 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name's Adam Payne, I'm the county administrative coordinator and co-host of this program with chairman Bill Gehring. And it's that time of year. Here we are in August already, but I'm sure you've been out there avoiding the orange barrels and construction signs, and today we're very pleased to have as our guest Roger Lanning, the highway commissioner for Sheboygan County. Today, Roger's gonna talk a little bit about the roles and responsibilities of the county highway department and give you a sense of what's been going on this year and some of the projects in the future. Roger, why don't you start by telling our viewers a little bit about your background in your position as highway commissioner. Okay, thank you. I've been an employee with Sheboygan County since 1979 in the county surveyors position, highway engineers position originally. And then starting in January of 1987, I assumed the role of highway commissioner for the county and of course have been active in that role since that time. And primary roles, responsibilities of the highway department? Well, basically the primary roles of the highway department are to maintain, design, and construct the county system of highways, the lettered system of highways versus the state with the numerical numbers 43, 23, 28, and of course the local roads have individual road names. Now I know some of our viewers may have seen recently an article in the journal Sentinel talking about how Wisconsin has more paved roads or is up there in the top rankings of the number of paved roads we have here and you certainly have a great deal of responsibility in the county. About how many miles of county roads do we have here? Well, we have 452 miles of county roads. Total in the county is just short of 1,500 miles. So of all of the roadways that we maintain in the county between the state, ourselves, and the local municipalities amounts to just about 1,100 miles or approximately 75% of the roadways in the county are maintained by the county highway department. So restate those numbers for us, 450? 452 miles of county trunks. And then when you look at all the town roads and state roads. Town roads, state roads, it adds up to a total of about 1,500 miles. I'll be tearing. Now, a lot of responsibility, especially the maintenance and upkeep, not only of the roads but the plowing and the winter. What's the size of your department, your employee structure and how are you organized? Okay, employee-wise we have 120 full-time employees and as many of the viewers will note, our operation is divided up into six, what we call district garages. For example, Implemouth and Cascade, Adel, Elkhart Lake, Howard's Grove, and of course, South of Sheboygan on I-43. And during the winter time, each of the garages there maintains about 200 miles of roadway in that specific area. And then of course, during the summertime, we break out into the various construction crews. And I might add that the administration building and our machinery repair facility is at on 23rd Street here in Sheboygan. So not only responsible for maintaining all these roads, but I know you're also busy with culverts, bridges, signage, could you touch on that a little bit? That's correct. That's all part of the maintenance of the roadways. I guess maintenance of a classify is resurfacing or sealing of the roadways, excuse me, mowing the grass, litter pickup, and as mentioned, signing and culverts and all other drainage facilities. Is that an activity that is seasonal? Can you give our viewers a flavor of, as the year progresses, where are your crews focused? Of course, during the summer months, all of the crews are focused on that type of maintenance that I just mentioned versus the winter time. We go as long as we can until the snow starts coming, and then we have to mobilize our equipment for the snow plowing activity, standing and salting. And what hours do the crews generally work? Normal work hours are seven to three-thirty. During the summer months, because of the daylight hours, we work six to four, Monday through Thursday, and as necessary on Fridays, some of the various crews will work on Fridays. Very good, thank you, Roger. Roger, in addition to being County Board Chairman, I'm also Chairman of the Town of Sherman, and I know that you do a lot of coordination and work with townships. Could you tell us a little bit about that type of coordination? Sure, historically, in this county, the townships have always worked with the County Highway Department when it came to maintaining and upkeep of their town roads, for example. That's quite frankly why our force is as large as it is, is to maintain the township roads. Currently, we maintain 12 out of the 15 townships, their roadways during the winter, and then of course, during the summer maintenance and construction season, we try to do as much of that construction work as we can with the township. So we have a very good relationship with the municipalities in the county because we've done the work in the past, and we certainly, with that amount of work, helps us to be cost effective in our overall operation. Can you talk about some of the projects that you've been working on lately with local units of government? Sure, well, in addition to many of the resurfacing jobs that we do for the townships and the normal, as you mentioned, culverts and whatnot, primarily, let me focus on, I mean, in the county roads this year, as far as the actual construction, County Highway O on the south side of Shepard Memorial Airport, that was what I call relocated or shifted south from its present location to a comedy future expansion of the main runway out of the airport. The grading and grappling is done with that, and we hope to be complete with the asphalt and the sining and have everything opened up by the end of August. The job that we started a couple of weeks ago, another grading job, is County Highway A from V, known as Six Corners, northeasterly to Wheaton Creek. That's about a mile and three quarters with a total regrading of that, total ditches, roadbed, asphalt, and we hope to be completed with that by the end of September. And then we have some other, what we call betterment jobs for a couple of the townships, whereby we basically leave the existing pavement in place, but basically reditch and work on the culverts on a length of roadway. Basically it's all rebuilt except the roadbed itself, and a number of the townships have some jobs lined up with us to do that work. Okay, great. Any state and other local projects you've been getting involved in? As far as the construction is concerned, we are in what would they call District Three, the Green Bay District of the State Highway Department. And any major jobs, major construction jobs, for example, if there's major construction I-43, or the reconstruction of 57, basically from Waldo to the South Carolina and into Ozaki County, those major construction jobs are handled by the DOT under lead contracts. That's all run through the Green Bay and of course the central office in Madison. The other maintenance activities, the grass mowing, culvert repair, and seal quoting, things like that, are considered part of maintenance. And we have, each year we work with the state setting up a program on their roadways for that type of work. Keep in mind that Wisconsin is unique in the nation as far as the counties having to do, that do the maintenance on the state highway systems. Any projects coming down the road next year that you're looking at? Well, first of all, on the county projects, we'll be rebuilding County Road P and a portion of A, Southwest of Elkhart Lake. That's a little over two miles of roadway. We'll be working on regrading on that. We have some work at the airport next year once again and a bridge is scheduled for reconstruction next year on County Road O over the Sheboygan River that's west of the airport a couple miles. And then once again, we'll have a number of projects lined up with the local municipalities. From the state of Wisconsin standpoint, what I've learned of their construction plans are many of us have been involved with or heard of the extension of State Highway 23 on the north side of Plymouth. We're currently where the four lanes end right now that that's gonna be extended to the west to bypass Plymouth about, it's about two miles of roadway. Some of the structure work, bridges overheads will start next year. The state will be letting a contract on that. And then in the village of Cedar Grove on State Highway 32 from County Road D north to the north village limits in Cedar Grove, that's going to be reconstructed starting early next year also. And then of course, after that, the state has long range plans for reconstruction of Highway 28 from 57 through Waldo, through Cascade down to the south Sheboygan County line. That's not gonna be a full reconstruction but resurfacing and operating of the facility as well as the same type of job will be on State Highway 32 then from the north village limits of Cedar Grove to Sheboygan Falls. So there's quite a bit of work going on. You're doing a lot of work within the county. Probably the viewers would be interested in how things are funded. Basically, how do we fund your department? Is it totally on the tax roll or? No, the easiest way to sum up is that we get our primary funding from three sources of course. The, our state and federal aid programs which include the, what we call, gas, the gas tax that we pay. Part of that comes back to the low units of government. So about a third of our budget comes from the state in the form of the gas tax and other aid programs like that. The other third of our budget comes with our contractual arrangements with this State Department of Transportation and the local units of government. And then basically another third is from the tax levy. How do things look in next year's budget based upon cutbacks both from the federal and state level? It seems that the state government wants to spend a lot of money on road building. Does that still filter down to the county or not? No. The, of course we've all read about the road building part of it. But quite frankly from the state budget, from the state transportation budget, only about 10% of the total dollars that they take in is funneled into major construction. But the work that we do, we call it the maintenance aspect of maintaining the state roadways. The way it sounds that those funding levels are going to stay the same as what they have been the last year or two. So, but then from the county aspect of course we talk and hear all of the levy caps, the levy limits, what we're gonna have to deal with. And of course at the highway department with our county budget where we've been asked to come up with 3.7%. We will achieve that goal in basically all areas of our operation, labor, our direct operations in our materials and programs and from the capital expenditure side for equipment. So, I guess I wanted each area of the highway department of the budget to feel some of the pain. Thank you. Focusing on the funding a little bit, you mentioned state and federal resources about a third and then working with the local units of government and the contracts that you receive. And then the other third is levy. What's the total highway department budget? 12.4 million. 12.4 million. As you alluded to, every department's been challenged to hit this 3.7% reduction to help us be successful for 2004 to address the revenue constraints we have, what have you. What's your overall sense in regards to what's happening at the state level and the change in priorities? And as you said, often when you hear about these increases for Milwaukee or other areas on state highways, that doesn't necessarily mean increases for county and county highways. How are we gonna continue to provide the maintenance and the snow removal when we're seeing these continued reductions in revenue? It boils down ultimately to some type of level of service. Now, keep in mind that let's just use snow plowing, for example. I'm not so sure we necessarily can cut back on the level of service of our plowing and our sanding and salting because of the need of the people to get to and from work. Quite frankly, the safety of the roadways. That has to be paramount. So you ultimately have to feel the pinch in your maintenance and construction of the roadways facilities. And that's where with the increase in material costs and our different road oils and gravels and whatnot and the increase in any of the labor that we have to deal with. And if you have a zero increase or cuts, it has to come out of programs ultimately. As many of our viewers, I'm sure are aware the county's worked real hard the last few four years to maintain our tax rate. And now with the additional cuts from the crisis at the state level, Chairman Gehring and the Finance Committee have established targets and direction for the county as a whole with these reductions. I think from our viewer standpoint, as you said, the level of expectation is pretty high. I personally, I know when I've had friends visit me and some of them like to ride their bikes a lot and are in triathlons, things like that. And they've often said to me, wow, our county roads are top notch, which is certainly a reflection on you and your staff. I know they're working hard and they're making good things happen. But if we only have so much revenue to work with and 23 other departments to balance those needs, people's expectations may have to change a little bit, whether it's snow removal or whether it's maintenance and brush removal. And that's true, and that's true. And a lot of times from a person's perspective, even in our home budgets, if we're tight, sometimes the first thing that we cut back on is maybe the maintenance of things or the upkeep. You just stay with the essential, so to speak. And in many cases, the maintenance items are the easiest targets somewhat because you don't see the immediate ramifications of those cuts. Right, right. Well, speaking of snow, though we're taping this in August, it won't be too long and you're gonna be changing over a lot of your equipment and gearing up for snow removal. Why don't you give our viewers a sense a little bit of what it takes to gear up for plowing snow and insulting our roads every winter? What, it's definitely a challenge when we make the transition from construction to snow because we try and push the construction season as long as we can if the weather stays good. And then, and hope that it doesn't snow too early so that you don't have the trucks hooked up with the plows and whatnot. So it becomes a guessing game a little bit. But usually at the end of October, we wanna start mounting some of the snow equipment and make that transition. For example, the trucks that all gravel and asphalt during the summer have to have plows put on them and get ready of plows and sanders and things to get ready for the snow removal season. How many plows do you have available to you at any one time? Well, the best answer to that is on, call it atypical snowfall if there is such a thing. And if it falls nice, so you can get it all cleaned up in that eight hour day, we would say an inch and a half, two inch snowfall would have 40 units out. 40 units and for an eight hour day with those 40 units out, most about $20,000. I'll be darned. And that doesn't take into consideration the wind or the change in the wind direction or any overtime. So every time there's an inch and a half of snow, we're looking at roughly $20,000 to clear off the streets. And from a public, again, public expectation standpoint, I imagine when there's a half an inch of snow, you're starting to get calls already and people are wondering when things are gonna get cleaned up. Well, you're right. And then it's interesting that you note that is that Sheboygan County being closer to Milwaukee and we've all seen, I call it a migration of folks moving into our area. And therefore commuting back to in the Milwaukee area has created more of a demand for bare roads because Milwaukee County with a freeway system doesn't have a place to push the snow. So they basically have to melt it all. And it carries into Ozaki and ultimately into Sheboygan. So we have a fair amount of pressure to keep the roads, I hate to use the term bare, but close to it so that people have the ability to get to work on time and safely. Bill was talking a little bit about the importance of working with the towns and other local units of government and the collaboration. And I know that Bill has really been emphasizing shared services and working collaboratively with other local units of government. What's at stake here? I mean, I know you have a good rapport and relationship with the towns. You coordinate activities. You do some of their road work, but not all of it. What's really at stake here if we didn't have that collaboration? Well, if we didn't have the collaboration, I guess, let me approach it from the standpoint of simply volume of work. It's very simple that when you get it up to do work that the more volume of work that you do, the lower the unit costs are going to be. So for example, the more gravel we can produce or asphalt which can be produced and laid, that the more volume we do, of course lowers our unit costs and to have the relationship with the local units of government and working with them to procure that work, not only helps, well, it simply helps all the taxpayers that if we can keep the unit costs low, it helps the town taxpayers and of course all of the county taxpayers. And when it comes to snow removal, I imagine you're working with a lot of the towns as well. Yes, like I had mentioned, 12 out of the 15. And if they weren't, then they might likely have their own equipment and their own staffing and costs could escalate. And quite frankly, our surrounding counties, for example, Washington County and Fond du Lac County, I know the townships in those counties do have their own snow removal equipment. So as people are out driving about, whether it's the summer yet and wondering about some barrels or wondering about something being worked on or whether it's our county highway department actually doing the work or someone who's bid out for the private sector or at the state level or this winter when certainly I'm sure you're gonna receive calls about when a road's gonna be plowed, who do they call? How do they get more information? One thing that's worked well for us and I'd like to put a plug in for it is of course our county website. And on the county website, we have like the state DOT numbers that they can call for statewide highway condition forecasts and what's going on around the state, as well as of course they can call our administrative office on 23rd Street. The sheriff's department or quite frankly any of our online district garages which I mentioned. Very good. And we had you on, I don't know it's been some time but I know it was more during the winter months and one of the things we asked you is any tips you have for our viewers when they're out there driving in these conditions to help with everyone's safety including our staff? Simply speed. I guess my best recommendation is is if you're going to work leave a little earlier to allow yourself some time to have to slow down or deal with some our snow equipment on the roadway or simply if it's the conditions you're going to run into because the variation in snowfalls and conditions in the county from West to East and North to South varies a tremendous amount and of course leave a little early and try not to drive 65 or 55 just because the sign says so. And if there are questions or concerns another level that's out there that people can contact are actually members of the Transportation Committee themselves. That's correct, yes. You want to just briefly touch on who participates on that committee? Sure, I'm glad you mentioned that Adam. Thank you. Of course our Transportation Committee has oversight of the Highway Committee as well as the County Airport. The chairman of the committee is Richard Beamus. The vice chairman is Gerald Holub. The secretary is Charles Conrardi. And Harold Locke and Harold Reimer are also the two supervisors that make up the five member Transportation Committee. Very good. Well we want to thank you very much for joining us today and it's certainly a pleasure to have Roger landing with us the last five years that I've had the opportunity to work with Roger. I know how dedicated he is, how thorough he is and certainly how committed he is to providing the best service he can not only himself but he has an excellent staff and an excellent working relationship with the other departments. He mentioned the airport earlier. If you haven't had a chance and I know we've had Chuck on the program recently but if you haven't had a chance stop out at the airport. Not only to take a look at the work that the Highway Department crew is doing but the improvements we're making there to the infrastructure. It's good for our economy. It's good for people in the community and it's really pretty impressive to take a look at. So thanks again Roger for being our guest today. You're welcome. Next month we're gonna have our finance director, Tim Finch, join us. As you know there have been a lot of discussions about the state budget, $3.2 billion shortfall and discussions of a possibility of a property tax freeze or CAP discussions locally as to what's gonna happen with the different programs and services we provide. Chairman Gehring, the finance committee, all the county board supervisors, all the department heads are presently developing their budgets, scrutinizing their budgets and determining where we're gonna make costs to live within the means, to live within the revenue that we're receiving from the state. And when you think about this state budget shortfall, believe me it's coming home to Roost and it's going to affect programs locally and certainly stay in touch. We need your input and the next month Tim Finch will be joining us to share a little bit about where we're at and where we're headed. So until then, on behalf of the county board, county board chairman Bill Gehring and myself Adam Payne, thank you for joining us today.