 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government. Working for you, my name's Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Roger Distruty. And this month, as we've been doing for a number of years now, we like to bring in a department head to talk about the roles and responsibilities of their department and upcoming activities. And I'm very pleased to introduce a new department head. You probably have read his name in the paper or perhaps met him personally. But our first TVA program with Mr. John Doulson, our County Clerk, welcome John. Glad to be here. John was elected in November, just started in January, following the heels of County Clerk Julie Glancy after a long stellar career. But of course, change is inevitable and we welcome John and he's been helping make good things happen. John, please start by sharing with our viewers a little bit about your background. A little bit about me, my wife and I and our two children moved to Sheboygan 18 years ago and I absolutely love it. And I've been in the private banking and financial advising business for many years prior to running for County Clerk. And family? Daughter's 23, name's Bailey and my son Davis is 21. And what did you say, 18 years now in the county? 18 years. So do you feel like you're a... We are Sheboyganites. You're Sheboyganites. I know there's a cutoff there somewhere. Well, it's good to have you with us. What inspired you to run for County Clerk? I've been involved with a lot of friends in their campaigns that have run for different positions, either locally or even at the state level. And I had a desire to serve the public and talk to a lot of friends. They said they thought it'd be good in a public office. So I started researching where I might start and my efforts fell on the county level. And then researching more into that realized that my background worked more towards the County Clerk position. And realizing then that Julie Glancy was retiring, the position was opened up and thought now is my time to run. Yeah. Well, very good. And what have your impressions been so far? I know it's only been, what, five, six months now? Six months. It's great. It's busy. It's a lot of facets changing daily. People coming in. We're almost a storefront for the county doing passports and marriage licenses and whatnot. And then monthly with the county board. So you just touched on a few of the areas but kind of give a snapshot. What are the roles and responsibilities of the county clerk's office? Primarily the county clerk is the secretary to the county board. They assist with running the county board meetings, coming up with the agendas, posting agendas for not only the county board but the other standing committees for the county. And then formalizing the minutes after the county board meetings and working with marriage licenses for the county, taking applications for marriage licenses, overseeing elections for the county. Which is huge. That's a big role. It doesn't come around, but in the spring and fall in certain years. But that's a big part of the business. And you just touched on passports, for example. As you well know, and certainly Chairman Distruty, the county is the right arm of state government. And most of what we do is required. The county board may authorize other programs or services. I think most of what the county clerk does is required by state law. But there are some permissive programs and services you provide. And of course passports is one of them. Right. The ones required is, like we said, being secretary to the board, running the elections, administering dog tags, the dog tag program to the different municipalities in the county, and overseeing the marriage license process. And the ones that are, a la carte fuel for the county are being a passport acceptance agency, application acceptance agency for the state department. And then being a resource for the DNR for hunting and fishing licenses as well as vehicle registrations like snowmobiles, ATVs, boat licenses for boats under 16 feet, things of that nature. And as an outdoorsman, I sure appreciate being able to just go downstairs in the administration building and get excellent customer service. And it seems like I'm only in there for a couple of minutes when I want to get my patron hunting and fishing license. And I think it's one of the better kept secrets, really, because I know Fleet Farm is very busy with selling licenses. The DNR office in Plymouth is busy, but they've now reduced their hours and it can be a little less convenient. So if you're watching this program and you're an outdoorsman like to hunt or fish, stop on in the county clerk's office and you'll have some real nice folks who can help you. And it just doesn't seem like the weight or the line is as long at your office. Easy in and out parking. We're right on the first floor. It costs the same, whether you come to our office or go to Gander Mountain or wherever. And then how many staff do you have and what's your annual operating budget? Three staff, two of them very weathered, been with the office for quite a long time working with the retired Julie Glancy who was clerked for 18 years. And it's roughly half a million dollar operating budget. But also one very new employee. I don't recall her name right now. Well, Leigh Ann Gilson. She started a couple weeks ago. She filled a position that Dave Werewein had filled and Dave retired after being with the county for almost 25 years. And in the clerk's office for I think it was 16 years. Yeah, very good. And what have you found personally to be some of the more challenging responsibilities associated with being the department head and running a county clerk's office? Well, I said earlier it's multifaceted. You are juggling a lot of hats. But the biggest challenge probably to me coming in was programming the election equipment and coming off the heels of other counties down south that had elections kind of go awry. The pressure's there that you have to perform and everyone's watching on election night. And everything went well. But that was a big challenge. And that's a great transition to you, Roger. Yes, and as most of you are aware there's a lot of elections that have taken place in the past two years. And most recently has been the primary elections. Let's start with that. Could you tell us a little bit when and where they occur and how many different polling places you'd get affected with? Sure. The primary that was in February, there was a few races that needed, that warranted a primary. That was a smaller election, but that gave way to the April election, which this year it was primarily for the smaller municipalities, well, all municipalities for that matter, but Aldermanic races, mayoral races, village presidents, village clerks, treasurers, constables. It was quite a large election and coming off the heels that I just missed with the outgoing Julie Glancy was the November election as the presidential. And the interesting thing is a lot of people think the presidential is the end all be all. It's just a nightmare of elections and it's massive. Well, it is and it isn't. It is in terms of turnout. It's presidential. It seems everyone gets out to vote. But the interesting thing is the spring elections are actually much, much larger. For instance, the November election, there were 10 races on the ballot. This is boring election stuff, but it's what I do and I love it. So there were 10 races on the November ballots and there were six different ballot styles. In the April election, there were 110 races and 81 different ballot styles. And if you look inward at what I do, it's all the designing of the ballots, programming of the elections and making sure everything's right, right down to the village constable. Spring elections are 10 times a presidential election as far as what goes on to make it happen. Yet the turnout is less. And people, they're like, it's just a local election. Most people don't know that. Please tell our viewers a little bit about the county clerk's role in coordinating all of that. And how does that happen? And for instance, you have a lot of part-time poll workers that need to act professionally at the polls. You're involved with that also, correct? The training? Correct. I haven't done any training yet to date because Julie had taken care of that prior to her leaving for that period. So I will be doing that again and filling her shoes. The county clerk doesn't run elections per se as what happens on election day. They administer the election process, train the municipal clerks, and make sure everything is done to the statutes with the Government Accountability Board. And there's five or six volunteer poll workers at each polling location times, I think there's 47 polling locations in the county. And on top of that, the different municipal employees like clerks, deputy clerks, for the towns and villages. And in addition to my staff of three and myself, the numbers, it's over 200 people that are involved on any given election day. The State Elections Accountability Board has a very user-friendly website. You want to tell our viewers a little bit about that? Sure. It's myvote.wi.gov. And there's a lot of helpful resources on there, especially if you are in the military or are going to be traveling overseas or just traveling in general, and you need to get information on absentee ballots. That's already readily available. If you're not sure, if you're new to the area or after the census, some of the district lines changed and you're not sure where to vote, you can go to that website, type in your information, and it'll tell you the municipality that you're in. As well as who's running in the different races, all of the information that we input for our election equipment and ballots needs to then get uploaded to the Government Accountability Board through their state voter registration system. It's a duplication of the process, but it's all the information that we have to get to them so they can have it accessible on their website for the taxpayers at myvote.wi.gov. I remember several years ago, there used to be different polling times at different locations. Now it's uniform throughout the county. That's very helpful, and those times never change whatever election it is. Correct. That time is 7 to 8 p.m. 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. That's consistent across the state. There used to be some confusion on that, but that's been a good change. Are there some other changes that have happened in the past few years that will affect some of our voters in the upcoming elections, or are they in place? They're in place. There are some things that are going through the legislature right now. We'll wait and see what comes of it, but some things are on campaign finance, but then with the times, some things that they are trying to do is regulate when people can apply for absentee ballots. That is kind of massaged per the municipality. A lot of outlying municipalities are part-time, or they might have office hours in their home with their home phone number. After 5 o'clock, they might be a farmer during the day and town clerk slash treasurer at night and on the weekends. So they kind of may do with the locals in their area. The state is trying to come by some people with the state or trying to come by and say, no, we got to have it like business hours, 8 to 5 up until the Friday before the election, things of that nature. That doesn't always work. That might work in the city of Sheboygan, but maybe not in the town of Mitchell or something smaller in the remote areas in the different counties, especially counties that are up in northern Wisconsin where there's 10, 15,000 people in the county. Most of those municipalities are pretty remote and small, and they massage the hours when they need to for the locals in that town. Thank you, John. And in addition to changes, and I know it's been a few years now, but we also had to change some of the voting machines that were accessible to people. I know I still haven't used any of the touch-type voting machines. I used the old paper process, which I'm comfortable with, but what options are out there now? Well, recently there was the Help America Voters Act that came out, which required every municipality in the country to have handicap-accessible, ADA-compliant voter equipment. And another element of that was to have a electronic screen with the capability of audio. So blind people can put on earphones. They have a handpiece with a joystick kind of operation, and it walks them through the ballot. So we not only programmed the optical scan machines that most people are comfortable with, where they connect an arrow and put it through the machine. The machine reads it and tabulates with the newer touchscreen machines with the audio capability. They're able to absolutely have everyone, pretty much with any disability, get out to vote. Yet anyone can use it, whether you're disabled or not. And a lot of people do. A lot of people just want to get away from the paper ballots, and they go and use a touchscreen, and it walks them through it, and then it verifies when you're at the end of your vote, you can double-check it and then hit Enter, so you can change it more easily than if you fill in an arrow on a paper ballot, and then issue you another ballot if you want to change your vote. I imagine the younger generation is probably going to appreciate more of that touchscreen, and it's a little superior. The usage is increasing every election. Very good. Well, earlier you talked about very briefly the passports and the DNR licenses, the marriage licenses, and for the passports and the marriage licenses in particular. Obviously, let's start with the marriage licenses. Very important function of your office. I see a lot of folks of all ages coming through from time to time to get that very important marriage license. What do they need to bring along with them to make sure they're prepared and aren't told no, you have to come back? That's a good question. Photo identification is obviously one of the main things you need. Proof of residency to show that you are in resident of the county, resident of the state, wherever you're going to be getting married, and the certified birth certificate. That's where a lot of people, they just bring in the old black and white sheet that they have from their parents tucked away in an envelope somewhere, and that's an actual photocopy of the certified birth certificate. When you need an actual certified birth certificate with the embossed impression from the register of deeds office. If they don't have a license, for example, a photo of themselves, are there different forms of photo ID that they can bring in? Basically it's the state issued photo ID. If they're not a driver, they get a lot of those. So if they're not a driver, they'll go get the state issued one just to show that they're a citizen or resident of that area. And then the birth certificate, if they don't have the certified birth certificate, they can go right upstairs to a registered deeds office. If they were born in Sheboygan County, they could go upstairs to the registered deeds office and purchase a certified birth certificate. And if they weren't born in Sheboygan County? If they weren't, they have to contact the register of deeds from the county that they were born. Okay. Does our register of deeds assist them with that? Yes. And it happens weekly. We have information on our website that is being used quite heavily and we have a brochure. A lot of times, especially with younger couples, they'll come in and ask, what do we need? Or they'll go to our website, make a phone call, we'll direct them to the website. And then the marriage licenses, what's it cost? You get a marriage license? $85. And that is dictated by the state and county statutes. So every time they look at you and say, why does this cost $85? You can say it's not the county board or the county clerk that's directing this, it's the state. Passports. Sounds like they need probably similar information. Yes. Passports. It's not dictated by the state statutes that we take on. We chose to take on that as a county years back to be an application acceptance agency for the state department. And they need photo ID, photographs. If they don't have them, we also take those that are office, if needed, and the certified birth certificate. Or if they're foreign born, they more often than not have their naturalization papers, which act as a certified birth certificate. And the cost of getting a passport? Typically $110 for the passport book. It's not inexpensive in having received my passport from your office and my full family, because we get up to Canada once a year for a fishing trip. I know that when you come in to get that, you don't expect to get it over the counter that day. There's a processing time because it has to be sent in of what, four, six weeks? Four to six weeks is what they state on their website. We are just a passport application acceptance agency. So we assist them in the process, but then we just submit it to the state department and if there's any issues or additional information needed there, then the state department's contacting the applicant directly. Very good. Very good. So what do you think is the most common reason you have to send folks home where they can't get it done, whether it's their marriage license or their passport? What do they generally don't have? Typically it's not the current or proper birth certificate. Then they go right upstairs. They say this is me, what do you mean? But it's a certified birth certificate. We just went in and we're changing our website. It used to say certified copy and the copy was confusing people. Although it was prefaced by certified, it's the certified birth certificate that you need. When we say certified, what does that mean to people? What's the difference? They just go in and actually look up that you were born there in that county. Then they have to stamp it and notarize it to emphasize that. Very good. The other thing with passports, which is new to a lot of people, now if you're traveling via car or land travel to the contiguous North America, which is Canada and Mexico, is that you can now get a passport card, which is $30, but it does not allow air travel. A concern to some, which we bring up, especially if they have young kids or if they have health issues if they're in their older years, is if there's ever need for an emergency to return home via an airplane, you cannot travel with a passport card via air. Typically, if they're just going up to Canada to go fishing and they do it every year and they have no intention of ever flying anywhere and don't have concerns about the emergency to get back home, which is a rare occurrence, but it can still happen, they'll just go with a passport card for the $30. A lot of businessmen will just get the passport card. Truckers, if they're constantly going across the border, it's driver's license size, easily fits in your wallet, and it's inexpensive. Similar to a passport, you have to get it renewed every 15 years. Once you're an adult. If you're a youth at last, it's good for five years. Five years for children and 15 for an adult. Very good. Well, we only have a couple of minutes left, but I know one of the new initiatives that your office has played a key role in with the county board and the county as a whole right now is the paperless initiative and trying to streamline and all of our county board supervisors now have received iPads and our website's been improved with the agenda development and the minutes, please take a minute or two to touch on your role there and how you see that developing. Sure. A lot of the wheel started rolling when Julie was in office last year to assist in cost-cutting measures for the county, and one of the things that the role of the county clerk's office has is getting out the agenda minutes and any attachments to the agenda for financial review, other ordinances, whatnot. Sometimes those documents are 40, 60 pages for each of the 25 county supervisors, plus yourself, plus for myself and a few others. So the cost of printing and mailing those out was high every month. So in order to combat that, some research was done with Terry Hansen, the IT and Finance Director, along with Julie, and found that a lot of counties were going to a ulterior paperless method, which the one they chose was with an iPad. Each of the county supervisors will all now have an iPad and over the next few months they'll be getting trained on how to use them, how to access the agendas, minutes, and attachments and can just view it right from their screen and call up, they can then call up minutes from past meetings, ordinances from last year. They'll be able to look up. And then we'll be able to, hopefully by fall, we'll have it implemented to replace the boardroom voting equipment. They'll be able to do it right on their iPads. That's outdated equipment that we currently have for the voting. And we'll be able to implement that soon. And I think the cost payback was less than two years on that. So it's the wave of the future, but it's a cost savings all the way around. And it's been kind of fun to see the process unfold. There's been a few hiccups along the way with any change or technology advancement, but I know some of the board members were a little sensitive to making this change. For our children, no big deal, but for some of our board members, there was some concern. But what's been refreshing is many of them already had iPads or were familiar with the technology. And then others that folks may have thought have provided feedback that they really like it and that information is more accessible and they're enjoying it. So, so far so good. Well, we've got to wrap it up, but thank you, John, for joining us today. You're very welcome. Excellent information. If you have any questions or suggestions for improvement or want to follow up with John or his staff and learn more about passports or marriage licenses or any of the areas he covered, please don't hesitate to call the County Clerk's Office 459-3003. Again, thank you for joining us. Thank you, John. On behalf of Roger Distruty and myself, we'll see you next month.