 Well welcome to the Donahue Group. We are back after our initial shows and we're delighted that you can join us again. We're a group of four people who live and work in Sheboygan County and we have opinions about just about everything on the planet. Just like everybody else. On a local and state and national level and we're here just to chitchat a little bit about some of those opinions and some of the burning issues of the day. I'd like to introduce our group again. We're hardly household names at this point maybe someday but to my direct right is Ken Risto. Ken is the social studies curriculum and assessment coordinator for the Sheboygan area school district. That was close. That is close and or as he puts it just a simple social studies teacher. Tom Panesky is a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin Sheboygan campus and Cal Potter is a former state senator from this area and also in his most recent incarnation assistant superintendent of public instruction. I didn't get that quite right but close enough. In charge of libraries and me I'm just a simple city lawyer. Last time we met was just before the primary election and for the mayoral race and the only state race of course being that for a superintendent of public schools and it was a surprise I think to a number of people Juan Perez won not handily but won by enough votes that at least was a clear winner. I think that if I remember correctly Juan Perez's percentage was 45 percent to Mayor Shram's 42 percent and then the other five candidates kind of filling in the field and I believe out of the 16 wards in the city Mr. Perez won 11 of those if my memory serves me correctly. I was surprised. I watched the votes come in. What do you folks think? Well I wasn't surprised. I think the visibility of the two front runners by meaning Shram and Perez was very evident throughout the election and that the remaining four candidates splitting a minimal amount of votes was not a surprise to me and even the victory of Perez was not a surprise because I think we had talked on our previous program about some of the big issues whether it's financing regarding Blue Harbor or the building of the police station. There were enough issues that were motivating people to go to one candidate or the other and I don't know that you can say that margin of victory or difference of three percentage points really says a lot but I think I wasn't surprised at all. I kind of put my money on the two candidates coming out of this handily and I think they did. Anybody surprised though that anybody else surprised that Perez actually at least in that I think Cal's point is well taken it was a small margin of victory with a fairly really low turnout of voters but he won. I think you've got a core of people who are going to be opposed to Mayor Shram no matter who is running and I think they're more likely and more energized to get out in a February primary in vote so I thought too that Perez might actually win the primary just because his backers and his supporters would be more likely to show up and vote on the kinds of issues that we talked about in the last episode Cal was alluding to and as we talked about in the last show too I wasn't too surprised when some of the other candidates who didn't make the cut in the primaries actually turned around and threw their support to Mr. Perez so you start adding those in I don't know it means much of anything I think it's going to be who's going to be able to turn out folks in April what the weather is going to be like in April and we're going to be in the middle of a snowstorm in typical Wisconsin weather or whether we're going to have nice weather like we had past Sunday and you know perhaps this is a wake-up call for the Shram campaign saying you know you've got a group of people who really really are energized to work to throw you out of office you better start finding out who your supporters who your people are and and get them out to vote Tom well I was a little surprised if you recall the day before the election I think the police department or police union had a letter to the editor indicating who they are endorsing they were endorsing Mayor Shram and they were endorsing I think Don Van Akron and I think they were endorsing Renee not Janet Jensen or somebody Janine Jeneen running against Montmire Marilyn Montmire so I thought well just the day before you know well that and surprisingly enough after you know the next day the surprise was all three who they endorsed finished second so I thought I'm a little surprised at that so it was kind of interesting and speaking of that the there were a number of aldermanic primaries and I think one of the more interesting ones was Renee Sushia beating Don Van Akron in district two now if my memory again serves me correctly Renee Sushia won the third ward and and Don Van Akron won the fourth ward respectively where each of them lives but that was a close vote too there's some real philosophical differences between those two candidates in terms of maintaining the status quo versus its time for a change any any prognostications on how that one's going to play out I think a lot of the mayoral issues are being revisited by the many different aldermanic races and so I think you're seeing even by the long time placements is around Sheboygan you see coalitions and blocks yeah you see these and pictures of the same candidate with another candidate repeatedly as you go down the block so I think there's going to be a very strong blocking of votes for certain aldermanic candidates as well as for certain mayoral candidates now the mayor said and I think properly so after the election results that only 16 percent of the voters came out to vote that it was a very low turnout historically however April elections in particular don't draw very many voters anyway generally around 30 percent sometimes more and perhaps because it's a more energized campaign with lots of issues we may may see a higher voter turnout do you think the mayor is right that the fact that it was such a low turnout skewed the results or is that just going to continue on through through the election returns I don't know whether there's going to be a bigger there'll be more voters come April of course but how much more because there's only one statewide race and that's the state superintendent race it's not unusual however to get more voter turnout when you have other races there are multitude of school board or multitude of judicial races as well as local mayoral races but right now there's not much so it's going to take a lot of motivation on a part of local voters to get out there but it's going to be obviously not be much higher than 16 percent but you still may end up with only 30 percent of the voters turning out to determine who the next mayor and what the constitution of the new city council in sheboygan is I don't think really the candidates had an opportunity really to flesh themselves out in the minds of most people I don't think many people really paid much attention to the primary we see a little a few letters to the editor we see a couple of articles in the sheboygan press about some of the issues but when you really press people for a good reason to vote for Juan Perez or a good reason to keep me or shram in office whatever it might be I'm not sure people are really getting a sense of what the differences are there's there's some sort of a populist theme that's working working for wands campaign some sense of bringing the bringing the voice of people back to the city hall but I'm not sure if that's going to be enough to really move lots of people I just don't know if there's a whole lot of outrage out there right now in the community that's going to it's going to convince people to vote against an incumbent so on the other hand sheboygan's got a bit of a tendency historically not to keep mirrors in office for very long mayor schneider was probably the exception that go a little bit but interesting to see well there are some groups out there that are working there's this save our parks group not how many members they have and how many people they will be able to drag to the polls I don't know some labor organizations are supporting shram so again what they're able to garner in a way of voter turnout is yet remains to be seen but there are some groups that are out there that seemingly say there's a lot of stake for their membership as a result are going to try to get their members out I think just as the campaign has played out since the primary and this is just my sense and I'd really be interested in in your perspective is that Mr. Perez seemed to have gotten the momentum a little bit more earlier on and I'm very intrigued by the exchange between county board chairman garing county administrative coordinator Adam Payne and the mayor it's almost like Adam Payne is running against the mayor in terms of of how the things are playing out there any sense of how the campaign is going or how what that particular conflict will have in the mix I think it depends upon how I wake up in the morning on the right side some days I think trams moving has you know moving ahead and then something happens and I think Juan Perez is moving ahead so I don't have a good sense of how it's happening in the comments that both the county board chair and the and the Adam Payne have made I I don't know how that that plays out because different people have different experiences with Mayor Schram and I had experiences with Alderman Schram so how it plays out I don't know I do change as day to day and I and I look forward to see what's going to happen next and there is that that core a core group of of city of county supervisors from city districts who are clearly supporting the mayor and who are in some conflict then with the county board chair and and the administrative coordinator so so you're bringing the politics of these two large bodies kind of into into a into a conflict I also remember when Mayor Schneider then Alderman Schneider was running against Mayor Susha and there was just a few group few of us on the council that supported Schneider but most of them supported Mayor Susha and that was an interesting play everybody thought that Mayor Schneider was not going to be a a good mayor they just said doesn't have it doesn't have it and to our surprise he turned out to be one of the shabuigan's finest I think did a lot for the city so I don't know how it plays out but we did have that conflict before and the and and the council was split I think it sets the stage for the whole debate of how adequate we have cooperation between the county and the city when you've got people very visibly several weeks before an election throwing their support one way or another based on what their perception of county city cooperation is I think you can kind of conclude that there isn't a heck of a lot of substance to maybe the the cooperative efforts that we need to have something that's more tangible and more result oriented because otherwise you wouldn't have this ongoing so-called debate and perception about who's doing what and how adequate it is yeah I think if the if the issue starts becoming talking about consolidation of services if all of a sudden people start getting excited about that topic or see that as a significant way to reduce taxes if that becomes the issue or Mr. Perez makes that the issue and people get excited about that then I think those types of conversations may matter in the way people start thinking about how they're going to vote or not going to vote if if people you know I don't think really most people in the city should really care much about what the county chair feels about anything anybody in given moment to put truth be told in their day to day calculations about how things are going inside the city but if it comes to be it does gets to be an issue of of the Sheridan park being linked with a county Sheridan police community and you get all those kind of knit together and people start getting excited about that net or see the connection between those if Mr. Perez can make those connections in people's minds then you know then it gets to be kind of interesting because you know a lot of people say well we like the park but the reality is where do you put the police station if not at the park yeah and then you start getting discussions of of shared you know city and county efforts and it gets to be an interesting kind of discussion but it really needs to get beyond just the police station I mean there I think if anything that I was not a political backer of Governor McCallum but I think if he had anything to say in his last weeks and months in office is that we need to look at then thousands of units of government that we have and see if we can do with less and have some consolidation on that includes school districts I mean we have four and 26 school districts and when you look at the administrative duplication and so on we could probably just my own guesstimate probably do with probably 40 or 50 of those districts and function very nicely there are of course there are many districts that could not consolidate because kids would be on buses for three hours every morning and every evening in which it's just impractical but there are many cases where governments do overlap and it would make sense if we could do some consolidation and we really have not gotten to that seriousness of a conversation as yet and we probably should all right well the the use of the park Sheridan park leads me into our next topic of of conversation again at the local level because some interesting developments have been happening around the Cargill plant which used to be the old Shryer malting plant again in the same neighborhood and in one of the city of Sheboygan's is clearly a working class neighborhood and sometimes bordering on on on lots of poor folks living in the area in fact on my way out here today I just drove by the plant because I think it's interesting that huge former malting plant going right down to the river sort of in prime prime landscape that these days you know if you were developing you would never let an industrial plant get that close to the river to Lake Michigan or whatever the proposal is as I understand it to convert the plant to an ethanol manufacturing plant producing 30 or so jobs and the gentleman who was quoted in the paper last night indicating 100 or so support jobs I'm not quite sure what that means but and ethanol being an interesting product and the manufacture of ethanol being somewhat difficult has raised some controversy there's a citizens group as I understand there will be a meeting with the Cargill people and Utica Energy LLC I believe is the the organization that's going to be working with that with Cargill what are your thoughts on this is this are we going to rezone the inner city of Sheboygan from as I understand it an industrial urban industrial zoning to heavy industrial zoning I think that's the first step is that rezoning process is it going to happen should it happen what are the pluses minuses I'm not sure what the plus and minuses but I had a chance to talk to a couple of people in that citizens group the last couple of weeks because they saw the first show and you know now they come talking to me I'm not quite sure do not let that go to your head no I said Mary Lynn's in charge of this thing and you need to call her but I think I think there again is if Alderman Perez wants to frame this issue along the same frame as his campaign you're going to hear before we talk about substantive let's talk about process I think you'll still you know talk a little bit about the fact that these folks really feel that this was done more or less behind closed doors that this is something that could potentially impact the quality of our neighborhoods and shared in school and the kids over there and and there's just this sense that decisions are being made without people being consulted and whether that's a fair analysis or not you know the perception is is that the city government pretty much gave the green light and this was pretty much the wheels were greased and this is going to happen and thank goodness we found out about it to start putting some sand in the gears and I think if you know Alderman Perez really wants to make that again an issue of how government doesn't listen to people average folks and wants to talk about his campaign being a return of the voice of the people to the halls of government type of approach I think I think that's going to be a big plus for his campaign and I think there are a good number of people I think it's more than 50 or 60 I think it's starting to they're starting to reach out and talk to other people they're starting quite wisely to ask questions as about well it's not just our neighborhood it's going to be what are the properties even in the entire city of Sheboygan to be like when there's the fumes that come from that factory air quality issues when Sheboygan already has some serious air quality issues they're talking about what's the effect going to be at the marina and blue harbor if we get a strong westerly wind in summer which is not that unusual in the city of Sheboygan so they're starting to actually expand the base of concern to beyond the local neighborhood and I think between now it'll be interesting to see how much this issue accelerates in the next couple of weeks and how much science prevails and the mechanism of having input in my years in government I've went through a number of these the Haven nuclear plant was one I-43 was another highway 23 building a four lane highway was another we had landfill discussions at one time eventually with recycling the landfills in manner what counties seem to have been sufficient for our waste disposal needs but those types of situations need to be handled with a great deal of public input and without that then you start getting these accusations that somebody's trying to do something to me and I have no say in that that really as a result of a lot of the controversy for example of locating I-43 we revamped our home and the domain statutes as a result of that power plant siding is another issue the statutes were revamped to allow their series of inputs and so on the public comment so there are models of controversial projects that have been out there that I think send a message that you need to listen to the people and provide opportunity for people to get answers there is really an answer here someplace I mean either this stuff stinks or it doesn't stink and either it's you know is it minimal or not let's find out there's somebody can tell us that based on other plants that have been built around the state and that's the type of answers these people need because there's no reason investing money and then having them of course into litigation and whatever that occurs because somehow well we didn't know it was going to be this bad or whatever happens ensues if it isn't pleasant well of course we always say there's probably no better way in the world to spend money than on attorney fees but that's just my own personal orientation but where there's we shouldn't underestimate the the NIMBY influence the NIMBY process not in my backyard and we see it like not only the issues that I raised but up in Manitowoc County has been some very large farms that have been developing these 3000 head farms and whether the people who are literally maybe several miles away can smell the manure that's produced by thousands of cows is their right to farm supersede their right to have clean air we're seeing it in sexual predators who are released from prison and where you put them Milwaukee news practically every night is filled with where they're going to build housing now because nobody nobody wants a sexual predator released and living in a neighborhood a general neighborhood so they're looking at housing to be built somewhere in the isolated areas to house these former prisoners and so we've segwayed nicely from ethanol to sexual predators but there's no shortage but no not in my backyard is what I'm saying yeah I didn't care outside of all is you know open public discourse and discussion and the bottom line may be the smell I mean IEPA and the state DNR have certain regulations on emissions and everything else so the bottom line may be smell you've got land that's been used industrial it's provided job it's now sitting idle let's have some discussion I think I think Cal you said it all and things like the the I-43 and other things that went on the nuclear power plant I think those have been good things for our state but at the time they were very contentious well and you look at the tax base potentially that the the plant could generate because this is not a tax incremental financing district as I would understand and these folks are not really asking for a lot of money from the city which undercuts you know Blue Harbor someday will be a nice tax producer for the city but not for a while and and so you know we have it has that advantage but it's right smack dab in the middle of the city on riverfront property we've done a really nice job I think of former development director Bob Peterson I think was pretty insightful in terms of the development that has gone along down at the at the river and the water that little water park is pretty pretty sweet for for children you know just off of the Erie Avenue do we want an ethanol plant in the middle of the city I think it's it's a substantial question well we have opt and burned or we have some other plant I mean the city's kind of we've had the plants and the city's kind of grown around and now when they become vacant do we vacate the the plant or do we find another use for the plant interestingly enough I understand that optenberg is looking at they're looking at after a failed attempt by the workers to take over that that failed plant to actually tear the plant down and put in condos and you know that's prime lakefront property and at least in the 21st century we take beautiful areas and we don't put industrial plants right along the water as we did when you know in the old days but we make them even prettier at least try to and I certainly blew harbors as has done a nice job at that we got what you gotta close it up but we got what's called Oz the two smokestacks at the power plant we look out our front window and we see the smoke blowing and we say well there's Oz yes the plume the plume that comes along the that comes along it's interesting too just in terms of process the peaker power plant that is being cited in the town of Sheboygan Falls along the highway 23 corridor hardly pristine land right in that particular area it's right I believe we're county to slightly west of county T and and and the highway 23 intersection old excavating site there was quite a lot of public input required by law as far as I am able to determine ethanol production is not regulated by the public service commission it's not really considered a utility per se they're tremendous financial benefits both for the town of Sheboygan and for the Sheboygan county to have that peaker power plant located there we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars essentially of shared revenue payments so that the financial advantage is huge maybe a little more tenuous here in the in the city I there aren't those kinds of of statutorily mandated shared payments makes it a little tougher sell well and later on top of that is just again talking with six or seven the folks that are part of this process on the community side there isn't at this point in the process and maybe it'll change as the conversation continues any sort of trust of large corporations who are coming into town I think so far in the process of until this meeting that's coming up there hasn't been a whole lot of communication people are getting their information pretty much based upon the experience of other ethanol plants around the country and you know doing google searches and finding finding those things out and talking to engineers who are on the outside looking in it'll be interesting to see it doesn't help to see the debate that's going on in madison whether all gasoline in wisconsin ought to have a certain percentage of ethanol in it and that whole debate in opposition that occurs it's as energy efficient as some people would like to believe and so on so there is a sort of a parallel questioning about the ethanol economy that some people would like to see some bark upon it'll be interesting to see if cargill is actually able to address the concerns of the neighborhood group to the satisfaction of these folks I they got a tough sell ahead of them from what I can gather at this point and if you'll remember the woodworking plant that I think had been associated with the mooth company woodstock woodstock there we go and a neighborhood group got together and and was not successful in in in stopping the the plan from being built but really put a stick in the wheel I think with its lawsuit you'll remember judge anderson there was a jury trial and minimal damages were assessed and and judge anderson changed the jury verdict thinking that it was an unconscionable verdict and increased the award I think by $250,000 and was rewarded by a recall campaign and so talk about the balancing of of of community values we wanted to you know a judge who thought well you know this was a nuisance and and the neighbors should be compensated for the fact that they couldn't open their open their windows and yet a community that was outraged and I think Mayor Schneider actually was the least well I don't know if he was the mayor at the time yeah I don't think so as we say in the legal world strike that but there was a certainly a community effort to to recall the judge which only only it was defeated by the fact that he'd been in office less than a year in that particular term so well we're gonna have to have folks stay tuned for it because I think as as the whole matter plays out it it's clearly going to be interesting who gets the last word so these are all issues that will be continuing I mean of course this whole issue will play out over months so we'll have an opportunity to revisit it again we'll ask the candidates there we go very good thanks and we'll be back in together again