 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name's Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrative Coordinator and co-host of this program with Chairman Bill Gehring. And today we're very pleased that our guest is Shannon Hayden, the Director of the Planning Department for Sheboygan County. Shannon, welcome. Thank you. Welcome. Shannon oversees one of 23 very important departments and today she's going to discuss the roles and responsibilities of the Planning Department. So Shannon, please start by sharing a little bit about yourself and your background. Thank you. I run the Planning and Resources Department. It's actually kind of got some dual duties. We currently have 13 employees on our table of organization. We do have one vacancy right now, so I supervise 12 staff. We have two major divisions within our office, the Planning and Zoning Division and then the Real Property Listing Division and each of those has their own unique roles and responsibilities in the department. Planning and Zoning regulates land division, shoreland permits and septic system, which is a real glorified job, I guess. And then Real Property Listing is responsible for making sure that the tax rules are developed so that all the tax bills can go out each year. So that's in a nutshell. In a nutshell, who is Shannon Hayden? I know you were our system planning director and I get nothing but good feedback about yourself, but why don't you share with our viewers a little bit about your background and how long you've been with us? I've been with Sheboygan County for almost four years. I started out as assistant planning director. I was here for one year and then upon a vacancy that was created for the planning director, I decided to, after some soul searching, decided to apply for the job. I have a bachelor's degree and a master's degree both in geography. I tell people geography is where it's at. It's all encompassing and I continually meet more and more geographers. It's kind of exciting. And I've worked for the Department of Natural Resources. I've worked for the federal government, the EPA. And now I'm here in Sheboygan County and I actually really enjoy it here. I think it's a great community to be in. So what do you see as the primary mission of the Planning and Resources Department? Probably the primary mission ultimately is to protect the natural resources as a whole. And in order to do that, there are a number of different things that have to happen. Such as regulating land divisions to make sure that that occurs in an orderly fashion. And then also with the septic systems making sure that our drinking water and groundwater stays clean. And with the shoreline zoning making sure that the structural setbacks and everything else, the lot coverage doesn't damage the water resource and it maintains an aesthetically pleasing environment for people who are, we look at from the water and from the lake. I mean, we want to make it nice for the people who have property on the lake, but we also want to make it nice for people who are out on the lake fishing or canoeing or whatever. So I would say if there was one core function that would be it, we oversee the Sheboygan Marsh. We have a total of five public boat landings that we oversee and the recreation trail. And so, you know, I guess if you had to have a little theme or a sentence to try to sum it up, it's trying to make Sheboygan County a healthy place to live, work and play. I mean, that's our ultimate goal. And healthy can mean recreation. It can be emotional or physical with hunting or fishing or those sorts of things. And it's also the actual clean, you know, cleanliness of the environment. And then real property is kind of a little bit of an aside. The tie-in is with the land information and how that's all based. And the work that we do with the land division reviews ties in with that. And in the past, the link has been computer mapping and things like that. So even though they're not part of that protecting the environment theme that runs through the overall department, they definitely have a tie-in with maintaining the land-based records that we have in the county. Oh, you mentioned you have a total of 12 staff. Right. And I know they encompass a lot of responsibilities, as you mentioned, county code administrators, planning responsibilities. You work with other municipalities and you're protecting the resources from boat landings to, again, where septic systems are located. And often people, I think, don't realize that the real property listing office is part of your department. Right. Please share a little bit more about their roles and responsibilities. Sure. Well, you know, one of the things that we really talk about is that if it wasn't for real property listing, government couldn't function because we wouldn't have the tax bill prepared and we wouldn't be able to collect the money that we levy. Any time a transfer property occurs in the unincorporated, we do not list for the city of Sheboygan. They have their own assessment process and their own assessor. But we list for every other community in the county. When that document comes in, if I were to sell you my house, let's say, and we live in the town of Sheboygan, my staff would process the document to put it from me to you for the tax bill purposes. There isn't any kind of automatic. The bank does their thing with the mortgages and things like that, and it's recorded with the register of deeds, but somewhere along the line that has to actually, the data needs to be entered to transfer the property. If a new subdivision is platted from a farm field or a vacant lot, real property listing is responsible for entering in that split of the property, getting new tax key numbers for it so the assessor can do their job and assign an assessment to that property. So not only do we deal with the straight transfers, we deal with the land divisions as well. And ultimately, our role is to support the assessors, to prepare a role for them to work from to go through the assessment process, make sure it's done in a timely manner so that the local governments can have their board of review and set their budget and do all of those things. So really, they need to work closely with the local units of government, the Department of Revenue, the state of Wisconsin gets involved too because there's constantly data that we're sending to them as well. So there's a lot of different facets of getting that done, and it's kind of amazing sometimes when you see all of the different things that have to go into that. But final question before turning it over to the chairman, one of the initiatives I know you've been a big part of is increasing our capacity with GIS and mapping. And in fact, your department works closely with the sheriff's department so they know how to most quickly respond to folks. Touch on that just a little bit. What's happening with GIS and mapping in your department? Well, up until this point, most of the work that's been done with GIS is data development, trying to get the data prepared so that it can be used. The power of GIS or geographic information systems or geographic information science, sometimes people call it, they interchange it, is the application, the ability to do analysis on the ground. And so now we're going through this planning process with our land information committee to update moving from a data development phase to an applications phase. And we've been working with the sheriff's department, health and human services. We've now brought into the loop. I'll be doing a presentation with some of their key managers next week on how I think GIS can help them with what they do. For example, we could use some readily available US census data to identify housing units built before 1950, and then they can decide to target those neighborhoods for a lot of abatement. If there was ever an outbreak for tuberculosis, an active case of tuberculosis, they could pinpoint that on the dot. They could put a buffer on the map, put a buffer around that spot and say, we need to contact all of the people around this area because they may have been exposed to tuberculosis. So there's a lot of different things that they could do. We need to get the users or the people that can use that information familiar with it because it's always been planning and land records and geography-based. But the whole purpose in GIS is for analysis, and now we need to take it to that next step. With the sheriff's department, we're trying, even, I mean, it's amazing. We never had a map before, really, of all of the jurisdictional boundaries of the first responders, and our office has been working very closely with the fire departments and ambulance companies and things, and we're finding there are places where there are actually gaps on the ground where if somebody had called 911 in that area, the dispatcher certainly would have been able to figure out who to send, but it wouldn't have been a quick pop-up. So we've been going through, and without that map, when you actually, it's very difficult to see that. And so I think that we've been having a really good relationship with the sheriff's department for sure, and they're starting to really value a lot of the things, and we've even had the DA come over a couple of times and have us put together some aerial photograph poster size for trials that they had so they could show, you know, this guy was here or if there was a drug unit bust or an accident that they wanted the intersection. So it's pretty far-reaching and the sky's the limit. There's a lot of really neat stuff out there that you can do with that tool. Excellent. Thank you. Shannon, let's go back to talking about recreational facilities that you oversee within the county. You mentioned that there are several that could give us a little advertisement for some of the what's available throughout the county. Well, we have one of the most visible is the 14-mile old Plank Road Trail, which you can take from Erie Avenue in the town, it's actually in the town of Sheboygan, all the way out to the old Wade House now. We just completed a mile-and-a-half extension from what we called the Green Bush Trailhead. If you're heading on Highway 23, it's where that log cabin was, and well, it still is. That's where it used to end, and now it goes another mile-and-a-half to the west, and you can bicycle to the road that takes you into the old Wade House. With the Highway 23 expansion project, it is hoped that that trail will go all the way to Fond du Lac. We only have about three to four miles that we would need to complete to get it from the end of where it is now to the county line. Fond du Lac County has nothing at this point in time, but they're very interested in bringing that together, and they did some work on the Highway 151 bypass there that they found very successful that they'd like to replicate here. So there's the old Plank Road Trail. There are some trailheads. There's one at the intersection of Meadowlark and Highway 23, and there's actually a boat landing there that you can, it's just a walk-in boat landing. You can't put a motorized craft in there, but if you're interested in canoeing the Sheboygan River, it's a really nice place to put in. And if you, you can actually drive along that segment, there's a small segment of the trail, probably about 500 feet with a cul-de-sac at the end, where you can park and load your canoe, and then go park up at the top of the parking lot. We have boat landings at Yetsers Lake, Little Elkhart Lake, Elkhart Lake, and Crystal Lake, and then we also have one at Gerber Lake, which Gerber Lake is not just the lake, it's also a hunting and fishing and wildlife area where people can do hunting out on that property. And so that I think a lot of times people don't fully understand that that is available to them. And then probably the most prominent, well, the most visual is the old Plank Road Trail, but one you hear a lot about is the marsh. And we have, overall there's about 14,000 acres that are all encompassed in the marsh. I wanna say there's about 7,000 that are owned by the county. We recently got a new vendor in there about a year ago, three guys in the grill, and they are, they've been remarkable in running the restaurant, and they've come up with some really unique things, some unique dishes to have, and they've been running the campground very well from what I understand, and we're really quite pleased with the way that things are working. So if people haven't been out there, I would certainly encourage them to go take a look because I think that they're doing an excellent job. You can even, my big thing was, as long as you can buy a t-shirt that says Sheboyga Marsh, it will be exciting, you can. So that in a nutshell is what we have right now. Are there any plans for any additional facilities that might be coming online down the road? Well, right now we actually are working on a seven mile extension of the Interurban rail line. It is in our five year capital plan to be constructed in 2006, and obviously with budgets, there's a lot of things up in the air, but we're gonna keep moving forward. We've formed an advisory committee, and we've been looking to Ozaki County, which has been very successful, and they have, for example, they were able to successfully fundraise for a pedestrian bridge to go over I-43. That will be constructed within the next year, so that was an over $1 million project alone, and a big chunk of that was from the grass roots, the citizens in the community really working together. So we've been tapping into their knowledge and expertise in helping us with the development of this trail, and we had some of the key players come up this last week. We're meeting once a month right now to try to get things really rolling, and speak to us about their experience, what they've done, things they might do different, and next week, or next month, we'll have somebody from Ozaki County come up and talk about the economic impact of the trail that they've seen in Ozaki County so that we can get a better feel for what that might do for us. Excuse me, we hope to bring it from the Sheboygan County line through Cedar Grove, and then ultimately into Usberg, and with the growth that those communities in Cedar Grove and Usberg have seen recently. I think there's definitely a need. I think that there's a lot more families moving into those communities. I may be talking out of turn, but I believe Usberg, for example, added an extra kindergarten class last year as a rumor that I had heard, and I think that's an indication of what is happening in those communities, and I think that there's a lot of people that would like to see more opportunities for recreation down there. But at this point, that's really the only facility that we're working on. The Resources Committee, which oversees my department, would like to see an observation tower out at the marsh, and so we're working on that, and we're working with an architect to try to come up with some conceptual drawings for some other multi-use type of things out there, but that's preliminary, but there's a big, strong goal to get that observation tower moving forward, and there's talks about fundraising potential and donations that could help fund that, and I think that's a reality. Okay, if the county implemented a stewardship fund a number of years ago, how has that worked? What projects have been funded? Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure, there have been quite a few, and they've been mixed. The first year, I think, it was kind of people getting used to it and learning, and a lot of the projects that were done were in the urban areas. The city of Sheboygan received $20,000 to help with the promenade or the walkway along the river associated with the south pier. The village of Elkhart Lake received the money for a nature trail, and that's done. The city of Plymouth received another $20,000 in that first year, too. They were removing a dam in one of their parks, and they were doing a restoration project with that, and all three of those projects turned out really well. The next year, we had the town of Rhine, and initially their dollars were for an acquisition project, and when they first did the application, I was looking at some of the site conditions and thought that there were some really great opportunities for a wetland restoration project, and ultimately that's what they ended up doing, and it's turned out to be a really beautiful project. I don't know if you've had a chance to take a look at it, but they worked very closely with the County Land and Water Conservation Department, and did a wetland scrape, is what we call it, where we take some of the topsoil off and get the water flowing in there, some prairie plantings, some shrub plantings, and it's really turned out nice, so some of the funding went to that, and then that same year, Trout Unlimited received $10,000 to put in lunker structures. They're called their habitat for trout in three different areas along the Onion River, and then the next year, the Sheboydon County Conservation Association received, I believe about $6,000 to assist with the acquisition of a 10 acre piece in the marsh, and the other half of their funds came from state stewardship dollars, so that was really a good match of how those funds worked out. The Village of Howard's Grove, which is another village in our county that's growing very quickly and has a lot of families, they're doing a wetland restoration on a new park that they're developing, so there were some funds for that, and I'm sure I'm probably, oh, the city of Sheboydon Falls, they're dredging out their lagoon, and as part of that, they are putting in a wheelchair-accessible fishing pier. So those are things that have happened to date. There was an emergency fund request made by the Department of Natural Resources for some money for an acquisition for, it's really in conjunction with the Onion River and the trout streams, the Land and Water Conservation Department received money for buffers in that area as well. So we have all these different projects in the Onion River dealing with the trout streams and this acquisition. Ultimately, I think they're asking for about $12,500 out of a total project cost of about $450,000. So if it wasn't for the county and the Sheboydon County Conservation Association stepping up in the last final hour, I guess, if you will, the whole project probably would have failed. It probably would not have happened because they couldn't get any additional dollars from the state, but because we've worked together and made this happen, it is going to happen and it's right along the line with a lot of the work that we've been trying to do over time. So I think that that was a really positive thing that happened and I think that there have been, now that more people are aware of what's out there and what the fund can be done with and we've tweaked the application process and everything, I think that it's really starting to fall in line. Really the same thing happened with the Gerber Lake project. Were you chairman at that time, Bill? I know you were on the executive committee and at that time we had the opportunity to save one of the last lakes in the county, if not in the area, that when you're on the lake, you see no development around you and between the Department of Natural Resources and the Conservation Association and Sheboydon County stepping up and leveraging scarce resources, we were able to protect that property forever and as you mentioned earlier in this segment, if folks haven't been out there, I sure encourage them to do so because it's a little jewel in the county that gives you almost a feel as though you're in Canada. So the Stewardship Fund now has provided planned opportunities to take benefit of leveraging funds and doing good things for the community. So you've done a great job. Yeah, thank you. Now the Stewardship Fund also has helped with smart growth in communities, hasn't it? Right. What have you been doing in that area? Early in the process, there was this Stewardship ad hoc community that was formed and one of the things that was raised is that not a lot of the communities in the county had a plan. So if a project was being brought forward, how would we know whether or not it was worthwhile for funding and we really should have a direction to know that a community has thought out this project and that is something that they're working toward. So the thought was that a portion of the Stewardship money would be spent to grants for local communities for smart growth planning assistance. And I think that as some of the things that plans are starting to come forward, some of the communities are in some early visioning stages and things like that, but when we've had these projects come forward, we can say, oh yeah, the residents of this community have said at a rate of 80% of the residents said this is really important to them. And so this is a good fit. Or if they've said we don't need any more of that at all, I don't know, should Sheboygan County be a part of helping with funding if the people don't find it important? Or if there's a list of priorities, maybe we can only fund five out of eight, those that are part of a plan can help be funded. We can decide that as criteria. So, and I think that if it wasn't for that, a lot of communities would still be kind of, I know everybody knows they have to do it. And I think that it helps them be a little more comfortable with moving forward and feeling like they can do it. And I think that whereas maybe four years ago, most people were saying, well, we'll just wait till 2009. It's the state law requires that you need to have the plan in place by 2010. There's probably only three or four communities in this county that I have not had active dialogue with regarding SMART growth. The rest of them been meeting with them periodically. Some of them were frequently than others, but all of them I've had good dialogue back and forth with. So, I think that it's really, there are some things that are happening in this county that I would have never thought would happen before. For example, one that you're familiar with is a partnership between the village of Adele, the village of Random Lake and the town of Sherman, where they're all sitting around the table talking to each other. We have a similar situation in an area that I call Lake Country. It's three towns and two villages in the northwest corner of the county. And another one, another partnership north of here, town of Mosul, town of Herman and village of Howard's Grove. Those communities are actually, every month we sit down at a table and we talk about this is what's important to my community or that's what's important to your community. And we start to hash out some of the issues and come to a better understanding. In one community, for example, open space is valued from an aesthetic resource and in another one it's only valued from a farming resource but they can talk to each other and understand and begin to respect that a little bit more whereas in the past there would just be this friction and anger sometimes between those two groups and it's a little bit easier when the face is familiar that you don't agree with it. And so I think that it's really made a positive difference and I think that people are really working together where before they didn't, I think they always kinda knew that it was a good idea but they didn't really even know how to start. Here's another example, town of Linden and town of Mitchell. One of the things that came out of this was that they now send notices if there's a rezoning request to their neighbors across the border where they weren't doing that before. But obviously something that if the town of Linden does it right on that border it could affect somebody in the town of Mitchell but now they're having a dialogue. So I think that though somewhat controversial I think that in the end it's better for everybody not just in each of the communities but if all the communities are planning it's best for the county as a whole. So I think it's working good. And even though your department is an awful lot on your plate you've taken a personal interest in helping several of the communities. Yeah, I think. Excuse me, I think that's really great. I think it's important and I think it's fun. And yeah, it's good. Thank you. Well we've already covered a lot of ground and one of the things that can sometimes not be a lot of fun in your department is you have very capable good staff who often have to put the black hat on. The Land and Water Conservation Department for example or the extension, UW extension. They often have the white cap on and they're working with folks and providing information and it's more of a voluntary situation where some of your staff obviously yourself included as the director need to enforce codes, need to enforce zoning laws that the county board or the state has mandated. Very briefly, we only have a few minutes. Talk a little bit about that challenge. What's your staff have to do in regards to septic system location or when it comes to development along the lake or river? Right, well as far as the septic systems go anybody who lives in the country or on a septic system will have to deal with our department at some point in time. Whether it's upfront in the beginning if you have a vacant lot and you have your soil test done and your installer is putting in the system, our staff are out there making sure that the installer meets the state plumbing code for that to make sure that that system doesn't back up into your house or no corners were cut and you know, from time to time, the staff do find things but everybody works together and get it done. I mean, ultimately want to make sure that the system is functioning and you as a landowner have a place to put the stuff that you use in your house. The other time that you might deal with us is if you have a discharge to the surface whether it be a drainage ditch or a river or whatever we respond to complaints. A lot of times I'll be honest with you what we see is two neighbors are mad at each other and then this one calls and says I can see it flowing down the ditch and then that you know and but once we get a complaint what we'll do is contact the landowner. We'll try to find an outfall at first. If we can't, we'll ask to die test the system when we put some dye down the sinks and the toilets and things and we wait a couple days to see if it shows up and sometimes even when we suspect it's a discharging someplace that's not supposed to you don't find it, you can't see it there's not a whole lot you can do about it if there's bright green water running through a drainage ditch one day then we can start, we'll issue an order and we always try to work with people in a reasonable time frame if an order is issued to replace a system or update a system, you know we don't give you one month if it's December because obviously you can't do much we try to look at that. If you live on a lake you need a permit if you live within 300 feet of a river or 1,000 feet of a lake you need a permit from us and there's a number of different criteria and if I had any advice for anybody buying land on the lake is come to our office and ask the questions because a lot of times we see people buying property with the assumption that oh I can just tear this down or I can add on here and then they've spent 300, $400,000 sometimes to find out that they're stuck with this property and now they're mad which I can fully understand but that makes things difficult and if you build something without a permit and we couldn't issue a permit for it you will remove it. People sometimes have this opinion that well I'll just pay the file building pay the fine and that's not the way it works we do issue orders for removal and we've been to court before on it so it's always best to just do everything on the up and up, get your permits and ask the questions beforehand. Though again it may not always be pleasant for your staff or the people interacting with your staff, the earlier they contact your office the better and the bottom line is you're seeking to protect the resource whether it's water quality or the interest of the individual looking to build that house or put that septic system in. Absolutely. Well Shannon we covered a lot of ground and time went quickly and I hope our viewers in this brief snapshot got a picture of just the energy and vitality you've brought to the department I know you've only been with the county about four years or so but Bill Gehring and I both appreciate the work that you and your staff do and we're very appreciative of the good things that are happening in the community as a result of your department. Thank you. If you have questions don't hesitate to contact Shannon Hayden or her staff at the planning and resources department in the county administration building they're always looking to help you and until next time on behalf of chairman Bill Gehring and myself Adam Payne thank you for joining us, next month we'll have the child support director Jim Groff here, again thank you for joining us.