 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. I'm Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and host of this program, and today we're very pleased to have Jim Holbert with us, our Planning Director. Jim, welcome. Thanks, Adam. I'm very pleased to be here. Jim, believe it or not, has been with Sheboygan County now going on three years and we were just saying off air how quickly the time flies. Jim, please begin by sharing a little bit about yourself and your background. I've been doing this kind of work for, gosh, more than 30 years, believe it or not. I find that kind of difficult to believe. I started out actually teaching environmental science in high school, but then I got a fellowship to attend graduate school and environmental studies and took advantage of that. And after that I worked for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency directing statewide industrial solid and hazardous waste programs. I've also worked as a Planning Director for two other Wisconsin counties, and the duties were somewhat similar as they are here. The major differences were we also had comprehensive county zoning so we were also involved in just about every land use decision. We were also heavily involved in recycling and solid waste issues and hazardous waste issues as well. I've also worked for the Aveda Corporation and directed Global Environmental and Sustainability Affairs for that very large company. I've also operated my own environmental consulting firm for a number of years, and I managed a small environmental consulting firm on the island of Guam, and from there we did work all over the South Pacific. And weather-wise it's quite a bit different than here, but I enjoy being here as well. As you know, Jim, one of the many things that I really appreciate about you is the tremendous breadth of experience that you bring to the position. As soon as you walked in the door, you hit the ground running, you continue to make wonderful things happen for Sheboygan County, and as you think about your breadth of experience in the different places you've worked and the challenges you've tackled, as a relative newcomer to Sheboygan County, what's your impression of our Planning Department? What's your impression of Sheboygan County? Well, first of all, the reason I took the job was because of you, partially, and then also the wonderful staff. We have a great staff. I think the taxpayers benefit from a very dedicated, highly motivated, and excellent staff in the department. Sheboygan County itself is a fantastic place to live and to work. It's beautiful. It has a variety of, you know, recreational pursuits. We've got Lake Michigan, the Kettle Moraines, Sheboygan Marsh, Colerandre State Park, and a lot of other wonderful facilities. John Michael Koehler Art Center. The list just goes on and on. So Sheboygan is, in fact, a wonderful place, and that's one of the reasons why I took the job. Well, it's a good day of the year. I hope it continues for some time to come. When you think about the Planning Department and as you said, you've got some excellent staff to work with, please share a high-end overview of what the primary roles and responsibilities are of your staff. Well, we've got two planning technicians, a land use planner, and the land use planner is involved in the smart growth planning process that's mandated by the State of Wisconsin. And we have two zoning administrators, and they're involved in Shoreland floodplain and wetland zoning. We have a code administrator, and the code administrator is kind of, I guess you could say, the lead person in those zoning issues. We have a non-motorized transportation component. We have three people working in non-motorized transportation effort. That's a $25 million grant that we were lucky enough to get from Congress. We have an assistant planning director and two mapping technicians, two mapping people with our geographic information system. Again, these are all highly skilled people and do a great job. So a total number of... Oh, I'm not sure. It looks like about 15 people, perhaps something like that. Give or take. Give or take a few, and I hope I didn't forget anybody. Well, as you said, you have an outstanding staff, and I know you've done some comparison to other counties with similar responsibilities and similar population bases. And if I recall, our staff is actually a little leaner than many out there. Yeah, for the population size of the county and the scope of work that we do, we actually are managed to do quite well with a fewer number of staff. The reason we do news for taxpayers is because we do, I think, an excellent job. In fact, a better job than some other counties who look to us as a model at far less cost. Now you touched on some of the programs and services that the planning department is responsible for, but you in particular have really gotten involved with some exciting initiatives, ventures. Please touch on that. Sure. One of the first things I got involved in was the plans to construct the observation tower of the Marsh, and I'm very pleased to announce that we are under construction, and we should be having an opening ceremony by the middle of November, and maybe a bigger dedication in the spring. So that was an exciting effort. I've also been involved in the Amsterdam Dunes Project. That was an attempt to acquire and preserve about 325 acres of some really good lands and very unusual habitats. Unfortunately, we didn't get the grants that we had hoped for for that project. I'm still working on that, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that'll be successful. The county had tried three previous times to get a smart growth grant, and for one reason or another, the state didn't see fit to award us the money, and so we tried again, and we did get the smart growth grant, about $238,000 that will enable the county to undertake this mandated program. I also get involved in just about everything else that the staff do. Another project that I've recently got involved in, thanks to your encouragement, I guess you could say, would be the dredging of the Chewbacca River, and that's an excellent project with, I think, profound environmental and ecological impacts, and I think we can accomplish a lot through that. Hazardous waste, I guess we, in the last three years, have greatly increased that program, and we have far more participants. We collect far more hazardous waste now than we used to. We also instituted in partnership with Healthy Chewbacca in 2010, and the Chewbacca Police Department, and other law enforcement and medical folks, a wonderful waste medication collection project. And I mean this with all sincerity. I have 22 department heads that I have as you were working with, 22 departments with vast roles and responsibilities, but when it comes to the team that we have in place, of course I want people that are making good things happen, or striving to stir the pot and improve our community, and Jim, I can't thank you enough for the many things you have been involved in, and I'd like to take these one by one a little bit. Starting back with the tower. As you know, I participate on the Friends of the Marsh as does Keith Obbler, County Board Supervisor Keith Obbler, as does the Board Supervisor Jim Baumgart. Lil Pipping is the chair of that. She does a wonderful job, but your interest, and your enthusiasm for it, and your staff certainly have contributed to this. As you said, construction's underway. Give our viewers a little bit more of a flavor of the Chewbacca Marsh, and just why this is going to be so spectacular. Well, the Chewbacca Marsh is a fabulous place, and being a newcomer arriving here, I did, of course, study the area. I guess I'm still amazed at the gem that the Chewbacca Marsh really is. 14,000 acres, and I think it's taken for granted by the people who live here. But it's very unique ecologically, culturally, the historic aspects, the paleontology, the archeology. It's a fabulous place. And so the tower will bring more visitors to the Marsh, and we have other plans after the tower is constructed to further increase the number of visitors. And it's also highly used by environmental education classes. On average, we may get more than 3,000 children there in the summer to study outdoor recreation and environmental education. We would like to make that a lot higher. Maybe get 4,000 or 5,000 children here. And also adults. And so we'd like to partner with universities and other academic institutions, other environmental learning centers like Maywood and Camp Waikota and many others to actually increase the awareness of the Marsh. So the tower will bring more people on. And I think one of the coolest aspects of the tower is that we're also going to have a video camera. In fact, two cameras on the top. One will be for handicapped people that may be a little intimidated from climbing up 80 feet of the tower. They'll be able to sit at the Marsh lodge and actually observe the tower in the comfort of the restaurant. The other thing would be a webcam. We also have plans, as you know, to put a webcam on top of the tower. And so that means maybe a Sheboygan county resident might be visiting China and plans to come back to Sheboygan and Duck Hunt and the Marsh. And that person then can log on and check out the Marsh from afar. And of course, educational value for school children who might want to go online at school without even having to go out there that day. Good point. Excellent. Right. It's going to be the tallest wooden tower in the state of Wisconsin. And if people are interested in this, obviously they can go out to the Sheboygan Marsh and take a look at it as it's being constructed. But if they want to make a contribution, as you well know we've done this by raising donations throughout the county. I think about 300,000 now. And if folks want to contribute, how do they get more information? Well, first of all, we'd encourage more contributions because thanks to Joseph Schmidt and son's construction they have undertaken the construction of this even though we may not have quite enough money to finish. And so further donations are encouraged. And for donations $1,000 would bring you notice on a step for $50 to $100 you could get a brick beneath the tower you could have your name or any saying or commemoration you might wish. And then also for the educational components of what we'd like to start accomplishing or I should say further at the marsh I think those donations will go a long way for that. Nice overview. Another area you've been very active in your department providing leadership with the non-motorized program trail enhancement development throughout Sheboygan County. I know we both take pride in the residents of this community do of the Old Plank Road Trail which was established many years ago. But as you of late have pointed out to your resources committee and others in the community it takes money to keep these trails maintained and enhance them. Please tell us a little bit about the Old Plank Road Trail and some of the concerns you have about making sure that we keep these trails available for not only our residents but tourists. The Old Plank Road Trail is another gem I mean that's a pioneering effort in Wisconsin. Planning for that started gosh I think at least 30 years ago construction maybe 25 years ago and it truly is a multi-use path, multi-use trail. We have users year on from the snowmobile folks in the winter maybe four to five thousand snowmobile trips bicyclists and pedestrian and moped riders in the warm weather and that's approximately 34 to 35,000 user trips. We also have horseback riders horse drawn carriages segues. So it truly makes it a multi-use trail. The presence of mopeds makes it unique in Wisconsin that we also have mopeds from a long heritage of use on the Old Plank Road Trail. Unfortunately when the Old Plank Road Trail was constructed as a cautious savings measure it wasn't constructed necessarily the way it should be in other words the proper gravel base allegedly was not installed and also we found that some of the trees and the brush that was cut was buried where the asphalt is now located. As a result this material rots and decomposes and subsides and so we have issues with some of the pavement cracking and we have sink holds, we have washouts and long-term maintenance of these facilities is something that's commonly overlooked that costs an awful lot of money. And so we're in a difficult situation where the county board is very supportive but because of all the other priorities we have a limited amount of money that has to go a long way. That money doesn't begin to cover the maintenance needs of just the Old Plank Road Trail in itself. We've tried to raise funds through grants and I've been successful in getting some grant funding through the DNR Stewardship Program. The county board also has helped with the financing through some bond money but we're still a long ways away and so one of the things that we would like to do is like many other counties and indeed like the entire state of Wisconsin does and their bicycle trail ways is to adopt a very modest user fee to help pay for maintenance not only on the Old Plank Road Trail but our boat landings, the March Lodge and other fine recreational facilities that we have. What kind of response have you received from the Planning and Resources Committee for Sheboygan County on the proposed fee? No that's a really good question and a good point. I have nothing but admiration and pride and satisfaction in working with our Planning and Resources Committee. These are dedicated people. They're very knowledgeable, very helpful. They spend a great deal of time. In fact when people are newly appointed to the Planning Committee they're amazed at how much time it takes and how many things were involved in and how we interact with the public in a wide variety of issues. So the Planning and Resources Committee are very supportive. In fact they consider these fees as absolutely critical and mandatory for the future of our recreation facilities. If we don't have user fees the only other option would be to increase property taxes even more. Our citizens tell us they don't want to pay any more in property taxes and in fact as we all know Sheboygan County can take a great deal of pride in your efforts and the county board efforts to not only keep our taxes low but actually to reduce them and I think that's admirable. But at the same time then that creates problems and funding programs like discretionary recreation programs where 100% of the taxpayers pay for these facilities but only 20 to 30% of the population uses them and so that's why we think having some sort of a modest user fee to help pay for these programs for the people that actually use them is a fair proposition. And I know you've been feeling a lot of questions on this and have had open discussions about this and anytime you talk about raising taxes or raising a fee it's controversial but what I've been very pleased with is if you take the time to study it and look at the situation and the long term goal of having a wonderful rec trail for future generations to also be able to use money that doesn't grow on trees and that financial support needs to come somewhere and I think you've laid out a real fair proposal and as you mentioned the planning and resources committee is behind it. Ultimately we'll see if the full county board supports it here in the near future. Right and if we don't get support then we have to come up with other options or we don't do the maintenance to the level that we would like. As you know we've also recently extended the interurban trail and I just got complained a couple days ago that we're starting to have maintenance issues on the older portion of the interurban trail that was constructed four or five years ago. All of a sudden now we've got willow trees that are sending shoots under the asphalt and they're breaking the asphalt coming up in the middle of the trail and again these things cost money to repair and last year because of heavy rains we had a washout of the interurban trail. Again that takes money that's an unexpected event so you never know when something happens that's going to take money that we don't have in our budget. Another area you've been very active in providing some excellent leadership is hazardous waste collection and we've had a program for a number of years there. You've really brought some new juice to it and I think help gotten the word out why it's so important to get this hazardous waste cleaned up and properly dealt with. How does the program work and what kind of response have you received? Well the response is overwhelming. Last Saturday October 10th for example in Plymouth we normally get 40 to 60 vehicles participating on a 30 cold October Saturday morning. We actually had 250 participants last time. Cars, trucks, pickup trucks, rental trucks trailers. We filled, completely filled a large semi truck and a dumpster. We were told by 9 o'clock in the morning we were already over budget and it lasted until afternoon so we collected a large amount of materials. Quite frankly because you know we have a limited budget and thankfully the county board increased that last year to $100,000 but we were already near or at the end of that budget and so we didn't even advertise the October event much. And even though we didn't advertise it much we still got a far greater response rate than that was anticipated. We partner with Veolia Special Services. They do a wonderful job and our biggest cleanup, our biggest hazardous waste collection is always in May. We're always in two different places and in 2010 it'll be May 14th and 15th we do get state money. Again we were successful in getting some state grants to help us with that. We formed, we're part of a regional multi-county hazardous waste informal working group I guess you could say. That's Manitowoc, Caliment, Fond du Lac and Sheboygan and because of our partnership we're very successful in getting grants. And some of our viewers may have heard you just say $100,000. We're spending $100,000 a year on hazardous waste collection. You know that may blow some people away but put that in perspective a little bit. If we don't have this program, if these contaminants are not collected and please give some examples of what you are collecting, what could the cost otherwise be? The cost of just one spill could far exceed the cost of collection and disposal. It's surprising some people are dumbfounded when they realize we're still collecting DDT. Even though DDT was banned in the mid 70's people still find that in their barns or their buildings on their farms or whatever. Every once in a while we still find very old formulations of arsenical pesticides that we use during the depression. So we're talking about arsenic and DDT and some other fairly dangerous things. And again we're blessed with our waterways, our rivers, our ponds our lakes, indeed Lake Michigan. And if some of this material was improperly disposed of or spilled or dumped along a roadside we'd have a very profound environmental catastrophe that would cost us hundreds of thousands if not maybe millions to clean up. And so yes 100,000 might sound like a lot of money. But Wisconsin does not have a hazardous waste landfill. Wisconsin does not have any dedicated hazardous waste disposal facilities. So we have to go out of state. Most of our stuff goes to Port Arthur Texas for incineration. We've also from time to time used the incinerator in Sauget, Illinois, or landfill in Alabama. So our disposal options are extremely limited. Again people are surprised to learn that it might cost more per gallon to get rid of a gallon of lead based paint than it costs to purchase it. It costs us 20 to 25 dollars a gallon to get rid of a gallon of paint. This is a great segue for something I wanted to spend a little time on the few minutes we have remaining and that is the Shaboygan River and the cleanup that's been discussed for 25 years or better. Talk about contaminants and cost. Please set the stage for us a little bit. What's the latest with cleaning up the Shaboygan River in the harbor area? Well it's a background back in the mid to late 1970s it was discovered that PCBs polychlorinated biphenyls were found in the sediments of the river, among other things like heavy metals and PAHs, poly aromatic hydrocarbons. And these things are very dangerous in aquatic environments. They build up in fish tissues anything that eats the fish could have profound health impacts, wildlife or humans. As a result there's a fish consumption advisory. We're not supposed to eat the fish in the Shaboygan River, especially children and pregnant women. PCBs are like DDT, they're persistent, they're not found in nature, they're only man-made chemicals so there's nothing in nature to break them down. For 25 years there's been different plans, different ways of thinking on how to get the contaminated sediments out of the river. During the last year or two they've been successful in cleaning up some of the, or most of the contaminated sediments in the upper river and now we've got the lower river in the harbor. And so we are partnering, we're actually helping the city of Shaboygan and the contractor and many other people involved to finally get rid of this contaminated sediment. We're working under two programs that are funded and taken care of by the US EPA in Chicago. One is the Superfund program and they're looking at taking away maybe the top two feet of contaminated soil. Another program is called the Legacy Act and if we're successful in writing a grant they will be able to, under this program, hopefully go on another 12 or 14 feet of sediment in the harbor. We also have to find a place to put that sediment. The really contaminated sediment over 50 parts per million of PCB is taken to Michigan as a hazardous waste. Anything under 50 parts per million isn't considered hazardous although it's still a concern environmentally. But we're looking at different options to economically and environmentally safely dispose of it within Shaboygan County and we would go way overboard in engineering and design and monitoring and pollution risk liability for any sediments left in Shaboygan County. And these contaminated sediments act far differently in terrestrial environments than they do in aquatic environments. And when you say that in late person language, my understanding is the PCBs will, they actually join up with the soil. That's correct. These very fine sediments clay particles or the silt particles the PCBs adhere or it's called attenuation they adhere to these very fine soil particles by electronic charges and it doesn't move through the water column like other pollutants might. The only way PCBs will leave the contaminated sediments when they're in a disposal cell would be if for some reason we would get very strong acids or alcohols or something like that involved that may be possible in a dedicated landfill but certainly not at all probable in a facility that would be constructed only for the safe disposal of sediments. And again if we are successful in locating a sediment disposal area in Shaboygan County we would require very long term monitoring pollution risk abatement insurance just in case there's any sort of pollution any sort of problem it would be immediately cleaned up with a guaranteed pot of money furthermore we would not only have monitoring wells which others don't even find necessary, we would also install what are called lysimeters and these are devices that would actually determine or detect any pollution from the bottom of any deposed sediment before it even got into the groundwater and so we would go far more and require greater guarantees to protect the environment and the neighbors than I think any other site for low contaminated PCB cells. And as we're both aware if we're able to do that within Shaboygan County we could literally save millions of dollars that could go back into the cleanup and the local match that we have to have. So for over 25 years sadly the Indians had the designation of being a super fund site with a contaminated river that no doubt does not contribute to economic development nor is it safe for people to eat the fish in those waters. After 25 years we're finally looking at an opportunity and next year we're going to be working together with the city and the DNR and the federal government to get this cleaned up. I mean this is big news and this is fantastic news for Shaboygan County. Yes it is. And you know our sport fishery industry here is very big and you know it's a wonderful great group of people and some folks don't realize that the source of PCB contamination in Great Lakes fish come from rivers like the Shaboygan River and so not only is it important from an environmental perspective but if we can get that river dredged out, get the PCBs out of there then maybe the quark will continue to dredge it like they used to and they stopped doing that in 1968 or 1969. Again when the river depths are restored we can get larger ships, we can get cruise ships, we can get the tall masted sailing vessels economic development potential for the city is greatly increased and the city staff, Paulette Enders, Mayor Ryan and others in the city are doing a great job in leading this effort that we're assisting in. Jim I want to thank you so much for your time today, covered a lot of ground in a short period of time. It really flew and if you're interested in learning more about the activities of the planning department or some of the initiatives that Jim's a very important part of please don't hesitate to contact Jim Holbert again at the Shaboygan County Planning Department. Jim thank you to you and your staff for the very important and good work that you do. Thank you Adam. On behalf of the Shaboygan Board I'm Adam Payne. Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your time and interest. Next month our new Health and Human Services Director will be here. Tom Eggebrecht, Tom's been doing a great job at Health and Human Services and until then thanks for joining us.