 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government. Working for you. My name is Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Tom Wagner and as you know every month we strive to focus on a different department, roles and responsibilities and give you an opportunity to get a little more insight about Sheboygan County Government and today we're very pleased to have a rookie across from us, one of our newest additions to our management team, Cindy Sarkity. Cindy, welcome. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. It's wonderful to have Cindy here. Cindy, I say new because the UW extension just went through a reorganization and Cindy is not just a Sheboygan County Department head, she actually is an area extension director working with a number of counties so let's get right into it and please begin by sharing a little bit about yourselves, Cindy. All right, I come from a background of an extension. I started in Michigan many years ago and I was a 4-H educator and when I eventually moved to Illinois, I wasn't an extension but I was an administrator at a community college, large community college and I learned a lot of my leadership development through there. When the college downsized I came back to extension in Illinois and I was a 4-H educator there. I've always loved Wisconsin so when the opportunity in Waukesha came available to move, I did and I was a 4-H educator there and then this opportunity of the area extension director opened and I said oh I can make a bigger impact doing this position which now I'm here. Yeah and I'll readily admit as Cindy knows when she first was hired it's you know it's a little unusual working with a number of departments being the department head and a number of counties rather and I thought well how is this going to fit in with our team and do I want someone in our monthly meetings that is not only a department head identified for Sheboygan County but for a number of other counties and I quickly appreciated how kind Cindy is as well as the fact that you can bring this additional insight and perspective and talk about best practices of other counties and really I think adds value to our discussion. So please touch on that briefly that you know how many different counties are you working with to give folks a flavor for your area of responsibility. I have four counties. I have Fond du Lac, Sheboygan, Washington and Ozaki counties. With the restructure some of the counties merged with two others some up to five. So I have four. Yeah well let's get into extension itself a little bit. What is the mission primary responsibilities of UW Extension? The mission of educators with UW Extension is to lead, teach and serve the community by bringing the resources of the university out into the communities of course and the individuals to help them transform their lives and their communities. Yeah and when you you know when folks think of UW Extension I'm sure many of our viewers are well my kids were involved in 4-H or I was. There are a number of areas of responsibility. Extension is one of our 19 departments but it's funded a little differently. How does that work? Yeah our partners in our funding are local and state and federally funded depending on you know what programs we offer. So a lot more collaboration and leveraging resources from these these different units of government which sometimes can create a little stress as well. Will the state or federal government provide their share? Will it go up or down? And that was part of the reorganization a little bit some of those financial constraints wasn't it? Yeah they had to reduce funding or the cost of extension by three point six million dollars. So as you've looked at your team and if you know someone was sitting across from you today and said well share a little bit about what UW Extension encompasses. What type what staff are you working with? What are their key areas of responsibility? In Sheboygan County we have a growth management educator and you've known about Kevin Struck that does the comprehensive plans in the townships in the villages and cities in Sheboygan County. We also have youth development which is a 4-H program that you everybody's familiar with. We have family living that works with coalitions healthy 2020 healthy Sheboygan County. We have a food wise program that most people don't know about that's a federally funded program and that's where educators go into the schools work with pantries and there's a certain income level that we work with and it's totally federally funded and then everybody knows about the agricultural programs that extension works with. And we've been fortunate we really have some experienced staff here at UW Extension and obviously well known in the community mentioned Kevin Struck, Mike Ballweg of course works with the agriculture community but just briefly talk about your co-workers a little bit and and the strengths they bring to the table. Well in Extension in Sheboygan County too obviously to be an Extension educator you have to have a passion about what what you do and you really have to want to help the community. So with Jane Jensen and in the family living program she really brings that ability to get people together with the coalitions that she works with. Sarah Targison and 4-H youth development and Linda Robson they love it. I mean if you listen to them talk about their programs they just shine. Mike you know he always educates me on the agriculture because you know I had a hobby farm growing up I didn't do the cover crops that you know he's so well known to educate the community on and then of course Kevin with his growth management and it's always interesting to listen to what he's doing. Yeah really good people and Tom and I both had the opportunity at the county fair to participate in the 4-H. What do they call that? It's kind of when we're serving at their stands. Shakes the food stand and and it always amazes me these young people how good they are. You know they're they're hardworking and they're so kind and they're good with the customers and it's not only a good experience for us but it's certainly a good experience for them. They're extremely tolerant of me. You would really love that opportunity because it's they're giving to the community they're learning these skills they learn how to work cooperatively together and develop those life skills that 4-H is known for and our 4-H program in Sheboygan County is about the third or fourth largest in the state we have over 942 youth that participate in the community clubs and 262 adult volunteers which is huge. Amazing. And then also we have youth volunteers about 118 of them so they really do a lot. Yeah and as I mentioned and as I think some of our viewers are aware you know Sheboygan County is such a breadth breadth of programs and services in 19 different departments UW Extension is one of those 19 yet kind of a hybrid with the relationship with the local state and federal level and some people may wonder well what's the difference between UW Extension and UW Sheboygan. What is the difference? Well UW Sheboygan is a college campus they offer accredited classes and UW Extension offers educational opportunities that are not credited but they're still just as valued non-formal education so that's that's kind of the difference we are under the we will be underneath the same umbrella with the reorg so we're still UW Wisconsin does the extension part of it. So if you're not familiar with where UW Extension is it's right here co-located with UW Sheboygan right across from Bookworm Gardens it's a beautiful setting and the County Board had the vision a number of years ago to co-locate the two as not only an efficiency opportunity but really it helped leverage resources between the two campus the campus and extensions so well thank you I'll turn it over to Tom. Welcome Cindy glad you could be here and you've talked a little bit about this already but could you go into maybe a little more detail about some of the scope of the services that the extension offers. All right let's see in youth development we do a youth government program and that's working with the county department heads to really show the the the teens about how they can see what government does because it's I think it's a very big idea and it doesn't make sense to them so the opportunity Sarah's working with the county department heads to have them help educate the youth so that's one area. We have a Marisa Gardner's program that's through the agricultural program that that's huge here and you know that they do educational programs throughout the the county I know they do stuff at UW-Shabuigan you know it's not that some misconception with the master gardeners that they'll come in and do the garden education you'd have extension education master gardeners are part of that they'll help educate you and teach you how to do it in the programs. The family living I know we do we have a Jane that works with it's a caregivers coalition she's had a great success that what she offers quarterly workshops and reaches about 60 organizations and about 212 individuals for those opportunities and then of course our agriculture we talked a little bit about Mike and his the cover crop crops that education but there's more than that what's interesting about the agriculture extension is that there's a tri-county and so we work already across these county lines they've been doing this already with Ozaki County and Fondlec County and Washington County so there's experts in the egg Mike is of course the cover crops we have somebody in farm succession for management we have dairy so they share their expertise that's kind of the way we're moving with this this is the way we are moving with the restructuring. Lots of moving parts. What role does the agriculture play in Sheboygan County? It's huge you know I did my I've talked to Mike quite a bit but I also did more research on it and I was surprised because I just moved to Sheboygan County in September that we have over 8,000 jobs in agriculture and that's 12% of the jobs in Sheboygan County the agriculture accounts for 3.1 billion dollars in economic activity and in oversight I'm reading my numbers because I thought it was very impressive to see this over 7 million dollars comes to the county and total income from agriculture so it to me that was pretty impressive to read I know that we have a lot of farms but to bring in that kind of money into our county is huge. Thank you. Community growth management I know is very important and I've worked with Kevin Struck who is out of your office actually on the Revolving Loan Committee for SCDC I know he also works with the different towns and that on some of the smart growth plans and things like that could you describe a little more how that is in housing involved in that and how that goes? Well Kevin's unique to the state there are not and you know he's one of the I think he's the only growth management educator in the state. No kidding. So he works with the Wisconsin stature they the community comprehensive plans have to be updated no less than every 10 years and so he goes in and he helps them develop these plans he doesn't do it because we're educators he helps the process and what's interesting it really saves these towns a significant amount of money because if they had to bring in a consultant it's about $20,000 to do exactly what Kevin does. No I've heard that from different town chairman of that very positive about having Kevin work in and help them with that because A they're saving the money and B at the end of the day they feel they got a good product that they've really built. Oh yeah and then when you bring sometimes a consultant and it can kind of be the consultants you know so I know it's working very well in Sheboygan County from what I've been hearing. And if I could just add on to that Tom Kevin used to work in our planning department so he comes with a real strong skill set he knows the community he knows these local officials and just as you said Tom I've heard really positive things about the work he does with the local units of government he also works with our I think our conservation side a little bit with water quality testing. The well testing he goes out and offers where they bring the samples in and then he takes the samples and they go to UW-Stevens point for the testing and brings the results back and helps educate them what it means if you have arsenic in your water or whatever else is in it so yes that he does do that too. Very important obviously. Community growth excuse me UW extension has been over a hundred years so it's serving a broader and diverse audience more than ever. Can you give me some examples besides family living maybe or things like that you talked a little bit about it already. Well food wise the federally funded one it has over 3,000 context educational context you know direct where they go out and teach into the schools and the pantries so that's one area and we talked about forage youth development you know and Sarah she focuses on sedition ship because all the youth development educators do look at what are the needs in the community and that was one of the focuses that she's been working on and so that that governance program that we talked about government you know as part of that. Agriculture they had 550 participants in their ag their field days and their workshops and that's just a small percentage of what they do. Educators in addition to doing this outreach and and doing the educational opportunities most of our faculty and ours are faculty the majority of them and so they produce research projects and they create documents that are shared beyond the state so what's happening here goes even further beyond that's a requirement for the faculty. I know getting back a little bit to the 4-H when I'm out at the the fair helping observe it what is always impressive to me is there's a whole lot of different things going on there relative to what the kids can learn but just being able to approach a stranger who comes up and just interact with them and be able to speak to them and that type of thing I think is really helpful to a 12 year old kid or 13 year old. They can do to five when they're in the program. Yeah the public speaking is probably the top skill that they develop in 4-H because they do talk to their judges of course they're talking to their the groups you know and they're in their clubs but really public speaking is the top one and like I said I've heard seven-year-olds tell me a whole speech which is pretty impressive and most people that don't don't realize that they'll be amazed and I know I've interviewed college students for different jobs and if they can talk to me I always ask what are you 4-H and a lot of them are. We have two or three of them usually come every year to the county board and give a presentation and they're always very impressive and some of them are pretty young too and they do a very nice job they have to have a stool so they can get to the microphone but very nice program. Yeah when we go to the county fair every year I think of my kids that are now out of the nest but you know we've had chickens and horses and you know hobby farm as you described you grew up on and and as Tom said you know the opportunities for youth to get involved and take responsibility last year at the county fair I bought a couple of chickens at this I don't know if he was 14 years old and he had he you know raised these chickens as from chicks and they were the most groomed beautiful hens I think I've I've ever seen and he was so pleased to then sell them after the fair to a family that was going to continue to take care of them and enjoy the farm fresh eggs so I I really admire what Sarah and Linda do and and all the staff at UW extension if you think about all of our departments though extension is not necessarily a required area of responsibility like some of our departments are you know health and human services clerk of courts there are so many things we have to do extension we don't necessarily have to do but from a standpoint of how many people they touch in this community and the good things they help make happen we're just very fortunate to have a strong staff here and I appreciate and value what they do so on that note you started sharing a little bit about the organizational structure and relying on county funding state funding and federal funding it's a long term partnership that's been around as Tom said for a hundred years we have this co-location now with UW Sheboygan which I thought has brought additional value and leveraged additional resources but as viewers listen to this and they think hmm I don't know I don't know a lot about what Jane does with maybe the elderly or those types of programs or I don't have any kids that were in 4-H how does extension determine its priorities and where it's going to focus in a community in the past and I say in the past because there's going to be a new needs assessment coming up there were needs assessments done in the communities there's focus groups they talk the educators talk with the partners out in the community I do that too to listen but they really look at an individual county and what the needs are and then they develop their program program area program development in address those needs so in the future and hopefully by summer that's what we're shooting for we'll have a statewide assessment that'll be very current relevant to what we want them to do with this reorganization and obviously you have a liaison committee every department has a county board liaison committee that helps establish policy and provides input you have one that's you know made up of county board supervisors and I know they're very supportive and very engaged you get feedback there as well yeah they do they're very very supportive and it's interesting when I bring up different components of our monthly report they can add to it first-hand experience I'll say well yeah I heard this one did this and this one did that and so it's very impressive that they they really know what we're doing not just reading what we send them but they know because they're of course part of the community and all those meetings are open to the public so if someone wanted to come and listen learn or provide input or suggest improvements they can do that yes they can yeah yeah so state federal local funds we've just gone through this reorg big picture what were the predominant changes that have that have occurred we're still going through the restructuring it's I think it's been over two years now I came in over two years ago and it was starting then the regionalization having the area extension directors like I am and then we are going to be looking at shared positions across county lines we already do that in some areas in Ozaki County we have an ag educator that goes between Ozaki and Washington County and also the changes are to really look at what programs we are delivering and making sure they're relevant you know in some counties and you know they did canning I know they do canning programs well is that really a need here in Shibuya and County we do not do that because that isn't a high need but there are other things that are a high need in the area so that needs assessment will help direct a little bit more a lot of the restructuring is infrastructures that with moving underneath the UW Madison you know we will have our HRs are now the same instead of having this extension HR so there's a lot of systems changes that won't really be seen by our communities but we're really committed to it with to the Wisconsin idea of having extension in all the counties and it's a credit to chairman Tom Wagner and the full county board for seeing you know already how long has it been now since we've been co-located here has it been six seven years easily I lose track of time but back then the board saw this as an opportunity for further alignment and administrative efficiencies and leveraging resources and we took a little bit of heat leaving Shibuya Falls and you know what was a well-oiled machine there as well but the the opportunity to further leverage resources cost savings and I think history is showing it was a it was a visionary move by the county board and now the state is aligning even more you know which really positioned us better I presume than some counties who aren't co-located and haven't yet leveraged those resources and in an extension we work with state specialists but now we are even with having that co-location with UW Shibuya we have the opportunity to do it walk down the hall and find these specialists instead of being a campus and we have already in the short period of time I've been here I know they've done things in the past but just in the short period of time we've had the faculty and administrators help us with our scholarships for our youth and you know look them over and say we can help teach the 4-H youth how to write successful scholarships so that's just the start of our partnerships tremendous that I've seen some and I like I said they've done things in the past you mentioned you worked with four counties again it was Shibuya and Fond du Lac Ozaki and Washington what has been your impression of the four facilities and engagement of staff have you what strengths have you seen in Shibuya perhaps compared to other counties opportunities for improvement here what I've known is the cross that's all the four counties that the educators are really dedicated and the resilient this change has been a tough because you know a lot of unknowns but I'm gonna tell you in all the counties they're moving forward they're delivering programs they're doing what they you know that we what we've always been intended to do the expertise in Shibuya you know you have a long series people have been here for a long period of time that helps quite a bit for Shibuya County and for the state because they give to the state to the educational component they're looked to as huge resources in in the state with their expertise best practices that's that's been something that's ongoing you know every budget process is a little different and I have to learn you know for different budget processes but the our support staff and all of the areas have been they jumped on that bandwagon they want to help improve the practices that they're doing they want to share and they've started at the very beginning I suppose you know this this county has a really good budget in fund-elect they have a really good budget budgeting documentation when I sent it over to the support staff here in Shibuya she had it done in an hour and it's years of you know why we cut why we increase why we did that so they're just really willing to go that extra step in Shibuya County especially the support staff they're kind of excited about it we got together recently off the four counties and I think they talked so much that they wanted more time to talk to be able to share what they're doing and how we can work together and there so and that's positive to me how about the facilities here what it's been your impression of outstanding outstanding to the IT department with me not being a county employee the IT department still was there to help me maneuver everybody's been so helpful within Shibuya County and the facilities is absolutely gorgeous yeah well I'm glad to hear you say that we we pride ourselves on collaboration here and working effectively together and and I think you've brought that to another level is now working with with three other counties to share services and expertise and I think it's a win-win across the board so thank you for that thank you well we only have a couple of minutes left and I wanted to go back to something Cindy said a few minutes ago we have an annual student government day where students from across the school district throughout Shibuya County come and get a snapshot a glimpse of Shibuya County government the 19 different departments there's over 200 programs and services and of course in one day they can't learn about it all but they get a high-end overview in our elected department heads Sarah Targerson from UW extension and a few other department heads as well have gotten more engaged and I want to thank extension for doing that because with workforce development needs if you're in high school and thinking about a career County government has so much to offer and most people as you said earlier Cindy just don't realize the breadth from health and human services to UW extension to planning and conservation to a sheriff's department to a nursing home I mean there's so much going on so I appreciate the role extension plays but I also appreciate the role of our veterans our Legionnaires who co-sponsor that with UW extension correct yes they do they do help with that they have the part of the curriculum that we've expanded upon to offer more opportunities and some funding to help help with that program so it is a good partnership folks like Alan Noel who's been a champion in the veterans organization for a lot of years helps with the the beautiful Veterans Memorial that we have there at Taylor Park and again a shout out to our Legionnaires and all our veterans not only for their service but their assistance with this program it's a good program and we appreciate their involvement and speaking of our veterans next month we're going to have Charlene Cobb here our veteran service officer to talk a little bit about their roles and responsibilities so Cindy we want to say thank you for your time today giving us an overview of UW extension if anyone has any questions about UW extension don't hesitate to contact Cindy or her staff you can go on our county website to get direct information or come on out to UW Shabuigan and check out the UW extension office area take a walk across the street to a bookworm gardens although it was bookworm gardens open yet I'm not sure I don't think so probably need another month of warm weather right but it's a great way to spend that lunch hour or a couple of hours with your kids or grandkids so hope you'll come out and visit and again Cindy welcome aboard and thank you thank you thank you Cindy so we'll see you next month veteran service officer Charlene Cobb will be here as I said a lot of good things happening with our veteran service officer staff and in the programs and services we can talk more about that and until then thank you for joining us today and be well