 Hello and welcome to the Donahue Group. We're glad you can join us for a half an hour of interesting discussion on issues of interest to city and county dwellers, state dwellers, and maybe today, maybe even a little national news, we'll see how it goes. I'd like to introduce my fellow panelists, sitting across from me in exactly the same spot that we've sat in every time we take this show. That's right. We know our stall. We know our place. We'd like to know our place. Former State Senator Cal Potter, sitting next to him, Tom Pineski, Professor of Mathematics at University of Wisconsin-Shabuigan, Ken Risto, Social Studies Maven, there are so many titles, Coordinating, Specializing, Assessing, General Boveval, and General Boveval in the Shabuigan Area School District. My name is Mary Lynn Donahue, I'm a lawyer in town and things seem a little quiet in the city. I appreciated the Mayor's Unity breakfast. I did not attend, but it sounded like a good idea from what I read in the newspaper, sort of a nice segue to a tumultuous summer political season, which we usually don't see around here. What do you guys think? Good idea? Well, I think what can top a recall issue, I think that's why it sounds so calm. Yeah. But I mean there's the business of the cities going on, talking about the architect dealing with the police station or the other issues in town, so it's sort of a business way it should be, probably, kind of spoiled by the high profile of that recall. Yeah, because really the business of running the city shouldn't be really exciting. It should be moderately interesting and, you know, getting the garbage picked up and the streets repaired and the fires put out and so forth, but the police station does continue to remain in the news. Now it's the architect and council members struggling with the way perhaps to terminate the architect's contract and it sounds like there may not be anything in the contract automatically that will let that happen. I have to tell you I've never been involved in building a new house, but through my work I've certainly worked with various clients who have taken on architects and contractors and subcontractors and it's a complex, difficult process and it's hard sometimes to get any accountability built into how things happen, so I'm wondering what's happening with Mr. Sabinash and maybe he just doesn't know who's calling the shots and I don't know. Well that's the impression I'm getting, the impression I'm getting is that he's moving, he's always hitting a moving target, you know, build a police station for X number of dollars. No, wait a minute, build a police station for this number of dollars. No, wait a minute, push, do it this way. And trying to deal with all those variables, I don't know how that works out for a man in his position, but I get the sense that there just isn't a real clear picture yet of how much of a police department we can afford. Well it's a four million dollar difference, I mean between nine million and thirteen million, if you're an architect, how big of a building you build and what type of materials you use, those are all very basic costly items that you need to have solidified before you can really put pen to paper. What was this architect hired two years ago? That's been a while, hasn't it? Same one, so it was Bill that, Bill that shared in the park, Bill that's City Hall, Bill over at I-23, don't play any part of the park. Maybe he'll want to get out of the contract. It's a blue harbor. There you go. He's going to tell me what to do and I'll do it, but it's going to cost you money. It really is tough, I mean just, who's the boss and what are the decisions and I think that's still very, very tough, so I must say the school district did it a whole lot easier with their extremely substantial referendum and the architects were put in place and the buildings were built and Jefferson is up and running and I understand I've not been in either of the north or south facilities but I understand they're fabulous and going to be dedicated in early November if memory serves me correctly. That process was a little bit different, I think really what went on there was they really met with various building principles and the department of recreation, anybody who had some kind of facility concerns and then you put together, well what would the building look like and then you put the price tag together and then you go to the Board of Education and you say to yourself, they say, well is this something that we can pay, is this something that possibly is politically palatable to people and then you put together a probe and the district did to its credit put together a very good program of going to community and getting the message out about why we need to borrow that kind of money. And school districts are used to building buildings and cities aren't. I mean when was the last time the city built any substantial building, I mean sheds get built here and there. From a library, but that was in the 70s. Right and then they did put the addition on, although a great deal of that money came from Mrs. Landware I believe if I'm, and I may have that wrong, but in any event that I think just putting the process together, the school districts used to doing it. They know who the partners are that they need to get in and talk about it. And they have certain architect firms that have designed north or originally a couple of them in town are known for school construction. And so we've done a lot of it in this large school district so I think the city is maybe just a little bit out of practice about it and it is complex stuff, you know there's no getting around. Of course UW-Shaboygan is building a huge lovely gorgeous building and that's a complicated process as well. Yeah it's looking very nice as you come up. It is. It's really quite a thing to see as you drive by I-43 and the first day of the day I thought I said oh my, it's really going to be very nice for the freeway. Yeah they lowered, they cut the berm back and so people could drive by and see it that was part of the arrangement. Yeah I think that's a great idea. Looking at buildings in the newspaper and I think Tom you're the one who's read up on it the most, a proposal for a visitor center that the city would build? Yeah they're saying the tourism division is currently in that second floor office I guess where the planning department is and now they have some money left over from the Blue Harbor construction, 314,000 so they're going to look to spend that or to build a scale-backed visitor center to house the tourism bureau and also to service visitors and yeah, service visitors. What point does an older man or older woman say well if we have that much money left over why don't we put that toward the police department? That would seem to be step two. My thought is it's earmarked for the Blue Harbor construction and they bonded for that so I don't know if they could take that money for another project. Any talk of working with the chamber? There's some talk, I guess the chamber had a site. They bought it, didn't they actually buy the site out on the highway? And they discontinued it because they lost the tourism contract and the thought was that we might be able to work with the chamber but it's only a maybe at this point. Sure. First of all, where is that site Tom? Let's see. The chamber site? The previous chamber. Taylor Frontage Road, South Taylor Drive, Taylor Frontage Road. More or less near where Harley-Davidson. Yeah, down in that area. Okay, here were the large Walmart's going to be going. Right. Maybe somewhere down there, I guess. It's certainly the hottest building area, I think, in the county these days. Well, I guess my question is if we can't take the funds and divert them to building a police department, how is it that we can take the funds and divert it to building this? Is it because it's earmarked tourism and the bond was, the resolution was tied to tourism development? That's a good point. I don't understand that. I don't either. I'm sure there'll be lots of discussion. We're quibbling over dollars. We're going to have to lay off employees. We can't build a police station. Oh, well, we're going to expand the tourism. Ultimately, I think it's a good idea. I mean, if you look at the whole question about promoting Sheboygan, whether it's the chamber or the city, you do need some focal point for which you can staff here or house your people, but disseminate information and have a stop-off of I-43 or one of the major arterials into the city. Having represented Manitowoc and the Senate in the past, Manitowoc went ahead and used their room tax, I believe, as a source of funding to build their visitor center, which is right as you come in on 151 off of I-43. And it's very popular, always a good stream of people and they disseminate a lot of information. And I think it would bode the community well to have something. I'm not saying that you need to play a police department off against tourism, but I think that's what's lacking in this town is a place right off the road, a major arterial where people can stop and say what do you have to offer. Use the bathrooms of nothing else and all of a sudden you find out there's more here than they thought, but at least you've diverted their route from going to Door County or wherever to head it and you probably didn't even know it existed. I have to say that maybe it's because I'm on the email list, but that the tourism director is really active and doing lots of interesting things. I think it's all a part of trying to keep Blue Harbor afloat and having people come into the city, but I thought the October Fest festivities and they're doing something at Blue Harbor, I think, toward Halloween-oriented kind of thing. There's an art fair that they're planning for mid-February that I think will draw some people in and I give her a lot of credit for really promoting just the city. Now, what I do see I think is the mayor reaching out to the chamber people and vice versa to rebuild or repair maybe some of the relationships that were somewhat damaged when the tourism bureau was created and I think that's to the good because I think our chamber right now is a pretty lively group. I think their strategic plan is a good one. I'm just impressed by the energy that the chamber is bringing too. So put them together, it's good stuff. Maybe this building initiative to really literally cement the relationship where different parties who feel they want to bring people together, bring them together literally under one roof and maybe they can both contribute something monetarily and maybe at the end it'll be a better building than anyone going by themselves. It's interesting stuff. So quiet, relatively quiet times in the city, quiet times in the county except we do have elections coming up. The yard sign wars are out. It's just a great thing. People who work in campaigns really get very involved in yard signs and supporters love yard signs even when you point out that yard signs don't vote and that the number of yard signs is not necessarily a cause and effect or causes a win or whatever. But I the live ham sign machine was pretty phenomenal. And I was astonished and still am and I've been driving around for whatever reason I've been going through keel and children a lot lately and huge signs up and all over the place but now I begin to see some olex signs and not with the speed or the apparent saturation but I'm seeing some olex signs and I think that race has still been pretty quiet here in Sheboygan County I don't know what is your sense of it I mean I know they've had one or two debates that have received some coverage but I don't I hear radio ads but I don't know what much is going on and I'm sure they're doing something every day they're talking to some group and doing something. They're doing good on that race. I agree. One of the things that past races in the Senate have always garnered was the periodic election board forms that are filed by the candidates the press usually would say well so-and-so got so much from PACs and here are the PACs and here's how much and here are the big contributors, individuals to those campaigns they sort of give the electorate who's putting money behind these candidates and these ads and so on you see none of that and I'm surprised so I would hope that in the next remaining days really in the weeks not many days many weeks remaining days that there's more attention paid to that race I mean signs don't tell very much I mean obviously they spark our interest in that sense that we're kind of political and we see that there's activity but what issues are really being portrayed very little. I think there's only been one article that I saw about I think there's a copy of an article that ran in the Harold Times in Manitowoc was reproduced in Sheboygan last week but that's about it. Well and I do think Senator Liveham's campaign is extremely well organized and of course the Democrats are the Democrats but you have to give Joe I think Joe Liveham credit for being very well organized being very energetic I mean he's even if you don't agree with his positions and I just don't by and large I have to have respect for you know how he has put his put his machine is not the word I want but put his campaign and his organization together and that just carries on in non-election years when the constituents get prompt service from him I think that people outstate think that it's a really competitive race because it was such a close race four years ago I was talking to some folks who you know have been doing a fair amount of direct mail and think that that this is a competitive race and I just don't think it is I like Jamie Alik a lot and I think that he's he's bright he's working he's an Iraq veteran he's well educated I think he's an up and comer but I think as one of my partners would say I I think there's going to be a bit of a schvetsing maybe not I mean you just never know but if it were a close race we'd be seeing TV ads you know think back four years think back four years and it was extremely competitive and the Republicans had targeted Baumgart as a seat that was possible to get and there was on both sides the WEAC was weighing in the Wisconsin Manufacturing Association what do they call themselves they were weighing in they somewhere along the way there's been some kind of internal polling and this is going to be a public pounding because if it was close there's going to be a lot of people putting a lot more resources beyond how the Freudian thing about who's sign is bigger seems to be going on right now my sign is bigger than your sign so I guess I'm much more popular there are ordinances about sign sizes just so you know it's not going to get any bigger the rural areas that sort of thing and you'd be seeing a lot more resources on both sides online to be honest usually I kind of peek and see what kind of money is being raised and who's giving money to which groups I just don't think that it's going to be a competitive race I think it's unfortunate because I think part of the reason is the media just doesn't seem to really care much I mean, but the only buzz that was going on with this campaign was Alex's criticism of Leibemann's vote about national guard spending for Wisconsin and how that may have played out for their safety in Iraq Leibemann slapped that away pretty quickly and that was the end of that but where else is there any traction on any kinds of issues there's a distinct difference on tater, on stem cells, on abortion there's a distinct difference between these two candidates and it's really not getting out there and it's a dug on shame that the press doesn't take this on and really investigate what the stand of these candidates is and put it out there and we were just talking on the this is probably a good time to mention Ken and I both heard just coming out on a radio program that the University of Wisconsin one of the many we're going to host a forum on like, what were you going to say? this was a poll not a poll, but a study study a media study taken by some media study center within the University of Wisconsin structure that indicates a typical half hour news cycle on network TV local news so either your 5 or 6 o'clock news 10 minutes on advertising 7 minutes on weather and sports combined and about 36 seconds on contested races and not on substance but on did you, you know, green gets slapped by the Supreme Court those kinds of things and why would they give free time when millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars are going into TV coffers for these terrible ads so I don't think it's just the Sheboygan press no, I think it's indicative of the news media trying to find the best saleability of their vehicle whether it's a newspaper or a television station but it's not very responsible in professional journalism but I thought I did think that was interesting and they just I think Liveham of course and Terry Van Ackman for example whose opponent is not very strong it would appear there's a distinct stay low but that really ought to be given to exposed to the if I were, if I moved to Sheboygan in August and I think I want to vote this fall I don't recall seeing, there may have been pictures of the candidates a little bios of the candidates who's running, I see the signs but who are these people maybe it's coming, but at the point of this taping we're getting within what, three weeks of voting and I think you're absolutely right if you asked my favorite public marketplace Pigley Wigley in the south side or someplace in the north side where people gather and you ask them, they might know the names but if you ask them what are the substantive differences between these candidates or what do you think this is all about I think you're absolutely right I think in the case of Liveham well we see him at the parades he's a nice guy, he's got a nice family and they all look like something out of a 1950's show and they're clean cut and they're nice kids and that's nice and you're absolutely right Joe's, and I've talked to Joe and I disagree with him on some public issues too lots of public issues but you can't help but very personable and he's also, like you said, very good at constituent services and so unless Alec can get himself some media to really get some traction on some substantive issues that people can think about he's going to get his clock clean as my grandma used to say or schvetsd my view is that if Alec gets 40% or above that's a victory and who knows who knows how it will all play out I think the city of Manitowoc may well go for Alec the city of Sheboygan I think has voted for Liveham even though it's a democratic district I mean that just shows you Liveham's strength and you know just going back to the Baumgart-Liveham race that was a battle of titans those two guys they worked tirelessly their energy levels looked a little different but don't see the canoe but they were tireless and they were good with constituents they were personable and they both had huge followings and so it'll be interesting to see I predict that Terry Van Ackerman will not have any difficulty with Job Jose I think that's pretty much you don't think people are buying this family Job's pro-family I'm not quite I don't know what that I'm kind of a critic I don't think anybody knows what that means except maybe it's a cold word for if you're a Christian vote for Job Jose I don't know I think he might have a little more support than people if there's no real debate about what these candidates stand for I think people may take their cues from these various phrases and signs that are out there and especially when I really do think is pro-family equals Christian values and that's really the way the Republican Party has framed this argument nationally, statewide and so on he might get more votes just because of that reason if you heard his radio ads no I haven't he does talk about pro-family and he cites three things related to family that Terry voted against or the marriage amendment and things like that and he also says I'm pro-family and I support the marriage amendment the constitutional amendment and that's why you should vote for me and I've heard those radio ads several times so I don't know how often they play and I haven't heard anything from Terry on as far as a radio ad but you're right, he's playing the pro-family I support the marriage amendment Terry he cites three things and says he didn't support this you should vote for me, I appreciate your vote so you might have a point there I think he's going to have a stronger I don't think he's going to win if I had to go out on the limb right now and make a prediction but I think he's going to be stronger than you think because of the very effective use of that code word yeah I'd be a little nervous if I were Terry my sense, he's not nervous in the least but I could be I don't know well you ran, you know how it feels I do I ran, I don't know how it feels you're always nervous it's always difficult but in any event well it'll be interesting there are very few there are no contested elections but registered deeds Ellen Schleicher appointed by the governor last summer and running her code is retained she can't say reelect but keep her in office and she's opposed by Darcy Valreth so we do have one contested race and we're starting to see a few signs from Valreth we saw the Schleicher signs go up first I don't care there again I don't know how much coverage is getting out as to who has what qualifications maybe the day before election we'll see an article in the paper well there aren't too many issues in the red actually for practicing lawyers and realtors having a good, smooth highly efficient registered deeds office is very important and it's complex stuff because you get tons of documents in from real estate and it's complex stuff but I haven't heard any criticisms per say of Ellen Schleicher's job I mean she's only been doing it a couple years I think and I think I think Darcy Valreth works at the senior center I'm not sure I mean if you ask people who are the registered deeds is Namas I mean that's because it's been so quiet Darlene retired so she had been the registered deeds for years forever, for years and years and years although she had a couple of contested races it was nonpartisan by statute and that's why they were in the fall so nobody's running against the district attorney nobody's running against the clerk of courts or the county clerk the county the county treasurer Laura Henning Lorenz I mean none of these are contested offices at this point there's a sheriff's race too isn't there and the sheriff is uncontested the reason some of them are quiet is because for example the DA is now a four year term the sheriff will become a four year term so some of the courthouse positions will be as this is phased in you will see two year terms and the others four are quiet because they're not even up exactly so well we have some predictions live ham I think we are all Van Akron but maybe with some reservations I think Van Akron is going to heal too he withstood he withstood a pretty strong challenge from Zemple and Zemple was the first time race for him but he was very aggressive and he got a lot of money and a lot of support and there's a lot of resources brought on both sides and he prevailed there and again I haven't gotten anything in my mail on that race either both sides because I remember that race clearly had wonderful written materials I mean Terry's piece was one of the nicest pieces that I ever saw you didn't go straight at it did you no unfortunately so well I'd like to have those skills what can I say it's like writing a good closing argument but being able to seize the issue frame the issue and make the opposing let me ask a question close we only have 30 seconds how do you think the city or the county will vote on the amendments constitutional amendments and the reinstating the death penalty and the marriage amendment do you think will be better than 50% or under 50% talk about not getting much play the death penalty in particular is just there has not been well we've got to wrap up but we'll talk about it next program to be continued thank you