 Welcome to the Donahue Group. We're so delighted that you could join us for a half an hour of fast-paced and highly intelligent conversation on the issues of the day, focusing this show on some city and county issues, which I think will keep us more than interested and entertained. Joining me today, former State Senator Cal Potter, Professor Tom Pineski, math professor at the UW-Shabuigan, looking very natty in that color, which is perfect for you, matches your eyes. The sartorial splendor does not end here today. Look at the suspenders on Dr. Risto. I just love it. Braces. Yes, and we'll brace ourselves. Ken Risto, social studies king for the Shabuigan area school district. I'm Mary Lynn Donahue. I practice law here in town. With a new firm. Yes, but that's... And a new attitude. There you go. There you go. And a new workload. That's really irritating. Oh, that was unkind. That was terribly unkind, coming from someone who's sucking in the public trough, but in any event, public service. And let's go into public service and talk about... It's a tough group tonight. We have a lot of interesting things to talk about city-wide with some county implications. I'm going to start, why not, with the Orange Cross Ambulance routine, which by now has been settled with lightning speed. As I remember the last time the Orange Cross contract came up, it was studied basically to death is my memory. I don't know if that's completely correct, but this fairly major, I think we can say, decision in terms of impact on the taxpayers came about very quickly. Tom? I'm pretty passionate about that. I was at Alderman at the time when we moved it from the police department to the private sector, and we spent a lot of time discussing that and a lot of effort. In those days it was the police? It was in the police. So you could actually get pulled over for speeding by an ambulance. They didn't have paramedic service then, they were just basically EMTs. So to move up to every community was to build to a paramedic service and obviously the police didn't want to be in that field. They wanted to be policemen. Was there any talk then about the fire department taking it over? They put in a bid, we went out for bids and the fire department put in a bid and a couple of the Orange Cross put in a bid and Curtis Ambulance and two or three others and we really went through the bids and selected Curtis and then of course Orange Cross was upset at the time and it was the big hullabaloo about Orange Cross as homegrown or whatever it is to keep the company. We thought Curtis put in the better bid and however it didn't materialize and we had Orange Cross and we have Orange Cross for 15 years. And so what year was that? That was 15 years ago. Okay. Yeah. Because they're talking about the contract coming up now they were three, five year contracts so that's probably 15 years ago. So 1991 were thereabouts? Yeah. Okay. Thereabouts? Yeah. And a contract being sought now was a 10 year? A 10 year. Yeah. Okay. And they couldn't negotiate it maybe they could have gotten or the city could have encouraged Orange Cross to pay a little more for you know the right to have the police calls or the ambulance calls or whatever. But to do what the council did, they're going backwards in my estimation. So is there a contract within the fire department now? They'll probably have to draw one up. I mean they agreed to turn it over. Go that way so they're probably, I suspect. Why should they? Well they don't need a contract. No. I mean within a department. But you'd almost think there'd be certain benchmarks, you know, like making money. Well and there was a proposal that the fire department did submit that is actually on the city's webpage and you can take a you know take a look at it and so they obviously thought through many of the issues and the proposals are proposals and you know I hadn't thought about it but maybe the better course of action might have been to take bids to put it out for to put it out for bid and see who could come back. But obviously the city didn't want it. They, they, I'll go out on a labor but we got a young council who's interested in power and greed and they're taking over the city and they're forgetting that they're served city. They just put out there I don't know 30 or 40 workers from Orange Cross. I mean these are paramedics probably people who moved here, got jobs here. Some of them probably are homegrown. All of a sudden now they're not going to have a job. They're going to be moving out so instead of creating jobs I think the city council with their quote power and greed view are now eliminating jobs in the city. It's backwards to me but it's done. Now tell us how you really feel. Are you referring to the fact that the chief Lestesky sort of dangled out the proposition that there's profits to be made here? Well yeah, I'm reading the paper Alderman are saying we can make money. We can make money. What you're supposed to serve the community. So it was the thing and then the chief says if I lose money then I'll take it out of the budget. Give me a break. The chief knows that Alderman are not going to take money out of his budget. Kind of like the police department and we'll get to that in just a minute. So he could say that knowing when the time comes that they don't make money the Alderman won't take money out of his budget. It's politics. It's the way they play the game down there. Let me just ask philosophically should government be in the business of making money? And that's a legitimate question. Yeah it's a philosophical thing. I think no we were there to serve the community as best way we can. If we can provide a service to the community they can't be done in the private sector then we should do it. But the ambulance service was something that could be done in the private sector and was working well with the arrangement with the county. And to take it over is just a power grab. That's my kind of government. I don't know if you might have a different view. That's the yin you we have a yang. I think you know whether government makes money or not probably depends on the use to which it's put. If it stays within the safety public safety realm whether they're going to help finance the fire department or police department probably that's a good idea. The property tax is not a good idea to you know it's a right aggressive tax. It does force a lot of elderly people and others to think about how big of a house they have and whether they need to sell this monstrosity to be able to stay in the living quarters. You know those are type of decisions that are forced on them by the economics of the property tax. And I think there are legitimate ways that government ought to look at financing government in their times other than the property tax. Wisconsin relies very heavily on the property tax. A lot of other communities in this country rely very heavily on user fees. It's not unusual to see communities with unit fees for everything there is from parks to higher water and sewer and fire charges and whatever to try to minimize other sources of taxes namely the property tax. Or the income tax. Yes. I mean the state of Wisconsin actually has a percentage of revenue from the state perspective from user fees is pretty high. It's in the 20 percent range. I was just looking at their pie pie chart of where where money comes from surprisingly just a tiny percentage from corporate taxes. So that was just a that was just an interesting which has been an evolution over the last 30 years to try to do that. Right. Now we're seeing the results of that shift. And now local governments are looking for alternatives to the property tax which is the goose that's now what's the other yeah. Well so the question is there a golden egg in this and I have not looked and there wasn't a counter bid to really look at and not much time was spent on this. But if Orange Cross is only making seventy one thousand a year in profit which is not bad. I mean but that's kind of razor thin and for the fire department to indicate that it is looking and I'm sure not right out of the right out of the box but you know fairly soon at making I thought four hundred twenty five thousand a year was was put out as a as a possible profit if you will. It seems you know Orange Cross probably has full time staff and the fire and I'm sure I don't know I didn't participate in the discussion with the figures I guess the chief presented. So I may be doing a disservice but I would think he would consider his paramedic staff. Fifty percent or whatever as a paramedic and fifty percent as a fireman putting out fires inspections other kinds of things. So already that's a way to paper reduce staff by half. So obviously they could say they're going to make more than Orange Cross because Orange Cross has to count its staff full time. OK I see what you're saying. I mean plus Orange Cross may also have a holistic budget here and that includes probably people at the emergency room level who obviously the fire department would not in any way have to finance. Yeah so they're just going to be carriers to the hospital. I'm getting back to Cal's coming. Is there been some discussion already because I'm on kind of coming late to the to the table about knowing this. Is there been discussion about where the money if these monies materialized these profits materialized where that money is going to go is it going to stay within the realm of public safety as Cal was talking about. I think so. They were talking about putting it into vehicle maintenance if I'm not mistaken and and the fire department is obviously the trucks and so forth are it's a huge capital outlay. I mean if they are making money to like you know alternate sources of revenue for taxes and stuff they ought to reduce the taxes with the money. But I think that's that's what I was thinking is that it's going to be interesting as a pool of money starts coming in. Obviously that money is being it's a user fee. You're charging people who use the ambulance service a certain amount of money. I assume they're using the same fees as Orange Cross is currently charging folks when they pick folks that are people up who need medical attention. So pretty soon they started saying well you know the pressure would be and I imagine you're going to get some pressure to say well if you're making a profit government should be making a profit. Let's simply cut the user fee here just like we got rid of the wheel tax not so long ago which was designed which was designed to maintain roads and streets in the city as well. One of the big issues that needs to be addressed and probably should have been early on is the whole issue of what do we do to service to Town of Shebaug and Town of Wilson communities that are now served by Orange Cross and whether we should not start looking in this area more at Metro government. I know that's always been some of the pariah. Nobody wants to even touch because Towns want to have their little realm and sort of villages and cities and so on. But you go to Jacksonville, Florida or you go to Nashville. Those areas they do have county wide services. They're fire departments. They're police departments are county wide. I know that's something you don't want to talk about but maybe there are some services where we need to start looking at providing them across borders rather than now as we are arguing what are we going to do about these entities and that are now left, you know. Well, it might be a golden little egg in that where the fire department would now stretch out and but you need some you need some really people who are really broad based thinkers who are and who get elected to office and who can bring along their constituencies with them. I think the the shared services committee had been revitalized well about two years ago when Mayor Prez was elected. There was more discussion between the city and the county than there had been. Interestingly enough, the shared services committee met last week and constituted a study committee to look at ambulance and emergency services provisions within the county that did not slow the city council down at all, unfortunately. And so I don't know where that discussion is going to go. I wonder if some of those relationships have been impaired at this point so that it'll be the philosophy will be a pox on both your houses. We're not talking about anything. I don't know, but I think if you really do zero base planning, if you say we have this county that needs these services, what is the best most efficient way of providing them at the lowest cost to the taxpayer? Remembering now city taxpayers pay for county services as well as city. I mean, it's a city taxpayers are paying. They're not paying twice, but they certainly are paying more than their county counterparts. I just I don't see a political will to do that. And and now I see a lot of hurt feelings. And it appears that the council has taken a position that is at least what you hear is diametrically opposed to what the majority of Shaboyganites who care about this issue feel calls are 10 to one. Against against getting rid of getting rid of Orange Cross. This is not a popular decision. It's an 11 to five vote. I found that the politics making strange bedfellows, Ryan, Clayunas, Berhassel, Wongamon and. He said, yeah, another fifth person. It's just boring. Yeah, I said for it. No, boring voted. No, he didn't vote. I thought he voted against. He voted against. OK, and that would be and that would have certainly been consistent with his philosophy. But it was an odd group of interest melding there, you know, people that you normally don't see. And so I just don't know where this leaves us exactly. Well, you had a new influx of kind of business types. And my older man, the numbers don't lie. Because other issues besides numbers, you know, that you need to consider about the numbers don't lie. Tom, the numbers do lie. They lie all the time. I know, I know. I spent half of my time where I was just trying to be honest about the numbers. Yeah, I know. But that being said, that's kind of interesting, you know, the perception is the council, especially the last election, elected people with more of a private sector orientation would think they would be the last group that would want to turn something over to the public sector. I find this kind of an interesting turn of events. Yeah, it is. And I don't know how much of it really is just we know we've got a zero. I mean, I've talked to very informally and very confidentially, some of the members, the older men and older women on the council. And they all tell me that they're just really frightened about zero based budgets for the next couple of years and what that all means that they've really in many ways kicked some of the cans down the road. And now they're looking at the future and they're saying, I wonder how much of their vote is just really determined that we really do need to generate revenue because otherwise the scenario is not what we really want to face because we're going to face really unpopular decisions down the road. And that's what they're elected to do. That's what they're elected to do. And it should end, and I think I mentioned this before, but my treasured mom living with us falling, called 911, the first folks on the scene are three big firefighters. The guys are all big and they're in good shape and they come rushing in. And then about three or four minutes later, I mean, in a very timely fashion, orange cross is there. So you've got five big guys trying to maneuver around. And it seemed to me just to be a duplication of services. This may keep the fire department more efficient, more occupied. Only 20% of their calls now are fire related. The other 80% are responding to the same calls that orange cross comes to. And again, if you had just fearless planners with a vision who might look at the most efficient way of providing services, it'd be interesting to see what the services would look like. Yeah, I didn't send a letter to the editor, but I really thought about it. Well, you're doing this today, so. I know, but you had all the... A verbal letter. Dulce Johnson submitted a letter and she gave her view. Then Alderman Tetschlag, usually pretty reserved, wrote a letter. He was like a dean of the council for a while. And then we had Mark Leiter from the county planner. Three people involved over time felt this is a no-brainer. It stays with the private sector. So there's a new mindset out there. Although I do think Ken's points are well taken about just the look. We've got a municipal court, for example, instituted in large part to save money and to make money. I forgot about that. And it's pretty brand new, not even a year old yet. And financially, I don't know how it's doing. It would take a while for it to become financially viable because you gotta get people to pay their fines or their forfeitures. So there's a little bit of lag time. Well, let's segue nicely then into the other big issue that has been in the paper, which is Chief Kirk's decision to pull funding for the street crimes unit and the community policing unit. That's caused quite a bit of controversy. Apparently his overtime budget is severely strained. Eight officers short. The paper today indicates that the council, the finance committee has now told the council, find the $175,000. What are your thoughts? This would be to keep those two units functioning. Well, one bunch is tight. Sometimes you cut the things that are most visible. It's oftentimes most important. And it does force people to then say keep them but cut elsewhere. And I think maybe that decision is being made here. And there's a prioritization of services being done as a result of this. There's usually another issue when they do budgeting. They try to treat all the departments the same. And when I was on the council, we did the same thing. It's very difficult to discuss priorities. And some departments may have higher priorities than others, but they try to treat everybody the same. Take them one percent cut from every department. Well, if something in the police department is really important, maybe the cut should have come from public works. Maybe the parks, they always cut parks. It's easy because it doesn't affect people. And you could cut back a little bit on parks, but not too much, because you don't want to lose the image that Cheboygan has. So, but they don't do that. Especially the dandelion crop we have around the city. I mean, I've just noticed that maybe because the last couple of days he's driving around and clearly we're not spending any money on keeping dandelions down, that's for sure. That's not such a bad idea. We've got enough pesticides running into them. There you go. Country boy. Maybe we could take our firefighters who are not doing anything and waiting around and having them harvest dandelions and making wine and selling it. Now there's another buddy maker. There's another buddy maker. That's an activity there. Well, we're just, you've got a bunch of good ideas. I am buying my computer ink cartridges now from Monks, Laser Monks. It's a nice little monastery and they're doing, well, they're making money. And they are making money. But Tom, back to your point. The plain fact is, is that the budget for the police department in the last 10 years has had a very, very steady growth. Fire department behind it. Public works has been going down and libraries, cemeteries, those things have been staying about the same. So really the police department has had about a 30% increase in its budget over other departments and here's the question. What is the priority? It seems to me that people are feeling very strongly that street crimes and community policing are priority and I think that's certainly a defensible position. Police officers issue in the city alone and Mr. Risto here having been victimized in that regard, over 9,000 traffic tickets. I was guilty. A year. No complaints. I went peacefully. I thought you just got a warning. Nobody had a taze or me. Yeah. There you go. There you go. The officer was kind enough to give me a warning and I was greatly appreciated. All right. I don't think it had anything to do with being a TV star. Oh, I didn't know you were a TV star. Where is that? In a different show. In a different show, very good. Excellent. Support of education here is good. Well, there you are. 9,000 traffic tickets. That's a lot. I think traffic enforcement's pretty important. You have reckless people like the guy wearing suspenders here going down the street, 45, 50 miles an hour, a little dangerous. What do you think about the idea? Some roll on the way the truth just got. Well, the chief apparently is deciding to go back to that issue. I think he's apparently deciding that that's less important to him than other issues in the fire department where traffic and crime. Although the way the newspaper article was written, it's not chief rearrange and re-prioritize how you're delivering services and what is most important to the community. And I wonder, would there be any utility in asking the community what it feels is most important? But that's neither here nor there. But they're actually going to get $175,000. They've been, the council has been directed by the finance committee to find that money, essentially for overtime, so you can keep those two units going. I think, Cal, you pointed out, and that's not a bad tactic, is to take the most popular visible kinds of programs and... Cut them, generate public interest and response. Exactly. So, because the $175,000 is gonna come from somewhere with the wheel tax being gone with absolutely flat revenues from the state, well, not absolutely flat, but pretty flat revenues from the state. Okay. I think it's real interesting. It's a situation in my mind that cries out for zero-base planning. Let's put a big white piece of paper on the floor and think about, if we had the chance to create from scratch, what would it look like? And get a lot of people in talking about that. I realize that's very pie in the sky and certainly not likely to happen in a political circumstance, but if I were running the world, I wouldn't do it. No, that's okay, Tom. I promise I won't do that. When the mayor first took office, he had the hearing sessions where, essentially, community members were invited to do exactly that, right? And they did. Talk about priorities and what it is they want. So, is that information now becoming relevant? I don't think it was done with the planning perspective, necessarily, although I think it's a good database for that. Number two, I don't think it got that particular. Should we balance, I don't know what street crimes are exactly. I mean, I don't know what they do that's any different than regular policing, but that's my ignorance. But do we wanna take traffic enforcement? Should we have less management? Should we have fewer lieutenants, sergeants, captains, and deputies, deputy chiefs? Should we have those folks participating on the street? Would that be a good idea? I mean, those are all things that I think you could talk about. But it's just been a very interesting political process. And I think right now it's pretty tough to be an alderman. I wouldn't want to. That's not gonna get easier. As you pointed out, there are a lot of things that they've forwarded. Fast forwarded. And they have to pay for them in the future. Yeah, and people used to say being on the school board was the worst job that you could have. Oh no. I'd beg to differ. I would say being a city alder person right now is about as tough as it gets. One of the good things about school board members, you used to have a guarantee by the state to try to reach two thirds funding. There's no guarantee for municipalities. It used to be a benchmark when we were down to about 40% state funding of schools to provide about city of Sheboygan anywhere from 35 to 40% of their budget through shared revenue. Well that has gone by way, by the wayside, because of the commitment to go to two thirds state funding of schools. Hey, only a couple of minutes left. And I'm sure that this will continue to play out and we'll have interesting discussions about it all summer. Any golfers in the group? Golf? Sort of. Sort of? Once or twice. So I'm not a golfer. I'm not a golfer either. But the senior open is starting. Interesting article in the paper about not reduced expectations but modified expectations on the part of business people who, when the PGA was here, I mean I think we all thought that there'd be just literally waves of people coming through the downtown. Again, there was waves of money coming through. Agreed to aspect again. We're gonna capitalize. But it looks like the city tourism department is doing some interesting things to try to get people downtown. I guess it was traffic patterns too that kind of steered people. It was so well run. That was, it was well run. You got on the freeway and there was no incentive to look back and go back into Sheboygan. Exactly. I know there are a couple of friends of mine who ran businesses. We anticipated they would be near the normal sorts of routes that people would go to get out to Whistling Straits. And so they anticipated huge amounts of business. Drive by traffic. And they saw the actual route and the way they got people in and out, there was no way. They weren't even gonna spend any money. They were back in Milwaukee before they knew it. Yeah, so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out and how we enjoy having a good time in the city. It's nice that they're coming. That's always nice. In the county. It's huge. I mean it's huge. It's very big. Yeah, and I think it really makes people, there's so many volunteers from within the city and the county who get involved in the. The National Exposure Sheboygan County. My brother and the principal of South High School are in charge of one of the holes. Well, all right. Now is that gonna be troublesome or? Here's everything. Oh, I know anything about Phil. He's gonna run a tight trip on that hole. And then with that happy note, we'll close out. Thanks for joining us. The National Exposure Sheboygan County.