 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name's Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Van der Steen. And today we're gonna do things a little differently. We've provided over 100 programs about county government and focusing on the different roles and responsibilities of departments. But today we thought we'd look back. I'm coming up on my 10 year anniversary working for Sheboygan County. It's been a wonderful 10 years and Mike and I thought we'd just reflect a little bit back on those 10 years and look at some of the key challenges ahead. So with that, I'll turn it over to Chairman Van der Steen. Thank you very much, Adam. But it's amazing that 10 years has flown by and that you're coming up on that anniversary. Could you reflect back a little bit on that time when you retired, we're hired, and also a little bit about your background prior to coming to Sheboygan County? It felt really good coming to Sheboygan County because this is where my roots are from. As you know, I've got grandparents and great grandparents that were born and raised in this community, and though I grew up in Stevens Point and married my high school sweetheart, Chris Payne, or Chris Favor at the time, we started our family in Madison. We both went to school there. I have an undergraduate and a master's degree from UW-Madison. And in January of 1999 was hired as the first chief administrative officer or county administrative coordinator for Sheboygan County. And I can tell you, it's just a pleasure to be here. I have three children that are 16, 13, and 11. We love the community, and I love the fact that I've really returned to my roots. What job did you hold before you came to Sheboygan County, Adam? I graduated in 1990 with my undergraduate degree, and I first worked for the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection. So I was there for about five years and worked in the farmland preservation program and natural resource type focus. My dad's a retired wildlife biologist, Neil Payne. He's from the Sheboygan Falls area. And after that went on to become executive director of a statewide association called the Land and Water Conservation Association. And the nice thing about that position was I got to work with all 72 county boards, predominantly their land conservation departments and their land conservation committees. And that really gave me a good insight to county government and how county government works as well as the very important role that county government has. Thank you. Could you tell the viewers a little bit about your responsibilities and how those have changed over the 10 years that you've been working for Sheboygan County? I was hired essentially as the first chief administrative officer in Sheboygan County. As you all know, we have over 20 departments, over 20 department heads. And my job was to really work with those department heads and be their direct supervisor. So when I was hired as county administrative coordinator, heck of a title there, I shared that supervision with the standing committees. So as you can imagine, or as our viewers can imagine, every department had not only reported to me, they reported to a five member committee. And that was somewhat interesting, but not unusual other counties have county administrative coordinators. And my role then as it continues to be was to lead the budget development process to recommend ordinances, resolutions, policy changes to the county board, to supervise department heads, be involved with the higher fire of department heads, complete performance evaluations, really provide a leadership role to implement county board decisions. And in August of 2006, I was fortunate enough where the county board, I think had enough trust and comfort in me after eight years that they promoted me to county administrator. So now my title rather than county administrative coordinators, county administrator, and really the key difference is now the department heads that are not elected. So not the sheriff, not the register of deeds or county clerk, but all the department heads that are appointed, all of them directly report to me. I have direct higher and fire authority and it's made for a clear line of chain of command. But generally speaking, it was a pretty seamless transition because other than that, and a little stronger role with the budget development process by statute, I think my approach in working with all of our managers and county board supervisors has remained pretty similar, that we have a real strong team work in place. And again, it's my job to make sure that I'm implementing the county board's policies and making sure that Shaboy and County is working as effective and cost-effectively as possible. You're right, it really was a nice step for us to take to start out with an administrative coordinator and then move into the administrator position for you. And it became an easy step because you've done a great job over the years and given, I think, the board a lot of confidence in the work and you continue to do that as administrator. Could you give us a little bit of a big picture overview of our county organization? It's a great question because a lot of people on us, they work in county government or have had some dealings with county government, really don't have a flavor for it. I had a flavor for it 10 years ago working with the land conservation committees across the state, but until I was working in county government, I didn't know that county government had a sheriff's department, an airport, a land and water conservation department, a register of deeds, a clerk of courts, planning, a corner, a treasurer, a finance director, a human resources director, the list goes on and on. So big picture, there are 34 county board supervisors, as you will know. Those 34 county board supervisors serve on 10 standing committees. Those standing committees oversee our 22 county departments. Those 22 county departments are comprised of some of the ones I just mentioned, from the airport to the highway, to health and human services and so on. We have $130 million operating budget of that $130 million operating budget, about 44 million is property tax levy. The rest is federal, state funds, fees. We have nearly 1,000 employees and we're providing some absolutely critical services to the people of Sheboygan County. Another thing that I think a lot of people may not realize is county government is really the right arm of state government. We're responsible for implementing state mandated programs. And that's a challenging task, especially when the state doesn't provide sufficient funds to get the job done. That puts a big pressure on our property tax levy. But the county board obviously is responsible for not only being part of implementing state mandated programs, but also a lot of discretionary programs. If you and the members of the county board create a program, a new service, then it's my job and our team's job to make sure that's implemented. So that's somewhat of a big picture snapshot of our organization. That's great. When you came on board 10 years ago, what were some of the key issues that both you and the county faced as you began your role? I can remember the interview well with the executive committee. And I can recall, of course, they asked a lot of questions that you would have in an interview and I asked some questions about key challenges. And I recall at that time 10 years ago, the two preceding years prior to creating this position, the county board had passed two levy increases of 15%. Two consecutive levy increases of 15%, which is almost unheard of. Now, you can't look back and point fingers because a jail was built at that time, a new detention center and issues come up and that's a county board prerogative, but it's pretty unusual to see double digit increases. And the executive committee made it clear that they wanted to get a handle on the levy increases and get away from that roller coaster ride and make sure that was stabilized. Another thing at the time that I can recall very vividly is there was a lot of discussion and controversy about our healthcare centers. We had three facilities at the time, comprehensive, Rocky Null, Sunny Ridge, and there was a great deal of discussion about consolidating or closing comprehensive and it was a very emotional debate and that was a big challenge in front of us. And then finally, I think one of the key concerns at that time was at that time we had 24 departments, there was a real silo mentality. Departments were like their own islands and they were more department heads and that liaison committee, they were predominantly concerned with their department, their programs and services. There wasn't a kind of a collective organizational point of view and they wanted this position to help bring that together and make sure that the county was working more collectively and that there was more teamwork amongst department heads. So I would say those are probably three of the key challenges at that time. Going back to your comments and the tax levy, what steps did you take to help the county to stabilize the tax levy and over the years bring it down to the level it is right now? It's been first and foremost a tremendous team effort, whether it's county board, chairman, board members, liaison committees, myself, our management team, it's been a wonderful team effort and it took a little while to develop that. But the first step I recall taking is doing an organizational assessment. I didn't know what the strengths and weaknesses were of our organization. I didn't know all the players, I didn't know the skill sets of the different managers. So I did what's called a SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, met with all the department heads, got some keyboard members involved and learned more about our organization. What's working? Where do we have opportunities to strengthen our hand? Where do we have weaknesses that need to be addressed? I found out at that time that our information technology wasn't as strong as it should be. Our finance department was from providing some of the support to other departments that it should. Issues like that came to a head. We established our first ever county board leadership forum and at that first leadership forum we developed a mission statement and a vision statement and our vision statement as you recall is the same 10 years later to be recognized as the leader of responsive and cost effective government. That was a big step toward, again, having a vision of where we wanna be and how we wanna be recognized someday. I'd say probably the key to our success in bringing that tax levy in check and eliminating the peaks and the valleys was establishing a new budget process and it wasn't rocket science, it was relatively simple and it was working again collectively with a team approach with the county board to establish a goal. So at our leadership forum, we looked at our fiscal outlook and the board said this is the kind of levy increase we want whether it was 2%, 3%, 4%, the board would establish a goal and then it was my job to work with those department heads and make sure we poised the board for success. All the departments received specific targets to help reach the county board's goal and I think that process over years has been fine tuned and has dramatically improved the end game which is we've stabilized our levy increases. We haven't seen double digit increases in over a decade and in fact, as you all know and we're both proud of it, we've had two consecutive years of property tax relief we're the only county in the state that has accomplished that and we've had eight consecutive years of reduction in our tax rate and that's pretty remarkable as well. So a number of other things of course were done we created a purchasing agent for example didn't have a purchasing agent in an organization with at that time a $150 million budget. Bernie Romer is still our purchasing agent today and he has helped save the county over a million dollars because of that initiative. So a lot of good things and a lot of teamwork. Yeah, you really got in there and tackled them and they're working for us yet today. You also instituted a county wide program and prioritization process. Could you tell us a little bit about that process and why it was important? The county program evaluation and prioritization process was something that we didn't create. In fact, one of the benefits of having professional organizations that you occasionally participate in is you get good ideas from your peers and I participate with a group called the County Exec Administrators Association and there were a couple other counties in the state that went through this county wide program evaluation and prioritization process and I thought boy, that makes a lot of sense. At that time, and this was three, four years ago, I couldn't look someone in the eye and tell them exactly how many programs and services the county implemented. I could tell them how many departments we had, department heads, what our budget was but exactly how many programs and services do we have? How are they functioning? Are they working? Are we getting our bang for the buck? So thanks to that tidbit of information that was shared with me at a meeting, I shared it with our county board chairman at the time, our executive committee and ultimately, we went through the process and what we learned is at the time we had 207 programs and services, many of them were mandatory, many of them were discretionary, some were a hybrid of both and some were performing well and some were performing not so well. And to the county board's credit, 10 member committee of all of our liaison committees, they reviewed all these programs and services, all the department heads provided information about each and every one of them and these 10 board members reviewed and ranked them all and though it's no magic bullet, it now is another tool that the county board can use when we develop our budget and when we're facing demands for maintaining or improving services yet reducing property taxes, when you have a tool like that with priorities in place that helps the county board make those tough budget decisions. Really right. And it's a process that we're looking at trying to revive and update now in the future. The last item I wanna ask you about is, personally that the healthcare centers were a big challenge. It was an emotional issue and it was hard to address. What transpired from your perspective and how do we look with our healthcare centers today? In the 10 years I'll be here come January, that is probably the most challenging issue that I was a part of and of course, many of us were a part of that but I can recall four or five years ago driving home just wondering, my goodness, you know, are we gonna ever get this issue resolved, highly emotionally charged and the short and sweet of it is, 10 years ago we had three facilities. We had more nursing homes and more nursing home beds owned and operated by Sheboydon County than any county in the state. We were number one. And comprehensive healthcare center which was a wonderful facility for decades got to a point where it was just so outdated it no longer met today's codes and standards. People were actually living in conditions, rooms that are the size of some people's walking closets nowadays. It was time for a change and to the credit of the county board they ultimately made the tough decision to consolidate and put a $10 million addition on it at Rocky Knoll. So the comprehensive healthcare center was closed, sold, and we put a state of the art brand new facility at Rocky Knoll and that was emotionally trying for a lot of people who had loved ones there or who had worked there but we got through it and ultimately I think people saw it as a tremendous improvement. Shortly thereafter the rules of the business changed again and the state and federal government they weren't providing the same amount of funding to operate facilities such as county owned and operated nursing homes. So all of a sudden we go from three to two we have the state of the art facility things appear brighter in the future and the bottom falls out financially and our tax levy in a matter of a couple of years went from one million to support these facilities to over six million. Had a tremendous negative impact to our overall organization and the county board and certainly you stepped up and said we gotta do something about this. So then the discussion ensued about going from two facilities to one we put together as you well know a citizens task force, a committee that again we followed a model of another county that went through a similar process and had good results. The citizens task force stepped up studied the issue closely again emotionally trying for all involved but ultimately they made some thoughtful recommendations we had a consultant come in had thoughtful recommendations and as little as a couple of years ago sold or privatized Sonny Ridge. So as it stands today we have one facility we're no longer leading the pack statewide and having more nursing home beds than any county in the state though we're still in the top five or six we have a beautiful state of the art facility we have an outstanding administrator that we recently hired Mr. Mike Tobinheim we have a new team in place and I'm pleased to say that I don't go home after a long day at work troubled about our nursing homes anymore. I think we've come so far made very good decisions and we're at a point now where the future really looks bright for our health care centers. You're right it really does. And I think we were maintaining a real strong service out there we were able to keep on most of all of our long term employees so we're in real good shape. Well it's a great transition because Mike is certainly both of us know and perhaps many of our viewers don't but you were a key leader in taking on that challenge and we're chair of the health care centers when that all really hit the fan and although Charlie Conrardi was a big part of that as well you recognized early on that something had to be done and that we couldn't just wait back in the weeds and that it was gonna magically correct itself. And let's step back and start with a bigger picture for you Mike. When were you first elected to the county board and share with our viewers a little bit about yourself? Well I was born and raised in Green Bay and I moved to Sheboygan in 1973 to run a shop for Du Bois formal ware and I still manage that shop in downtown Sheboygan. One of the things I did early on was take my boss's suggestion to get involved in the Sheboygan JCs and that organization gave me a great training for some of the things that I'm doing right now. It taught me Robert's rules of order it taught me how to organize projects and it got me involved in the community. I went on to be a member of several community citizen committees, things like the Sheboygan Board of Park and Forestry, the city capital improvements commission, the city planning commission. And from that involvement I took the next step and I ran for Alderman and I served as Alderman for the city of Sheboygan for four years. And then I took another step and I ran for mayor. Well I was unsuccessful in that bid for the mayor's job at that time. I took a year off and I decided to get involved in county government rather than running against somebody that I really felt was representing our area quite well in the city, I turned to the county and I'm in the beginning of my sixth term, my 11th year as a county board supervisor and look to another challenge and that was to run for county board chairman. So that gets me to where I am today. Along the way I married a local girl, Julie Bacchus and Julie and I have two kids, Rob and Katie and they've been through college and one's in Boston and one's down in Madison and it's great to be an empty nester. It always amazes me when you ask a county board supervisor about their background, just how much they've been involved or the public service they've provided and certainly you're leading the pack in that regard. As our viewers are listening to this and thinking about the role of a county board supervisor, how would you sum that up in a nutshell? What is the role of a county board supervisor? Well, I think it's somebody that wants to make a difference. That's what I think drives people to the role and right now to be a member of the county board, it takes a certain amount of time commitment. There's like one county board meeting every month and then we have a new person will be appointed to at least one committee and some of the older members might be appointed to two committees and that committee will generally meet two to three times a month and occasionally there's other things to attend like the leadership seminar that we talked about and a few other occasional meetings but that's generally the time commitment that it takes other than the time you spend reading, looking at agendas, getting reports and evaluating them so you can make good decisions so when you're at those meetings. No loss of things to do, always a lot going on and it can in fact be challenging to follow at all with all the 10 standing committees and everything else in play. It is really tough. How have things changed for you personally? You're in the county, a county board supervisor, one of 34 for some time, had some different leadership roles but then you became county board chairman this past April. How has that changed? What's it like being county board chairman? Well, in the past I have looked for opportunities to seek leadership positions. I've done this in several committee organizations like Big Brothers and Big Sisters and others like that. And then on the local scale running for mayor and attempting that and now as county board chairman. So I think I prepared myself for a role like this. I have kind of a, I call it a collaborative style of leadership. I don't like to be the authoritarian person. I like to work with people to build good solutions, look for new ways to solve old problems and bring those to the forefront for the group to vote on and hopefully we can convince, in this case, the county board when we do that. Right, right, absolutely. Obviously you play a critical role with developing the budget and establishing that goal and policy development. Recently, and I mean, you hit the ground running some of the new initiatives that you discussed right away that you wanted to tackle. Why don't you touch on that? Well, one of them was, is one we're still gonna be working on and that's a key factors report that Mike Tabinheim started out at Rocky Noel. I was the chairman of that committee when we hired Mike and he's opened my eyes to a process of giving our tea people and our organization good information on what they're doing and in this case, a daily basis and putting the decision making authority in how the money's gonna be spent and your members of your team's hands. And this gives Mike an easy read on how everybody's doing, but it also tells them every day how they're performing. They have overtime issues, how the revenues are coming in and you have to tailor your organization to the revenues and the people that you have to take care of. So we wanna try to adapt that to other parts of our organization and see if we can also have similar results. You mentioned earlier the Pepsi process and I know when you were first elected, you said two things to the county board. You said one, I wanna see a consecutive reduction in the property tax levy and you got that done. And the other thing you said was you wanted to revisit the Pepsi process. What were your thoughts there? Well, it's been about four years since the initial one was done. Some of our programs have changed and we also have seen things change outside of our organization. And I thought it was time to just take another look at it. The other thing, we had nine new supervisors that came on the board and as we went through this process, it was a good learning experience for everybody who participated and I think the whole board to identify every one of those programs and do a little bit of research on them and learn more about them and why they're important or not to our organization. Absolutely. The other thing that we worked on was trying to take programs like this and put this on our website. We have a lot of residents who aren't able to get the cable channels that it was available on. So by putting it on our website, anybody in Sheboygan County or outside can view this program as well as our county board meetings. Absolutely. So if you can't catch this at home or if your television's a little blurry, you can go on the county website and see it there as well, which was a real nice addition. Mike, what do you see as some of the biggest challenges facing Sheboygan County in the future? Well, some of the challenges are being faced by our state legislators right now. They've got a deficit and we don't know how the county funding that we get from the state might play a role in solving that problem. Obviously, we feel that we are underfunded in some areas. We have many programs that are mandated that we don't get full funding for or things that we overmatch with local money. So we're real concerned about that and how that might shake out. The county board has previously decided that they're gonna go down to 25 members and we eliminated one standing committee this year and it's somewhere in the time between now and 2012 and that would be implemented. We're scheduled to eliminate or consolidate one more of our standing committees. And so that'll be an interesting process then to take that many people, nine people out of their job basically and have them run against others as we redistrict Sheboygan at that time. You mentioned that we had quite a change really in this last election, nine new county board supervisors. That was one of the bigger turnovers we've had in some time. Otherwise, we were only averaging three or four. We still don't see competition for all the seats. You did a nice job earlier touching on the important role that board members have. What does the county do to support county board supervisors? How do we help develop board members, get better at what they have to do? Well, first of all, we do have an orientation for all the new board members. Second, we have this leadership night that we've talked about before which is a little bit more of an in-depth presentation. We really get into the budget and the goals for the budget and some of the other pressing issues that are challenging for us at that time. We've also opened up our chairs committee meeting. This is a meeting where the chairs of each committee will come in. They will talk about all the different issues that are going through their committee at the time. And this is a great thing for the chairs to educate the other chairman, but we've invited all the other supervisors to that meeting so they get a better background of what's really happening in the whole government of county government rather than just on their specific committee. And Mike, like his predecessor, Chairman Bill Gehring, they've really said we need to get more out on the web and on the internet and make it more accessible and easier not only for board members, but the public. We gotta wrap this up, that 30 minutes flew, but I hope as you got an appreciation for, we've got an outstanding county board chairman. He follows a line of some very good ones and there are some great things happening in Sheboygan County. And I for one, again, going on my 10th year here in January, I'm very pleased and proud to be working for Sheboygan County. We have a wonderful team in place and as you can see, we're two individuals that we're glad to be here working for you. So if you have any questions, any concerns, please don't hesitate to contact either one of us. And next month, we'll return to our regular program and have our Health and Human Services Director and wonder gem here. So until then, thanks for joining us.