 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name's Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program, although as you can see, our fearless leader, County Board Chairman Mike Van Der Stien isn't with us today. In fact, Mike had some ankle surgery. He's resting comfortably at home and if you get a chance or you know Chairman Mike Van Der Stien, please drop a note or give him a phone call because he may not be with us now for the next couple of months, in fact. But we are very pleased today to have Greg Schneller, Highway Commissioner with us. Welcome, Greg. Thanks, Adam. I enjoy being here. Greg just mentioned to me it's been since 2006, since he started as Highway Commissioner. It's amazing how quickly the time goes. We've met with a lot of challenges so far, but we're weathering the storm. Weathering the storm and speaking of storms, by the time you see this, things are already really clear, but we had what, 8 to 10 inches this weekend and I thought the Highway Department just did a tremendous job. Let's start there. Tell me a little bit about what it takes. I mean, when this area sees that kind of snowfall, blizzard conditions, how do you respond to that? What's the game plan? Well, first we start early November. We prepare all of our equipment, wings, plows, all of our trucks that are utilized for asphalt and gravel installation over the summer months are transformed into winter activities and modes. We also have our graders that have wings and such and v-plows so that we can open up for the bigger storms, similar to this one. We did activate just about every piece of equipment that we had with our snowblowers and Oshkosh trucks, which normally don't go until we get the big stuff and usually we don't see the big stuff until January, February when the ditches are all full and we get the drifting. In order to prepare for this, we spent a couple days and we've heard about it coming and nobody really knew where the eye was going to be. We made some decisions as far as sending some guys home early to get some rest and so we had enough people to go over the night. Our night shift is primarily only two guys for eight hours and another two guys for another eight hours after. So as we get a second and third shift, it only consists of two people. For this storm, we added a few more just to keep our main highways going and keep everybody moving along. So when it's just coming down like it was Saturday night and again I know this is a tape-delayed program, which certainly everyone's going to remember this snowfall for a while. When it's just coming down in buckets, winds blowing hard, do you try to stay after it while that's happening or do you essentially hold off a little bit and say let's let it come and get out there once rather than fight it the whole time? How does that work? We will continually plow through the storm. It's a challenge to shut down roads and say to people, hey, we're going to let you sit. We're not going to do that. We're going to do our best to keep our equipment moving. But there is a safety fact that we have to look at as well. And that's to keep the motor in public safe besides our own people and our equipment. When visibility gets tough for us, it's tough to make sure that there's nobody in front of you and you're using a truck that weighs 72,000 pounds. So when it's loaded down with salt and a wing and a plow, you can do some real damage. And if you don't know what's in that snowbank, there's a potential of some danger. So we haven't had to pull our plows yet. I remember a few years back in a previous job where we did pull plows and it was a challenge. We had to shut down the interstate and put up barricades to not allow people to go back up there. And it probably took us six hours to shut the interstate down. By that time, the winds had died down. So it's a real challenge. But we do continually plow. The reason we do that is we don't want to have the compaction similar to what you're seeing today. The snow really made a bond to the pavement. We're having some real challenges getting that off. That has a lot to do with the temperatures that we're seeing now. And the consistency of the snow when it came was real wet and moist. And now we're stuck with it. So it's coming around. The sun's helping us now. And that's our best friend right now. And we're going through a lot of salt, though. So this is an expensive one. And let's complete that thought. You know, I've heard you say in the past, or former Highway Commissioner say in the past, when you get three to five inches of snow to get that all cleaned up from beginning to end, you might be talking $40,000, $50,000. I know it depends on the wind conditions and everything else. Something like we experienced this weekend, what did we look at? I believe after I ran the numbers for Saturday and Sunday alone, as of yesterday, we had about $125,000 in it. The storm or our cleanup will continue now and still will be continuing probably through Thursday. We're hoping that we can get it all cleaned up. We're expecting a little bit of snow overnight and tomorrow. But I would say by the time it's all said and done, we'll have close to $200,000 in this storm alone. And we've kitted about this, but it's more cost-effective for us when it snows during the week than over the weekends. Absolutely. We have some operators that worked on Sunday for 17 hours, and that's completely over time, the entire time. So the overtime starts to rack up. The truck gets the same rate no matter if it's going on Friday or Saturday or Monday or Tuesday. So a lot of people realize that the salt alone goes for $60 a ton. That's what we're buying it for. When it's kind of strange to me where we can put asphalt down for $40 a ton, and salt costs $60 a ton, and at the end of the season, we have nothing to show for it. Yeah. Now, those who may have followed our budget process this year, of course, the county board's been making real tough decisions about where they're going to provide limited resources, whether it's law enforcement, the highway department, health and human services. In our highway department, we've done some downsizing there. We've reduced the staff. Where are we at right now with your table of organization? And again, back to the snow plowing on a regular shift. How many folks are out there actually plowing still in Chavoine County? Where we currently stand today is we have 96 employees. At the end of December, we'll be down to 90. We'll be laying off six employees, and that's what we're budgeted for for 2011. What it's going to do to our operation is we're going to continue to provide the service, but we're going to rely on the same people more often. Maybe making them or having them run longer, shifting our services around. Maybe our levels will be a little bit different, but you're not going to see a lot of change. The one direction that we looked at when we were going through our budget cuts is that we feel that this is our main focus, is to take care of winter, and that's what people rely on us for to do. So we didn't want to disrupt that apple cart, if you will, in order to make ends meet. We are providing a service and a safety service. So I know for a number of years now, we've had a hiring freeze in Chavoine County. We've been reducing some staff through attrition as they retire or take another job. If memory serves, at one point we had about 120 employees at the highway department. When I started in 2006, we were at 118. 118. So a 25% reduction in our employees over the last four years. And I think it's important for people to understand that clearly, snow removal and taking care of our highways, our infrastructures, are a critically important task, critically important responsibility should boil in county. But like all levels of government, we're feeling the pressures, we're hearing the demands to keep property taxes in check. We're seeing reductions in revenue from the state level, and we're also seeing demands for more services, whether it's health and human services, law enforcement, you name it. So I think Greg and his leadership has been absolutely critical to our success. And of course, we need to see how this next year or two unfolds. It will be at 90 is what we've budgeted. And of course, snow removal is a key responsibility. On any given day, for example, today, if we saw three to five inches of snow during the week, how many individuals do you generally have out there doing snow removal? We provide service to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and plow their snow as well. So when we send out a full complement of our just our one-way trucks, the ones that are carrying the salt and doing the, I would say, the primary plowing, just to keep everything open, intersection salted, we send out 42 trucks. At one point on Saturday or Sunday, we had 60 employees in not counting our mechanics and any of our supervisors that was just running the graders, which we would send out 12. We wouldn't do that with a three to five inch storm depending upon the wind and all that. There's different conditions that will dictate that. But for the most part, we're looking at 45 people that will be sent out on a three to five inch snow storm. Okay. And 42 pieces of hardware, 42 trucks out there. One shape, size or kind out there involved with it. And then we had the graders, that's an additional 12. And we had six Oshkosh trucks out on Sunday and those are, like I said, depends upon the wind there. But some of those haven't been used for four and five years and they're like our insurance policy, if you will. They're old, but they get the job done. An earlier set, unless I misunderstood you, that the third shift though, you only have a couple of folks out there. So what time does the first shift start? Because I'm sure you want those roads clear before most people are heading to work. Well, our normal operation with the one on a snow was seven to three thirty. At three o'clock, we have two individuals come in to take care of our second shift. They come in from three to ten, they're at ten thirty and we have two others come in at ten thirty and they go until seven o'clock in the morning. Their primary concern is I-43 and State Highway 23. The state pays for those individuals to be here to respond to their calls. It's not to say that we won't go off and take care of an emergency call some place out in the county, but that does take away from the service that we're providing to the state where there's more traffic. So that's why when we get up in the morning and head on Highway 23 or 57 or one of the interstates, those roads are looking good because we've had some people doing nothing but predominantly focusing on those. Whereas during the day, your workforce is going out to all the county and town roads and throughout the area. If we would get that three to five that you talked about earlier, if that would start, let's just say at maybe midnight to night before, we'll bring our guys in. Our first shift guys then will be called upon maybe coming at three or three thirty four o'clock in the morning and then they'll plow throughout the day. So by the time the normal person would leave for work at seven or six or whatever, there's a pretty good chance that they're going to have good sailing, if you will, or some salted highways where the salt is starting to work. Typically, if that storm is going to take the course and it's going to continue throughout the whole day, we'll go until eight, depending upon how bad it is, we might go until nine with those other individuals helping out on certain sections so we can get ahead of it so they can perform their services throughout the night when nobody else has given them a hand. So that's usually our four to eight is what we were running during the snowstorm if we have to and then the night guys will take care of the hotspots if you will. As we know accidents always happen and obviously you want to really try to avoid hitting another vehicle or knocking over a mailbox, but I know just in the area of mailboxes that we both hear from time to time, just the weight of that snow coming off the plow can knock that mailbox right off and I noticed just the other day where one had been knocked off. If that happens, if someone has some damage like that, what should they do? Contact the Highway Commissioner, your assistant, how do you like to handle that? The way the policy has always been, if it's maybe an unwritten policy, if we cause the damage physically, if the wing or the plow of the equipment will hit the mailbox where it's, you can see the physical damage, whether it's an orange paint or an area where it was definitely hit and dented, we will replace that mailbox and the post. Now if it's caused by the snow, that's something that really can't control, that would be the homeowner's responsibility to take care of that. We've have fixed a few here and there because of arguments, because of yes, the plow hit it and all the plow didn't, but we would like the homeowner to be responsible for that because really it's something that we can't control. As you can imagine, if our truck's going 20 miles an hour and he's got a 13-foot blade in front of him and a 12-foot wing on the side, there's a tremendous amount of snow and pressure coming off of that as he's going. Also on the lines of safety, I know you've said it before and I think it's always a good reminder, what's the distance that people should keep from these plows, whether they're heading down 23 or on a town road? Minimum 200 feet. You don't know, when we are plowing down a highway and if we have to come to a bridge, there's a lot of times that the bridge lays the same as what the plow is and all of our bridges have a joint in them and if there's not enough snow covering that, that plow has a tendency that it can fall in there and stop the truck dead in its tracks. A lot of our guys will slow down, put a little pressure up on that blade so it's not falling in there. So if the person behind them is not paying attention or at least doesn't give them that 200-foot buffer, when he slows that truck down, they're going to be on him immediately and obviously if he's out there it's going to be slippery because otherwise he wouldn't be there. So our guys are creating whiteout conditions when it's windy and they're plowing and it's flying off the blade, so we don't want you to drive into that large cloud either. Stay behind the truck, stay at least 200 feet and give him his space because if he can't see you, if you can't see him, he can't see you. And intersections I know sometimes can be a little confusing for folks because the plow will come up to the intersection, they might assume it's just going to go on through, but they may actually work those corners and push that snow back and be backing up. So you really got to be in your toes. As they're cleaning up and like I said, if you can look into that truck and you can't see the operator in his mirror, then he can't see you either. So there's always that possibility and when you're at the intersection it's good advice to turn down the radio so you can at least hear that backup alarm because sometimes the snow is covering their lenses in the back and you won't see that they're backing up but you'll be able to hear it with the backup alarm. Now we're talking a lot about snow here but it is the season and obviously it's a very important responsibility of the highway department and you've talked a little bit about your labor force and the different schedules and the approach you take out there and you mentioned real briefly salt and the cost of salt and I know that's fluctuated tremendously and as you said at the end of the year the salt pile's gone and what did you get for it but give our viewers a flavor for just how expensive salt is, what the cost county taxpayers as a whole to pay for the salt, how much we need every year, how much we go through and where do you get it? When we go through our salt we have to order it in July already and we go on estate bids so all 72 counties plus the municipalities within those counties have an opportunity to go on a state bid where we can obviously when you buy that amount you have buying power where you get a little reduced price. I believe the number is in 100 plus thousand tons of salt that the state of Wisconsin buys so obviously if we all get in on that we can get in on their unit cost. So what we do is we'll take our inventory at the end of the winter and see what we have left. Based on five-year averages we we could run about 12,000 tons a year which basically comes down to about three quarters of a million dollars in salt that we have to purchase. We have salt sheds we have to have the storage for that it has to be inside throughout the summer months a lot of people try to keep it outside but it leaches into their ground. It runs about 60 dollars a ton and when you're going down the road and you're putting it down you want to make make sure you're utilizing it to its fullest extent. These temperatures that we're seeing right now sometimes the salt that doesn't work is effective it won't work is effective 15 degrees and below becomes a challenge where you have to add more to it. We have been taking advantage of some additional funding that we got from the state to purchase tanks where we're starting to mix salt brine and that's injected at the spinner so that when the salt hits the road it's already activated it's wet and starting to melt so we don't get the bounce anymore where the salt's bouncing off the side of the road so we've taken steps in order to reduce the use of our raw material the salt and started using the liquids to help enhance it. And your comment about the salt not working if it's 15 degrees or colder and I got to imagine from time to time folks are going to and from home or work and they're wondering why is this ice not yet off what's taken so long well before experiencing temperatures like we are now four or five degrees it takes a little longer you need some need some sun and to get those temperatures up in the 20s is really the best. Sometimes it can work as a disadvantage to you as well as when we some if we're going to go out and salt in the morning we pay real close attention to what the wind is going to do the rest of the day if we go out we're salting we get the road all wet and also the wind picks up at about two o'clock in the afternoon that snow is going to start to collect in the road and the salt's not going to stay there long enough to melt it down so now we've just created ice and over the night it's going to turn to ice and it's going to get extremely slippery that we're going to have to contend with throughout the night and for the next couple days after. Someone experiences a real trouble spot they you know leaving early in the morning go through an intersection or come around a curve and it's just glare ice or black ice how should they you know they want to be a good Samaritan and point that out sooner rather than later before somebody gets hurt or killed. Do they contact the highway department the sheriff's department what's your advice there? Depending upon the timing if it's during the week Monday through Friday we have people in the office from usually six a.m. until four o'clock in the afternoon outside those hours the best bet would be the sheriff's department inside those hours they can call directly to our highway department we'll get a hold of the people that take care of it. Very good very good I know we haven't even looked at these questions very much obviously Greg knows this department and roles and responsibilities inside and out every year we talk about the seasons and that there's two predominant seasons I know we've just talked a great deal about one of them the winter season what's the other? Construction we all you see the comics in the paper you know you're in Wisconsin when you see all the orange barrels up and down the highways and that's what we've been seeing over the last couple of years and unfortunately we have such a short construction window we want to try to compact as much into as possible so as you can imagine things are starting earlier this year this uh in 2011 you'll probably see the orange barrels come out in March already for I-43 there's some bridges that need to be replaced we have our own construction projects that will be coming up in April and in May so we're trying to get as much done in that short amount of time as we possibly can and so we're aggravating the people just constantly it's either winter or it's construction so it's not what we want to do we just want to perform the best service that we possibly can. Sure and you've got you've got a tremendous crew of people there as you mentioned you know the 90 employees working for you you know I certainly know you don't have just those who plow snow and just those that do construction they're there year round and and have a variety of skills talk us talk about the construction season a little bit and your workforce and and how you utilize your workforce what are some of the roles and responsibilities there? We uh we're pretty much a full service highway department we construct our own roads we we offer that service to our other local missed valleys as well we have an asphalt plant a crushing operation we have a grading crew which is the grading crew does the actual earth work cuts and fills and then we have another crew that comes back and adds the gravel and puts down the black top so it's when when the construction's going on our other crews are off working on a municipality job or any other project that we have we have some backhoes we have some earth moving equipment plus we have our maintenance operation as well with the mowing has to get done at the same time we're one of the few counties in the state that takes care of as many townships as we do there's 15 townships in shitboyton county we take care of 11 of them i mean take care of them i mean that's picking up the litter filling the potholes cutting the grass plowing the snow um ditching color replacement so we're moving a lot and taking care of a lot of stuff we have 450 miles of highway department jurisdiction just county trunks we have 170 miles of state road and we have 465 miles of township road that we take care of a lot going on out there and as we look for it at 2011 ahead in the construction season that before we know it we'll be done plowing and back out there what are some of the key projects you have come in our direction we're going to be first thing in spring we'll be going down to county trunk okay for a roundabout project that intersection from my knowledge has for the last 10 years been looking at a lot of accidents and so that's what's our first project out of the out of the blocks from there we'll be going over to county trunk or to finish from i-43 to why that's been a constant project from 2008 on now and this is the last phase of it and hopefully we can get it completed and get it all taken care of we got numerous paving projects the county board was gracious enough to give us some additional dollars this year to catch up on our road paving that's been put aside since the prices have been going up so high on on oil costs and roundabouts you you said it roundabouts and i know i know very well because every now and then you and i get a phone call about roundabouts it seems like some people they either love them or hate them and the folks that don't care for them they generally tell us we know there are a lot of good reasons for roundabouts and they're becoming more and more prevalent throughout not only the state of wisconsin but the nation and they're very prevalent in some other countries what is it about roundabouts that the department of transportation is is encouraging that they be put in now more frequently than ever before strictly safety less maintenance the when you look at a traffic signal a light setup you know those require almost as much real estate as what does a roundabout because you have to add in different lanes and put electrical boxes in so you have to have space for all that stuff the true reason behind a roundabout is that it reduces accidents and injury accidents by it's in upwards of 85 percent if not higher and the reason that is is because you're going into them at such a slow speed and when it's when you do have contact with another vehicle you're hitting in the side where you're glancing off or you're a front fender it's not this t-bone type real aggressive accident some of the reduction in accidents that roundabouts are just because people don't want to use them so we're not seen as much traffic you know they try to avoid them at every cost so so i guess they are still reducing accidents and that's what we're after we're after the safety for the people well as you said when you go in at the angle if you do hit someone you're not hitting head on like you do through a stoplighter or a stop sign personally the first couple of times i used a roundabout you know it does feel a little uncomfortable and you're looking to see who's coming and who's going but what i've come to really appreciate about them is you're never waiting for that doggone long stoplight it seems like it really keeps the traffic moving it's and that's really another key point for them is that if you're you know if you're if you're in the circle you're the boss so that's that's one of the things you got to learn right away the guy in the circle has the has the right away if you look back and you we watch people at certain intersections they like to course through them well now you have the opportunity to all the time in a roundabout you're not going to ever get a call for it not you fail into yield so it's it's a nice nice feature how many roundabouts does sheboy and conny have now seven soon to be eight seven soon to be eight and when we put in a roundabout you know i think some people are under the impression well the county solely made that decision and the county taxpayer is solely paying for it how is the process established why when when is it to determine that a round about is the best approach and then when that decision is made how is it paid for we typically will look at our accident history at the intersection and we'll ask for help from the do t to indicate whether what would be a good fix for this intersection not every intersection should be around about it and i think we're all well aware of that so we'll start the process we'll get an accident history on it and the funding that's that's associated with the roundabouts typically is federal funding and the percentage of funding that you're going to get is based on the history of accidents and the severity if there's fatalities and a lot of injury accidents they establish a cost to all that the particular roundabout at county trunk ok and ee is a 90-10 funding we're going to have 10 percent of is our responsibility only and that's due to the severity of the accidents and the history and the amount of accidents over the years the the intersection of 40th and superior that roundabout that was solely funded by the county taxpayers it was applied for to get some funding but it didn't it didn't meet their criteria it didn't have the accident history if you will that's a beautifully functioning roundabout with a couple different legs off of it that you don't see a lot with wilger street coming in at such an angle but it's worked all well and i've we've gotten a fair amount of compliments from it got some complaints as well but some compliments too but normally how does the cost sharing work with a roundabout if the department of transportation is involved with it and the accident rates up there what's the funding breakout normally it would be a 80-20 normally 80-20 normally yep and that's and that's the uh the federal government would be would be supplying not the state government okay very good well we only have two minutes remaining and covered a lot of ground and i know in the last four years you know as i mentioned at the onset here tremendous challenges for anyone at any level of government and as our viewers know real winds of change right now at the state level there's tremendous pressure to hold property taxes in check or reduce taxes at all levels yet at the same time work continues to need to get done demands for services in many areas continue to go up and all 21 of our departments including the highway department need to be part of that solution and part of that process as you look back at the last four years and look at the year or two or the next four years ahead you know what do you see as some of your key challenges or you know what are you most proud of and again we only have about a minute remaining well i'm most proud of that at this point we've reduced our service our staff by 25 percent and we're still maintaining we're going to have to maybe prioritize some of our work schedule in the summer months and still focus all of our service towards the winter i believe that that's that's our strongest that's the backbone of our highway department is our winter people rely on us to do that and that's what we're going to continue to do biggest word for next year and next couple years is change and that's what we're all going to have to deal with yeah yeah like it or not we can either embrace it or get rolled rolled underneath it well Greg thanks for joining us today excellent discussion of the good work your highway department's doing i know you've got great staff i know it's been a challenging period for all of us and certainly highway department employees who have left or a few will get laid off but i appreciate the good work that you're doing in your management team and everyone at the highway department so thank you for being here and thank you for joining us next month erin brault our new interim director of the planning conservation department will be here so i look forward to introducing him to you very good person has been working with our non-motorized program now for about five years and again recently promoted to interim director until then have a wonderful holiday season and drive safe