second to other areas of the planning department. Sure. From one extreme to the others, perhaps, and that is the Sheboygan Marsh. There are a lot of good people in this community who enjoy fishing and recreating at the Sheboygan Marsh, just a tremendous jewel for Sheboygan County. And this year perhaps so more than any year that I can recall, perhaps in the history, I don't know, you may know, but we had a real issue with the bogs, with the wind and the rain and the water levels going up. How much did we spend to remove bogs this year and what's being contemplated to improve upon the situation? Sure. Like you said, that's a real gem for our community, but we did have an issue out there this summer. We spent about $67,000 to keep the boat landing open out at the marsh for a variety of factors. I'm no biological expert or wetlands expert, but we had some very high rains and high winds this summer that attributed to those cattails breaking loose and floating down to the dam area at the marsh. If you think about the marsh, a lot of people don't realize what kind of a watershed that marsh encompasses. It's about the way I understand about 130 square miles that all drain to that one point at the dam. So if we get a rainfall in the area in Fond du Lac County, Calumet County, Sheboygan County, that dam or the water levels in that marsh fluctuate quite significantly. So with those actions and then having a lot of those high wind events that we had this summer, that high water and high winds just basically ripped the cattails out. And they float to that one point that I mentioned being the dam area. And so not only from keeping the boat landing open, we don't want to put excess pressure on that dam and have the dam break. So they need to be removed. Historically, if you look at the records, it's about every eight to 10 years we start to get events like this. From the recorded history that we have, there's never been anything as large as we experienced this last summer. There were some events in the late 90s, early aughts, if you will, that were quite large as well. I believe in 01 or in 2000, we spent about $40,000 removing bog. So it's not a one time problem. What the experts at the DNR recommend is that you do a drawdown every so often to try to mimic past drought types of events. And what happens then is the cattails get to root more so. There's not as much water on them. And so they have a stronger root system. And so they recommend every five, six, seven years you draw down the marsh. So we're going to do that this spring again. We lasted it in 2001, I believe. And from 2001 until last year, this year, or 09 and 10, we had good summers. I made one or two, three loads that we were taken out of cattails. And this year we're up over 500 loads. County truck, the big orange trucks you see on the highway, at least 500 of those truck loads of cattails were taken out this summer. It's quite the sight. If you have never been to the Sheboygan County Marsh, first, I encourage you to get out there. It's your jewel. And it's a beautiful one. We have the new Marsh Tower there, excellent restaurant, excellent food, excellent service, campground. And again, if you've never been out there, park on the side, well, you can be on either side, the restaurant side or the tower side. But you can see just in front of the dam, if you can imagine this whole area, was so full of bogs this year, you literally could walk across from one side to the other. Chairman Mike Van der Steen, I know, received some phone calls from some duck hunters or bull hunters out there that were concerned and asking the county to get on top of that and get it removed as soon as possible so they could access the the boat launch there and get out and hunt or fish. And but it's not just those using the boat launch. It's also the campers. It can get a little ripe in the summer when those logs come down. And as Aaron said, every year we get a few. It hasn't been too bad the last five years or so. But the Marsh Advisory Committee, I understand, is recommended that we do another drawdown. The Resources Committee will make that decision. And it's always controversial because there's a number of people who are concerned when that drawdown occurs. That impacts the fishing or impacts the ability to get in and out of there with your boat. Sure. There's a number of, you know, as with anything, I guess, in our day-to-day activities, there's different sides of the coin and different user groups that have different opinions on everything. So, you know, some people say that the drawdown is a good thing. Some people say that you shouldn't do it. You should actually keep the water higher. And then again, you know, the fishermen don't like that. You know, they won't be able to fish for a summer. They will be able to fish in the south channel. We keep the south channel open, but you're not able to go out onto the lake like you normally would be. Duck hunters tell you one thing. A lot of them will say that it's a good thing that you do the drawdown because that provides more forage for the ducks and other waterfowl. So, it's a tough situation. It will be controversial. Like you said, you know, I'm not going to pretend that it's not going to be. And speaking of controversy, the recreation fee that the County Board enacted about a year ago as you well know, and certainly your predecessor was a big part of that, we established a recreation fee. So, if you launch a boat at one of our six boat launches, or if you camp at the Sheboygan County Marsh Campground, correct me if I'm wrong, $16 a year for an annual pass. If you're a Sheboygan County resident. If you're a Sheboygan County resident. If you're a non-resident, it's 24 years. And then the daily pass. Our four and six. Four and six. Why was this recreation fee established a year ago? What's the purpose of it? Let's start with that. Well, I think we touched on it earlier. It was to help offset costs from the tax levy. As I mentioned, our department were down about 25 percent. And, you know, the cost to maintain these facilities doesn't go down. And our revenue streams are. So, again, I can't speak, my predecessor, you know, dealt primarily with this, but I can imagine those discussions are revolved mostly around that point. You know, how are we going to continue to pay for these things that we have and that people want to use with shrinking revenue streams? So, tremendous pressure on the county board to reduce property taxes, yet there's tremendous pressure to maintain law enforcement or health and human services or other programs that are actually absolutely essential. Recreation facilities, though I certainly in part feel they're essential because I enjoy them and I know you do and a lot of people do. The fact is a lot of people who are property taxpayers don't use our boat launches, don't camp at the Sheboygan County Marsh. And the board obviously has put this fee in place to have those who predominantly utilize these recreation facilities take a greater responsibility to help pay for them. As we both know, and I think folks who have been following county government know that there's some concern right now about the recreation fee as it's currently on the books. What are some of those concerns, Erin, that are being shared and what is being contemplated to improve the ordinance? Sure. You know, definitely I think some improvements can be made to the current ordinance. Some of the big complaints that we've heard are that it's not equitable to all users. For instance, on the Old Plank Road Trail we charge for bicyclists and mopeds currently. We exclude snowmobilers in the wintertime and folks in the summer who may be using it to jog, walk, roll or blade, what have you. So I think that's probably been the primarily, the biggest concern is that if you're going to do it charge everyone or charge no one. We've recently been meeting and will continue to meet with the Sheboygan County Conservation Association to get their input into making the ordinance better. Again, I think there are some improvements that we can be made or that can be made and I think in the next few months we'll see some of those come forward and I guess it's up to the county board then whether or not they enact that ordinance or not but I think some good compromises are out on the table now and well I guess we'll see where that takes us. And with the trails for example, you and I both know that by federal law the fee could be applied to some trails but not others and then there's some state concern with snowmobilers and that we could apply it to some users and not others. My sense is the county board is going to very likely eliminate the recreation fee on the trails just because we can't consistently apply it to all trails and all users but on the boat landings, that's pretty common. Sheboygan Harbor has an annual boat landing fee I think it's $70 a year. Random lake, it's very common throughout the state so I think the boat landings it can be consistently applied and the bottom line is though most people including myself don't want to pay these fees if we're going to maintain these facilities and be sure they're good for our future generations someone's got to pay the bills. Yep, the money has to come from somewhere. So moving right along, we've talked about non-motorized we've talked about the Sheboygan Marsh and you touched on a number of programs and services another one that was a recent initiative and I think a very successful one is collecting hazardous waste as well as unused medical waste pharmaceuticals. Yes, we have our household hazardous waste program has been very successful. This year we'll do it again starting in March so it'll be in every other month collection similar to what it was the last few years and then in May we have our big clean sweep event and there we partner with Manitowoc, Calumet and Fond du Lac counties and on the same weekend or Friday May 13th and Saturday May 14th we'll have collection sites set up where we do a big clean sweep for the county and you know you would think in this day and age that there wouldn't be that much out there but every year we still get DDT last year a guy called up and said what can I do with two tons of glycerin you know I don't I glycerin is not hazardous but you know those are the types of calls we get there's a lot of stuff still out there and an old barn or something that may have been sitting there for 50 60 years and you know the kids are starting to clean things up and they want to know what can they do with this stuff rather than throwing it in the stream in the backyard which is exactly what we do not want to happen and that's one of the main reasons we have this or not so much just throwing it in the stream throwing it in the backyard which ultimately gets in the stream or yeah or dumping it off at our boat land instead we end up having to pick up refrigerators every year that we have to pick up and dehumidifiers and things like that so so yeah it's been very successful we get some grants from the dat cap department of egg trade and consumer protection as well as there's also local monies the county board is deem this a necessary program and so we get funding from the tax levy as well to help cover the costs of the household hazardous waste program waste pharmaceuticals a lot of that comes from grants as well but that's been successful as well right now we have drop boxes permanent drop boxes at the city of sheboygan police department city of plemoth police department and this year we will be adding additional permanent drop boxes at city of sheboygan falls and village of elkhart lake police departments and that's again one so it doesn't get in the hands of teenagers and and those who might want to use those drugs in a not so recommended for a type of situation but also to for water quality you don't want to flush them down the toilet you don't want to flush them down the toilet no I mean they're finding fish are starting to mutate and some bad stuff going on in our waterways from waste pharmaceuticals even if it's just Tylenol, acetaminophen, things like that you want to get rid of it properly we only have a minute remaining and I know one of the major initiatives that we both have been participating on is the work group on the superfund site the sheboygan river finally getting the sheboygan river harbor cleaned up and eliminating the superfund designation very quickly what's the status of those efforts what's the good news for the community good news for the community after 30 years it's finally going to happen I think folks have been trying to get this done for 30 years and we finally got the monies in place locally only 200,000 from the city of sheboygan and another 100 from the city of sheboygan and 100,000 from the county of sheboygan as our local match to finally get EPA, DNR the locals all on board to get it cleaned up so and overall upper river lower river we're talking about a 50 million dollar project yep overall 50 million dollar project so I don't think that's a bad return on our investment so absolutely deeper you name it cleaner well nice work thanks for joining us we've got to wrap it up thank you for joining us again if you have any questions or would like to talk to Aaron Brault directly don't hesitate to contact our planning and conservation department again he's our interim but certainly doing a fantastic job and I'm hoping to be working with Aaron for a long time to come so Aaron thanks for joining us today yep thank you and thank you on behalf of the sheboygan county board chairman Mike van der steen and all of us thank you for joining us next month Rebecca Persick will be here our family court commissioner