 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name's Adam Payne, county administrator and co-chairman or co-host rather of this program with chairman Roger Distruti. And I'm already a little on edge because I'm on the opposite side of where I sit today. Chairman Distruti is going to be interviewing me. Recently I gave my 15th annual State of the County. I've been here 16 years now and every year I provide a State of the County update and chairman Distruti thought it'd be nice to give a big picture update to our viewers on the roles and responsibilities of county government as well as touch on some of the accomplishments and challenges ahead. As you know every month we strive to bring a different department and focus on a different department head or their staff but this month we thought we'd take a little pause and set the stage big picture and talk a little bit about the overall roles and responsibilities of county government and again the State of the County. So from there I'm going to turn it over to my fearless leader, chairman Roger Distruti. Thank you Adam. It's amazing how time flies and I had the privilege of being on the executive committee 16 years ago when we interviewed you and made our choice and I still think that was one of the best decisions I ever made on the serving on the county board. You're doing a great job and we pulled in part-time supervisors. We felt we needed CEO and you've been doing a great job at doing that but why don't you tell the viewers a little bit about your background and a little bit about the hiring process and a little bit about your family now and where your roots came from. Yeah, sure, I'll be glad to. And I thank you for the opportunity that you and Bill Gehring and others gave me on the executive committee 16 years ago. It's amazing. We haven't changed a bit have we Roger? Just we, time has definitely flown and I'm so grateful to be in this community because as you know my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were born and raised in Sheboygan County predominantly in the Sheboygan Falls area. So to return here 16 years ago with my young family and now raise them here to the point where I've got two kids in college and one now leaving the nest gonna be graduating from Plymouth High School. It's been a remarkable opportunity and as I said I'm so grateful for it. Prior to moving here, my wife and I were high school sweethearts so we're from Stevens Point and we both went to UW Madison. I got my undergrad, Bachelor of Arts there and a master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning and I really give that master's degree credit for opening the door to being a candidate that you and others considered 16 years ago. So thanks to that educational background and some experience I had at the time in Madison working for the State Department of Ag, Trade and Consumer Protection and a non-profit organization called the Wisconsin Land and Water Conservation Association. I was executive director there. That gave me the opportunity to work with all 72 counties across the state but in the end you had to take a risk and hire this greenhorn and I'm so thankful and appreciative that you did and it's just amazing that 16 years have gone by. And why don't you explain some of your primary responsibilities and duties and how have they changed in the last 16 years? Well, when I was hired, I was hired as the county administrative coordinator which is quite a mouthful and often people say, well, what's that? And it's the chief administrative officer. So as the chief administrative officer I was responsible for supervising our appointed department heads as well as assisting with the budget development, what have you, but what changed significantly over the years and in 2006 is when you promoted me to county administrator. As county administrative coordinator I had shared supervision of the department heads. I had shared hire and fire authority and when I was promoted in 06 to county administrator it gave me direct hire and fire authority, direct responsibility to prepare a budget obviously for your and the county board's consideration and final approval. I oversee all of the management operations of the county which consists as you well know of 18 departments and about 825 employees, over 200 programs and services and a budget of 125 million. So I see my job is really working with an excellent team of managers and a strong county board to help lead and help this organization be successful. And why don't you give us a big picture of the organization and how far it reaches and the different departments and at least the main departments what takes up a big share of your time before seeing it. Yeah that's the great thing about being in a position like mine or an upper management position is you get to work with so many wonderful people and you get to learn so much and be involved in problem solving and as county administrator as I mentioned 18 departments I think 32 years or 33 years ago when you started on the county board we may have had 31 departments. So we've really done a lot to streamline and we'll touch on that more little later but 18 departments from a sheriff's department with an elected sheriff, a health and human services department with a appointed department head there, a nursing home, Rocky Knoll, planning and zoning, county clerk, register of deeds, medical examiner. The list goes on and on. There are so many unique areas of responsibility in county government and it's a pleasure to work with the board and with managers and our staff as a whole to problem solve and help this community and many people aren't aware of the breadth of county government but they may be aware that you have a sheriff's department, they may be aware of some health and human services for the neediest of the needy but there's such a tremendous breadth and opportunity to get involved and help your community be successful when you're part of county government. And when you started 16 years ago what were some of the biggest challenges you faced and how have they changed over the years? Well, I can remember my grandmother, my dearly departed grandmother Bernice Taghi who had a century farm on County Road TT in Chubboy and Falls asking me when I let her know that I had applied for this position saying what would you want to do that for? And I asked her, why did you say that? And her response was there was so much tension and concern in our organization associated with the nursing homes. 16 years ago we had three county owned and operated nursing homes, the Comprehensive Health Care Center, Sunny Ridge and of course Rocky Knoll and they all provided valuable service, they all provided quality service but when I started I can recall you and other members of the county board saying, you know, we have more beds than any other county in the state. We own and operate more beds and provide a higher level of service here than any county in the state and can we afford to continue doing that? So one of the significant changes we've made and of course it was a team effort and you helped lead that charge was we ultimately closed the Comprehensive Health Care Center because it was an old facility that its time had passed and added a $10 million addition to Rocky Knoll and ultimately we privatized Sunny Ridge so now we just have Rocky Knoll. We went from three to one facilities and to put that quickly into perspective for our viewers, we went from a $6.1 million property tax subsidy to help support the operations of these facilities to today it's under a million and that's been one of our tremendous success stories. And that was one of the things that greatly helped stabilize the tax levy. What are some of the other things that have helped us over the years? Well part of it was just providing a streamlined focus process. Prior to being hired the county board actually had two consecutive years of 15% increases in the property tax levy and not to second guess that we built a new correctional facility and there were expenses involved and the board at that time must have felt you know what let's pay for this more upfront rather than borrow more for it. So that decision was made but of course today you would never hear or rarely hear of that kind of increase and one of the things you and the executive charged me with was get a hold of this budget process that we have and improve upon it. And so it wasn't rocket science simply working with you and other members of the board we established a completely new budget development process where you and the county board supervisors established a goal and said this is what we wanna achieve we'd like to have no more than a 2% increase in the levy or we wanna hold the line or we wanna reduce it every year it changes. And then it's my job to help the county board be successful to work with our department heads, establish specific targets for them and then we all work together to achieve that goal. And I'm very proud of the fact that every single year we've done that every single year the county board has been positioned to achieve the goal. And in fact again as you all know, Roger the county board had nine straight years of reducing the property tax rate and the county board has reduced the property tax levy for the last eight years. We have become a very fiscally responsible organization and you've been recognized for it. And how did the county, I know some of the things we did were have a prioritization program and an overall big picture look and how did that follow through and are we still standing pat on that or have we refreshed it or how has that helped us? Well, every unit of government and generally people that are running for office or are newly county board supervisors or common council members or state representatives, they all talk about having to cut the fat or streamline or prioritize. And of course to most of us that always sounds good but if you don't know what you have and you don't know how programs and services are performing and the outcomes of those programs and services, how do you cut the fat? How do you streamline? How do you identify priorities? So to the credit of our organization, not once but twice, we've done a complete county-wide program evaluation and prioritization process. That's quite a mouthful, so we called it Pepsi. And through this process, all the committee chairs of the standing committees and there were 10 at the time as well as members of the executive committee got together and they reviewed every single program and service that Chaboy and County operates. And that's when we all first learned we've got 207 programs and services that we operate here. We learned what was mandated by the state that we absolutely have to administer and what was discretionary. What did the county board develop? And many of those discretionary programs really for all practical purposes you have to do as well but we identified all the programs and services. We talked about how they're operating, what the outcomes are and then most importantly the county board you and others prioritized all those and said here's the rank and file of the importance of these programs. To this day, now that we've gone through that twice as part of our budget process each year we now have a tool we can use that gives a high-end two-page summary of the program. What's the value of it? Why was it implemented? Is it mandatory or is it discretionary? What does it cost? How successful has it been? And it's in priority order. That has been one of the keys to our success in every year developing a balanced budget. And setting those priorities was a challenge but I know firsthand that one of the big challenges was this very emotional thing for a lot of people when we had three nursing homes. Would you explain how we progressed and now we only have the one rocky note? Back to my grandmother's comment. Why would you wanna get involved with all that? Because it was so emotionally charged. The Comprehensive Health Care Center was a grand building built as solid as any building could be and I believe I had a great grandmother that actually lived there for a period of time. It was a place where folks that were mentally ill or had significant develop disabilities would go and at one point it was a farm which some of our viewers may recall but it was an old building. It didn't meet any of the standards that we have today. The rooms were very small and frankly we were seeing less demand for it because the trend for years now has been for more people not to be institutionalized but to receive care in the community to be more integrated in the community. So we were seeing less of demand for that facility as well as we were seeing higher cost associated with maintaining it. So the board ultimately made the decision and frankly I don't think that one was as difficult on them because they knew it was an old facility and they made the decision to build a brand new, smaller state of the art facility as an addition to Rocky Null. So that was done. The more difficult challenge that you and I and others faced was the question of do we privatize or close the Sunny Ridge facility? And I can recall back in 2006, 2007 attending public hearings in this community with over a hundred people in there and very emotionally connected to Sunny Ridge and we can't possibly think of privatizing this facility and why would the board do that? But ultimately the board did, as I mentioned earlier we had more county owned and operated beds in any county in the state and financially it was hurting, it was really hurting. The subsidy going to support those operations were taking money from transportation, taking money from the Sheriff's Department and other departments that needed those resources to maintain their operations. So we privatized, sold and privatized Sunny Ridge in 2007 and it's been a success story. We're down to again one facility, beautiful facility, Rocky Null and Plymouth. It's been updated, it has a couple of additions on it, excellent staff, our census continues to go down believe it or not even after going from three facilities to one because more people are getting care at home or in the community. There's so many more other alternatives for people today but bottom line is we're providing a quality service and as I said our subsidy went from 6.1 million to under a million. Tremendous success story on the county board and our organization. And over the years we've both seen a lot of changes over the years to the county board members. We have I believe a more diverse group of people, a lot of backgrounds and interests so we get quite a variety of input which is helpful to the board. But yet we don't see a lot of competition for any office but sometimes the county board has a few races, sometimes not but that's not just with us, there's an overall trend. What do you see, why does that happening like that? I attribute that to a number of factors. One is people sometimes are quick to complain about a level of government whether it's the city, town, village, county, state, federal but when it comes to getting involved actually putting yourself out there and running for office that's a whole other matter and it takes courage and it takes commitment and it takes good thoughtful decision making and not everyone's willing to do that and take that risk. So as you said across the board you tend not to see a lot of competition for these positions because frankly most people just don't wanna put that kind of time and commitment into it and put themselves out there to be criticized. But I think one of the other reasons why Sheboygan County, why our county board in particular hasn't seen a lot of competition is because our county board's been doing a pretty doggone good job. If you look at the fiscal track record of the Sheboygan County Board and the decision making that they've done it's tough to be real critical. We have a good thoughtful team in place as you know and of course occasionally we get some new faces and everyone's different with their personalities and approaches but I can say that in the 16 years I've been here I have never been more pleased with the county board than what we have today. I really think as a whole we have a very thoughtful well intentioned group and their track record is second to none. And speaking of the county board members how do you feel we've improved and helped educate and make our county board members more effective? Well you're a big part of that because as county board chairman obviously you're a mentor to many of the board members and they look to you for guidance and they bounce things off you and other county board supervisors that are veterans who can give them good coaching and good advice. As you know not everyone follows that but most of them do and being a mentor and helping your other board members is very important. The other thing that we established already 15, 16 years ago was we established a county board leadership form and it was rather a simple idea one that I think Dan Lemieux may have been the chairman at the time when we implemented that and it was simply for the county board once a year to get together in a more informal environment often we meet right here at the UW Sheboygan campus and we focus on big picture. What's our fiscal outlook? What are our challenges? And just make sure that the board as a whole appreciates what we're doing, where we're headed and as working as a team. And that has been a very effective meeting particularly when we hold it in June as kind of a preview of our budget development process and being sure everyone's on the same page and working together to set us up for success. You and other board members are encouraging to your peers about attending Wisconsin County Association forms and professional training opportunities, regional meetings to learn about state budget issues. I mean often we don't have to reinvent the wheel with 71 other counties out there they may have had a good approach or an idea and board members and positions such as myself and department heads we learn from one another. So I really think again it's a reflection of our county board wanting to be the best they can be supporting professional development and personally taking the time personally to attend things like our annual county board leadership forum and getting involved. We have a thoughtful group of individuals that overall really puts the time into to learn and make good decisions. And every year there's a state of the union address state of the state address and the last few years we've been have a state of the county address that you give us. And so it was great to get the big picture and what have we done and what are we going to do? I don't know that you got as many standing ovations as Governor Walker or the president did but it was great. Would you summarize what some of the things we were talking about in that state of the county? My pleasure, my pleasure. I think one of the keys to our success in Sheboygan County is good communications and teamwork. And we have a lot of collaboration and as I said a track record that I think we can all take pride in. As I shared with the county board in February the state of Sheboygan County is strong. We have a strong fiscal track record. We have excellent reserves. We have been very good about our budget development process and balancing our budget year after year and working within budget parameters. And so when you look at our organization from a fiscal standpoint today and in the past it is strong. Our bond rating is outstanding. It's as good as it can be for a community of our size. So that helps us keep interest rates low when we bond for transportation or major additions. So we're looking good in that regard. We're also looking good when it comes to thinking thoughtfully about making improvements and going forward. And so as part of that state of the county I like to talk about recent accomplishments that we have. And one of the probably the number one accomplishment and is always the number one issue in my top 10 list is being fiscally responsible in our fiscal track record. And once again you and the county board have delivered a modest property tax levy less than 1%. We've been holding the line on that for years. We are leading the state in providing property tax relief and as I said for the last eight years the county board's delivered. So excellent fiscal track record. The top, the second top accomplishment that I mentioned in the state of the county was the purchase of the Amsterdam Dunes property. And as you know, many of our viewers may not but certainly as you know Roger, you and I and our planning director Aaron Brault the three of us really led the charge with that the full county board deserves a tip of the hat for supporting it. If you haven't heard of Amsterdam Dunes I encourage you to talk to your county board supervisor or certainly go to our county website. But in summary, 337 acres is one of the last remaining on develop pieces of property between here and Chicago the county board purchased with $4.2 million of fund balance. They did this because an opportunity presented itself and we took advantage of that opportunity and went after this property. It was appraised for 7.5 million. So we did well negotiating, acquiring it. It's a long saga to how that all came together but it's 337 acres of pristine land that we will preserve now in perpetuity. And one of the reasons why it was so strongly supported in the community what is it's both a preservation area and a component of it is going to be a wetland mitigation bank. And if you've never heard of a wetland mitigation bank any time a road or airport needs to be improved or a company needs to expand their headquarters and that's gonna impact a wetland area that's a difficult thing to get approval to do by the DNR but as a practical matter when it needs to happen, again for a road expansion and airport expansion, a new headquarter expansion for every acre of wetland that's destroyed another acre and a half or two needs to be set aside and preserved. And this wetland mitigation bank is gonna position Sheboygan County to be highly competitive when it comes to economic development opportunities and it's also gonna position us to be far more cost effective rather than purchasing wetland mitigation credits in an area outside of the community that is no bearing on us or doesn't help Sheboygan County we're gonna be able to create wetlands right here that enhance our own environment. So Roger, as you know, I tip my hat to you in particular because this is in your district you've gotten a lot of feedback and support from your constituents and your town and village and I'm just so proud to have had a role in establishing the Amsterdam Dunes property. I know we're running short on time but one of the other areas I'll briefly touch on is just the board's thoughtfulness in making sure that we're continuing to improve our infrastructure. We recently completed an addition to our Health and Human Services Department in Sheboygan a beautiful addition that's gonna help serve our clients. We recently, the county board, when I say we the county board recently supported another addition to UW-Sheboygan the engineering addition is being built as we speak and of course that's gonna be complement this facility and the science addition and the Acuity Technology Center. Our transportation system is highly important to us. We continue to put dollars there. As you know, I could go on and on but I'm just very proud of the accomplishments that the county board and our organization has made. Well, there's a lot of things that we've done in the last few years and it's really great to be part of it. What do you really see as the biggest challenge going forward? Well, and it was just what I said, transportation. Transportation, quick analogy. One mile of overlay cost $100,000. Need to do that every 12 to 15 years. If we don't, if we don't keep up with that for just one mile, it's gonna cost us $250,000 to pulverize, to roll that out and resurface that. So we go from 100,000 to 250 and if we don't keep up with that it costs about $1.2 million to completely redo that same one mile of county road. So it is incredibly important to take care of our roads, to maintain them in a timely fashion because if we don't, it's highly irresponsible and if we're gonna talk about fiscal responsibility, we've got to maintain our transportation system rather than kick that can down the road. So I think, Roger, our number one challenge is going to be just maintaining what we have and doing it in a fiscally responsible manner. And what has been the most rewarding thing or a particular thing or in general in your years with the county? Well, I know we only have a minute or so remaining so I'll be brief. For me, what's been most rewarding is working with a team of people, a team of so many good people whether they're county board supervisors or department heads or employees and our sheriff's department or highway department and we have 825 employees here, 25 county board supervisors and to be able to work with so many committed people who wanna help make good things happen in our community to problem solve, to make this organization and community better. That's for me is what's the most rewarding, simply working with good people, dedicating their lives to help make good things happen. Well it's great to have worked with you for the last 16 years and many years going forward. Look to our challenges we have and thank you again for all you do for Sheboygan County. I appreciate it. Next week or next month rather, our guest will be Aaron Brault and he's the planning and conservation director for Sheboygan County and we'll be talking about Amsterdam Dunes for instance and some of the other things that that department does. So once again thank you for joining us and see you next month for Sheboygan County and Roger T. Strudy, County Board Chairman and Adam Pien, our county administrator. Thank you.