 At this time I would call the meeting of the Sheboygan County Board to order, are we in compliance with the open meeting law? The agenda is posted on January 13th at 10 a.m. At this time would you all rise and join me in suppressing the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you at this time of roll call. You'll notice there's someone missing tonight. Chairman Wagner took ill with the flu last night and called me this afternoon and said he will not be able to attend tonight. So we wish him the best wishes and speedy recovery. I have to talk to the IT director and see if we can get this microphone fixed. Okay, at this time the next order of business is voting on roll call. Roll call. Have you all pressed your attend button? We don't have 23. And press your I button. Okay. We have 23 supervisors present. Next order of agenda on the agenda is the approval of December 20th journal. Supervisor Winkle. Motion to approve, Mr. Chairman. Motion to approve. Supervisor Glavin. I'll support that motion. Motion is made and seconded. Are there any questions, corrections or additions to the journal? Hearing none, would you all please vote on the approval of the agenda? What? Supervisor Rayner. I was just seconding it. Okay. Okay, at this time would you all please vote? That motion is approved unanimously. Next order on the agenda is presentations. There are none. Next order is public addresses. There are none. Next order of business is letters, communications and announcements. We have none. That brings us to the next order of business, the county administrative report. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman. Good evening. Glad to see that you got here safe and sound. We've had some interesting weather here of late. And as I was preparing my remarks for tonight and there's two things I want to cover. Transportation and our combined dispatch. But first I want to talk about transportation a little bit in our highway department employees. And the tremendous job that they're doing. You know Sheboygan County is responsible for maintaining 900 lane miles of county roads. 356 lane miles of state and interstate highway. And 930 lane miles of town roads. So for your math majors out there that's 2,186 lane miles of roads. A lot of roads to take care of when it snows. When we have freezing rain. When we have conditions like we've had the last couple of days. And I imagine from time to time you may hear your constituents say well what does it take? Why does it take so long? Why does it cost so much? So if you think about just a 2 to 4 inch snowfall. An average snowfall. No wind. No freezing rain. Just a nice gentle snowfall in a 24 hour period. How many staff do we have available? How many pieces of equipment are involved? How long does it take to get our transportation system back in order so it's safe? Well believe it or not we have on average 57 employees involved in a situation like that. We're utilizing 45 plows. We also have graders that we can use if need be. But on average 57 employees are involved utilizing 45 pieces of equipment. And in a 24 hour time period it costs about $125,000 to clean it up. Significant. If it's an above average snowfall with wind. With the kind of ice conditions that we've been dealing with. Taking dramatically more salt. More man hours to get out there in just 24 hours. It's closer to $200,000 for that one event. On average we go through nearly 11,000 tons of salt per year at a cost of $800,000 per year. And obviously the worse the conditions the slipper it is the more ice we have the more salt we're putting in place. Suffice it to say it costs millions. It costs millions of dollars each year to keep our transportation system maintained and safe during the winter months. Some of the folks from Florida and others don't have to worry about this so much. We do in the Midwest and it's costly and our staff do a tremendous job. Our county highway department employees are on call 24-7, 365 days a year. They have to be ready to perform their jobs at any given hour of the day or night and not just in the winter obviously. They are called upon for any type of weather emergency year round including responding to assist law enforcement with automobile crash sites, fires, put up road signage, you name it. Our staff cannot stay home during a winter event. They have to make it through whatever road conditions there are to get to work so that they can open the roads for the motoring public. Most people do not consider a highway department employees emergency responders, but they are. They are at times the first on the scene of an accident providing aid and calling the sheriff's department. Recently one of our employees was the first on the scene to assist a sheriff's deputy who was trapped in her vehicle when she was rear-ended on highway I-43. Even more recently sadly one of our highway department employees was the first on the scene of a fatality. He was the last person to speak to the victim and the first to provide CPR. If our staff is not on the roads doing their job then police, fire, ambulance personnel cannot get to you and assist you when needed. We are so fortunate to have highly skilled and dedicated highway department employees. I think personally I think it's just amazing how quickly they can get our roads in good order after a snowstorm and I think it's equally amazing how impatient some people are. So I kindly ask you and those viewers of TV8 and others that may think a little bit about our transportation system and the good work of our dedicated highway employees to thank and appreciate their work. To be patient and recognize that they are outstanding and important public servants. So again in light of the weather we've been dealing with and how treacherous these icy conditions have been I wanted to shout out to our employees who are really doing a nice job. Speaking of good work I also wanted to talk a little bit about our combined dispatch center. As you know governing is hard work. It's heavy lifting. Collaboration is clearly an important key to success. Earlier this month Mayor van der Steen who is with us this evening asked Chairman Tom Wagner and I to go to the city common council to talk a little bit about combined dispatch and the very impressive collaboration that's occurred between the county board and the common council. They both took that opportunity and enjoyed the opportunity. That evening Mayor van der Steen presented us with the two and a half million dollar check. They're the city's contribution toward combined dispatch and we took that opportunity not only to talk about combined dispatch but a lengthy list of a number of opportunities we've worked together to make good things happen. And I sent that all to you as an email attachment earlier this afternoon. But for nearly three decades there were discussions to combine our dispatch center between the police department, the Sheboygan County Sheriff's department, county board supervisors and the common council. And finally we negotiated and came to an agreement on a path to get it done. The 2016 merger of the city and county dispatch center eliminates duplication and provides a single point of contact for all citizens and visitors to access emergency and non-emergency services. It provides a more efficient, effective and consistent level of service, eliminates the need and delay associated with transferring calls which is very important, provides for better county wide radio coverage which is very important. And it's going to help save lives. The county and city were also able to successfully retain and merge most city and county dispatchers and prove working conditions and provide for a seamless transition. The most difficult challenge personally and I think most in this room would agree was garnering county board support. Support to absorb nearly a one million increase in operating costs going forward because of this combined service. We picked up the costs associated with the city dispatchers that came our direction. We added a supervisory level that we didn't have before. We certainly raised the bar but there was added cost and the board swallowed hard and approved it because they knew ultimately it was a better and more consistent level of service for the community as a whole. In addition our radios and equipment was dated. Certainly Chairman Tom Epping and members of the law committee they know that this is dated equipment because they were doing the heavy lifting during this discussion. And we had not only to make the investment in remodeling our law enforcement center but we have new dispatch consoles, equipment, radios, towers to a total of about 12 million dollars. Of which again the city provided two and a half but this was a major investment in our community. So I just want to say thank you. You probably don't hear it real often from your constituents as you go shopping or go about your day. But thank you county board for your leadership and support. Thank you Mayor Van der Steen or joined us this evening for your leadership and support. The common council the chief of police and his staff. Most of the city dispatchers came our direction they were wonderful to work with. We made this vision become a reality. It was and is a remarkable achievement. And I think in this line of work we tend to get things done and we move right on to the next but it's worthy of a modest pause and to recognize what collectively we accomplished. This evening I want to particularly thank our staff. And with us this evening is Sheriff Todd Preby if you would please stand and be recognized. Inspector Jim Rousseau, Lieutenant Christie Dublay, former inspector Bill Bruckbauer. I had the pleasure of meeting with these individuals generally every three to four weeks depending on what was happening they would give me updates on their progress and they are tremendous. Their teamwork, their collaboration, their problem solving. I think everyone knows former inspector Bruckbauer and the passion he had and the support and recommendations he was making early on in this and for him to come back after retirement and help be a project manager and see it through. I just tip my hat to his public service and willingness to do that. Sheriff Todd Preby came in he had relationships with the city so that clearly helped. Inspector Rousseau what a strong thoughtful decision maker, leader in the department and then Lieutenant Christie Dublay who worked with the dispatchers and so many of the key staff who are now making this work. Her communication skills, attention to detail, follow through with these employees, outstanding. So let's put our hands together. So thank you and Inspector Rousseau if you could please come forward. That concludes my remarks but I asked Jim at Chairman Wegner's request to just give a brief overview of when we talk about combining dispatch and some of this equipment and radios and towers. If you're on the law committee or if you're Vern who's a member of the fire department I mean you got a pretty good handle on this but some people may not as much and there are others certainly watching perhaps on TV8 that what's this all about and Jim's going to give a little bit of an overview. I just wanted to put together a few slides for tonight because much of the system the county has spent a great deal of money on is behind secure doors and in places where it's normally not viewed. So just to kind of give an idea, put a visual on what we've done. This first picture is the new center as a couple of days ago. We're completely moved in and it is fully operational. Much, much larger, much more accommodating than our previous center and so far things are working very well. There's always a few bugs and adjustments and things like that to make on when you're dealing with this kind of electronics equipment but overall it works very well and we've been using it on a daily basis since the 14th of November when we went live out of the center. How it all began, this is kind of the in the beginning slide. This was a resolution passed by the county board. It was introduced in 2012 and passed just after the first of the year in 2013. Oddly enough it was just a couple of weeks before I became inspector at the Sheriff's Office so I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming for a year but it was certainly a challenging project to take on right out of the chute. But I was very much in the loop, former inspector Brockbauer. I've been working with him, shadowing him for a year already so I was pretty much in the know on what was going on. As county administrator mentioned, we asked inspector Brockbauer to come back to be our project manager. The amount of thought and effort he had put into this idea for many, many years, there's just simply no one that can match it. So we thought it best that he come back and manage that side of it because he had much more background and much more depth as far as what the vision of the project was. To start with, we had to figure out where are we going to put this center. Several ideas were floated around as far as location. As we say location is everything. The original plan introduced years earlier called for expansion of our building. Expanding the footprint of our building. That of course would be quite expensive because of the nature of our building having the company walls and basically being a bomb proof, weather proof type building. So that was going to be expensive so our goal was to try and fit it in an existing space. This is a layout from the furniture company. Giving us a layout of the furniture and how things would be placed inside that room. This is what it looks like today without the walls. That's basically the layout of our furniture in the northeast corner of our building. We also had to displace a number of people including myself and the sheriff. We had to move to the opposite building where office space was created. But this proved to be a very useful and a good plan to go forward. This is what we frequently refer to as the guts room. This is a new radio system. It's in a temperature controlled and room off the comm center. It has its own fire system to protect against fires. And that's where essentially the guts or the core of the radio system is. It's a couple million dollars sitting in these racks here. But it runs the entire system. As with many things you're not going to see a lot of traditional electronic tubes and wires that we used to see. Everything is essentially a computer-based system run by huge processors. So this is what it looks like inside the core room. Some of the things that had to happen as the system progressed. The last time we upgraded our system was in 2000. Since that time many codes as far as radio systems and structures have changed including electrical codes. So all of our tower sites, we had six of them at the beginning of this project. We now have seven. All six towers had to be inspected for both load rating and any other code upgrades that would have to take place. Just as an example this tower at Highway 67 had to be strengthened. It did not meet the load requirements. So there was some modifications done to the base of that tower. And also historically we had some problems with the generator. The tower site is actually owned by another party, a communications company. Their generator was theirs but it had failed on a regular basis. So we took over that responsibility and installed a brand new generator. And also made the strength upgrades to the tower. And there's our very own homegrown generator that now will power that in case of a power outage. This site is critical to the infrastructure of the system because that site also has the equipment for paging fire departments. So this site is critical. We can't have this site go down for any period of time because our fire paging will not be possible without it. This is inside the equipment shack at that site. I took this picture last June prior to the new radio equipment being installed. Just to kind of get an idea of what the inside of these buildings look like. This is the old equipment that had to be somewhat disconnected and pushed aside so we could install new equipment alongside of it. And also if you can see the thermometer and that it was maybe 60 degrees up when I took this picture which you can see it's much warmer in there. This equipment gives off a lot of heat. And these little shacks at the base of these towers have to be constantly temperature controlled. So air conditioners that will kick on even in a couple of times of the year because the equipment is in during so much heat. This was an important addition and improvement to our whole system. When the system was upgraded to 2000, there was discussions about the need for a 7th tower site in the southeast area. Along the lake shore, what we affectionately refer to as the Dutch coast, there are some dead spots and dead areas that we wanted to try and address. We weren't sure at the beginning of this project we were going to be able to do that because of the cost of their building or renting space on a new tower. We left it as an option when we put bids out and negotiated the contract of Motorola, we left it as an option. And in the end we were able to do that by renting a tower space from a U.S. cellular. I also want to point out as far as our cooperation with the county departments, when a nice little shack was about to be delivered, weighs about 15,000 pounds, we needed to pick that thing up off a truck and set it down. While all that stuff weighed more than what the existing road was going to handle, there was simply a small path where they threw some gravel on top of a farm field to get into the site. And that simply wasn't going to hold the truck or the crane that was needed to lift it off. So a very short notice, Greg Schnell and his highway guys put a road in for us that would hold 100,000 pounds. And they did it pretty much overnight. I think we called it late in the week and I think one of the intrusive the following week that road was in. So if you did an outstanding job of meeting the need and keeping us on schedule as far as getting this shack installed and getting us in there. This also makes it possible for the highway department to maintain that. So if our technicians or anyone needs to access that site, they can get at it. That's the top of the seated rope tower. Just to give someone an idea what the top of that tower looks like. This is cell phone equipment and that's cell phone equipment. We rent tower space in 10 foot increments. And I believe we rented the space in between these two. There might be some below, but I think we rented 20 or 30 feet of space on that tower. That saved us a lot of money by being able to rent space on an existing tower rather than trying to construct our own. Instructing it at a far more expensive and time consuming, by the time all the permits and everything were secured. So we now have a seventh site in operation, which has improved our service in that area greatly. This is an old coverage map I found. Our county, these red dots are all our existing tower sites. The new tower site is what we needed. It was supposed to improve coverage in this area. Pretty much as soon as you travel east down the bluffs near Amsterdam Beach in that area, coverage was lost. So there's a fair number of people that live down there. It is somewhat seasonal, but there's still a lot of people that live down there. And we've had calls for service as far as there's a drowning, there's been house fires down there. Other fires, medical situations, and we really needed to have coverage in that area for our services. This is the new map, the new system installed. We have a seventh site there. The white spotted area along the coast is not long. So we don't have coverage through our coast. We have the Amsterdam Dunes area. The county is acquired. And also, even in Tohazake County, no waste. So that has solved that issue immensely. Oddly enough, not long after the system went live, we did have an incident in that area. Our gentleman suffered a medical condition. He lives in another area, but was formerly from the Cedero area. We had an attempt to locate him. His vehicle was found near the Amsterdam Dunes property. And there was an intense search to try and fight him. The weather was not going to be able to stand the weather. While that search was conducted by law enforcement in the Cedero fire department, they had complete and clear radio coverage the entire time we searched that area for him. And fortunately, it was found in time to get him to take over our systems. But we got to see some of the benefits from the seventh tower. As many of you know, a second tower, or a new tower, had been built at Taylor Hill. The old tower, which had already been reinforced last time we upgraded our system, simply wasn't capable of reducing new codes, was not capable of pulling the load that was going to be on it. So a new tower was built right alongside the old one to meet the new standards. Now this picture was taken before equipment had been transferred to this tower. But all the new equipment is on. This one is now, sits idle, and sometime in the next month or two, that tower will be dismantled and taken down. Weather hasn't been the greatest for the tower climbers lately. If some of you remember when you go up, it was kind of an amazing thing. It pretty much went up in a single day. They constructed that tower. So the expertise and experience that people have in these things is nothing short of amazing. The user end, a very key component to us is the end user products. This is a mobile radio that fits inside any vehicle. And these are the two varieties of portables, portable radios that we utilized. This is one of these dual bands. We can operate on an analog or digital system. So we can talk to the counties around us that still have analog systems. This one is a typical one that the fire departments liked. They liked the color because it matches a lot of their other equipment. But I'm not sure if you can see it, but this version also comes with larger knobs, which is a much sought after feature with local fire departments because they can turn those knobs with that glove hand. Typically, in their business, they have gloves on no matter what time of year it is. So they're able to do that. There was just over $5 million in radios purchased as part of this project. So that was a huge part of it. We are very pleased with these end user products. They contain some nice new features for the users. They are crystal clear. Going from an analog system to a digital system is like going from rabbit ears on your TV to a satellite system with my definition TV. It's just much clearer. The voice is crystal clear. And one of the new features that is incorporated in these radios as well as some other manufacturers is noise canceling features which is invaluable when it comes to using these radios at an incident. There's demonstrations and we were part of them where someone using one of these radios would stand alongside of a fire truck with pumps running, a chainsaw, or a cutoff saw, generators, and you could barely hear yourself talk, but they could talk in a plain voice in that radio and the person on the other end hears nothing but that user's voice. You don't hear any of the background noise. That is nothing short of amazing when it comes to technology. During some of the testing process, we sent a few people out on our boat out of Lake Michigan. It was rough that day. The outboards were going full tilt, and they said they could not even hear themselves talk and the wind and the waves of the motors running. But in dispatch, they could hear it clear as the bell and they heard none of the background noise. In fact, the outboards did not show and they showed us a lot to hear themselves talk that it was going across through the boat. So it's about standing features for our fire units and law enforcement. Another important feature, improvement, I think there's many people that think this is a 901 system. It's not, in fact it's not even a phone system anymore, but I just do not set for effect. This is a 901 system. We spent roughly half a million dollars on 901 software. That allows one screen at each dispatch console to be dedicated entirely to 901. In our new center, we can take, we have five or 12, 10, 901 lines coming in. So we can take 10 individual 901 calls at one time or as many dispatchers as can pick up phones. Some nice, some of the features on this did not change much since the previous version. However, one of the components we have on this system is we have a statistical feature and analytical feature on this where a supervisor or many cases of a tentative blade can look back at calls that were received, determine peak call times, determine how many 901 calls are received at any given time, whether it's yearly, annually, daily. One adjustment, as far as staffing, was already made because of the information gathered from the system. They took personnel from one shift and moved them towards another shift to better address peak call time. But there's all kinds of information, even from a personnel management standpoint, individual dispatchers that can look at their own individual habits and techniques and see if there's improvements or anything that can be made to that area as far as how much time it takes from the time the calls are received to the time the resources are dispatched. So there's all kinds of features that are built into the system that can be utilized. And one of the questions that has come up in the past when my dispatch was in discussion was how many of 901 calls are received from the city, how many are received from the county. This system has capabilities to analyze much of that. So that provides great tools to move forward and manage this as much larger use. So keys to success, support from the county board of supervisors, it all began here when that resolution was supported in the past. It also needed to be supported from the city council. The city council, Shabuigan, those were key components to getting this started getting it off the ground. The shared services committee, I went to many of those meetings and the idea kind of blossomed out of the shared services committee. We have a great number of people supporting it and a great number of discussions and resources were put forward from that committee. Cooperation and leadership from the county administrator and city administrator. Once the resolution was passed and there was a team of people from the city and county that met regularly to make a separate agreement between the city and county. Those were some pretty intense discussions and they were not easy. I guess it would be safe to say that only one meeting ended in total agreement which was the last one. But in between there was a lot of things that had to be discussed. Everybody in the room had the best interests of everyone in mind but navigating through some of those individual matters was not easy. Everybody was committed to finding a way in the end we reached an agreement. Cooperation leadership from Sheriff Dewey and Police Chief Donald Balski. I think we would have been very understanding had the city been resistant to some of the things that came up along the way for a period of time. We decided to move our dispatchers to the city PD while construction and other things were taking place in our own facility while awaiting the equipment to arrive and being installed. The decision was made partly because we just needed four complete dispatch consoles to work from and we only had three at the Sheriff's Department so we moved to the city for several months. The city was very accommodating. Basically anything we needed to make it work they accommodated us in their homes. They've been outstanding both from managing the personnel that were there trying to work with their supervision there to make sure communication and everything worked along there while we were there and they were just there standing to work with Schwoing County Fire Chiefs. A huge part of what we do is dispatch fire resources to volunteer fire departments. There are 27 departments in this so that's a lot of individuals a lot of best intentions and good thoughts trying to get those all to one place to come to an agreement from everything from dispatch protocols how to template that we install on radios as far as what channels and in what order are installed on those portables that was a huge thing what if they're able to get it done and come to an agreement and in the end I think we've taken a huge step forward in our relationship with those fire departments. Project management by Jim Tobist and Govrappard managing both the construction side of the project and the personnel and merging side of the project was primarily managed by these two and I did outstanding I think it was St. John. Thanks for the finance director, Wendy and for the finance director, Terry Hanson Wendy inherited this project and became finance director I know she's very appreciative of that she enjoys the challenge but her expertise to help us stay on top of our numbers has been outstanding because there were times where it was difficult the project was moving fast so forward assets were being acquired, things were being acquired and bills needed to be paid but we needed to know where we were at and she's been outstanding that area Bernie Purchasing agent, Bernie Rodman whenever it came to purchasing equipment, items that were not specifically Motorola radio related, Bernie was a guy and he could turn things around really quick and when it came to negotiating products like our dispatch software he's very good at that if you've ever worked with him you understand that you may find the product at a better price and Bernie will always get a better price so in the end everybody wins technical support as I talked about from transportation director they're outstanding getting their road bills built for us but they also took out the responsibility of installing radios with our vehicles which took a huge burden on our own in our own people personnel guides and development from our HR director Gene Galmore from the Department of Deblay working through merging two sets of benefit packages and rules and guidelines and practices that's not easy it's a very difficult part of merging the two work groups from the city of the county we also understood from the beginning that we really had to get it right the first time at least as much as possible because we didn't want to lose people the counties and cities that merge lose many people the 20% or more they lose just because of the merger we were able to create much better statistics that way we didn't lose many people at all as far as people who just didn't seem to make the jump but in the end we were able to hold it together and those people are still with us today and have made the transition but they're outstanding in that Lieutenant Deblay she was the frontline person as far as during the stress transition for the two work groups we were able to endure that the people working for us were able to endure that we made it through technical knowledge and skills of our radio technicians from the city of county George Macias on the county side Shreiner on the city side it was no secret that these two gentlemen are outstanding in the field that you really learned to appreciate as you step into a project like this I think we probably have the two best radio technicians for a long time in this state their skills are tapped into other counties in the area and other counties even across the state George frequently gets calls from the department of corrections for their persistence with some of their systems in their facilities as well these are two outstanding people with great skills in their field and technical knowledge and skills of our building services, electrician, mic and planks, air ice mic was outstanding even changed the way some of our more old people wanted our facilities where Mike knows building codes on the front to back actually it was outstanding as far as doing a lot of the work and saving us a lot of money and time by doing a lot of the work within our own people city and county dispatchers and supervisors they had to endure this enormous transition we had people that had only been here a year and we have one employee that's been here 42 years and we have everything in between it's a lot of change to endure when not only your physical location changes every piece of equipment that you touch in the day is part of your job everything changed entirely new faces to work with entirely new policies, procedures protocols the city people had to learn about the county the county people had to learn about the city and they had to do that all within a matter of a year or two so they endured that and have come through it successfully I think we have an outstanding and very efficient system thank you continuing on our agenda consideration of committee reports from the executive committee ordinance number 10 regarding repealing and recreating chapter 70 sanitary regulations committee recommendation to enact Supervisor Gehring thank you Mr. Vice Chairman I move for adoption of ordinance number 10 motion is adoption Supervisor Baumgart I second that move and for adoption any discussion hearing none when the clerk opens the roll please vote that motion is approved unanimously next order of business it is ordinance number 11 regarding repealing and recreating chapter 75 erosion control and stormwater management ordinance committee recommendation to enact Supervisor Dampe thank you Supervisor Chairman Assistant Chairman I move to enact ordinance number 11 thank you motion is enact Supervisor Baumgart I second that motion motion is second for enact discussion seeing none when the clerk opens the roll please vote that motion is also approved unanimously next order of business is resolutions introduced resolution number 30 from the finance committee regarding carryover of unexpended 2016 appropriations to 2017 resolution number 30 is referred to the finance committee resolution number 31 for planning resources agriculture and extension regarding participating in snowmobile aids program 2017-2018 resolution number 31 is referred to the finance committee next order of business is adjournment Supervisor Bemas I move to adjourn motion is adjournment motion second to adjourn the clerk opens the roll please vote we are adjourned