 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government. Working for you, my name is Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Roger Distruti. And today, as we do every month, we're pleased to have a very special guest with us, a department head, and a seasoned veteran with Sheboygan County, our County Clerk, Julie Glancy. Welcome, Julie. Thank you. Julie has, and when I say seasoned veteran, I say that with the utmost respect because I've been here 14 years now. Julie's been here longer than that and she's always been an individual that I know I can go to and seek help and assistance and guidance and it's just been a pleasure working with Julie all these years and as you may know and we'll talk about a little bit more toward the end of this program, Julie as our County Clerk has announced her retirement. She's going to be leaving us come January and it's bittersweet for those of us who've had the pleasure of working with Julie. So please begin, Julie, by just sharing a little bit about yourself when you first started working for Sheboygan County, the different positions you've held and how long you've been our County Clerk. Well, I work for Sheboygan County. I started in 1969 with the Clerk of Courts office. I was there for seven years and then I left when my children were little. I worked for office on aging for a couple years and I've been in the County Clerk's office for the last 29 years. I've been Clerk for 18 and I was in the deputy for 10 and I was here a year before that, so I've been a total of 29. So I'm going to go to person for not only County Board Supervisors as the key assistant or secretary for the County Board but just to go to person County-wide whether it's the public or employees. What are the roles and responsibilities of the County Clerk's office? What important functions do you have? Statutorily, we're required to do marriage license applications. We're in charge of the election process for the County. We have to do domestic partnerships and we're a very much an official record-keeper for the County, so a lot of records that don't have a home anywhere else are filed in our office. When you say secretary to the County Board which is kind of an old term it's administrative assistant nowadays but what does that mean? Well, we're the official record-keeper for the Board so we have all of their agendas and minutes and documents on file in our office. We are the person who takes the minutes for the County Board meetings and we also our office does the minutes and agendas for the finance committee but we are responsible for making sure the minutes and agendas for all County committees are posted on the County website. Important task, kind of a behind-the-scenes leadership responsibility but if those minutes and agendas don't get posted correctly or don't get handled correctly folks like Chairman Distruty and others aren't happy. Well and it's also you know so if we miss those deadlines and don't get them posted then the meetings can't be held which is problematic. So some of your roles and responsibilities statutorily required than others and you touched on a few aren't required by state statute but you have initiated or the County Board has initiated touch on a few of the discretionary programs. We do conservation licenses and that's really pretty much a throwback to years and years ago when conservation licenses were done on paper and at that time the County clerks were the distribution centers for the state in their counties and we would get cases of you know conservation licenses for the state we get them out to the fleet farms and bait shops and stuff like that and dealt with all the accounting and of course that's not necessary anymore but our issuing of conservation licenses kind of stemmed from that historical involvement in conservation. We do the registration of snowmobiles and things like that as well. We issue passports or not issue but process their applications. Our office is also the in charge of the phone system for Sheboygan County and the property and liability insurance for the county. And if you didn't catch all that particularly the conservation licenses and the passports I've taken advantage of both those opportunities and having bought my license, my hunting and fishing license at the fleet farm for years or the DNR station both would do a good job but rarely do you have to wait in a long line when you go to the county clerk's office we have good people there who can assist you with that and the passports as well I always find that you can very efficiently assist people. Well and you know we have you know there's four people including myself in my office and when you go for a passport at the post office they have maybe one person who handles that you know and I think because most people think of fleet farm for their conservation license and the post office for passports you know we don't a lot of people don't realize they can come here so we don't have the probably the turnover or the number of people that are involved as well so we can be a little bit better a little bit quicker service. So if you watch this program now you know and you'll get some helpful assistance and get in and out real quickly so you just mentioned for staff what's your total operating budget annually? Our general operating budget is about $142,000 a year. We in election years like this our budget will go up anywhere from $40,000 to $45,000 this year with the recall elections we've had we're probably looking at about a $60,000 increase from our regular operating budget. So $140,000 to over $200,000 depending on what the elections do on what the elections do and a lot of discussion about the elections and I know Chairman Distruty is going to touch on that more in a moment but you know the time that it takes I think county clerks across the state really deserve a pat on the back for stepping up particularly this year with the recall elections and all the assistance you provide just personally in your experience you know how has that evolved over the years and what happened this year? How were you able to manage it? Well you know when I started Sheboygan County had the lever machines in the city and everybody else had paper ballots elections were pretty much a snap there wasn't a whole lot involved now it has become it has just exploded in terms of the amount of work we have to do the statewide voter registration system has added a huge amount of work the electronic voting equipment is another huge impact and there's just been more and more paperwork that has to be done and more and more security issues you know everything has to be built and locked and tracked and you know so it's become a real administrative nightmare. It seems like rather than getting easier it's becoming more burdensome for staff. Absolutely in a time of worse every year. Right it's counter intuitive though we're all trying to streamline and gain efficiencies and hold costs down yet county clerks in particular are being asked to do more and more complicated information or systems to work with and it takes a higher level of expertise. Absolutely finally before I turn it over to Roger what do you see is the most challenging responsibilities that the county clerk has to contend with you've just touched on a number of elections are really the big thing right now it really is you know especially this year with the presidential election there's so much you know so many people interested in it and so much you know people that vote once every four years and and have difficulty knowing what they need to do you know they all seem to find their way to call our office or you know right look for ways to what they need to do excellent thank you Julie Roger well thank you Julie for your years of work in the clerks office and a lot of people don't really appreciate all the work you do with the local municipal clerks most of them are part-time and they they're not really attuned to all the laws and you help coordinate that and much appreciated from all the local governments and the election day is coming soon what are the what offices are on the November 6 ballot well in addition to president you have the federal legislators you have the state senate and the representatives of congress there are all the state assemblymen are on the ballot and because this is a presidential year the even numbered state senators are on the ballot so for Sheboygan county that's senate 20 that's about maybe a third of Sheboygan county on the local level I shouldn't say local but county level we have district attorney county clerk registered deeds and treasurer we also have two municipalities and a school district that have referendum on this ballot and is there anything new people should know for this this election in particular yeah there's really a lot of new first of all but most people will probably notice a straight party is no longer on the ballot years ago you used to be able to go in and pick your party and give every candidate in that party a vote that was huge two years ago it was represented almost 40% of the voters voted straight party and the legislature has chosen to eliminate that in this year so there is no straight party on the ballot you need to vote for every candidate on the ballot or every office on the ballot and there's a little bit of concern because what happens with this particular election is there's so much interest in the top ticket on the ballot for president a lot of people will come in and vote for president and then the rest of the ticket stays blank so there's a tremendous amount of drop off when you get towards the bottom of the ticket and there are a lot of contested races including the one for county clerk and registered deeds that if people don't continue on down and vote for the entire ballot you know will make an impact on the outcome of those elections so there's concern about that there's also tremendous amount of changes in absentee rules that the legislature has passed one of them is that in-person absentee balloting can't start until October 22nd the clerks have all had their ballots since September 20th but if you walk into their office and ask for to vote absentee they have to mail you your ballot until the 22nd of October I'm not quite sure the understanding behind that legislation but that is a change so that makes it a little harder for people and absentee balloting is also over a little bit sooner you can't you can cast a ballot in the clerk's office up until the Friday before the election but the weekend and that Monday before the election no one can vote absentee unless you're hospitalized or sequestered juror so that's going to be a problem for some people that the day before the election you go oh my gosh I have to go out of town you're not going to be able to vote and so that's a change that might you know some people might find difficult to deal with and Roger I think this last minute and a half of discussion is an example of just how complicated it has become with our elections not only in the technology and the new systems and everything that Julie has had to contend with Julie and her staff and the municipal clerks but just her explanation about early voting and who can and who can't and how I've heard her give this explanation four or five times Julie can very confidently share it but my bet is if you poll 80% of our viewers are better right now they go huh you know it's it's challenging to understand all these rules so again if you don't know or you didn't catch that don't hesitate to contact the county clerk's office and they'll walk you through it and we sure appreciate having people there who do understand it and and for those of us who vote at the at the ballot and in the polling places we used to have different times that were available throughout the county we made that uniform what are the times that the polling places are open okay the polls all open at seven in the morning and they all close at eight o'clock at night so they're open for 13 hours so you know they should be most people should be able to manage to come in during those periods of time fortunately that's still simple that's that's probably the simplest part is you can go there and vote yes and I understand the government accountability board has a new website what kind of information does that have it is the my vote website and it's myvote.wi.gov it is a very it's a very nice website it's very intuitive it allows voters to check to see if they're registered it allows them to look to see what's on the ballot and they can also fill out a voter registration form and an absentee ballot request right on that site they do have to still mail them in they can't you know just print it and assume they're done but it does give them that opportunity if you are in the military you can actually print a ballot from that system and mail it in so that's particularly helpful to our servicemen who are overseas because it's very difficult sometimes to get a ballot mailed to them or whatever that way if they have access to a computer they can print it they can mail it in and their ballot will be counted so you know it does have some good things it is a little bit of a challenge for the clerks though because if you register or you request an absentee ballot it always sends you all these emails so we're all getting you know dozens of emails from the system alerting us to people that have downloaded forms so we can watch for them in the mail so would you walk us through a typical election day and after we voted your work has sort of just begun and come to the ballot? Yeah it is a lot of people will come up to me the day after the election and go wow I bet you're glad that's over and for us the November election probably won't be over until the second week in December before the election we have to get all the supplies ready for the clerks we do the ballots and there are 59 reporting units or polling places in Sheboygan County all of those places needs somewhere between 30 and 50 for all of them and get out to them so they can use and of course that stuff all comes back to us at the end of the night on election day so when the election is over the poll workers finish up whatever paperwork they need to do they bring it into our office and the memory packs from the machines both the optical scan and the touch screen are brought in and we can download those results into our computers so that's how we tabulate our results election night once the election night is over and everything's reported after that we have to prepare for the canvas board which is really just a verification of what was reported election night to make sure all that is correct another one of the absentee changes recently is that absentee ballots can be accepted up until the Friday after an election as long as they're postmarked by election day so that has pushed back our board of canvas we used to meet the Thursday after the election now we can't meet until the Tuesday following the election to account for all those late arriving absentees so those all have to be added into the totals we got on election night our numbers are all certified and enter into the state system and then we can certify the county candidates who have won and issue their certificates of election but because we do the statewide voter registration system for 19 of our municipalities we then have to enter all the people who registered to vote between the last time in election day and on a presidential that can be a significant number of people that register at the polls we also have to enter the voter participation so every person who votes on election day has to be updated in the system to say that yes you voted you know so when you go out to that state website you can actually see your voter record and how many times you've voted and until all that kind of stuff is done it's going to take a considerable time to finish that well thank you Julie you're welcome so when you hear all that and all that's involved behind the scenes with elections next time you're standing in line waiting to cast your vote and having to be patient please be patient because it's generally volunteers who are working at the polls I think they receive a very small compensation for their time it's not a whole lot and out of the goodness of their hearts they're looking at the polls so bless their heart please be patient and also recognize that they have to learn and understand and certainly there's a lot that the county clerks and all the municipal clerks are doing to make sure that the elections run smoothly so I think if anything they deserve a little patience and appreciation absolutely and when people are frustrated they usually take it out on the person they're looking at at the time and that happens to be the poll workers which is unfortunate Julie we should have all the county board supervisors work the polls I think the legislators should vote the polls and the state legislators some of those laws when people are complaining about the fact that they can't vote in the clerk's office until the 22nd even though there's a stack of ballots sitting next to the counter those are things that that is a great idea the legislators should be able to explain to the voters moving along back to another matter that you mentioned earlier another service that you provide and that's marriage licenses periodically I'll stop down in your office and it's always kind of a heart warmer to see a young couple or an elderly couple for that matter walks of life there getting their marriage license what's that process if someone is going to be married does everyone need to come see the county clerk for a marriage license what's the process yes in Wisconsin you have to apply in the county that you live in so even if you wanted to get married in Door County in Sheboygan County you need to come to Sheboygan County for your marriage license if you live outside of the state of Wisconsin and you want to be married in Wisconsin you apply in the county you're being married in so it's pretty standard when you apply for a license we need a birth certificate we need proof where your residence is we need to know your social security number and where you're getting married things like that if you've been married before we need proof of how that marriage ended so there's documentation you need to bring with you so be prepared if you're not sure call ahead make sure you're organized and you need to know when you're getting married every once in a while you have somebody come in and say well we're thinking about getting married and we want a license well you need to know when because a license is only good for 30 days so we don't want to issue a license to someone whose plans are 40 days out maybe and now it's a non refundable license and it's $85 you know when I started I think it was 20 and I think when I got married it was 12 but you know it's not a cheap proposition you know there's a fee involved and we want to make sure that if they get a license they can use it so 30 days I didn't know that so 30 days prior to getting married no 30 days it will expire so you have to apply at least 6 days before you're planning to get married but not more than 30 days not more than 30 and is this is the marriage license a statutory requirement that you have to have a marriage license in order to be married you need a marriage license it's $85 just so I can tie the knot that doesn't seem right but that's a state requirement that's a state requirement it's actually illegal to marry someone without a license so I have you had a couple in front of you already that you know you started going through what this marriage license is all about and they decided I don't know if I'm going to go forward with it no they usually are there and they're going to do it but we do have people that will walk in once in a while and want to pick up a license and they just come in and apply and about how many marriage licenses do you process a year you know the last couple years it's been down before that we had about 750 a year the last two years it's only been about 620 so it's really you know I don't know if that's a change in the population or just a change in how people operate but it has been down and now there's also domestic marriage licenses that correct or it's a domestic partnership it's similar to a marriage license but it isn't there's no officiant like when you get married you have a minister or court commissioner perform the wedding for a domestic partnership it's simply a notarized document and the point of having that is it gives them a few additional rights in terms of decisions and end of life decisions and things like that it doesn't have a lot of value it doesn't have the same standing as a marriage license but it is a partnership understood and then of course right next upstairs from you is the register of deeds and that's where ultimately their marriage license will be recorded and if they need to get their birth certificate that's right upstairs as well very good so as you look back and reflect on your years as county clerk and working for Sheboygan County and getting married here and raising your family here and I know you've had a wonderful life at least from my point of view I think the one thing about Julie that hasn't changed Roger 14 years I've been here I know you've been longer one thing that hasn't changed is you look at her and I think she looks the same as she did 14 years ago I've kidded her about this before I think Julie knows where the fountain of youth is and if you don't know or you want to find out talk to Julie but honestly she's just always maintained a professional youthful outgoing disposition that's a big compliment for you for that so as you reflect on your years what's changed the most what do you think about that really has changed the most significantly I think it's just technology because when I think about when I started in the county clerk's office we did not have a computer in our office there were no computers at all I mean the county had mainframes that they dealt with but there were no personal computers for departments and I think after I was there about a year or two we got one and we had five people at that time and there was one computer that you could use and when I think back on the processes and the things we did county board for example we would type out on these big docket pages the county board minutes and we did it with carbon paper because we had to send a copy to the press so they could type set it and all that stuff and when you think about the changes that technology has afforded for those kinds of things elections things like that, the DNR now, when I think about the cases and cases of paper licenses we dealt with now it's a little roll of green tape basically that you punch in a computer it prints it out and you hand it to somebody you know so technology has really made the biggest difference and as you also reflect back what do you are there some personal accomplishments or collective accomplishments that you're particularly proud of or that you think back of and say you know I'm really glad we did that well I think you know I was kind of in the right place at the right time because I was able to really work through all these technology changes and really have an impact on how we do things you know setting up procedures and systems and things like that I had a big hand in designing how our office is laid out in the new administration building and it's not new anymore it's 14 years old but and I you know and I'm kind of proud of how things operate and I had an opportunity to impact that I'm also really proud of our relationship with our municipal clerks you know I talked to county clerks in some other counties and it's like oil and water sometimes between the municipal clerks and the county and so I'm really proud and happy with the relationship we've developed with our municipal clerks and you've built a good staff you have some employees working for you that have been with you for some time maybe not the newest employee I think has been there for almost 10 years so yeah our staff has been there a while and they've you know and I think that reflects on you as well because obviously if they didn't care for who they worked for or with they still wouldn't be there in all likelihood so my compliments well when Julie says that she's proud of making a difference and having the opportunity to help the county board streamline and new processes or the elections and working with our our clerks across the county and being proud of that relationship which is I think really touching to hear people have taken notice Julie and you may have read this in the newspaper recently received the Wisconsin County Association Friend in County Government Award this is a state award that's given to one individual in county government amongst all 72 counties thousands of employees one individual receives this award and Julie this year received it and Roger and I were honored to be with her when she received the award in La Crosse at the Wisconsin County Association conference and for me and I'd like to hear from you it has to be pretty sweet to know that your years of service and the accomplishments and everything you've been a part of that it's being recognized yeah I was really surprised to learn I was going to get that award and really honored because as you said there's so many people in county government and certainly some I'm sure that are more worthy than I am to receive that award so I was really honored to be chosen for that it was pretty nice well you were very gracious as you accepted it and acknowledged clerks across the state for the good work they do but this is not the first time we've received this award believe it or not it's the second consecutive year and I'm sure it's Molly who works in economic support in our health and human services department received it last year so we are very proud Shabuagan County is very proud of you Julie and thankful for your years of service and you have without question made good things happen during your tenure and we're going to miss you well thank you I'm actually going to miss government as well I've spent a lot of my life time of my life here and it is really hard for me to leave but it's time to say though the county board I think in Shabuagan County makes those things possible they allow department heads to manage and to do things and I think that makes a huge difference in our performance because we have the backing of the county board which is tremendous we got a good team in place well thank you for joining us today and providing a little snapshot on the important work of the county clerk's office if you have more questions or would like more information don't hesitate to contact Julie we have a county website where that information is available and certainly we're in the phone book and by the way our county website is going to be updated I know Julie's office is going to be part of that but we're going to have a whole new look with our website here soon so on behalf of the county board and certainly Julie and her staff thank you for joining us today next month what are we having here next month Roger I got to take a look at this next month Rochelle Valesky our new administrator at Rocky Knoll new name new person Rochelle Valesky she's been with us just over a month and we're looking forward to having her join us and telling you about the good things happening at our Rocky Knoll Health Care Center so again until then thanks for joining us