 Hello, welcome to the Donahue Group. Glad you could join us for this wonderful half hour of conversation before we get started. Well, first of all, let me introduce my fellow panelists. Cal Potter, former state senator and assorted other titles that I'm not going to get into. Tom Pineski, University of Wisconsin Sheboygan Mathematics Professor and now acting dean of something or other. Not yet. Not yet. Next show. All right. Very good. Ken Risto. Is that because everybody is retiring? Ken Risto, who I think has actually been demoted. I'm about not yet. I will be stripped of my titles in a month. All right. Soon, just a teacher. Just a simple social studies teacher. Finally. Finally. It's been about time. I'm Mary Lindenahue, lawyer with the fine law firm O'Neill Cannon, Holman to Young. But, before we get started now is the time to say thank you. Because To the academy. I've always wanted to say thank you to the academy. This particular TV show has been awarded an award of merit at the Wisconsin Association of Public Educational and Government Access Channels 2008 video festival. We're going to turn in unison to our producer and say thank you, thank you. Without you this would not have been possible to our fine cameramen who are here. We love them. And then I'd like to thank my mother. All right. We'll move on. All the little people. I think that we should be able to leverage however at least maybe a wardrobe person or make up or something like that. At least a publicist. Because nobody knew about this. And now we do know. We're sharing the award, the talk show award and their documentary seniors, religious children and sports awards as well. So congratulations to us. It only took us four years to get here but we're pretty happy. Do we get any statuettes? I think we need to work on that. Carrie, do we get anything? Any hardware? Oh a plaque. Or maybe if not a plaque. At least a certificate. You should put it on the mantle here with the clock that never moves. We're going to bring that down for the next show. It's running. It's a pretty nice award guys. It is working. We all here have enjoyed participating in the Donahue Group for the past three and a half, almost four years. It's been kind of a blast. Three and a half years. Exactly. Thank goodness the Memorial Day Parade is not only back, it's back with attitude. 40 units are currently... 40 units? That's more units than we have in Iraq. Yes, well not quite unfortunately but we're going to not only have a Memorial Day Parade but it's going to be a parade with some amount of presents. Now can it possibly be longer than the 4th of July Parade which is one of my personal favorites by the way. And when you have little kids you have to go to the parade and just do that every single 4th of July and I wait for the bagpipers of course. Well that's exciting. 40 units when it was like we're going to cancel because there's no interest. That's very nice. And I think it's important for people to realize the city doesn't do these parades. It has taken on the 4th of July Parade and it has become very much a municipal event but the Memorial Day Parade not so much. So hopefully the high school bands it's their last opportunity to perform so that they'll be there and I understand that Chief Kirk will be delivering the address at the ceremony afterward. Maybe the dining group should walk in the parade. We could have a float in the 4th of July parade. You could hold up Ann Coulter's face with a little man and Ann Coulter mask. I think we should get the chairs and move the whole set onto a flat bed. Do a live. We could do a live presentation. All right. Now just everyone calm down so we don't lose our honor. This is the kind of creativity that got us award. Exactly. Sharp political commentary. Trenching political commentary. I do think it is very cool though that the parade is back and back with some amount of fervor. It's still a month away so who knows, we'll have 60 units by the time we're all done. I think if I'm not mistaken the 4th of July parade has an excess of 70 units. It's been as high as 100 if you count every car that the politician rides in. Yeah. It wouldn't be a parade without the politician. Who's in charge of the parade? The veterans groups are in charge. I attended the meeting they had with the mayor and I think their concern was just the apathy in terms of response. You send out your postcards and nobody responds and so I think they just kind of figured that this would be a way of getting everybody's attention and it sure did. Congratulations to the mayor for having pulled it all together which I think he did expeditiously and so it all seems to be in place. Those are the kinds of things that mayors should be doing. There's credit for getting it done. Let's just move into something not so cheerful for the mayor these days which is shared services. Excuse me, I do have a cold. I apologize and if I blow the top off the microphone I apologize even more. I don't know, shared services. I don't know what you think, just in general. It's just a conundrum because you have people saying and it's one of those things that intuitively and cognitively we ought to be able to say makes sense but the reality of it seems to be not quite so good. You're talking about the new communications? The dispatch center, the human resources shared medical services I mean you name it doesn't seem to be working too well. Well I do have my ambulance a little problem I mean it was ambulance was serving the county and the city and all of a sudden although it wasn't county government I mean that wasn't a shared government service so I mean I think the problem with the dispatch centers I understand is that the county sheriff's department understandably needs different things than the police department. It needs warrant information and to be able to enter information on a restaurant and things like that. It seemed like the city was really moving very quickly. Their new tech guy Tugir Lee is very bright and very aggressive and it just seems like it's kind of hard to bring it all together. Should they keep trying? Is it all silly? I think you try to save money but one of the problems you have and we've talked about this before is you have different units of government serving different geographic areas and until you go to sort of a metro government where you have a common denominator you're serving people not serving streets and blocks and you know these artificial boundaries that are more problematic sometimes than they are helpful. You find that in street maintenance you find it in sewers you find if you could cross some of these boundaries and start looking at the service provided rather than this jurisdictional thing of the town and the city and so on that's part of the problem and we don't really sit down and say do we need this town do we need this village do we need this level of government when somebody right next door is doing the same dang thing and if we merge with them we could do it for cheap but nobody talks about it in that sense. They start looking at each service and say if we put them in the same room can we save a lot of bucks and you really don't always save a lot of bucks because you still have the administrators of the two services you still have the vehicles of the two services and there's no economy of scale and so sometimes you know you're not getting at the heart of it metro government in many areas is what you need and nobody wants to give up their power. Yeah. If you had a metro government then when some technology advancement comes along you could implement it because technology is changing so fast but when you have to deal with four entities to implement some new technology change you do it and then oh we haven't been consulted we're not ready to we like ours so it gets difficult it really does you know I think particularly if there's not any history of it I do know there's some volunteer fire departments in the county that have a history of sharing I beg your pardon sharing expenses services equipment and so forth and they have written agreements but you get a new person in who doesn't like it or a different governing body or whatever and it kind of tends to shake things loose so I think it is I think it is kind of tough. Well how do we do the tax bills sharing services county tax and city tax Well the tax bills are sent out by the treasurer and the treasurer collects the money and then figures out who gets what and so there you go. That's a shared service I think Oh there are shared services I don't think there's any doubt about it it's just a question of taking on more I mean can you in fact merge human resources functions between the city and the county I think that's huge I think it's worth talking about but to think that that could one move easily and two I mean the basic question is you want to do it because it saves money I'm just not sure that that's possible but And also recognizing that I don't know the city we've talked about before that they're having a difficult time even finding competent and qualified people and I don't know if the public really understands or they only get maybe a vague inkling of how difficult it is given salary schedules to really encourage quality people to go into public service I mean on the educational side which is what I'm more familiar with the number of superintendencies and now on your side the number of chancellors who are living on the Wisconsin level maybe we talk about that in the next episode but people super superintendencies are vacant and the number of applicants and their youth and their lack of experience and the amount of time that they turn over so quickly really speaks volumes to the fact that same with assistant principals and principals and buildings it really speaks to the fact that there's just not a lot of interest in public service it's a lot of aggravation a lot of headaches a lot of pressure and some folks talk in the media about benefits and pension plans and sweetheart deals and cashing in your sick days and all the stuff the reality is is that there's going to be a large exodus and already going on exodus of qualified public servants you may end up consolidating solely because you need there's just fewer people available fewer people available I was wondering you know because you were saying that the police department moved pretty aggressively on this was it simply a matter that they couldn't wait or is this a really kind of attempt to create the architecture so that you've preempted any kind of possibility of shared services in the county level no I clearly the police I'm not so sure where they stand I don't think it was necessarily the the police department I mean they have obvious needs and there's this new program called pro phoenix that would address the city's needs excuse me what we do have though is a new IT person who in the city's computer infrastructure is pretty aged and pretty I don't think it's changed much Tom since you've been on the no but I know it hasn't and I remember the library board meets with the finance committee twice a year just to it's a courtesy and sometimes we exchange ideas and one of our last meetings we got talking about the computer system the library is trying to stay current with changing things to service the community and adding these and they're costly and so we we were talking about budget issues and would certainly like to have the finance committee aware of our needs and they volunteered that their service their computer system is ancient and old and they're trying to get rid of it right and the fellow that they hired to do it is young and he's very bright and he's aggressive about what he wants to get done and so I think he's ready to go a million miles an hour and then all the political forces around him are kind of pulling back that's my sense of it I mean I don't know for a fact but and you know there's just that pride like we want our own why you don't see a lot of carpooling on major highways is because you want your own car and you want to sit all by yourself and you don't want to have to share and I think that's a fairly normal kind of approach so I think that may be something that's that's involved sorry I have a cold here the Sheboygan business group the greater Sheboygan committee is its proper name I think is a great proponent of shared services but again they're business folks and I don't know how they understand the complexities of governments working together I mean you're talking about taxpayer dollars and so government and business really are different although why not adopt some of the good business practices that would make your governments more efficient and leaner and meaner as it were and so forth I would just love somebody to come up you know it was the old cattle commission you know years ago just come up with an efficient way to run government and then let's just all sit down and agree to do it we aren't going to fuss anymore about politics and turf and all these things we're just all going to get together and work as one big happy family what do you think under the dictator who I know we have a cold are you in medication I only wish I only wish little Cody wouldn't that be nice just in the way of small things the bank clock is coming back the US bank clock I didn't know that I still occasionally look up that way I know it was iconic you're never late now I'm never late is it going to be the existing structure that's atop there or are they going to change it all around I think it's going to be the same I hope I was going to hope we get the turning one again I really like that one they're going to use LCD rather than light bulbs it's going to be a different type of wood lighting facility my mother and father in law lived in those apartments along the waterfront the lake riverfront no where the chair the garden toy they used to live in one of those apartments from their window that's how they kept time they look out the window and saw the bank clock we can get temperature too I hope so but I did enjoy the article they asked Mayor Perez for a comment and he said well we're glad because the city gets multiple complaints about why the city isn't maintaining it oh really Mayor's fault that the clock's not working so I think he for one will be happy to have it back in place I get calls occasionally I don't know why I get the calls I see people in the communities they're really unhappy with the LCD screen whatever it is that the district has on its building over at central support because you see it for only a split second as you're heading southbound on 9th street and then you go into the swing you can't see it anymore and they're saying why did you place it there and we really want to see more information it's too little, too many words you can have about six words on a billboard or a placard as you're driving by and hopefully those people were also on their cell phones and having an Egg McMuffin for breakfast as they're trying to do all those things putting on their makeup and reading the newspaper all at the same time there was some controversy just coming back to the city for a minute about appointments to the committees Ed Serk as we know is the new first district alder person replacing Richard Manny who retired Ed is just a nice guy but the former HR director human resources director for the city I wonder if Ed is going to have a little bit of problem of a problem just changing roles having gone from the HR director position trying to understand what he needs to do as an alderman which hopefully is distinctly different than what he did as an HR director good call, bad call that's always a call that's difficult in the legislature for example I chaired the education committee because I was a teacher and I probably of my assembly committee of 13 people probably nine of them were either school board members or former teachers and then if you look at the banking committee there were people who were bankers or investment people and whatever and what the speaker did in putting together the appointments was saying well these people know to trade better than anybody they're going to deal with lobbyists they've got to deal with people who might want to slip them bad information and they can smell out what's good policy and not because they've done these things in real life so you can see there's a connection how they view it maybe it isn't good but the expertise that somebody brings to these committees from previous life I think is something you got to take advantage of agriculture committee for example it's usually mostly farmers well obviously it ought to be because there's a lot of technical things that go on in the farm situation that you want their expertise on I just wonder how different that role is going to be because at least the human resource director is negotiating as an agent of the Board of Education so I would think that in his previous position he at least gets a sense that he's answerable to the aldermen and to the taxpayers and I'm wondering how big a role that really will be in terms of changing the way he approaches that position and the same I would think with well I think the biggest change is I don't know the structure of city government I would assume that he would be sitting and listening to potentially grievances that he once would be sort of if you will the prosecutor that's really not the right term but he would be the one presenting to is he sit in as on that committee as a person who listens to or hears and makes determinations about labor grievances and contract disputes or is that a different group altogether when I was on there we that was just handled between the personnel director the grieving parties and the committee never participated unless it was an unusual situation where we were asked to so it was usually Civil Service Commission does hear does hear some of those grievances as well although from a represented represented employee perspective I mean the collective bargaining agreements really govern those kinds of things but the police have their own police and fire have of course the police and fire commission and so it does get to be a you know pretty complex routine but I just think sometimes when you're changing roles it's hard to remember that you're doing more policy work and that you have the staff that does the day by day stuff and that you don't sit as a staff person as an alderman acting like a staff person and I think that that's going to be it's your natural inclination well I know how to do that I used to do that this isn't the way I did it I think we need to do it the way I used to do it and so I think that's going to be Ed's challenge the experience that he brings though I think is very very helpful and but we're looking for alderman and school board members not to micromanage and not to understand all of the functions of the agency that they regulate because they're broad policy setting bodies in my opinion city council maybe a little less so maybe it should be a little more broad but I know in the school board when I was first on the school board we had board members who were involved in the minutia of how schools ran they were in the schools every day they were like many staff people and I don't think that advances or serves the interests of the organization city's a little different but going back to your first topic shared services Ed could know whether that position and there's no it's really a vacant position in the sense that there's an acting person there right now so he could know because he was in that position whether it can be effectively shared with the county and he might say yes it can he might say with a little bit of effort we can or I just don't think it because he served there and that might be very helpful in the legislature how staff dependent were you I mean I suppose because they were much bigger agencies you really did not get into the minutia of how government agencies were run no you rely on different people for different staff for needs for example every committee is assigned a legislative attorney and that attorney probably been practicing education law or banking law for 20 years and that person knows that section of the statutes backwards and forward so when you want a legislative history of a statute if you want the meaning of a statute your legal counsel would be right there if you want to get into fiscal matters you have the fiscal bureau which staffs basically the finance committee but is available to all legislators to deal with state government so you have different resource people that you look to for different roles at different times there are people with unlike popular image the tenure of people in the elected office is not very long there is very little institutional memory well there you go you rely on staff to have that institutional memory and it's a good thing sometimes that we do have legislators for a while or local people who stay around for a while because they do amongst their colleagues have that institutional memory so you rely on staff for not only the expertise but the institutional memory that you need well it will be interesting to see how it plays out and I don't know I'm not sure I'd really necessarily want to be on the city council these days but or the county board but again we had spoken about this formerly was a city who's now the county board chair if anything is going to kind of at least getting people to talk he certainly is affable and easy to get along with and if somebody from the city side he knows the city directors because he's worked with him as an older man so it's an opportunity for something to happen and former county board chair did a fine job but he was a county person and which is good you need somebody there to represent county interests but I think Mike is a downtown business person for at least 20 years I get a phone call saying it was really 28 but Mike has been around for a long time and he is cordial and affable and knows his stuff with respect to that so I think there may be opportunities there we don't have any time today to get into the idea of a city administrator you know the county has a county administrator and then a county board chair and I know that there's discussion going on about a city administrator and a mayor who would essentially act as the county board chair so interesting but assisting and I'm just bringing this up again one because I'm delighted two and I'm running the show there it is there it is which really never happens in my life let me just tell you that I'm in control of so little that these these three cordial gentlemen who just allow me to say or do whatever I want it's a pleasure that's why we continue on here four women on the county board now and there's a very nice picture on the front page and I think and all of them were saying and I think rightly so it's not a big deal that we're women and it's not a big deal when you think they're 35 members of the county board and I'm going to say it is a big deal and I think women do not always but often bring a different kind of perspective and I think in all elective office whether it's the state legislature or congress or whatever I think women are totally remiss and not pushing more to get equal representation and they certainly are terribly underrepresented but as we're saying goodbye right now we say hello to joining Connie Zigglebauer who's been on the board for quite a long time Peggy Feider Fran Damp and Chris Wheeler who wrote one in a write-in election I mean two write-ins I mean there you go I mean it's an odd political life and we wish them well and as Ms. Wheeler said it's nice to see women getting involved in politics period and she's a home daycare operator and so I would tend to agree but thanks for joining this award winning show and we hope to see you back again