 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name's Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Van der Steen. And today we're pleased to bring one of our many departments to your attention, the Planning and Conservation Department. Mr. Aaron Braultz with us, welcome, Aaron. Hi. Aaron's been with us. Now, I think we're going on five years, are we not? Five years with the county, the first four with the non-motorized transportation pilot program in the last year as planning director. Yeah, so I'm sure some of you recognize Aaron. He's been very visible in the community with the non-motorized transportation program. We'll talk about that a little bit, as well as other roles, responsibilities of the department. But just a year or so ago, Aaron was promoted to be our director of the Planning and Conservation Department. We consolidated two departments into one, and he's done an excellent job. So Aaron, please start by providing just a little background about yourself. Sure, I grew up in two rivers. I don't know how detailed we want to get here, but my planning experience out of college, I graduated from UW-Madison and started working for a private planning consulting firm called Vandalon Associates. I spent about four and a half years there. Then my wife, she's a doctor, and her residency program took us to Indianapolis. And at that time, that was about time the economy tanked the first time, as far as the tech bubble, and jobs were scarce. And so I started my own business. I was actually a home inspector and rode the housing bubble. And when we determined we wanted to move back to Wisconsin, I was successful in selling that business and ended up at the county once we moved back to Sheboygan, so. And started as manager of our non-motorized transportation program, actually worked as one assistant for a period. Yep, yep, yep. I started out as an assistant in that program. And then when the manager left, I was promoted to the manager position. And then shortly thereafter that, promoted to the planning director. Right, so. There are a lot of opportunities in county government. Living, breathing example. So as director of the planning and conservation department, please give our viewers a flavor for what types of programs and services are provided. Sure, the basic core areas of our department, on the planning side and conservation side, are we administer the county shoreland ordinance, the septic maintenance program comes through our department. Water quality program on the conservation side is run through the planning and conservation department. Non-metallic mining, permitting comes through. County addressing, all the county's mapping comes through our department. So the snowmobile program, it's a very diverse workload, I guess you could say. The county stewardship program. County stewardship program. Yeah, there's a host of other things as well that come through our department. And how many staff do you have in what's your annual operating budget? We have 15 permanent staff. Currently, we have 19, four temporary staff. One, we typically have an intern every year. We also have two folks in our office that are funded through private entities and the county's buy-in per se in those areas are providing a workspace. So we have a gentleman in our office who is funded by the Nature Conservancy and is working on a county watershed project. We also have an aquatic invasive species coordinator that's funded through Glacierland RC&D and they're in our office as well. So total 19, 15 permanent operating budget the last two years has typically been about three million thereabouts. And that has decreased over the past few years. I looked back over the past five years, it's steadily gone down between 10 and 11. We saw about a 8% decrease and I believe last year was about a 3% decrease in our annual operating budget. And I'm sure some viewers may have thought, wow, 15 or 19 employees, but again, you consolidated from two departments into one. Yep, yep, yep, conservation. It's been going well. We've developed synergies. I think it was a good move. It makes sense, planning and conservation were involved in a lot of the similar types of things with natural resources. So we've been able to capture some of that efficiency with our mapping, CAD work and just being able to interact in the same office with both divisions has really benefit, I think. Just today, Pat Drynen came up to the office and Pat Drynen is the executive director of the Sheboyne County Economic Development Corporation, just received an award from the chamber and he popped up to compliment how nice it is to work with the planning department in your GIS staff. He said that that's just worked out so well. Yeah, we've actually done some analysis for him which I have a GIS background and I've been trying to push onto our mapping folks. We've been typically maintaining data and developing data, parcel, information, things like that and we've never really gotten into a lot of analysis using the geographical information system tools and so working with Patrick, we've been able to do some analytical things. One of the things we've been able to do for him there was potentially a data center who needed to be within so many miles of a highway, had to be within so many miles of high-tension wires, things like that, had to be on sewer, had to have redundant power, things like that so we were able to plug all that into a model in our mapping software and at the end of the day spit out certain areas within the county that fit those criteria. So outstanding, outstanding. It's a nice tool. Sheboyne County Economic Development Corporation is in the county administration building so they have the ability to work real closely with their planning department and our registered deeds and we almost treat them as though they're one of our 20 departments. We're a partner, they're not a county office, but they're in our administration building and again just got recognized with a real nice award from the chamber, a letter from Governor Walker complimenting the job that the board as a whole and Patrick and his staff have done. Well, moving along a little more about you specifically, I think folks have gotten, I hope they've gotten an appreciation for the excellent background you bring to the table, the private sector experience, the planning experience, building inspection, non-motorized transportation, GIS. I mean, you have a broad skill set and you have some excellent staff that you oversee. You put the budget together every year, but of late, Aaron, where have you been spending your time? I'd say within the past three months, maybe four months, 90% of my time has probably been involved with the Sheboygan River and Dredging, or River Harbor Dredging project. So we've been, and other key staff, no doubt, in our department and working with the city of Sheboygan staff as well. We've all been putting in a lot of time on that project, you included, so. So that's been a big emphasis of late. I actually, the county's been involved with it for probably the last year and a half or two, but certainly Aaron has provided a key leadership role in the last few months in particular. Pat. Miles. But Pat Miles, yes, how quickly I forget. Pat Miles on conservation side, he's been involved for some time. Now, Emily is the new individual who covers the non-motorized, but you've also been very involved with those projects that are coming along. Sure, yeah, Emily Vetting, she helps with a lot of the education and outreach, and I still maintain a role in the budgeting and overseeing the implementation of a lot of these projects. She came along a little too, I'd say on the tail end of getting that stuff into the pipeline, so to speak. So there's about 27 infrastructure projects that have been funded. Of course, some have been already completed. Some will be completed this summer. We're looking at about three projects this summer, two out in Plymouth, and then finishing up County Highway O, and then 2013, we'll see some of our larger projects. Union Pacific Rail Line, Eisner Avenue, Taylor Drive, the Sheboygan Falls Project, a couple other projects out in Plymouth, the Kohler Projects should finish up in 2013. I had a very good meeting with Union Pacific yesterday. A fellow flew in from Omaha from their headquarters, and we sat down and talked about the Union Pacific Trail, and so things are moving along there as far as acquiring the real estate to be able to build that trail, so. It's standing. I'll stand, one final question before I turn it over to Mike. Non-motorized transportation, we received this grant a number of years ago from the feds, we're one of four pilots, as I think most people are aware if they followed this over the years, but it literally has been years, and this is the year that you really feel a lot of these projects are gonna start breaking ground and getting rolling. In 2013, some of our bigger projects. This past year, we completed eight of nine projects. We had to forego one. The bid came in about 41% over the engineer's estimate. We're rebidding that this summer. So last year was a busy year. This year, we'll see a little bit of a dip, and then 2013 we should see a lot of activity again. Very good, excellent. Thank you, Aaron. Thank you, Aaron. Aaron, you know all levels of government have been really under a lot of pressure to keep property taxes in check. How has your department met that challenge in the county? Sure, as I mentioned over the past five years that I've looked at, we've steadily seen a decrease in our department. We've lost some staff over the past few years. From when I started about five years ago, I believe we're down three or four staff members. We've also diversified our funding. We're looking for more and more grants, both public and private. I mentioned the TNC, the Nature Conservancy Grant that helps fund some of our staffing. And also just simple cost savings within the department. Over the past year, we've switched a lot of our printing around. We had a number of printers that we didn't need any longer or that we could consolidate into one, all in one type of machine. And so that saved us on rent and toner and things like that. And just simple things, our conference room. We keep the door shut and the temperature set down to 63 degrees in the wintertime. And in the summertime, it goes up to I think 72 degrees. So we've been trying wherever we can to provide that cost savings. Now, one of the things that you brought to the county board was to institute a fee for a recreation fee. And it's turned out to be a fee that's really just applying to our boat landings. How's that going? It's actually to our boat landings and our campground out at the Shiboygan Marsh. And last year was the first full year that it had been implemented. And it went well. It was rather contentious when it started. And there are still some gripes here and there, but we were about $9,000 in the black last year with about $5,000 of that being put into a non-lapsing segregated account for the campground specifically because that's where we receive those funds from. And then the remainder will be used basically in a savings account. Again, a non-lapsing segregated account for any boat landing maintenance that we have to do. For instance, last year some of the maintenance has been delayed and delayed due to funding. And last year we were able to dredge a little Elkhart Lake. We are able to repair the parking lot at Gerber Lake and by adding some gravel, it was all beat up, pothold. And we were receiving a lot of complaints about that so we were able to tackle that. And then out at the Shiboygan Marsh we were able to install a new pier. So those are some of the projects we've been using those monies for. And again, one of the goals of it was to, again, provide, in essence, a savings account for future bigger projects that may come up, paving parking lots, new piers, new docks, that kind of thing, lighting, new bathrooms that have to be installed every so often. And so we'll have that fun there. Now you've got a ranger that also goes around to the facilities and kind of keeps them up. Is that helping to pay part of that salary too? Yep, and it's also paying for that individual's salary. Okay, that's great to hear. I'd like to interject here because the county board deserves so much credit for having the courage and the will to see this through. When the rec fee was proposed, of course people weren't real pleased about that. But how often do we hear people complain about the federal level not paying the bills and the ongoing debt that builds up at the state level or starting to see a little turn with their budget process, but for over a decade they've had structural deficits not paying for things as they go. In Sheboygan County, the county board's striving to maintain, take care of our infrastructure and pay as we go rather than pass that burden on to future generations. So I very much appreciate your leadership and the county board's leadership to step up and have the will to say, not everybody uses our boat landings, not everybody goes camping. These are predominantly user fee opportunities to pay for, maintain, take care of what we have. And so far it's been working out real well. And I'll add on to that. We saw this year, we had a detailed breakdown of what lakes we were gathering the fees from. And we also asked on our passes, just simply where's your zip code? And so we know that about 20, I believe 23% of the funds that we gathered came from out of county. So it was visitors who don't pay property taxes in Sheboygan County that are using our amenities helped pay for them. They might as well help pay for them. Yep, so my compliment. Thank you for those compliments. And it's good to see that the department's making that program work so efficiently. Yeah. To switch gears a little bit, going back to more of the planning activities I know recently, you had a survey for the Marsh Managing Plan Update. Could you tell us a little bit about that plan and some of the other plans your office is working on? Yeah, there's two plans that we hope to update this year. One being the Farmland Preservation Plan and without going into too much detail on that, that allows area farmers if they enroll in the program to receive a tax credit for keeping their land and agricultural use. And the second one that you had mentioned was the Marsh Management Plan Update. That was done first in 2001 with a lot of good public input. And there's just some areas in there that have become out of date. So we're looking at redoing that plan or updating that plan this year as well. So, and you're right. There's a survey out online. If you go to our website you can, it's a pretty simple survey. Five, six questions. Doesn't take you a lot of time to fill out but just gives us a general idea of what folks are looking for, what they're looking for at the Marsh in the future, how they want to see us manage that. You know, what they like about the Marsh, what they don't like about the Marsh, things like that. Now what kind of interval do you update these plans? Is this a annual or a much longer period? Typically planning, you want to update your plan probably every five, eight years. Somewhere in there between five and eight years. All right. Things change, it's a working document. So you want to make sure it's accurate and timely. That's great. And one of the other activities your department's been involved in is dealing with hazardous waste and trying to stage different events to collect that. I know last year you got into electronic waste a little bit more than the normal hazardous waste. Could you tell us a little bit about those programs and what's anticipated this year? Yeah, the household hazardous waste program along with our waste pharmaceutical collection program are two things I didn't mention previously but those are also things that our department administers. The household hazardous waste program, it's been widely successful. You'd be amazed at the stuff we still get every year. Every year we still receive DDT, other toxic substances. I believe it was last year or the year prior. I don't remember, we had a call for, what do I do with two tons of glycerin? So there's just some crazy stuff that's out there that there's nowhere else to dispose of it. So either it's gonna end up in our ditches at our boat landings, we get dehumidifiers and refrigerators at our boat landings every year. So this provides an outlet and it's a popular outlet. Everybody seems really on board with that program. This year there will be a change going back to user fees. We will be charging $10 per car load at the household hazardous waste program which in other counties that have started to charge, you don't see a reduction in quantity, which is good, we're getting it off the streets out of people's barns, out of people's basements. But you do see the car loads go down and what tends to happen is that the neighbors get together and pack up a truck and bring it all in. At the end of the day, we're taking care of what we're interested in and getting that hazardous stuff off the streets. Same with the waste pharmaceuticals, we have collection boxes now at, we've added one at Kohler over the past year as well as Sheboygan Falls. So now Elkhart Lake, I believe, is the only police department that does not have a drop box in their entryway for waste pharmaceuticals. That's great and the response from the public on those is good to see and it's all helpful. Yeah, and we had asked, going back to the fee, one of the questions we asked, we do a little survey every year when people come in, we asked would you be willing to pay a small fee to offset the cost of this? And we were encouraged, I believe it was 97% of the people said yes. That's great. And so we're hoping that we don't have too many headaches with that. Excellent, now I understand there's gonna be a little reorganization in your department. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, unfortunately, Pat Miles in our department, he's been the county conservationist. I believe he's been with the county for over 30 years now. Has decided to retire. I wouldn't say that's unfortunate for him, but. Not unfortunate for him, I can't wait for that, Dave, but unfortunate for the department. That position will be consolidated into the engineering management position in the conservation side of our department and then we'll be hiring a new full-time person in our department to do the park ranger activities. We're calling it the outdoor programs coordinator. So they'll be pretty much involved with everything we do outdoors. So our recreational facilities, the snowmobile program, conservation education has been lacking the past few years due to downsizing and cuts. So we'd like to bring some of that back. And that position will probably also do the household hazardous waste and the waste pharmaceutical program as well. Sounds like some real good moves to take advantage of all the good qualities that that individual's gonna have. Yeah, yeah, very much. Well, thanks for working on that, Adam. I'll turn it over to you for finish up. Thanks, Mike. At the beginning, we talked a little bit about all the responsibilities you and your staff have, and we chat a little bit about the Harbor River dredging. Let's end there a little bit and just set the stage. I think, again, most people probably have followed that pretty closely in the press, and it's been pretty well reported. But big picture, high end summary, what's happening in Sheboygan County? What's happening with this river harbor dredging? Yeah, 2012 will be a busy year on the river and the harbor. At the end of the day, including the work that took place in 2007 up in Sheboygan Falls, it'll be between a $77 and $96 million project. That's gonna be invested into our river and our community and our county. So, you know, we're very fortunate. There's 40 or so areas of concern because of pollutants in water bodies along the Great Lakes, both on the Canadian side and the US side. And Sheboygan was picked, basically, to receive this investment. So I feel very fortunate as a citizen of this county that this has come our way and we've taken such a strong leadership role in working with it, you know, from economic development along the riverfront, which benefits the entire county, to fish and wildlife consumption advisories that will eventually be taken off for our river. It's a huge benefit. Habitat restoration projects are also included in that. So we'll be working at Kiwanis Park, Taylor Drive Indiana Avenue intersection, Wildwood Island in the city of Sheboygan, along Kohler, some stretches along through the village of Kohler. So just, you know, I think we're all fortunate in this community to have been targeted like that. Well, and as you know, I wholeheartedly agree. It's a tremendous project and there's a lot of activity and a lot of stakeholders working on this. Some work done, as you said, in 2007, up a river. We've had the middle river now dredged in part. They'll continue that work this summer. And then the last piece, as you know, that we're really focusing on is dredging the harbor. What's happening there? What's the status? Well, it's a little nebulous right now. As you know, we're looking at disposal options, where we're gonna go with the stuff, the sediment in the river east of Aith Street. That's the area where there's very low concentrations of contaminants. And they're so low, in fact, that the EPA or the Corps won't fund the disposal of it. So that's been up to the county and the city to find those funds for the disposal. So I'm sure as many of our viewers are aware, we looked at the airport site. There's been some contention over that, so now we're exploring other options. At licensed landfills, of course, that's gonna be more expensive, so, you know. And to give folks a flavor for that, you said 77 to 96 million. The EPA is looking at 10 million alone, just for dredging the harbor. And then of course, if we haul it to an existing landfill out of the area, and the closest one is Whitelaw, that's gonna add literally millions, though we're in the midst right now of negotiating and trying to get the best bi-week in, we're also leveraging resources between the EPA, the state, the city, the county, and some of our viewers might be wondering, well, geez, how much is this gonna cost us locally? How would you respond to that? At this time, again, it's a little bit nebulous because we're working on those prices. If we go the landfill option, I would say shooting from the hip and based on the estimates that we have in-house now, we'll be looking at it anywhere from probably 200 to 350,000. At the county level. And so if we have two to 300,000 from the city and two to 300,000 from the county, that's gonna draw 10 million plus from the federal government, and two million plus from the state government. So from a standpoint of leveraging our resources, tremendous opportunity, and we continue to hear from the EPA and the Army Corps, well, this is a once in a lifetime. This may never happen again. And whenever you hear someone say that to you, never is it a long time, but why do you think they are saying that, Aaron? Well, the simple fact is our harbor is recreational. We don't ship goods out of our harbor anymore other than the fishing industry. But when you're comparing our fishing industry to the ports of Milwaukee, ports of Gary, Indiana, Cleveland, whatever else on the Great Lakes that have those type of ports, Duluth, Superior, those are where the Corps is spending its resources. Their budgets like most other budgets have been shrinking and becoming more competitive and at the national level. So they're prioritizing and that's where they're putting their priorities is in the big commercial harbors, keeping those dredged, keeping those working. And so for our little harbor though, it's very important to us on the grand scheme of things when you're talking commercial ports, we just don't have that volume. So as you mentioned, we looked at the airport site, it turned out to be a very feasible site with 50 feet of clay and in an area of the airport, we couldn't develop fenced in, but ultimately the town board was not comfortable with it, the residents weren't comfortable with that. We're respectful of that. We're now looking at other options. They may be more expensive, but we remain hopeful. One thing that folks perhaps haven't gotten a real flavor for, but certainly we have and Chairman Van der Steen is the support we've received from the business community, the veterans organizations that want to see ships be able to come in here, the charter fishermen, other recreationalists that use our river. I think I've covered most of it, but there's been a lot of- Yeah, and even if the harbor gets dredged, there's cruise ships that want to make Sheboygan a port of call on the Great Lakes. Last year there was gonna be a large Great Lakes schooner that was gonna dock here. It's more of a tourist attraction, but it couldn't. It couldn't get in. It was too shallow. So yeah, I mean, the Windsor ship, they're looking at the Naval Association, they're looking at bringing in the U.S. Canon while they probably won't be able to if we don't get the harbor dredged. In fact, I don't think they will be able to. So yeah, there's a lot riding on it. Again, I think it's a great opportunity for our community. And again, at the federal level where they're prioritizing, I see this at least as a once in my lifetime opportunity. And one that the future generations, I think will appreciate for years and years to come. Chairman Mike Van der Steen, the county board just voted on a resolution and support of the county's role 27 to four just this week. And so there's strong support from the county board again, we need to lock in a site. We need to lock in the dollars. And of course, then we'll be returning to the county board for a final decision. Aaron, thank you so much for joining us today. Covered a lot of ground, a lot of information. If you want more information or want to make some suggestions or constructive criticism, please don't hesitate to contact your county board supervisor or myself or Aaron, remember the planning department. Next month, we're gonna have Tom Eggebrecht here from the health and human services department. The county government works week is soon gonna be upon us and the health and human services department is gonna be focused on. So we're looking forward to having him there. And until then, Aaron, thank you. On behalf of the county board, thanks for joining us.