 We're delighted you could join us for another half hour of conversation about local and county politics and events and fun things happening around town. I'm Mary Landonni, you're the host of this fine group, or at least I try to be the host. Sometimes I lose control. Let me go. And you think it's a fine group? Generally a fine group, not always. The King of the Harlequin Romance Series, Ken Risto, also a social studies teacher with the Sheboygan County School District. That is a gorgeous sweater. Sheboygan County? I mean Sheboygan area, excuse me. The colors of the sweater is so dazzling that I can't. Thank you very much. It's fall. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. You sat in your chair, you almost disappeared. There you go. Also garbed in lovely colors today, Tom Paneski, Professor of Mathematics at UW Sheboygan. Team's sweater vest. It's the sweater vest boys. I'm telling you they coordinated this in advance. Cal Potter looking just really sober and quiet. Former state senator. Most way sober? No Mogan David on the set, so we're doing fine. In any event, I think we'll have a good discussion today. There's lots of stuff going on around town. I'm gonna start with the good news. My own personal best to good news. 7th Street and 9th Street are now a two-way traffic. And I'm having a great time totaling down. It's a complete turnover in the Gestalt, the world view, what's another word, Professor? Veldschon? There we go. The German word for Sheboygan? Yes. It's just kind of different. It's different. I like no stop lights. Oh, and isn't it great? You just have to stop and then go. You have to wait for the light to change. So that's kind of nice. And I always used to do a little meditation at the corner of 7th and Center because I never ever made that light as I was going west on Center and it was a minute. And of course there would be no cars going down 7th Street. So I just kind of commune with nature for 45 seconds or whatever, but I think it's good news. Seems to me there's a lot happening downtown, the hotel in the parking lot, which name escapes me, the grand stay. Are you talking to the old executive in building? No, no. The new one. The new one that they're building in the parking lot. All on 7th and 9th. I'm sorry. That seems to be going great guns. And as does landmark is really rising from the ashes as it were. And so it looks like there's good stuff going on downtown. So any other personal best stories for Sheboygan? I got to attend Michael Feldman's What Do You Know at the Wiles Center. I was there too. Were you there? I didn't see you. It was great. It was a great, great time. Yes it was. So Sheboygan and he did a good 15 minutes. He almost sounded like he was from Sheboygan. He was that familiar with the local nuances. Yes, and brought Ruth Kohler on stage. She did a nice job and Larry, was it Williams, the server? Yep. That was fun. So they had a nice, and then they had finished a course with Broutwurst from Miesfeld. Which I understand were thrown into the audience. Yes, absolutely. Somebody got a pickle, somebody got an onion. Somebody's got ketchup on it. There's also a good exhibit at the Art Center on a variety of artists who are, I guess, I don't know what the name of the artists are called. Self-taught artists. Environment builders. Yeah. And it's worth walking through, taking a peek to see what some of these people have done. Yeah, it is a remarkable exhibit. So I've been living at the Art Center lately. So it's really fun. Also went to the first family presentation they're doing on family cultural values. Not values, just cultural stuff. I'm sorry, I'm very inarticulate here, but it was on Indian culture. And they had Indian dancers and food and workshops. They're gonna be doing a Hispanic one, I think in February. And one more among one, I believe, in May. So again, the Art Center is just one of those really incredible institutions that just keeps the community ticking on. By now, I'm sure that you're sick of our Polly Anna-ish approach to them. What's wrong with your wife? It's fall. We're both a hunker. We're both a hunker. It's Christmas almost here. It's winter and never to be seen again, so it's nice to get out and about and do things. Cal, start complaining about the roundabouts or the rotaries. Well, I went through it today for the first time. I guess I'm somewhat sympathetic to them because I do think they keep track of traffic moving and being an environmentalist. Should probably tell us where which ones you're talking. Well, I went through the one that the double circles at I-43 and 42. And the challenge will be for people to be slow for one thing going through in second to know where they're actually going because you go from one circle to the next. It's automatic, so I could go through a figure eight and you do have to know where you're gonna go and watch out for trucks because they do consume a lot of space going around those curves. So I think you're gonna see a lot of letters to the editor for a while for people. We're such a right angle type of a society and that perpendicular is just stuck in people's minds. And these things, you know. People are right angle people. I think so, Americans are. And I think the circular routes are gonna be a challenge for people for a while. Well, the website, Boygood Press has a website and they had a video, so some young lady was doing a little report on those circles and said, well, we did have one minor accident, one of those big semis took off the side view mirror of a car, got too close and took it off. Oh, really? Yeah. See, I'm a particular fan. So that'd be interesting if there's more minor accidents like that. Of the 8th Street Rotary. I lived on the south side of town for a little while and always going through 8th and Indiana and I never liked the stoplight. We were always turning left. You know, you get in this lane, you get in that lane, yada, yada. And so I think that's an extremely efficient way of keeping traffic moving around there. And I know there's always a fear that if a lot of people had to leave the south, not south part, had to leave the south pier area, traffic would be really terribly jammed up. But I think, by and large, the 8th Street one does a nice job. Now I have not been out to see that. The 8th Street one doesn't have huge semis making the oval. Where out at 42 and I 43, you're gonna have a lot of semis. So I don't know how the semis are gonna fit into this. Well I lived in Boston briefly years and years ago and of course everything is a rotary in the Boston area. And they go fast and they're not polite. And they don't, I mean Midwest drivers, I think really are quite polite and they don't let people in and so forth. So I think, I know DOT loves these roundabouts. They just think they're the- Only when you have a 75% reduction in crashes that are of a large magnitude and injuries, I can see why you love them. But they do their challenge. For my observation, a lot of people like, because they're going straight into them, they think they can keep straight going, or going right into them, but you really do need to yield to anybody who's in that circle. And so it's in lieu of the stop light, you're kind of yielding is what you're doing. But somebody who thinks that they can go help out through this thing, there's gonna be a problem. Yeah. So I went through the 28 and 32, just- That one's simple. That one's really pretty straightforward and actually, yeah, things work really pretty well. I thought when we started with the rotary on 8th and Indiana, I thought for sure that was just going to be mass chaos. But actually, it's been very, very safe. I don't think there've been many- They're common in Europe. Europe does not go into the right angle, stop light can sit in idle for, that's not their mentality. So Americans have to change, I think. All right. So speaking forward for change, let's talk about speaking of changes. Not so much in our tax rates. We finally have a state budget and we'll be talking a little bit about that in our next, probably talking a lot about that in our next show. But the impact that it's had locally, I note the county board kept its tax levy not only equal, I think it dropped a little bit, which would make sense because it's not supporting sunny-rigining longer. And so one would certainly have expected a tax drop. I'm sure it's maybe not as big as people expected. The school district is going up. After various adjustments because of the budget delays and so forth, it's my understanding 4.2%. I don't know how much of that is from the referenda. I don't either, but I know that when they went to the public, the projections they shared with the public was that spending was going to go up for a little while because of that building referendum. I don't, and I have not seen yet, interestingly enough, we should have gotten well over a month ago, the third Friday numbers shared with us. The third Friday of September is when we stop the clock and count all the kids and that determines to a certain degree our state aid. And that's usually been shared with us. So I don't know what really our enrollment numbers are. We were projected to be right around the same number, maybe a little bit higher, maybe a couple of dozen students more, puts us around 10,000 students. So you've got the state aides based on that, among other things. But we are, the numbers I did see last year were we had more students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, more students with ELL needs, more special ed students. Sure. And those students typically have smaller classes, so I've had a chance to pay much attention to the budget because it was just approved last week and I really haven't seen the breakdown. Normally they walk us through the budget at various administrators' meetings and things and that doesn't happen this year for whatever reason. And I think governmental budgets that are kept in line are, you have to give credit to a lot of the people who are putting those numbers together because just fuel costs for vehicles, heating costs, we all know from our personal lives what that has done. We're not talking about two to three percent, we're talking big percentage increases over the last year or two in those items. And I think what the public sometimes forgets is when you build large field houses, they have to be lit and heated. That's right. And I know the district, yeah, and I know the district has spent considerable time and energy. Gene Casper in his retirement has been given the project really working at having the district in other areas use less energy. When you start talking about the hundreds of classrooms in the district and the number of computers and printers and all the types of electronic needs, we've been really been focusing on turning things off. We now have sensor driven lights so that if there's any motion in the classroom, those lights go off and they don't go back on until somebody walks back in the room. I know there's been some considerable savings there which will help offset the increases in the new facilities, but whether that's a wash, I'm not quite sure yet. Well, that leads to the mayor's discussion. A drop in state revenue puts the city budget at $330,000 in the whole. And that's new because I think mayor-president come up with a budget that really did hold the line just to the either a flat tax rate or the increase that was allowed under state law, which is only 2%. Now because of the way the revenues are coming into the state, there's a $330,000 hole which is tough. There's a proposal to sell a couple of buildings that the city owes, the little red school house. I didn't know the city owned that, but apparently it does and it also owns the old. I think it used to be the old Girl Scout building right down on the lake on Broughton Drive that has housed the Literacy Council now for some years, I think. I've never been inside, just a cute little building. They think that those buildings together, they're getting them appraised, might be 200,000 or whatever, but it's hard when you're trying to hold the line at the budget that you want to and yet you've added police officers, just all the costs that you've talked about, Cal that just keep going along no matter what we do. And so I think that there is a move of foot in the city and county and certainly in the school district to really look at how do we do business? And do we have to look at a cutback in services or can we look at how we restructure and reconfigure services? And so from my perspective, that makes all the sense in the world, but it's tough. Any thoughts on whether the mayor can find 330 grand someplace? I don't know, I heard Gisho say that he doesn't want to raise the taxes, he'd rather do a borrowing, I think, and then use that to offset the operating expense and then pay back through the borrowing, I guess. Well, it's not unusual for municipalities these days to take a hard look at how they finance their dad. Shwoigen is a huge, I mean, through past borrowings, I mean, our debt limit is, I mean, we're actually approaching the top of our debt ceiling, view the water coming up to our noses and we're just barely staying above, not quite that bad, but if you can refinance and look again through your financial consultants on just ways to restructure, I mean, essentially it's a refinance and we do it for our houses, why not do it for government entities? And they do do that and it makes some sense and taking money from the vehicle replacement repair fund to pay down the pension liability, I think is a terrific idea. I know the school district did that. Yep, yes, we did a while ago. So you're not paying out the terrific amount of interest that the state exacts from you as it should for this unfunded liability, so I think all those ideas make sense, but. As an aside, this is really, since you mentioned finance, I know that the city was looking for a finance director, this is kind of off topic what we're talking about, but it's finance. Do you have any knowledge about where they are in their search for a finance director? Have they hired somebody? They have not hired anybody. There have been interviews with any number of candidates and some have been plausible, some good candidates, but nobody to date has accepted the job. So whoever's been offered has not accepted. So I think they're really back to starting over again with that and. Wow, that's a challenging job. When you look at the real estate market today and what might be there in the future, property values don't continue to increase as they have, which has always been a goose that was laying golden eggs. Exactly. I mean, one of the reasons for the deficit that the mayor says they're facing is industrial values decreasing or flattening out. Well, if the housing crisis continues the way it is, we're going to see other values decrease and that's not going to bode well for the next budget crunchers in the years ahead. Yeah. I think the mayor is at that point where he is able to work with people that his folks, you know, there's always turnover and it's somewhat slow at the city level, but they're going to be looking for an HR director for the finance director. And then as I understand it, they've reconfigured the information technology position. I don't know how, but you know, currently a very high paid position, kind of looking at how that gets handled and in the table of organization and so forth. But that all takes a huge, as you folks know, I mean, hiring is just a huge and incredibly important part of the job that you do. And I think in any entity, whether it's private or public, you just have to have good folks. And then I'll switch again. We have a new fire woman. We do. A new fire woman. We do. So you don't want to talk about taxes anymore? Well, I am happy to talk about the, I had the honor of attending the swearing in of the new Sheboygan's first woman firefighter. And I am chief Jay Lestusky, who did a very nice job at the swearing in yesterday and those are always nice ceremonies. You have families and members of the force and the mayor and people just coming in to wish the new people well. As a member of the police and fire commission some years ago, I kept saying, just find one woman for us to interview. Just one, that's all I need. And even if we don't hire her, just to know that we have been able to interview one woman. Well, Jay came in and said, not only did we interview this woman was really at the top of the list. And so she was clearly the most qualified candidate and the list tend to be fairly long. And there was another woman who was down the list somewhat and you know, passed the hiring cut off but was also well qualified. And so it was a great swearing in and I met Ms. Zemke, I think her name is briefly and just offered her my congratulations. I think it's a... Marilyn, how does that work? Is there a period where people apply, they take obviously some sort of an academic or mental test of some kind or other and then there's a physical test. And then those that pass go on a list and then they wait for openings to occur or do we wait for retirements and we go through it every time there's a vacancy in the department? There are a variety of ways of handling it but at least when I left police and fire they would create a list and they would do testing of 30, 40, 50 people and create the list based on really fairly objective criteria in terms of the physical strength tests, endurance tests, knowledge tests. Of course now they're only hiring paramedics, the fire department because in the past you did not have to be a paramedic. But I mean as far as physical strength and so on which would open up to maybe more women who don't have the bulk that maybe is necessary to do the physical test. I mean the physical strength is obviously a key piece of it but as the newspaper article pointed out and it was my understanding of the physical test it's not the raw amount that you can lift, it's how you lift and under what circumstances and can you crawl down a pipe and pull somebody out, that sort of thing and women can succeed at those tests. According to the paper she was a volunteer fireman woman or so it was in Manitowak for 10 years and she was, I guess when they moved she and her husband moved here, she kind of gave it up so she's happy to be back, she's age 41 too so that's usually you think of hiring a fireman aged 25, 26 but are you hiring somebody aged 41 so that's kind of a coup also. So I think it's a great thing. So those lists exist and then if there are vacancies they can pull up people from the list. Usually they're in place for a year or two, police do that too, I think in various permutations so at least when I left that's the way they were doing it and the police and fire commission interviews which was very interesting to me, all of these candidates and part of the statutory requirements of the police and fire commission created I think years and years ago when it was really who you knew and how you knew people that got you a job as a firefighter or a police officer or which were considered plum positions in the early 1900s and so forth so I think it's a new era. That's a new era, that's correct. And as the chief said, well she's the first woman firefighter today but from now on it's not such a big deal and I would agree with that although it'll be interesting just to see. Where is she going to stay? How is she going to be housed? Has she been assigned a particular station? I don't think so. I think she was still going to be doing some training and so forth. It's amazing all of the firefighters that apply these days, number one they're all pretty well educated and college graduates are not at all unusual and second every single firefighter that I ever interviewed was an EMT which is certainly less of a skill level than a paramedic but clearly the firefighters are learning those skills and of course come January 1st with our new fire department. What's your name, Janet or Jane? Lemke. Zemke or something but anyway she's according to the paper she worked four inch cross so she is a paramedic, she's a fully trained paramedic and who's done that sort of thing before. Well 80% of firefighter calls these days are EMT calls or medical calls, they're not fire calls so that's a good thing but in any event. A consultant has been hired by the city to develop a plan to revive the flagging commercial corridor on Taylor Drive. I didn't realize that blockbuster video is gone as well as Walmart and the pig and hardies. I didn't realize hardies was gone. Hardies is gone too. I was just there today. I went over to Book World which is still up and going, used to be called Little Professors and now it's Book World because I had to work. You really went out to hardies, I know. No I did not. He did. I did not and I stopped at a vagal place for a salad to go and it was about 11 o'clock or so and coming off a excruciating administrative meeting and I needed some roughage. I needed some roughage. I needed more roughage so I was over there. They settled down so we aren't taking off the air. They had six or seven people in there but yeah it is really pretty much a ghost town up there. There isn't, I mean there's a cost cutters and there's a few things up there. Batteries plus and Community Bank is anchoring the other end, the south end of that. Which is a little more thriving. It's got culvers and shoe store. Yeah it is, a ghost town up there almost. And there are implications that Shopco might pull out. Oh really? That if the concern is if this whole corridor across the street is dead, Shopco is right across the street from that although I think Shopco must do well in terms of its vicinity to the as well. It's his own vacancies. It's funny just how things shift from downtown out to the mall. What's sad about it is that it's still commercial but it just keeps on moving. It isn't, it's sort of poor land use planning. I mean when you consider all the volume of buildings that just sitting there empty and that could be better used if maybe we used their, I don't know, maybe a little more disciplined I guess in how we consider where we're gonna let commercial development occur. It just sort of bounces around. Let's take our last few minutes to talk a little bit about the cable franchise bill. We've got four minutes left and maybe we'll need to carry this over into our next episode. But the assembly has passed Assembly Bill 207 which basically changes cable franchising as we know it and we've talked about this before because we are the recipients of funding. The reason that we're here dear listeners is that the city has money from cable companies that pay a certain fee to the city in order to be able to be the franchisee. It appears the vote has not taken place in the Senate and I don't really know what the governor is going to do with it. I wrote to our Assemblyman Terry Van Akron urging him to vote against the bill and he did not because of me, I don't really expect but in any event I was glad to hear that he had voted against it. We've talked about it pretty extensively. I don't think it's any better than it was. Certainly AT&T has spent more than $250,000 on its 15 lobbyists. And much more on his TV ads which are couched to be a consumer advocacy type ads but behind it you know there's somebody's special interest being promoted. Yeah, has anybody heard what the governor might do on this? I have not. I don't know. It's gonna be interesting to see what the Senate does because there are several Democrats in the majority caucus who would like to see the bill amended to be more like the Illinois plan which is passed which preserves the community television aspect of it. And so those amendments will be on the floor on Thursday, this Thursday as we are making this program but I don't know exactly where the votes will be because there are Democrats like Senator Playway and Senator Decker who have sort of signed on to the AT&T version I guess that came out of finance came out of the assembly. Yeah, it will be interesting to see because I think a big, big chunk of the funding for Channel 8 and the studio out here comes from the local cable TV stations or the local cable company rather. It's not local, huge international company but it's local focus here. And the opposition says that competition is good, that there is not that competition now because there are these local franchises. Seems to me, however, if you have a state franchise the ability of local people to influence rates and so forth is, I don't know, what do you think, Tom? Well, I can't imagine going to the state and for complaints, it just seems so remote and it'll take forever to happen. And I guess that's what's gonna, the outcome. Now I was asking Scott about how does that affect charter? Can they, do they have to opt in or can they just still run their local franchise? And I guess they have a choice. They could decide to still operate their local franchise but I don't know what that means. Right. Well, stay tuned. It'll be interesting to see what happens and sooner or later if this bill does pass the Donahue Group and all the fine programming here may just kind of fade into the woodwork. Well, we'll have a new name, the AT&T Group. And thinking quickly about what AT&T could stand for. We're gonna sell the naming rights for this program. AT&T was canvassing our neighborhood seeking and really pushing for us to sign on to the totally, you know, the three package, the combination of wireless internet, television and telephone. Well, we're gonna wind up but thank you all for a lively conversation. We enjoyed it.