 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name's Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Bill Gehring. And today we're pleased to have a very special guest with us, our county clerk, Julie Glancy. Welcome Julie. Thank you. You may have heard me say in the last couple of months that Julie Glancy was going to be with us. And let me assure you it wasn't because she isn't busy. She's been incredibly busy with the election process and all the good things that are coming up here shortly. Many of the things she's going to be touching on today. So Julie, it's just good to have you with us. Thanks. Nice to be here. Please begin by sharing a little bit about yourself and when you were first elected to the county clerk. Well this is my 14th year as county clerk and I was in the office about 10 years before that. So I've spent a lot of time in the county clerk's office. I've lived in Sheboygan County my whole life and before I worked for county clerk I was in the office on aging and I also worked for clerk records for a while. So I kind of have a really wide range of experience in county government. But 14 years as the elected county clerk. Yep. And how many years did you say before that? 10 years. 10 years. So 24 years in that office. I was six when I started. I can see that. Yes. Please touch on a little bit of the roles and responsibilities of your office. We do a lot of kind of unrelated things but primarily we're the secretary to the county board. We're in charge of administering the election process for Sheboygan County. We issue marriage licenses. We do a lot of kind of smaller things. Dog tag issuing to the municipal clerks. We're kind of the official record keeper for Sheboygan County. So we have a lot of kind of unrelated records that we keep. And when you say secretary to the county board you know folks might be wondering well what's that mean? Well we take minutes at their meetings. We're responsible for making sure that all of their documents are on file. So if someone needs to get a copy of a resolution or an ordinance our office is where they would come for that. We make sure that the meetings are posted in compliance with the open meeting law which is a huge issue right now. And we are also make sure that that information is on the county website as well. So if your office isn't in play and if you're not posting the minutes or the agendas and preparing the minutes and doing all that really the county board is in trouble. Yes. Yeah they're kind of on their own then. Well enough said. Yeah. You recently started providing a new service one that when we say recent I think it's been the last couple of years now. About four years now. Four years. Providing passports and I know it's been a real boon not only to your office but also for the community another opportunity to get passports. Please touch on that. We started doing passports about four years ago. The passport agency opened it up to more than just the post office to be allowed to do it. They've since closed that window so we kind of got in at a good time. But it provides a real service for the people because we've had a lot of people that come into our office say that friends of theirs waited for an hour at the post office for a passport and they just kind of breathe in our office and go in and out because not all that many people know that we do it so you know the majority of the people still are going to the post office. But it's it's a real good service for the people because you need a birth certificate to apply for a passport and if you're a born and shabuagan county you can get that at the register of deeds office that just right upstairs from our office. We take the pictures in our office so it's kind of a one-stop shop for people if they have to get a you know a birth certificate then you just come right downstairs and do the whole passport application. Recently you know I was in there with my family we got all our passports for going to Canada for our annual fishing trip and it's helpful if folks are prepared with some information. What do they generally need to have? Well they need to make sure they have their birth certificate along. They should bring their checkbook with them because you need to send it a separate check with each passport application and you also need to pay the counterfeit as a separate payment either by cash or check. You need to know your parents names and dates of birth things like that. If you've been married more than once you're going to need to know your previous marriage information. Your former spouse's date of birth then where they were born and things like that. In cost it's not inexpensive. No it's not the price that went up just recently at $75 is the fee for an adult passport plus a $25 counterfeit so it's a total of $100 for children and $60 plus the $25 counterfeit and then we charge $10 for pictures in our office. And how long does the passport how long is it good for? It's good for 10 years for adults it's five years for children and the turnaround time right now is about four to six weeks. I know last year for a while they were really backlogged and they were looking at sometimes three months and I know that people kind of lost out on their trips last year because the passport agency was kind of overwhelmed but they've kind of turned things around so it's four to six weeks and we've seen that pretty consistently right now. And I know personally it was a very good experience and your staff are excellent at providing assistance taking the photo. If anyone's watching this and is thinking you know we need to get our passports for a vacation coming up and they want to talk to somebody ahead of time to make sure they bring the right things is there a number that sure they can call our office it's 459-3003. 459-3003 and whether it's the county clerk Julie Glancy or any of your anybody in my office can help them. Very good thank you Julie. Julie your office really has many duties and I think of taking care of the county board because I'm the county board chairperson but I also think about elections elections they're very important this is a national election year but what's going to be on the ballot in April? In April we have the justice of the supreme court we have a the court of appeals judge district two is on this ballot all the county board supervisors which of course is very important a lot of local elections the city of shabuigan has some alderman races city of falls and city of plymouth both have mayor races are not a race but plymouth has a mayor race falls as mayor is unopposed but a lot of the local stuff there's school board on the ballot there's a statewide referendum for kind of curtailing the powers of the governor to veto on the budget bill right now he can kind of cross out words and sentences and make whole new meetings and they want to kind of limit that which is what the proposed constitutional amendment is town of rine has two referenda questions village of wallow has a referendum so there's a lot on this ballot being both on the county board and the town board those local elections are important to me how many county board supervisors are up or how many contested races we have six contested races we also have one district district 26 which is represents most of the city of shabuigan falls has a kind of a contested registered write-in race which is kind of unusual there was no candidate on the ballot but three people have taken out papers now to be an official registered write-in candidate for that but out of the 34 supervisors there's only six with competition the one with the write-in and district 11 in the city of shabuigan has no one running at all how about the city council that's often very contentious they only have two of their eight have can have contested races right now okay then looking forward to the fall ballot which really seems far away but it will be upon us aside from the president will be there be other issues um yeah congress six which is representative petri's district is up for reelection all of the assembly districts and we're in 26 27 and 59 also senate district 20 which is glenn growthman's district is is up for reelection this year and of course the county offices which is important to me the county clerk the treasurer and the register of deeds and the district attorney era for election this year as well okay there might be some listeners out there that might be interested in running for an office down the can you tell us a little bit about how they would it's a little late to register for the for the spring election although if you're interested in being a registered write-in for district 11 or any of the county board districts you can register for that in my office there is a little advantage to being a registered write-in in that the poll workers are kind of watching for your name you can take a little more leeway and how you look at those names on the ballot and also gives you the right to officially campaign and you can do that anytime even up to the monday before the election if you want you to register for that but to be on the ballot for the fall election you need to file the the starting date is june 1st for taking out papers for the fall election you have the whole month of june and a little bit of july to get your signatures but you need to file a declaration of candidacy a campaign finance registration form and then for county offices you need between 500 and 1000 signatures to have your name on the ballot if you want to run for any of the state seats you need to register with state elections board the timing is the same but the number of signatures is different what are your key roles then in the election process oh lord we have a lot a lot of things with the election we start out of course with registering candidates this is kind of the first thing we also get the ballots put together and for the spring election even though it doesn't seem to be a very big election for us is the most work because countywide we have 108 combinations of county board supervisor municipal election and school district elections so we have to make sure everybody gets their right ballot combination so we get the ballots put together and printed we are in charge of programming the equipment not only the optical scan which is the one where you write the you know make the arrow on the ballot and put it in but also the touchscreen machines that are new we also publish most of the ads that you see in the paper for the elections we are the providers for the statewide voter registration system for 20 of the 28 municipalities in the county which means we enter their voter registration applications get their candidate information on the the voter registration system after the election we need to make sure that they're everybody who's voted is is registered as having voted we also print their poll lists and things like that we've seen a lot in the paper about the accuracy or the desertification in florida and california of their new voting equipment have you any concern about the equipment being used in shabuigan county in wisconsin no i don't the optical scan equipment has never been in question in terms of whether or not it's secure the touchscreen equipment which is what they're desertifying in california and florida is very much the same equipment we're using however those states do not require a paper trail when you vote in wisconsin on the touchscreen your ballot prints out on kind of a little like a cash register tape looking thing so the voter actually can verify that ballot and that ballot is kept for any kind of recount purposes or if anybody wants to audit that election the ballot is there in the in the states that are desertifying they have no paper trail so you're just relying on what that memory cartridge says happened on election day and that's why they're just certifying that equipment is simply because there's no way other than relying on that cartridge to tell you what what the voters actually did okay i mean there's somebody out there living in shabuigan county they've been a resident for some time but never registered to vote do they have to register to vote and how would that you have to register to vote the deadline for registering by mail for this april election is passed but you can register at the clerk's office at whatever municipality you live in you can also register at the polls on election day if you do that you need to bring or even at the clerk's office you need to bring proof of residence that can be your driver's license if it has your current address can be a utility bill a rent receipt just some official paper that shows that that's your your address you also need to provide your driver's license number if you have a driver's license so you need to be prepared to have that information but you can register right at the polls okay i'm obviously a registered voter having voted for many years but i keep getting these things in the mail and courage me to register for vote what should i do with them um actually if you're registered vote you can throw them away uh the there's a there's a lot of national organizations and whenever you have a presidential election you have what a number of groups that are you know there's rock the vote and there's a number of them that are really just interested in making sure they get as many people out to vote as possible which is good but they send out this information to everyone whether they're registered or not registered they just get a list of people who live in municipality and they send this out and it's confusing because many of those things make it look like if you don't send this form in you won't be registered to vote and people need to be aware that if they are registered they can throw that away we get many of those almost daily we get a packet from the state elections board nearly half of the people who send them in are already registered and it's just extra mail there is a way now for voters to check to see if they're registered to vote if you have access to the internet the statewide voter registration system has a public access port that you can go to it's vpa for voter public access dot wi dot gov and if you go there you can enter your name and date of birth it will tell you if you're registered it will show you the address where you're registered to vote if that information is correct then you're you're good to go you don't need to send in anything else if that information is wrong if you've moved since that then you need to send in a new voter registration application to change your your address i almost thought i was going to hear you say that we're going to be going to being able to vote over the internet but that's not quite there yet but voter public access is really a very interesting website because it will tell you who you're who you're where your polling place is who your current incumbent office holders are once the ballots are generated in the system you can go out there it will tell you who's all on the ballot in your area it will also give you your voter history if you're a registered voter you can also if you're not a registered voter and just want to know well where do i go to vote on election day if you type in an address it will tell you what the polling place is for that address okay and then finally how many polling places are there in shabuigan county and i think you've answered one of the questions there's find out yeah there's uh 48 report voting places in shabuigan county 16 in the city of shabuigan and then of course all the municipalities have their own polling place and like i said you can go to that website um you can also when you get there's a flyer that's in them that comes out in the mail or in with a newspaper the day before the election you can check there or you can call our office or your municipal clerk and we can tell you where the polling place is also great thank you julie julie what was that website that website that you mentioned a moment ago because i could see some viewers wanting to write that down and check that out vpa voter public access dot wi dot gov gov okay how about one more time vpa for voter public access dot wi dot gov gov so they had three chances now to write it down i'm doing that so sure or you can call our office and and or you can go to the state elections board website and there's a link right from their website to it as well earlier you mentioned that it's a big transition year that we have 34 county board supervisors all are up for reelection only six have competition though i think we're going to see correct me if i'm wrong is it 10 new faces yes because there are a number of supervisors that aren't running that aren't running and and have someone else running on a post uh big year for the county board and uh come april first we'll we'll know what the uh who the new faces are and and april eighth will have then our first board meeting with the new board no april eighth is the last meeting of the of the old board april fifteenth april fifteenth is a new meeting so april eighth the last board meeting of the current term and then april fifteenth will be the the first new board meeting with the new newly elected board members and i think this would be an appropriate time to say that as many of you know chairman gearing has been a county board supervisors a county board chairman for two full terms and and and part of a third uh as some of you may recall dan lemieux state representative lemieux moved on to the state assembly and bill completed dan's term and then was successfully reelected two subsequent times so two full terms plus and uh this will this may be bill's last tv eight program unless of course we have him on for a guest or he returns to a county board chair someday in the future but uh bill will be turning over the reins to a new county board chairman uh effective april fifteenth and julie give our viewers just a flavor for well what happens on april fifteenth how does the county board go about selecting a new chair vice chair what are some of the steps okay april fifteenth all the board members get sworn in one of their first official access to adopt the rules of the board to determine what how the board will function once they've done that then they need to nominate and elect a county board chairman that's their their next job it's a secret ballot it's one of the only things that are done on the county board floor that's done by secret ballot the first ballot is a nominating ballot so all the supervisors get the opportunity to write the name of someone they think would be a good chairman on a piece of paper it's collected and tallied and we put it up on on a chalkboard at that point in time whosoever nominated some of them will drop out and say i really don't want to be chair or whatever and you end up with a slate of of of possible chairman after that you have official ballots and as many ballots as it takes again by secret ballot to finally get a majority for one person and then that person is elected as the chairman and they follow that same process for vice chairman and the three other members of the of the executive committee and then that executive committee gets together and they identify committee assignments and committee assignments are assignments that each board member will be surveyed to see what committee standing committee they want to be on currently the county board has 10 it may be eight with some consolidations effective on the 15th they'll make there they'll share their preference with the county board chair the county board chair will then share his or her recommendations with the executive committee the executive committee then comes back and ultimately they appoint supervisors to their individual committees yeah and that's the the meeting the following meeting of the county board they meet the net the week after the 15th I think it's about the 22nd 23rd and at that point in time the board confirms those appointments to all the committees and those committees then break for a short time to elect their chair of their committee vice chair their committee and things like that and decide when their committees are going to meet Julie and I have the opportunity to participate in some orientation for our new county board supervisors certainly it takes some time to learn how the organization works 22 departments 137 million dollar program budget over 200 programs and services a lot going on the county board chairman has an annual leadership forum where the whole board comes together and discusses key issues and pertinent information but a very important transition happening here in April and let me put you on the spot for a moment as you know bill's been chair for the last four and a half years five years closer to five years how's he done his county board chairman I think he's done a great job he runs a really good meeting I really appreciate that he he always the thing we appreciate the most is he always announces the name of the supervisor who he's calling on because we need to as secretaries need to write down who made the motion who made the second and sometimes if you don't have a chairman that's that's calling on a supervisor by name you have to rely on did you hear hear the person did you see whose light was on to know who to write down so we really appreciate that behind the scenes there's a lot that goes on prior to every board meeting the board meets once a month and chairman garing will meet with Julie glancy and the vice chair and myself and go over the agenda and the chairman will ultimately decide what's on that agenda and who things will be referred to and of course bill is taken approach where he gets input from others but the chair has that very important responsibility and Julie helping run that meeting with the chair is actually typing in things as people make motions and and making sure that the meeting goes smoothly and everything's recorded and documented as you mentioned earlier so a lot of these things just kind of happen and they don't happen by accident they happen because you have good leadership or you have good staff in place that keep things moving smoothly and i commend both these individuals i'm going to miss working with bill gearing because i think he's been an exceptional county board chair and i'm going to be glad that he's continuing on the county board as well as glad that we have an exceptional county clerk uh we have 22 department heads of those 22 department heads 16 are appointed meaning that i would point them and they're confirmed by the respective liaison committee the other six are elected julie is one of those elected department heads and she is exceptional i cannot tell you how fortunate we are in sheboyton county to have an excellent management team in place and all of the department heads bring a lot to the table and i would be the first to say that you heard julie mentioned earlier her experience as county clerk 14 years i hope she's here another 14 and then some because she does a fantastic job she thanks my pleasure uh julie you talked about roles and responsibilities earlier in one of them that i think some people recognize your office for is providing marriage licenses how does that work if someone out there is going to get married or has a son or daughter that's going to get married how does that relate to your office okay you need to if you're a wisconsin resident apply for your marriage license in the county where at least one of you lives so if your residence of sheboyton county you would come to us you need to make sure you have your wedding plan set before you come in because that's one of the things we need to know you need to apply for your license at least six days before you plan to be married but not more than 30 days before your wedding because they expire in 30 days so it would be no good you both need to come in in person you need to bring certified birth certificates you need to bring something that shows your current address if it's not a first marriage you need to bring a copy of your divorce papers or death certificate from your last marriage if you're divorced it needs to be final for at least six months the fee is 75 dollars and we're open monday through friday 8 to 4 30 for marriage licenses we're actually there till five o'clock but if you're not there by 4 30 gets a little it's a little hard to get you out the door before they lock the building but it's a 30 day license license is good for 30 days i didn't know that i'll be there so if you're coming in a 30 second day and you could be in trouble yep it'll expire before you get married no they may not necessarily have you individually helping them it's very possible but you have some excellent staff please uh touch on your staff that you have worked for i have three staff members share say is the deputy county clerk davie warwine is the accountant and charles savon is the secretary to the county board and between the three of them they have a fair amount of experience as well uh yeah um i'm trying to think shares been there will be 10 years this year dave's been in my office for nine but he's been with the county for much longer than that and charles is going to be there five years in about a month so one of the other things that your department does and does so well is if someone needs a hunting license or a fishing license and as many of our viewers may know if they hunt or fish or enjoy the outdoors is that licenses come up and are due again in march at least if you're going to get a patron license or if it's just an individual fishing or hunting license they can come by your office and take care of that yeah we don't do as many of those as we used to it seems like every year that kind of dwindles a little bit because most of the people that come to us the people that have been coming to us for a long time uh and there is a new system this year for issuing licenses it's coming off of a touchscreen computer this year they're kind of an awful green license this year they're kind of strange but um it it's still basically just as easy to do it and we have a scanner now where we can scan in your old license or scan in your driver's license and that will put the information into the system so so back to the position of county clerk when is the next election that you have to be concerned with if you choose to run again uh this fall this fall yeah November out of sight out of mine i haven't even been thinking about that so paper squad in june and come back in july and the primary is september and the election is in november and if and just to give folks a flavor for that if they are interested in running for county clerk or another elected position or just want to learn more about what what's entailed that's information that your office can provide contact our office and this is a four-year term for for the um offices that are up for i'm fighting the urge to just ask you but i'm going to do it anyway are you are you planning to run again yes i am i'm planning to run for this term okay so there you have it there i have it she's coming back i'm coming back at least for four years right this is going to be a challenging four years because not only do you have you know your standard election things but in 2011 which is part of this four-year term is the redistricting you know that every every ten years they do a new census which will be 2010 and then in 2011 is the redistricting and what that entails is you need to make sure that every district every county board district represents the same number of people and because of course you have new new housing developments and population shifts every ten years you have to kind of reallocate that and i know the board is talking about reducing the size of their board at the 2000 and in 11 redistricting so that will be a real challenge this year and that impacts of course all the election processes from that point forward so in 2012 all the information we have in terms of what voters go with this ballot combination will change with the 2012 elections because of the redistricting so it's going to be a challenging four years and i've had some people ask me about that recently i i suppose with the election process and play with board members but they said well didn't the board take action to reduce their numbers aren't they at 34 now and they're going to 25 and the answer is yes but they didn't want to implement that until actually after the census right and and they they were really limited if they wanted to change their size before the census because you can't change ward designations between the census periods you can only change your districts and we have 16 county board supervisors that each represent just one ward so the only way to reduce the size of the board between censuses was be cut the board exactly in half and the board really didn't want to go from 34 to 17 they felt that 25 was a much you know much better number for the county to to operate on so they had to wait until the 2012 elections for that with your years of service with sheboygan county and specifically in the the county clerk's office what are some of the biggest changes you've seen over the years the biggest changes aren't elections election changes have been huge um there's a lot of emphasis right now in security and there's many many more security regulations in place uh the statewide voter registration system which has went into effect two years ago has had a huge impact on our office and in all of the departments you know all the municipalities because you have to enter it in all the voters have to be entered into one big database it's much more complex of course and keeping their own systems going the way they had been um the um new touchscreen voting equipment that was required by the HAVA which was the help america vote act of 2002 and required this touchscreen equipment in all the voting locations that's a huge impact on our office because the programming for that is probably 10 times more complex than it was for the for the optical scan equipment and do you see that trend continuing for a while that uh yeah it seems like every day there's another set of legislation proposed to to change security there's the always the voter id thing that comes around periodically so there's always changes in elections very good well julie i want to thank you for taking the time to give us an overview of your very important role and responsibilities and and giving our viewers a snapshot of the of the important work you do thank you until next time thank you very much for joining us today and on behalf of the shabuagan county board and chairman bill gearing we're very pleased that julie could be with us today i hope perhaps two four years from now you might see these same people in these chairs we'll find well time will tell but uh it's not often that i go on on the limb endorsing a department head but let me tell you julie is just a breath of fresh air she is very good at what she does she has an excellent team in place and again i thank you for joining us today thank you next month we may have nan tod in here a clerk of courts to get a feel for what's happening the clerks of court clerk of court's office so until then again thank you for joining us