 working for you. My name is Adam Page, Boyden County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Bill Gehring. And today we're very pleased to have a face on the program that you haven't seen before, at least not on this program, our new Highway Commissioner Greg Schnell. Greg, welcome. Thanks for having me. Greg, I think's been with us now for three, four months. I started October 2nd. And has a tremendous amount of responsibility associated with the Highway Department. And as you know, it is the season, the roads can get slick, and Greg's gonna give an overview of his roles and responsibilities as well as assure some of the challenges and new projects that are up and coming. Greg, please begin by sharing a little bit about yourself and your background. Well, as you stated, Adam, I'm new into position. October 2nd was when I started. My wife's name is Cheryl. I have two kids, Natalie and Mack, 11 and seven. We reside in the village of Howard's Grove. The position of Highway Commissioner in Sheboygan County is, some days challenging, but most days rewarding. I have an excellent staff to work with. Adam's been a great advocate in my corner, and so has the Transportation Committee. The biggest challenge so far I've seen is getting to know the roads and the employees. There's quite a few of them. So that's what I'll be working on throughout the winter months here. And it's nice that you touched on your family and where you're living, but obviously you've got a lot of great experience. And that's why you were hired. You worked over in Manitowoc County. What were some of your responsibilities there? As I started, I was a bulldozer operator and worked my way through the ranks, took some night classes in the interim, and progressed into a position of road superintendent and spent the last seven years at the Highway Department estimating jobs and scheduling a workforce and working on budgetary issues with the Highway Commissioner there. So folks watching the program, when they hear we're talking about the Highway Department, they may think it's rather intuitive what the Highway Department is all about, but in a nutshell, what are the key responsibilities of your department? The key responsibilities, I believe, would be providing the safe and reliable transportation that we do perform here in Sheboygan County, not only just to the taxpayers, but to the people that are going through. Obviously, we have I-43 that goes through the county and carries probably anywhere from 30 to 40,000 cars a day. And also the businesses in Sheboygan County rely on their goods and services to be, to get there at a reasonable amount of time. So it is a huge responsibility. And I believe that from what I've seen so far in the short time I've been here is that it's been managed very well to this point. And we continue, we'd like the community to do that way. So first impressions have been pretty good. Yes, they have. How many employees do you have? We have currently 114 employees, 104 of which are represented by the union. We have a staff consisting of in their office with administrative assistant, a bookkeeper. We have our accountant, some engineer and two road superintendents. They are responsible for taking care of the road construction and maintenance projects throughout the county. We also have a county engineer who has a survey that works with him also. And let's see, I probably missed somebody, but as we go through and we have a shop superintendent also, our highway shops consist of, we have six district sheds, which also have a supervisor station to each one. And these gentlemen are responsible for a crew of men to take care of the maintenance that needs to get taken care of on a daily basis. So $15 million budget, that number I happen to remember. 114 staff, and as you said, responsible for road maintenance, but also responsible for repair, new roads, what are some of the specific tasks that these folks are doing out there? We, Sherbrooke County is not unique, but in a certain sense it is that we do have our asphalt plan. We're one of eight counties out of the 72 that has an asphalt plan besides having a crusher. So not only do we do the road construction, but we make the products to complete these projects. And we do that all of ourselves. We have our own paver, we have our trucking. We take care of the construction from ground up. We build the road. It's a great thing to have. It's cost savings to the taxpayers. And I believe it's fortunate to have that type of equipment and diversity in the Iowa Department. I know it's been a real cost effective for us. And you've been obviously working with municipalities that Chairman Gehring is gonna talk about in a moment, but just how many roads do we have out there that we're maintaining? We're responsible that the county highway system is established at 450 miles. We also are responsible for the state highways at 170 miles plus we take care of 465 miles of local township roads, the townships and villages that we take care of. So it's a lot of road. And that's not counting all of them because there is a few townships and villages that have their own equipment that take care of themselves. But it's a lot of stuff to do. So when that snow or sleet does come and folks are wondering why my road hasn't been hit yet, they might wanna remember. Just how many roads we have out there to maintain and take care of and that takes some time. Exactly. Well, I think that's a pretty good overview. I'll turn it over to Bill. In addition to being county board chairman, you know I'm chairman of the town of Sherman and the county really does a lot of work for other municipalities. How do you coordinate all that work with towns, villages and the state work you have to do? The state maintenance basically is, we have a manual that we follow and it kind of gives us guidelines that are established by the state. In interim, we do have a state representative that comes down once a week and rides at one of the superintendents and we overview their roads to see what the needs are. If there's things that are getting overlooked or should be taken care of, they will tell us what direction we should take on that kind of stuff. As far as our outlying sheds or our district sheds, a lot of our shed supervisors will speak to the town chairman or the town employee that's responsible for the roads themselves and they will coordinate the patching or the brush cutting or whatever is the need that they're looking for, it'd be a ditching or even shouldering for that matter. So it's coordinated through a community of effort as far as from the chairman or the town worker to the shed supervisor. And we all work together on that. If there's something, a bigger as well project that would need to be taken care of, we provide an estimate or provide the material and the equipment in order to take care of that job. I've always thought that there's really a benefit to the taxpayer, both to the local town taxpayer and the larger county taxpayer to have that coordination. Can you speak to that issue? Well, it's effective as far as time management. If you had to go to the outside and try to hire a contractor, a lot of them are either tied up and you may have to wait for a fair amount of time in order to get the project completed that you want to in a short time, especially if it could be an emergency type situation with culvert pipes and different things like that, that need to be taken care of right away. The cost benefit to having the highway department taking care of your maintenance and your snow plowing would come down to where we own the snow plows, you contract us. You don't have to have a building to house that equipment. You don't have to purchase the salt to take care of the ice. You don't have to have the employees to do it. You just contract somebody out to do it and we have the equipment and the know-how and the expertise to get it done in a timely fashion. And that's where the cost-effect of this, it's called shared services and I think that's what a lot of us are looking for it to the future because it is getting expensive to purchase and to buy the equipment and the materials needed and if we keep the stuff going that we have and find more beneficial uses for it, the better off we are. Great, great. Adam mentioned already, I believe that your budget is $15 million. Can you talk a little bit about what's comprised of that budget? How much in that budget do we spend on snow removal in the average year? Just in looking back at some of the past history, obviously I've only been here for a short month so I'm trying to pull as much out as I can, it evolves to about close to $2 million, just shy of $2 million. And out of that $2 million comes the purchase of the snow plow blades and the salt and the snow fencing and all that stuff that gets into winter in order to take care of business when the storms do hit. Salt alone, we purchase just for the county use alone is about 11,000 tons. So you're looking at over $300,000 just in salt alone. So it does take a fair amount of money to keep the roads bare and at the end of winter you really don't see, whereas when you asphalt the road and you spend $200,000 you see the asphalt and it's gonna be there for many years to come. Salt is washed away. So it's, and it's a coordination effort. There's ways that we can, depending upon the storm and timing of going out there's ways that we can save salt also. If we time the storm right and every storm is different but snow has different consistencies and a lot of times it's gonna take more salt to get some off and less salt to get others off. And if we work with Mother Nature, a lot of times we'll be able to, we can time it where we can save salt and benefit, save money. We've been fairly lucky this winter haven't had too many major snowfalls but what type of equipment, how many trucks do we put out for say a one to two inch snowfall and what would be the cost of cleaning up a one to two inch snowfall? We run in a typical one to two inch snowfall we'll run 40 trucks with the blades under front with a wing. That cost, depending upon again the style of snow that would come, heavy, wet, windy, it all factors into it. We could be looking at $60,000 at a normal basis. That's not counting over time and all that. So the timing is everything. If it's a weekend it's gonna be a lot more expensive of a snow than it is during the week because the guys are here already. So it's the consistency of snow, the timing of it and what's gonna happen after. Normally when we get snow around here we get a bunch of wind that follows it. So the snow that just was in the ditch on one day it's gonna blow across and cause problems for us in the rest of the week. So it depends upon the timing. But $60,000 is a pretty good bet. Okay, what are the normal working hours? Obviously you have to call work resorted all hours but what are the normal working hours of the Highway Department crews? Our normal working hours in the winter are seven to three 30. In the winter months we put out a second shift which starts at three o'clock and works to 1130. And then we have a third shift that comes in and works from 1130 to 730 I believe the hours are. They consist of two men per shift and they stay pretty much on the I-43 and 23, two of the main thoroughfares into Sheboygan and it's basically by state DOT request. They want 24 hour coverage so we provide that throughout the week. It's a great benefit. We can see benefits in that early morning when the traffic's starting to flow about five o'clock up the interstate, we need to be applying salt. And if you start at your normal time, if let's just say we call the guys in at four o'clock, they wouldn't be able to make that first round in order to get that salt applied and get it working so that the traffic can move at a decent speed and get to their destination that they want to. Are we still working 10 hour days during the summer? Yes we are. We start Memorial Day and the Monday after Memorial Day or Monday after Memorial Day and stop at Labor Day. So those in that short time we work the four 10 hour schedule which is a benefit to us. When you have to go out and set up as much traffic control as we do, if we did it in eight hours shift we'd lose probably an hour at least in the morning and half hour at night in order to establish that traffic control. This way in a 10 hour day you're still getting a good nine hours of work and getting your traffic control and everything taken care of. Then finally do you have any tips for winter drivers so that they might help the plows and not hinder them and as the plows go down the road? Well, the further back you stay, the better off you are and we can see a lot better that way and know where you are. It's a lot of truck to be moving around but just to back up in preparation of winter I think that the first things that people should do in the winter months in the fall is secure their mailbox tightly to the post. We do not hit them on purpose. So it's one of those calls that we don't like to get and I tell you when you have a 11 foot wing hanging off the side of a truck it's a lot to control. So it's not something that we like to do but it does happen. So secure the post and then the mailbox tight do it the first thing and while winter long just give our guys space so that we can back up and see passing a plow which is I think illegal now prepare for the whiteout condition and that can cause lots of problems. You might not know but is it also illegal on a four lane highway to pass the plow? Do you know? During the event I believe it is when you're in a cleanup situation when the plow can be off to the side of the road it is allowable but the legal distance to stay back is 200 feet. I'd also like to mention along with them 40 vehicles and when we get to larger storms we do have 12 graders and 18 Oshkosh trucks. Oshkosh trucks are the big ones that move a lot of snow and they're all four wheel drive and they're basically designed just for snow. There is no other operation for them so it's a lot of iron to go out and push snow back so. Okay well I appreciate that clarification on passing the snow plow even on a four lane. I've learned something, thank you. You're welcome. Now back to those mailboxes because it's that time of year and you're right not only to have them secured well because they may be hit. Obviously the guys try to avoid that but I've noticed of late living on a county road that even when you come by if they don't hit the mailbox just the force of that snow coming off the wing and hitting that mailbox sometimes can just cave those boxes right in. As you can imagine, you know if the plow is going and usually the speed for the first round in the morning when the guys are just cleaning up the first path and applying the salt on their way back the second one is when we started picking up the slush from the salt that was applied first and if they're going a little bit over 35 miles an hour at the end of that wing it's coming off there a lot faster. Sure. So it does cause we don't hit them most of the time it's mostly the snow that causes the problem. And back to the tips for a little bit you mentioned that you know some safety concerns with give these folks some space and you know be careful if you're gonna pass and that type of thing but what if someone comes upon a intersection or an area or a low spot in a road where they just it's icy it's dangerous they can see salt hasn't come through yet or they see the same spot kind of reoccurring. What's your advice to how they get that information to the appropriate party and get it dealt with sooner rather than later? You can call if it's on an off our basis you can call the sheriff's department we have people on call 24 hours a day and we'll go and take care of it view it first you know to see if there is anything that we can do in a lot of snowfalls there is some cases where it's slippery but we do not want to apply a salt and the reason being is that salt turns everything to liquid if the snow is blowing across it creates more hard pack and more ice every time we get it wet and we can't control the wind. So it's we're not doing it just to make people going to ditch or make sure our jobs are secure it's because we don't after you apply that salt your cleanup gets a lot more expensive because you'll probably need that bringing other pieces of equipment to help cut that off by graders and other pieces so it's like I said before it's not brain surgery but there is a fair amount of thought that goes into each and every storm and how things are gonna operate temperatures and all that stuff and what's gonna happen after in order of an earth and a science Yes it is Very good well you've talked about some of the important maintenance responsibilities that the department has and obviously from the winter snow removal and dealing with the ice and road conditions just the maintenance that happens throughout the year and you briefly touched on some of the work that your crews need to do when they're out they're actually improving the roads putting another overlay on what have you and I know you weren't here for most of 2006 although you've clearly come up to speed real quickly what were some of the major projects in the past year that were roads were improved throughout the county? We did County Trunk V I'm not sure of the distance was 2.4 miles it was a complete reconstruction we recut the ditches and re-sloped everything and rebuilt the base with aggregate and then laid the binder mat of asphalt on and in 2007 now we'll put the top finish coat on we had some major projects over at the airport with a hanger I'm not real familiar with that job that was complete by the time I got here we started a project in the village of Adel on County Trunk A I believe that is yeah I think so that we had to pull out of we started the construction and we got to the middle of the job and we had some utility conflicts so that was one that was ripped up for a while and so we're gonna go back and complete that in 2007 we also had I gotta look at my notes here a little bit County Trunk C Eastern Avenue in the city of Plymouth was a short stretch but it was still very time consuming and kind of a pain for the people that lived out there so it's those are a couple of the major big ones and we did we paved about 15 miles of overlay this year and did about 12 miles of seal coating and Bill asked a moment ago well if you have an average snowfall of one to two inches you mentioned you're looking at a cost of probably a minimum of $60,000 which again people can get appreciation for just what it takes to get that work done out there what's the general rule of thumb that if you do a mile of roadway whether it's overlay or a general someone's wondering well what's the cost to do one mile of overlay what's the general rule of thumb there a complete reconstruction would be a million dollars a mile that would be from start to finish an overlay runs anywhere between depending upon what the shape of the road was when you started because a lot of times we'll go in and we'll do some patching prior to the overlay so that we get a nice smooth ride and bring the road back into shape it can range anywhere from 50 to 75,000 you got to add shouldering on which could entail another $5,000 to $6,000 so it's anywhere from $60,000 to $100,000 in order to do that seal coating runs about $10,000 a mile seal coating if you don't know it's an application that we make we spray down some oil and add in some chips or some boiler slag from our area heating plant here and give the asphalt a fresh coat to this and it helps preserve the payment so if someone has some seal coat go by their county road or town road and a mile of that maybe anywhere up to $100,000 and if someone's having a complete reconstruction done where you rip it out and completely redo it you're looking at a million dollars a mile adds up in a hurry yes it does unfortunately for us we've, my predecessor Roger had laid out some very good funding avenues into the future here and hopefully they're still there when we get to the time to start building the roads again and we do have some construction scheduled for 2000 and seven here and some of it is we're trying to figure out the schedules County Trunk or Superior Avenue was gonna get built in 2007 but due to some issues with the design review we're gonna be held off so we're looking at construction in 2008 which is gonna entail a roundabout and some widening there and just to make traffic flow a lot better through that area between Wilgus Road and 40th Street we're looking at 14,000 cars in that quarter so it's a very high traffic high volume area so we'd like to and it's growing so fast out there also that's just gonna add to the problem in the future what else do you see coming up in 2007 we have some the inter-urban trail the connection between the Cedar Grove and Usberg we have a County Trunk PP by the city of Plymouth we're rebuilding from 57 to Willow Road there's numerous miles of overlay that we're doing I think we're looking at 20 miles projected this year which is an increase from last year and it's gonna depend earlier you asked about oil prices that we just are in the process of bidding those out so that's gonna establish our price for 2007 for what we're gonna be able to do for asphalting we have just various little betterment jobs for different townships that are coming in now and we'll continue to do those betterment is working inside the existing right away and cleaning up the ditches and making sure the drainage is flowing usually wanna do that a year prior to asphalting the road and that's kinda how the progression is and I gotta commend the Sheboygan County and the entire local units of government they do a very good job at the betterment and getting the roads back into shape and we're glad to be a part of that and you have a what five to 10 year plan do you not that kinda schedules when these roads need to be overlaid or maintained how does that work we like to get out of our surfaces anywhere from 10 to 15 years on that overlay we wanna get 10 to 15 years normally we're trying to get and that's prior to the doing a seal code some of the stuff that's going on now is the oil companies are saying we should maybe seal code a little earlier to preserve that payment before it breaks down and preserving it means that a lot of times the stones that are in there will start to pop loose and you wanna do it before that starts to happen so that you don't lose the integrity of the road as far as the plan for the future I haven't quite got that pile yet of stuff I know there is some stuff on the pan that we're looking at for the future and we'll continue to look into that well you've gotten through most of this program with only looking at your notes once so I'm very impressed Greg you mentioned roundabouts and we only have a couple of minutes left but roundabouts have laid in the county you've been getting a little more attention in the paper and with some of the different projects whether it's local or state what's your opinion on roundabouts from a standpoint of traffic flow and safety well you know as I stated before not every intersection is slated for a roundabout you know you have to have continuous problems and continuous problems mean is if there is a history of accidents and different things like that or if there's that potential and every intersection has a potential of accidents but some are worse than others I'll go back to the example of the 40th in Wilgus you have a five-legged intersection which is very difficult to that you wouldn't have to be able you couldn't even light it efficiently as far as having traffic signals there so a roundabout in that situation due to the amount of traffic and the amount of congestion due to the stop you know at certain peak times of the day there's backs up of traffic that goes quite a ways so in that type of environment a roundabout is going to be a very safe and efficient way of moving traffic without having to stop basically or you know you yield to your people but very few times you have to stop so it keeps traffic flowing and if there is an accident in that roundabout it happens at a very low speed 15, 20 miles an hour so they prove to be very safe in that whereas if the intersection is left the way it is you have a possibility of T-borne accidents where there's a lot more personal injury type of incidents you blow through a stop sign or a stop light at a higher rate of speed versus that slower yet but ongoing traffic and a roundabout real big difference in the type of accident you're going to experience personally the little that I've been on roundabouts but generally that first impression is it's kind of awkward at first because we just don't we don't have a lot of experience with them but it seems to me at least to my impression that once you've driven it once or twice after a while you begin to appreciate it because you're not stopping for the light you're not stopping for the stop sign depending on the roundabout and the yield signs but usually it seems to keep traffic going pretty well from what I have an understanding and there must have been a pheromone of disregard for the one that was going to happen now in 32 and 28 and the people that are that were not happy with it at first are happy with it now it seems to keep things going and flowing a lot of people are comparing the downtown rotary to a roundabout and there's a little different style and a little different setup they're easier to maneuver through a roundabout is easier to maneuver through than the rotary that's currently downtown so the comparison shouldn't be that way also there's going to be five roundabouts going in in Sheboygan County on State Highway 42 between Howard's Grove and Sheboygan or by the Minards and the new Walmart that's proposed that's going to be going over there so it's not going to be something that's going to be new for Sheboygan County anymore it's going to be here to stay it's I think they're a good way of moving traffic but again not every intersection is designed for a roundabout it sounds like the Department of Transportation though the State Department of Transportation is definitely taking as accepted a policy or is now promoting roundabouts far more than they did certainly 10 years ago yes they are what's driving it is that there's some Brown County has put in a lot of them and they feel that they've been accepted in that community and people are really getting used to them it's a change from what we're used to the with the DOT I mean we just can't slap in roundabouts wherever we want we have to go through a design and that's a design review through the DOT and that's one of the things that held up our project we wanted to make sure that it was the correct fit for the project and we've gotten that back now and they said this meets the criteria for a roundabout well Greg we appreciate you joining us today and obviously covering a lot of ground from A to Z on the high end overview of the highway operations and it's a pleasure to have you aboard as Greg mentioned earlier he he filled the shoes of a very successful predecessor Roger Lanning who retired here last year and we knew we had big shoes to fill and Greg has come in and just hit the ground running and I've heard nothing but positive things about you from your staff and board members and it's just a pleasure to have you with us in Sheboygan County I appreciate being here I thank you for the opportunity to give me the job and and this interview next month we'll have our interim planning director Sean Wiesner here as well as Dirk Zeilman who is the chair of the non-motorized transportation program that Greg referred to dollars to spend throughout Sheboygan County to improve our transportation system and Dirk Zeilman as well as the project manager Mary Ebeling will be here to talk about that program and give a status report so until next month thank you for joining us