 Which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next order of business is the roll call. Supervisor Schobert, you are here remotely, correct? Yes, that's correct. Supervisor Hilblink, you are here remotely, correct? Correct. Supervisor Bosman, you are here remotely, correct? Here, correct. 24 supervisors present. Okay, thank you. And one dog. Next is a consideration of a memorial resolution, resolution number six. Resolution number six, honoring the life of former County Board Supervisor Alan S. Raider. Whereas former County Board Supervisor Alan S. Raider passed away on April 7th, 2021. And whereas Mr. Raider served as County Board Supervisor over a span of 30 years from 1970 to 2000. Having served on the then Agriculture Committee, which he chaired from 1971 to 1980. And again from 1982 to 1984. On the then Resources Committee from 1970 to 1978. And again from 1982 to 1988. On the then Welfare Committee from 1978 to 1982. On the Property Committee from 1986 to 1988. On the then Highway Committee from 1988 to 2000. Which he chaired from 1996 to 2000. And on the then Human Services Committee from 1994 to 2000. And whereas Mr. Raider also served his community on the Greenbush Fire Department for 52 years as Fire Chief and First Assistant Chief. As Greenbush Town Clerk. And as a member of the Farm Bureau, the Alcar Lake Glambula School Board. On the United Church of Christ. As well as many other clubs and organizations. And as the builder and owner of the Stagecoach Drive and Restaurant in Greenbush for seven years. And whereas Mr. Raider was a polio survivor in his teenage years. Never letting his disability slow him down. And whereas Mr. Raider will be remembered as a conservative man who treated people courteously. Didn't like wasting county tax dollars. Was concerned about providing proper roads for county residents. And was a proponent of Rocky Knoll and the Marsh. Now therefore be it resolved that by passage of this resolution. The county board here with. Makes public its recognition of Mr. Raiders dedicated service. The citizens of the county. And expresses its heartfelt sympathy to his family. And friends and especially his wife Janet. And children Deborah Russell and Perry. He had further resolved that. The clerk be directed to forward a copy of this resolution to generator. Deborah Sipple Russell Raider and Perry Raider. Respectfully submitted this 18th day of May 2021. Pursuant to county board rule 2.13 this resolution will be on the floor for immediate action. And please join me in a standing vote. Thank you. Would Perry Raider and Debbie Sipple please come up to receive the resolution. Resolution number seven. Regarding honoring the life of former county board supervisor Steven H. Bauer. Whereas former county board supervisor. Steven H. Bauer passed away in April 12th 2021. And whereas Mr. Bauer served as county board supervisor from 2014 to 2020. Having served on the law committee from 2014 to 2016. Planning resources agriculture and extension committee. From 2016 to 2018. And the property committee from 2016 to 2020. Which he chaired from 2018 to 2020. And whereas Mr. Bauer. Also served as community as chairman of the town of Sheboygan Falls for 14 years. And as the owner of the SNR bar and restaurant for 37 years. And whereas Mr. Bauer will be remembered as being a personable. Gentlemen who is extremely organized. Love politics enjoyed. Working for the local people. Especially those in the town of Sheboygan Falls. Any respect to other people's ideas and opinions. Listening. With an open ear heart and mind and fighting for what was right. And now therefore be it resolved that by passage of this resolution. The county board herewith makes public its recognition of Mr. Bauer's dedicated service. To the citizens of the county. And expresses its heartfelt sympathy. To his family and friends and especially his wife Rosie. It further resolved that the clerk be directed before to copy this resolution. Rosie Bauer. Spectally submitted this 18th 18th day of May 2021. Pursuant to county board rule 2.13. This resolution will be on the floor for immediate action. And please join me in a standing vote. Okay. Thank you. Would Rosie Bauer please come up to receive the resolution. Next is the approval of the April 20th 2021 journal. Supervisor Wagner. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Move for approval of the journal of April 20th. Thank you. Supervisor Brower. I second that motion. Thank you. Supervisor Brower. Is there any discussion? Seeing none. Please vote. Supervisor Schobert. Yay or nay? Yay. Yes. Supervisor Hilbelink. Yay or nay? Yay. And Supervisor Bosman. Yay or nay? Yay. Which is approving unanimously. Okay. Next is consideration of reappointment by county administrator to board of adjustments. Pete Sherman. Plymouth. Supervisor Wagner. Thank you Mr. Chairman. I move for approval of the chairman. Thank you Supervisor Wagner. Supervisor Abler. I'll support that motion Mr. Chairman. Thank you Supervisor Abler. Is there any discussion? Okay. Seeing no discussion. Please vote. Supervisor Schobert. Yay or nay? Yay. Supervisor Hilbelink. Yay or nay? Yay. And Supervisor Bosman. Yay or nay? Yay. Yup. That's approving unanimously. Next is a presentation. We have Matthew Stripmoder, Health Human Services Director, giving a presentation on child welfare. Okay. Good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board. It is my pleasure to be here tonight. And I do mean pleasure. This is the third time in three years that I've been here to speak to you about our child welfare system. And for the first two times we were using the words crisis. We were using that because the state of Wisconsin was in serious straits and especially here in Sheboygan County. And tonight, although I'm not going to suggest we don't still have challenges, we used the word update because we have some very promising, very optimistic news to be able to share in terms of results that we're getting from some significant work that's been done by staff in the last couple of years. So the presentation tonight, I should back up. Basically, I'll try to, just in case you don't happen to remember exactly what our child welfare mandates are here as a county, I will briefly go over what it is that each county is responsible for. I will remind you what it was that we said in 2019, 2020 when we came and spoke with you. Then we'll talk a little bit about what we're seeing today and a bit about the near future and what we'll be doing next. So our county system, each county system in Wisconsin is responsible to ensure that we have the ability to accept phone calls or communication of any kind. If someone is concerned about potential safety risk, potential neglect, each county needs a system to accept those, to assess those, open those for ongoing monitoring and services if needed. And hopefully not often but sometimes when families need to be split apart and children taken away, hopefully to be placed with other relatives. But sometimes that isn't an option. Counties also need to be able to do that as well. As you can see from up on the display, this is a large system. This is a large responsibility. We have four supervisors, approximately 24 social workers and support staff. There's about seven and a half million dollars of overall funding inside this system, about four and a half million of which is levy. This is something that is very near and dear to counties. Very expensive, very important work as it relates to the safety of children in our communities. We came in 2019 talking to the board about the need for a resolution, the need for some conversation with local legislators and the Department of Health Services and the Department of Children and Families. It wasn't good enough in Wisconsin. We had a crisis situation. Certain counties were closing departments because of expenses. Some counties had 100% staff turnover. Children in some communities were being sent to Tennessee, Arkansas, other states because there was nowhere left in our own state to care for these children. That's what the word crisis meant there and that was something felt across the state. 80% of cases across the state in the child protective system had some sort of complication from substance use. Here in Sheboygan County, when we looked at children that were removed over the course of 2010 to 2018, 276 children were removed because of caretaker drug abuse. That's a 110% increase over about a six-year period of time. Unacceptable workloads across the state. Best practice was talking about maybe eight families per worker, maybe 15 children, and outside of Milwaukee back in 2019, it was about 15 families per worker, about 30 children per worker. So it's hard to do good work when you're working with twice the suggested number of cases. And county match, as you can see from this last graphic, counties were required by statutes to be putting $6.8 million into the child welfare system. Counties were over-matching that by 1,600% to the tune of more like $117.9 million. So a crisis funding-wise, a crisis in terms of outcomes in children being removed. Another example of the children being removed, if I can get it to go here. This was a slide back in 2019. We shared this over the course of six years or so. The number of kids in out-of-home care across the state increased by 40%, 39%. In Sheboygan, that same timeframe, it increased 200%. So a crisis in the state was a double crisis here in Sheboygan. And not only did more children go out of home care, but they stayed in out-of-home care for 131% longer over that same timeframe. So that's what we said in 2019. A lot of data, a lot of scary numbers. 2020, back in the Leadership Forum, we talked with you again, that we had plans, but we wanted to remind you there are still 80% of the cases coming into our system complicated by substance use. There are still an increasing number of children in our community. Up to 96% in 2019 versus 21% in 2011. Increasing numbers of kids because of substance use, caretaker drug abuse. These issues aren't going away. The Sheboygan workload, that VEX practice again, was roughly 1 to 15 for children. We were in the 1 to 17 to 20. Not quite in the 1 to 30, but again, hard to focus and do best practice when you have large loads like that. I'd mentioned in 2019 how our cases of numbers of out-of-home care had gone up 200%. If you added about another year, year and a half to that data, they actually went up 247% in Sheboygan. And then our levy over the course of 2010 to 2018 went up almost 2 million. A couple years later, almost another 2 million. So the crisis has continued. But really one thing that, I don't know, I call a tipping point on this scale. As we were gathering our ideas on what we needed to do to change, we finally got some data from the regional office. It felt like it was worse in Sheboygan. And we got some data. What you can see here is a bunch of different colored lines. Those are communities of similar size. We should expect to be somewhere in the middle of those. We are the number up on top. We had approximately 100 children more in out-of-home care on a given day than many of our equivalent counties. And what I told the board during the leadership forum was some of that was bad luck in our community from substance use and things like that. But that's everywhere. Some of that is that we just weren't as innovative as we needed to be. Somewhere along the line, our practice had shifted and we needed to tighten our belts and do a better job. That's what we've been working on for the past year and a half. It helps that the state did increase, recognized that there was a challenge related to the funding. And in the last biennial budget, there was a substantial increase that counties received. That was helpful, but again, that wasn't the full answer. What really did it, I'm just going to pop all these up there. This slide here shows that going back to about early 2020, when we were recognizing that things needed to change here, we started a lot of different action. We changed the methods and mechanisms in which we staffed cases from the next morning after something might have happened, through how we reviewed them on an ongoing basis, how often we reviewed them, the tools that we used. We maximized the referrals to the other kinds of great services that we have. Our Children with Long Term Support Program, which is well funded by the state, our Comprehensive Community Services Program for kids with mental health issues, that's well funded by the state. We're growing those as systems that need to be serving children who are at risk. We changed the way we worked in the court systems with our legal services. We began a new partnership with Corporation Council back at the beginning of 2020 that has been very successful. Some great work. The DA's office was trying very hard, but it had a lot of turnover and wasn't able to devote the amount of staff time that we're able to get now. That process was going so well that we received permission to use a little bit of our reserve to enhance that. A little chart there that you can't see for every 25 kids or so that we can get to permanency. It's good for them, and it saves the county about $250,000 a year. So we have a temporary increase for our legal services to try to get more of those through the legal system, more permanency for those children and families. And then the biggest box on the end is because that's where most of our work's coming from. We started a process improvement with the state facilitation. We've had 18 different teams so far working on things from tools to comparing our practice to other counties, to the legal services, to how we communicate with the judges, to who we're communicating with in the schools and how we're doing the various collaborations, to team morale, anything that might affect how effective our system is. That's been going for about, going strong for almost a year now, and a lot of staff buy-in. So now what I want to do is really talk about the stuff that I think is pretty exciting. This first graph that you see here, this is trying to represent that every year we get roughly 100 or so contacts from the community that they're worried that somebody might be at risk, might be a safety concern, possible neglect, anywhere from 1,100 to 1,300 a year. It dipped a little bit in the pandemic situation because there weren't as many kids in school for as long, which is a place where some of those situations get recognized. But still, our business stayed fairly stable in terms of the number of referrals. This next graph is showing, as a county, when we have more kids out of home than other counties, what it's showing is that we have different risk tolerance. We are opening more cases. We are being probably too conservative, which is hard to say because you're talking about children's safety, but other communities our size are not opening as many cases. They're finding a way to support the families in the home or not open them to services and refer them to other things instead. So as our business stayed about the same, this second graph is showing that the number of cases we screened to open to our services has started to decrease. As we staff things different, as we use different tools, fewer families are being opened. More families, we are finding alternatives to keep safe other than opening them to our system. The number of times when we go to the legal system to say we have a child in need of protective services, we think most likely we will need to remove that child and place them somewhere. That has gone down from a roughly 165 cases in 2019 to projected 88 cases this year. Again, we're finding different ways other than removing children to help keep them safe. And my favorite slide because this really shows, this goes back to 2017. You look at the beginning of 2019 with that 367. There was a day we had 367 children and out of home care. That was probably a day when we were using that word crisis a lot. At the end of the first quarter, when we happened to look on March 31st or April 1st, our system had 193 children and out of home care. We are keeping kids safe. We are finding a way to do that differently, to offer more services to families in their homes, remove less kids from homes, which is better for them. We need to keep them safe, but there is effects when you remove kids from homes even if you're keeping them safe, you're causing challenges in other areas. So some great results. We're not done. I think that number is still higher than some comparative counties, but it is much closer than it was a year or two ago. As we look at next steps, we hope to propose some ideas. The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 consciously recognizes that the child welfare system is probably being affected by the pandemic as more and more families have been struggling, anxiety, mental health, as things have been challenging, probably will show up. And so funding can be used to strengthen community alternatives. So I'm sure we'll be looking closely at that. Governor Ever's budget has a lot of enhancements to the community system in there. I'm not sure how many of those will make it through the Joint Finance Committee process, but we're hopeful that possibly some additional funding or some new infrastructure supports for counties to build more community services comes out. We have to take a very close look at our case loads. As we talk to the counties that are doing a little bit better than us, they're working with one to 12, one to 15 children. We're working with one to 17, one to 20. We want to believe that we're better than other counties, but we may need to take a look at some point in terms of our case load sizes to get to that next step. And then federally, there's a whole movement federally for states to do more of what we're doing right now. Federal government wants to see less kids and out of home care, more kids being served in the community. That would have kind of scared me with our numbers two years ago, and I don't think we're ready yet, but we're well on the track to maximizing those community alternatives. Really proud tonight to be sharing some of those early indicators that our system really has turned the corner and is looking in a way that makes us much more proud and innovative than we would have said a couple years. So that's it. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Next are our public addresses. All right. First is Phillip Jones. Phillip here. Suzanne Spelz is next. Address, and you'll have five minutes. I'll give you one minute, one minute. Hi, my name is Suzanne Spelz, and I live at 3917 Mendocino Lane. I just wanted to say that I know that there are some persons here who truly have the best, the citizen's best-interested mind and you protect our constitutional rights. That being said, I have concerns in regards to the transparency of our county government ever since this ordinance three came down, and that was an issue that appeared to me to be announced at the very latest possible moment in hopes of getting it through before the public could find out about it. That's how I took it. Of course, we all knew it was defeated due to many people rising up and speaking out. That was what the county, some people in the county were trying to avoid. After all that, I discovered via open records requests that certain individuals were planning for more enforcements similar to what ordinance three would have done. I took this as more secret planning. Then just recently on May 4th, a few citizens were on the Health and Human Services Committee meeting, and we were made rather inadvertently. It appeared to me anyway, so this pandemic administrative panel that had been going on for a year, and I asked this question, was this another effort that was meant to stay hidden from the citizens? Once I did receive the minutes, one of the items was community pop-up clinics with possibly the schools. Then on Monday, May 10th, the Sheboygan area school district told students and families that there would be pop-up clinics at the schools starting on Wednesday, May 12th. I do not know this for sure, but I wonder how much influence our public health and county government had in these clinics being starting up. Being that these Vs are highly questionable, which much evidence that they are dangerous medical experiments, you would think that the public should have made aware of these pop-up clinics sooner, especially since it involves minors. Assuming that the county had influence in this situation, was it hidden purposely because people knew that they would be pushed back from the public? Who knows? I don't really know for sure, but I would imagine somebody does. I have never paid much attention to local government until last year where I saw our rights and freedoms being chipped away at under the guise of health and safety. I believe our governments were originally set out to work for the citizens. Now I'm not sure really who government is working for. Anyways, as long as I have breath left in me, I will continue to speak up for my rights and freedoms. Thank you. Next, we have Judy Poole. I'm Judy Poole on 1118 Ashwood Drive in Sheboygan. The day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, a school teacher named Jane Elliott conducted an experiment with her third grade classroom. She divided the students between blue eyes and brown eyes. She proceeded to tell them that children with blue eyes are better and smarter than brown eyes. At recess, she told the blue-eyed children they could play on the playground equipment while the children with brown eyes could not. The blue-eyed children could go to lunch first. She instructed the blue-eyed students to put brown collars around the necks of the brown-eyed children. Consequences of the minimal group experiment became very evident quickly. With the superiority of the blue-eyed children that they began to feel and with the support of the authority figure, the teacher, the blue-eyed children became more aggressive and mean to the brown-eyed ones. They started calling them brown-eyes as an insult. They refused to play with them and harassed them constantly. They even started physical fights with the so-called inferior group. The second day, Elliott reversed the groups. There were arbitrary reasons why now brown-eyed children were better and smarter. Blue collars were now placed on the blue-eyed children. The results were the same. What this experiment proved was that in an authoritarian environment, the group closest to the authority figure, in this case the teacher, feels superior and justified. It's a teacher's role to be the mediators between children with superficial differences, not instigators or punishers. This is wrong to try to pit children, parents, and teachers against each other. As I told the Sheboygan School District Board last night, my concern is the coercive methods being used to divide citizens in this county. Face-friendly people versus those who want to wear masks. Those who believe in natural herd immunity versus advocates. The Board compromised a lot, but were reluctant to make masks optional immediately. Instead, they stated the schools will be mask optional after this term starting June 9. Even ultra-liberal Mayor Tom Barrett proclaimed masks optional today, giving until June 1 for people and businesses to make changes. The obvious collaboration between government and private businesses in this county to push an agenda has been astounding. The bullying and demeaning coming from some county board members has been very disturbing. Jane Elliot's experiment is being conducted today by people in authority over regular citizens who just want to live their lives as free Americans. I believe that some of the board members here know that our Republican Constitution protect first the right of the individual above any and all local policies. Unfortunately, other members may have forgotten this and need to be reminded. Still others are aware of this fact, yet their own personal biases and ambitions are overriding the rights of the people to choose how they live. Please consider which category you are in. Thank you. That is all we have for public addresses. All right, next is letters, communications, and announcements. Okay, we have a few. We have a resolution, two, from Washington and Wapaka County boards of supervisors supporting legislation providing an increase in criminal and ordinance violation surcharges. We'll refer that to the law committee. Resolutions from Washington and Wapaka counties. Board of supervisors supporting legislation that removes requirements for duplicate copies of transcripts for application of search lines. We'll refer that to the law committee. And two, from Wood County. The first, opposing changes to the wildlife damage and claims program. Okay, that we'll refer to the planning, resources, agriculture, and extension committee. And the last one from Wood resolution requesting Wisconsin to strengthen its hate crime statute 939.645. And that we'll refer to the law committee. That is all we have. Next is the county administrators report. Good evening. Isn't it nice to look on our faces? It's just, it's wonderful to be here. I want to thank Chris Lewinsky and Elaine. They're both in the control room back there. But Chris Lewinsky in particular, all of this IT and technology that's before us now, not only benefiting the county board, benefiting the public so more people can participate in these meetings, whether they're in person or participating virtually. And of course our court system. The court system really took a hit the last year and slowed things down. Have a lot of catching up to do. And this is benefiting the courts as well. So my compliments and appreciation to our IT staff and Chris Lewinsky and his leadership. I also wanted to thank Matt Stripmoder for his excellent and uplifting presentation about child welfare. The child welfare crisis is real and Matt's leadership, his thoughtful leadership and the team he's working with has made such a difference. So thank you to the county board for your support the Health and Human Services Committee. And also I want to give a shout out to Crystal Fever, our Corporation Council. The collaboration between Corp Council and Health and Human Services I think has been as strong as ever and it's really making an impact. So thank you both. I have a few areas I'm going to touch on tonight. Do you have the clicker or do you need this year? First, next slide please. I want to look at some comparative statistics. 14 months we've been at. Challenging months. And no one's had a roadmap to follow. And it's taken a toll on our community and our country and the world. And when we were really starting to pour into this, as you know back in March of 2020 look at the active cases at that time. The US active case count was 4,565. Sadly, 85 people had passed from COVID. The Wisconsin active case count was 72. No one had passed away. And of course, in little old Sheboygan County we only had four active cases and no deaths. So in March when we were all trying to get our arms around this and what does this mean and how do we prepare, how do we go through our emergency planning and work in collaboration with others to safeguard our coworkers and community. We were hungry for information and again, no one had a roadmap. We had individuals who came forward and suggested we didn't need to do much or that it was a hoax or it wasn't more serious than the flu. And I appreciated the public speaker's comments about treating everybody with respect. I remember early on last summer when people started wearing masks some of them were ashamed for doing so. Yet we continue to hear how wearing masks is so important to protect ourselves and others and it's also really knocked down the flu season, which has been one of the positives in this ongoing pandemic. But look at where we are a year later. U.S. confirmed case count of over 32 million people contracted COVID. The active case count is just under 6 million. 586 thousand people died directly as a result of COVID or it's been a contributing factor. I think of those families across the country and truly it saddens me and I think more and more of us in this community now know people have been impacted and the difference it can make. If you don't think it's serious ask one of those families that lost a level. The Wisconsin confirmed case count is now about 606,000. The active case count is 7,846 and of course we think it's much higher than that. This is the reported active case count and then sadly there's been nearly 7,000 deaths in the state of Wisconsin today. In Sheboygan county 13,769 people had confirmed COVID. The active case count today dropped again 79. I think it went below 100 yesterday and it was difficult not to get up and cheer. It's just so good to see these recent trends go down. It's just good for everyone and I'm really pleased. In fact we haven't been below 80 since last August of 2020. At one point you may recall we had a high activity case count peaked at 2,600 people in November. We've come a long way. Sadly 43 people have passed away from COVID or COVID related impact and of course we feel for those families and those people impacted in this community. CDC came out with some wonderful news last week and that's why I think most of us in the room aren't wearing a mask tonight. If you're fully vaccinated you are no longer strongly urged, required to wear a mask and we just communicated that information with all of our employees today. We have about 850 employees and I doubt there's many people in this community that aren't aware of this CDC guidance and I know that Chairman Koch and I and a few others attended a function just that evening, a chamber county function and we would have been in there with our masks on without question and we walked in and you could just feel the elation in the room and how much people enjoyed seeing one another and interacting again so we've come a long way. And of course that recommendation is driven on science and how far we have come starting to combat COVID and defeat this pandemic. Really encouraged by it and again it's just good to be here tonight meeting in person again safely and seeing one another's faces. All of that information to our employees was obviously shared with the county board this afternoon as well and I presume many of you saw that and it's just good to have your support. Next slide please. That evening at the chamber we got to celebrate some success and you know I don't think we often take enough time to celebrate success or really reflect where we've been and where we could improve what we could do better going forward but the community has been coming together of late to recognize outstanding professionals people who have gone above and beyond to do good work and as you can see our Starlene Grossman our public health officer who has dealt with some of the most heavy lifting you can imagine over the last year, year and a half was recognized by United Way of being the outstanding essential worker of the year. Wonderful attributes of her. Next slide please. It didn't stop there our Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce also had an award tonight, that's the function we were at last year and Star once again was identified as an outstanding leader in this community who has gone above and beyond she was recognized as the top young professional of the year Star Grossman our Sheboygan County Public Health Officer You know the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation has been very supportive from day one of our public health guidelines and actions they know we're not perfect but they know we care and we're trying to protect this community and keep businesses open and they've been very supportive we had folks like David Kohler and Lou Gentine Johnsonville and many other companies do a public service announcement encouraging people to wear masks social distance follow CDC guidance when you can when it's your turn and I can't thank our pillars of this community and our community as a whole for their support and collaboration and again it's just nice to see some of those tributes going to one of our own county employees in public health Next slide please. It doesn't end there Representative Lynn growthman Congressman growthman I'm going to start and I'm going to read it I would like to commend Ms. Starlene Grossman for being named the top young professional of the year by the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce This award recognizes a young professional who has made all around significant contributions to civic, charitable entertainment or quality of life within Sheboygan County Ms. Starlene Grossman has distinguished herself as a Sheboygan County Division of Public Health and Community Engagement Starlene has gone above and beyond to ensure the safety of the citizens of Sheboygan County during the COVID-19 pandemic Staying up to date with the most critical information and working tirelessly to keep the public informed and healthy she deserves this award Once again I would like to commend Starlene for receiving the top young professional of the year award I wish Ms. Starlene Grossman all the best as she continues to serve others in her community These are just three examples I can't think of someone who deserves it more but I'll tell you what I'm so proud of her and proud of our organization and I hope we all recognize we should all be celebrating this recognition We don't make any decisions here in a vacuum There isn't one individual that makes all the calls here We always collaborate to work together before we make decisions and we certainly were doing this with public health I mean public health has a lot of statutory responsibility start as a public health officer but not once was she making decisions without working with her team working with Matt Stripmatter working with Corporation Council working with the county board her committee, the county administrator all of us work together to make the best decisions we could There's this administrative pandemic committee that came up during public comment I just want to touch on that We have a county board making thoughtful deliberate decisions all these policy makers all these elected officials but I can tell you there are literally if not dozens advisory committees and internal committees and staff committees and working with others to get inputs problem-solve working collaboration that's what we do and that's what this administrative pandemic committee has been doing for the last year it was established by county policy if something hits the fan and it did this group convene who's on this group hospitals law enforcement emergency responders school administrators nurses it's a group of public and private sector individuals doing emergency planning and working in collaboration to serve this community of course if any policy final policy decisions need to be made such as the ordinance that was considered in August and supported but that in part came out of that administrative panel group because doctors and hospital presidents wanted to make sure that we work together and we're doing emergency planning being transparent and sharing what we might do if things get worse fortunately we never had to take some of the actions that were being considered but this group really deserves a lot of credit for their service to this community and the ongoing service it hasn't stopped so take pride in these awards that Starling Grossman received next time you see or send or a note but it reflects on Sheboyin County Government all of you as county board supervisors and what you've done to support our public health team provide the resources we need the decisions to be made together in collaboration next slide please so moving forward you heard Matt talk about that is the hot topic a hot and certainly a more positive topic than the ongoing discussion of COVID we'd like to think COVID is starting to see the end of the road and let's focus on making some wonderful investments in our community let's continue to help make some good things happen so the state of Wisconsin as you heard at one point it was about 3 billion and they're going to receive about 3.2 billion the numbers all got ruled out last week and adjustments were made but the state of Wisconsin is going to receive about 2.5 billion Sheboyin County will receive 22 million that actually went up about 900,000 the city of Sheboyin is going to receive 22 million there's dropped a little bit but all in all in my career I've never experienced a situation where we're getting direct resources from the federal government to help make wise investments and improve our community maybe the non-motorized transportation program that was a 25 million grant we had years ago to improve our bike trails but this is as far as I'm concerned a really unique situation and as I shared with the finance committee last week I'm fired up about I mean we're always striving here just to hold our own and keep our heads above water and maintain the programs and services we provide you as elected officials are truly going to be able to make some decisions on how these funds are used to better our community and believe me ideas are starting to float our direction but we have until December of 2024 to expend these funds so often you receive news like this and you've got to spend it the same year right? we've got three, three and a half years to make decisions here so we can be thoughtful, we can be deliberative we can work with other communities to leverage resources we're already having discussions with the city of Sheboyin we can work with the private sector to leverage resources why? that's what we do it's exciting a little flavor for it next slide please if you haven't already encourage you to go to the U.S. Department of Treasury website they've got more information there that you probably care to read I think the entire bill was over 150 pages but this this high-end fact sheet boils it down to two pages I think I sent this to the board a week or so ago and I encourage you if you have time this would probably be a good thing to take a look at this shares the eligibility for how these funds can be used because of course increasingly more people are encouraged by this one and what can we use the funds for what's possible so if you get a chance take a look at it very quickly these funds may be used to support public health response you've heard Matt talk about important programs that they have in health and human services and what we might be able to do is work there support behavioral health care things of that nature address negative economic impacts it's pretty broad when you hear that certainly where's the negative economic impacts the past year but we're going to be able to help speed the recover of impacted industries promote the area promote businesses promote tourism promote people to move and live and work in Sheboygan County in fact we're already having discussions over Wisconsin on how we can have a broader state and regional approach to marketing our area and helping recruit and retain citizens workers we continue to have three four thousand job openings in Sheboygan County for the last decade we've been talking about two and a half to four thousand job openings in Sheboygan County one of the key barriers we have for that right now is housing we're going to put all these people if they do come so we are going to have some opportunities to address negative economic impacts and marketing our area helping businesses recruit and retain staff working on things like housing are all possibilities we can replace public sector revenue loss this is good for local property taxpayers everyone in this room is in property taxes when you have something like COVID hit the fan you don't have that plan for necessarily a budget for that right we had most of that recovered already think of Rocky Knoll our census went down from about 130 to 99 the lower our census is at Rocky Knoll the less revenue we have coming in to support the overall operation of that facility that could require more of a property tax subsidy with this funding we're able to mitigate the loss of some of those dollars rather than put it on the shoulders of local property water and sewer infrastructure the city is going to be looking at that as well as other municipalities but where might we need some water or sewer infrastructure from a county point of view Rocky Knoll has a wastewater treatment facility that Elkhart Lake surrounding areas rely upon we may want to take a look at that and see whether or not we need to make further investments to enhance it while we have this opportunity the other thought that has come to mind is our airport the Sheboygan County Memorial Airport is ripe to explode with economic development we've had folks who'd like to create a headquarters there, build there it will absolutely further enhance our community it's a jewel if you haven't checked out the US Customs Facility a terminal get out there, it's beautiful but what we don't have out there we have sewer rely on wells that's a little tough to build a headquarters or a new business if you don't have that infrastructure we may, you may want to consider that going forward broadband infrastructure no doubt you're all hearing a lot about broadband infrastructure I'm excited about this too but you're a student school pending Lakeland a business who wants to operate more effectively we all know in this room that there are areas in this community that are underserved or it's pitifully slow and if there's one area of agreement at the state and federal level it appears to be investing more in broadband so we could use some of these funds for that but there are also other opportunities through the state resources that we may be able to tap into that and not necessarily use ours bottom line is we're already talking to folks there's a company in the village of recognized supervisor Bill Gehring who brought it to my attention and helped facilitate the meeting Bernkatz, German Katz joined us we're already talking to a local company that can do broadband infrastructure to hear their ideas and they contacted us through supervisor Gehring and the SEEDC so we're hearing, we're learning Thursday this week we're going to be having a heads of government meeting and we're going to give a discussion of broadband just to raise everyone's understanding of what it is and how it can be helpful why it's so important for economic development so that's in play and then finally and I said it earlier housing I'm so pleased the city of Sheboygan Mayor Ryan Sorensen has really made an issue of wanting to further enhance housing let's say for example there's three, four thousand job openings right now and we put together a program of some kind we're able to recruit a thousand people to move to Sheboygan County to start working at Sargento Johnsonville and other places places that want to expand if they had the workers where are they going to live we've got some barriers to work together as a community to overcome so ultimately through our annual budget process our deliberate thoughtful budget process committees department heads anyone in the public can weigh in and offer suggestions Matt Stripmutter has already reached out to his staff a few weeks ago and encouraged them to reach out to nonprofits on ideas they may have we are open to ideas and if you get contacted from a nonprofit or anybody who has an idea particularly if they're your constituent hear them out see what they think forward it on to the respective department that may work in that area behavioral health or mental health service may be a good idea to contact Matt Stripmutter or a member of his team so it can be vetted a little bit more but ultimately that's going to go through the committees, finance, full county board and be again thoughtfully considered next slide please we'll conclude on a lighter note we have as you know for a number of years well as long as I can remember we provide 5, 10, 15, 20 year pens to county board supervisors and employees as you may recall didn't do that last year it's not quite as meaningful to do it if you can't be in person and recognize the person so we have three five year pens to give to three county board supervisors this evening if Vern and Robert could please join me now the first county board supervisor but not the in attendance this evening but he's with us virtually so Brian Hillblink it's nice to see your face up there and both virtually and we've got your photo from the county board file and let me just share a few a little bit of background about Brian and some of the things he's been involved in Brian was appointed to the county board in May of 2015 filling the vacated seat of Devin Lemieux was now serving in the state senate Brian has served on the property committee since he joined the county board and also served on the human resources committee during his tenure on the county board property committee Brian supported a number of construction projects including the health and human services front lobby addition boy if you haven't seen that check that it's very simple the engineering lab addition at UW-Shaborgan combined emergency dispatch remodeling in the sheriff's department the Taylor Park shelter replacement the transportation complex and more recently the courthouse secured entrance and our new u.s. customs facility and terminal you start hearing these things and you start and you recall just how many projects and investments we've made as an organization and you've made these investments is highly valued and appreciated and he and his fellow county board supervisors certainly you certainly have made some significant investments so please join chairman Koch, vice chairman Zika Bauer and me in recognizing supervisor Brian Hilbeling for five years of dedicated service we will we will take his pin to his home or whatever he prefers but let's put our hands together for Brian would county board supervisor Henry Nelson please join me up here Henry was elected to the county board in April of 2006 how's that work well he went he went and spent some time with the city common council but he was subsequently appointed to fill a vacancy on the county board in 2015 so this is this five year pin this evening as well though it could be seven plus but we don't have seven plus pins it's five ten it's just the way it looks right Henry is currently serving on the planning resources agriculture and extension committee in his chair of the property during Henry's tenure he supported and oversaw the same projects I just touched on that Brian was involved with so I'm not going to repeat that including relocation of the veteran service office to the aging disability resource center and numerous facility enhancements throughout this organization to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 we talk a lot about public health but our property committee and building services staff really stepped up to help keep our employees people utilize our facility as well so we thank you for that Henry Henry is also a champion of natural resources protection and enhancement and supported the enhancements we have made at the Amsterdam dunes Shaboy and Coney Marsh and the new Shaboy and Coney Marsh environmental center that is currently under construction Henry also served on the health and human services committee from 2015 to 18 and suffice it to say Henry is a very thoughtful engaged and valuable member of our team who like all of us in this room strives for continuous improvement and the wise use of taxpayer resources please join chairman chairman Siegelbauer and I in recognizing three for five dedicated and finally who is that county board supervisor could be in that photo he certainly is a good looking son of a gun next slide please could Keith Obler please join us up here I can't believe it's been 20 years 20 years he was elected to the county board in 2000 you're after I started with the county he's currently serving as chair person of the planning resources agriculture and extension committee a committee in which he served from 2008 to 2010 and then again 2012 to present in the past before some of the liaison committees were combined he served on the resources committee the agriculture and land conservation Keith is also a member currently of the executive and finance committees in addition Keith previously served the resources committee from 2012 to 2020 and on the property committee I think Keith is a great example of when you move around and serve on different committees you get such a breadth of experience and knowledge of county government and of course as we all know particularly those of you have been around longer every committee you go to you're learning new things we're always learning new things and he's done a wonderful job doing so I have always appreciated Keith's thoughtful down-to-earth approach and fair mindedness he is a track record of being an engaged problem solver improving the environment and strengthening our organization after 20 years the list is far too long and what Keith has all been a part of and contributed towards but let me just name it Keith played a key role in consolidating the land and water conservation department improving our county's fiscal track record help lead the charge to see the vision of the Sheboygan County Marsh Tower become a reality Keith also supported the development of the county stewardship fund the buffer strip program in order to help protect and enhance our water quality he supported the acquisition of the property around Gerber Lake improving the Sheboygan County Marsh Capground cleaning up and restoring the Sheboygan River and Harbor what I think is a top ten accomplishment of this county board and purchasing the Amsterdam Dunes preservation area and wetland mitigation bank another thing that I think is a top ten accomplishment certainly Roger Distruty deserves a lot of credit for that Keith has also been instrumental in improving upon our employee policies and helping assure we are doing right by our coworkers during Keith's time with the property committee he helped oversee the sale of the comprehensive center build a significant beautiful addition to Rocky Null complete the UW Sheboygan Science Building the technology center and with all that said Keith has contributed to Sheboygan County having on average only a 1.2% property tax levy increase annually for over a decade all the projects that I mentioned all the investments you've made all the improvements that this organization has done and on average property tax has gone up only 1.2% over the last decade he's been a big part of that you all have been a part of that these are accomplishments our county board and our community take pride in so on brief Keith is a great guy with a big heart and a strong wonderful voice please join Vern Robert and I in congratulating Keith for 20 years of dedicated service consideration of committee reports executive committee resolution number one regarding disallowance of role claim against Sheboygan County recommendation to adopt Supervisor Gehring thank you Mr. Chairman I move for adoption of resolution number one Supervisor Tostrodi thank you Mr. Chairman I'll second the motion thank you Supervisor Tostrodi under discussion seeing no discussion please vote Supervisor Schobert Yay your name Yay Supervisor Hilbeling Yay your name Supervisor Bosman Yay your name Yay resolution number three regarding adoption of the Sheboygan County comprehensive outdoor recreation and open space plan 2021 recommendation to adopt Supervisor Clark thank you Mr. Chair I move to adopt resolution three thank you Supervisor Clark Supervisor Obler thank you Mr. Chair I'll support the resolution adoption thank you Supervisor Obler under discussion please vote Supervisor Schobert Yay Supervisor Hilbeling Yay Supervisor Bosman Yay resolution number five regarding approving first amendment to Sheboygan County airport ground lease with Sheboygan County Aviation Corp recommendation to adopt Supervisor Gehring adoption of resolution number five thank you Supervisor Gehring Supervisor Distroty thank you Mr. Chairman I'll second motion thank you Supervisor Distroty under discussion seeing no discussion please vote Supervisor Schobert your name Yay Supervisor Hilbeling Yay Supervisor Bosman Yay Supervisor Blasley consideration committee reports finance committee resolution number two regarding authorizing application to Department of Natural Resources for grant to control agricultural or urban storm runoff pollution sources recommendation to adopt Supervisor Wagner thank you Mr. Chairman I move for passage of resolution number two thank you Supervisor Wagner Supervisor Montemay-Arch I second that discussion seeing none please vote Supervisor Schobert your name Yay Supervisor Hilbeling Yay Supervisor Bosman Yay consideration of committee reports planning resources agriculture and extension committee resolution number four regarding approving easement for location and replacement of drain tile Thomas Sheboygan Sheboygan County Airport recommendation to adopt Supervisor Abler I'll make a motion Mr. Chair to approve resolution number four thank you Supervisor Abler Supervisor Brower I will second that motion thank you Supervisor Brower and under discussion seeing no discussion please vote Supervisor Schobert your name Yay Supervisor Hilbeling Yay Supervisor Bosman Yay that also is approving unanimously alright with that I turn the gavel over to Supervisor Schobert seeing that there are no resolutions or arguments Supervisor I'll be with the next order of business is there a second thank you Supervisor Imel thank you Supervisor Imel all of the favorites say aye Supervisor Schobert Yay your name Yay Supervisor Hilbeling Yay Supervisor Bosman Yay Supervisor Clark Groober Abler Supervisor damp Supervisor Imel Supervisor OJ Supervisor damp we are adjourned