 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name's Adam Payne, co-host of this program with Chairman Bill Gehring. And today we're very pleased to have two very important people in the community with us to talk about the non-motorized transportation program. Shannon Hayden, our planning director and Dirk Zeilman, who was recently elected chairman of the non-motorized transportation program advisory committee. Welcome. Thank you. Good to have you both here. Shannon, we're gonna start with you. Why don't you start by sharing a little bit about the non-motorized program and what again is the mission and purpose of this program? Sure. I think one thing that's really important to note that I keep hearing when I go out into the public is that it's a trail program and it's more than that. And I think that there needs to be a shift in understanding that it's not just building trails, it's building a network, excuse me for the frog, of non-motorized transportation facilities throughout the county that connects the places that we live, work, and play effectively. Schools, neighborhoods, retail centers, things where you can get services so that people can have transportation choices that don't necessarily require a person to use a car, get people out, get cars off the street, and then also get people moving more. We know that we need to do that more often. We're not doing it as much as we used to. And the county board, it was I think last November, December, when they passed a resolution establishing this non-motorized transportation program in Sheboygan County, authorized and asked you and the highway commissioner to take the lead, obviously, or in transition with the highway commissioner, so Shannon's been doing a great job shouldering the responsibilities. But one of the first tasks that we had was to convene an advisory committee because obviously we want to make this a very open process. And prior to the advisory committee being selected, there's been a fair amount of discussion in the community about this 25 million that we're supposed to receive. Shannon, is it truly $25 million that Sheboygan County is going to receive or something else? What's the status with that? That's a really good question because it's something that has come up a lot. And I think that there's some key points of understanding that I think would be helpful for people. The actual law that Congress passed states $25 million over the course of the fiscal year period, I believe it's 2005 through 2009. It actually ends up to be five fiscal years. However, it was passed after one fiscal year had already been completed. It was retroactive. We're now into year, we've got really three years to move forward. So the bill did say $25 million. However, there are some components of the way that the federal government is funded that can reduce what those dollars actually come out to be. And one of the things that we need to contend with, if you will, is obligation limitations and how that works is Congress passes a bill, not necessarily knowing what all the budget implications will be. And then as they start going through to deal with the budget issues, they start reducing across the board, I guess, if you will, dollar amounts to help balance that budget or get it passed through Congress and then ultimately signed. So each year, 100% funding would be $5 million each year or 6.25 million over four years. However, the funding, the obligation limitations for this year, it was reduced by 87% or reduced to 87%. So for fiscal year 2006, we will be receiving 87% of 6.25, which actually comes out to be, I think, 5.5 million. So there is a reduction. However, from my conversations with Congressman Petri's office and other federal government employees, this is a common thing that happens. It's just they have a little an acronym for it even. So it's unfortunate. It's sometimes confusing. It can be frustrating sometimes. But ultimately, we'll live with $5.5 million. So our viewers are aware, they've certainly read in the newspaper and heard on the radio and I've seen letters written to the editor. Well, Sheboyin County is gonna receive 25 million and folks need to appreciate that though the total appropriation was 25 million, the federal level takes some dollars to administer that. We have some dollars gonna supporting the state level because of their checks and balances involved. So when it's all said and done, Sheboyin County may receive something closer to 18 or 20 million depending on how this all rolls out. But just so folks will recognize, we're not gonna see a full 25 million here, which means there will be less resources, though still considerable resources to make a lot of good things happen here. Before I move to Dirk, last question, Shannon, what's the primary role and responsibility then of your department in administering this program? Sure. Well, with the departure of the highway commissioner, which was very sad. I had to give him some words. That's Roger Lanning for those of you. Obviously he was a very good man and enjoyed working with him. True. Right now, we're doing a lot, bearing a lot of the brunt of the project, working with the advisory committee. We have a program manager who has been on staff now, I think for three or four weeks. I don't really know, I've been going by so fast. She is really handling all of the department functions and working with the advisory committee. The advisory committee, Dirk being the chair, and has decided to break into subcommittees and there's five. So she's been working with each of the subcommittee chairs and Dirk, because Dirk is an ex officio member of that, getting agendas ready, minutes. We've been working with the consultants to make sure that our bicycle and pedestrian plan is updated and current. We have one, but it's about four or five years old at this point, working with the consultants to do some public outreach types of things. We wanna get the public involved. So really, I think that initially when this process was put in place, the idea was that the transportation committee would be handling some of the technical details of administration of this program. They've done things routinely with handling federal pass-through dollars and negotiating with contractors and engineering design and those types of things. And quite frankly, I learned a lot on how to negotiate contracts and things like that with Roger leaving, it was a baptism by fire. But hopefully when the new highway commissioner comes in, they'll be able to take over that part of it, working with DOT and then that will free up the planning department's time to do more of the, I guess, touchy-feely planning kinds of things and looking at how the infrastructure will impact the community and make it a better place to live and providing the support for the advisory committees and then obviously also the county board committees that make the final decisions. So what's the project manager's name, Mary? Mary Ebeling. Mary Ebeling. So you and Mary Ebeling really are providing a key role in the planning department. We have the Joint Transportation Resources Committee members, county board members that have the oversight responsibilities, final decision making at their level. But then, Dirk, we have this very important advisory committee and I know they were recently appointed by the Joint Resources and Transportation Committee and if I recall correctly, did that go to the full county board with the membership or was that made at the resource transportation committee level? Then they had to organize themselves and you recently, and congratulations, were elected by your peers to be chair. It's a great committee. It's a big committee. 30 people are on it, but we have professionals, we have people who are avid bicyclists, we have business people. And really, I think a group of committed people that are saying, we understand what the charge of this legislation is, we wanna make sure that we benefit Cheboygan County, the entire Cheboygan County community, as much as possible. And so we're, as Shannon said, we've broken into five subcommittees. We got a little bit of a late start. We had elections, we broke into the subcommittees. We needed to assign chairman to each of the subcommittees, but now we are rolling well. I'm very happy with the progress we've been making. Each of the subcommittees we'll meet before our next meeting, which is on the 27th of July. And the public is invited. It's at the new Maywood facility at 11 o'clock. And anybody that wants to come, certainly you are welcome to come. But we look forward to working closely with Shannon and Mary, the entire planning department. But also with the county board, we kind of view ourselves as an extension of the county board, where their eyes and ears are out in the community, but we only make recommendations to them. The county board is gonna continue to be the ones that actually make the final decisions. So it's our responsibility to work closely with them to set up the right kind of criteria and then follow those criteria and make our choices and our recommendations to the county board. Jerick, I imagine the viewers may recognize you and certainly your voice has to sound familiar because of your role on Friday forum, but you also were school board president in the city of Sheboygan. And I can't tell you how pleased we are as a county organization to see you step into this leadership role with the advisory committee because it's a critical important function. Thank you. And I'm excited about it. Our members are excited about it because we feel it's an opportunity to have a positive impact on Sheboygan County. Excellent. Kim, obviously the county board is very interested in getting as much community input as possible. Now we do have the advisory committee, but is there a plan to get information ideas from the greater community? Absolutely, and that I think is a real role of the citizens advisory committee to go out there and solicit proposals, solicit inputs, solicit ideas because we can't do it in a vacuum. And if we just say, well, here are two or three proposals that we've thought of, that wouldn't be what's best. So we are looking at having public hearings. We're looking at service club presentations. We have a number of members, as I said before, that on the committee that are avid bicyclists and people who are very interested in upgrading and maintaining the trails. But as Shannon said, it's more than just trails for bicyclists out in the country. One of the things that the advisory committee will focus on in the early stages is something called safe routes to schools where there are many of schools around the county that don't have sidewalks coming to them. And by law, if you don't have a sidewalk, the school district is obligated to bus the child to school. Well, therefore a young person could live two blocks from school, but have to be bused. If we can look at putting some of this together and getting those sidewalks in, we think that we can get the number of kids that are walking or bicycling to school. We're trying to come up with statistics right now, but the best evidence we have in some of the schools, it's like only five or 10% of the kids actually walk or bike to school. If we could turn that from five or 10% to 30 or 40%, that would be something that would be very impactful. So that's one of the things that is not directly related to bicycling and trails out in the county that the advisory committee is looking at closely. Once we do get an initial list of possible projects, how will the selection process actually move forward? We are in the process of setting criteria and we're working closely with the planning department. We will, when we have finalized that list or gotten it to 80, 90% completion form, we'll take it to the Joint Resources and Transportation Committee, get their input and hopefully buy in, and then that will be the real key to making the selection. And I think that's critical. If we can be driven by numbers, if we can be driven by tangible things as much as possible, rather than somebody just coming in and saying, I like this project, another one says, I like this project, then we just fight about it. But say, no, let's grid it out. Let's look at the criteria that we established, that we said were important to making those selections. And then we'll see how each of these projects rates out. And at the end, that will be the basis for our decision. We think that's gonna be much more accepted in the community than if there's this impression that we just willy nilly pick certain projects because it was a particular pet project of me or of somebody else on the committee or whoever. We wanna try as much as possible to stay away from that and have a rating system, that is very transparent and is accepted by the entire community. Do you have any timetables for when you think projects might begin to be selected when the first projects might be selected? We're in the process of establishing those criteria. And I would like to have us 80 or 90% of the way there by the end of, really by the middle of August. Then at our August meeting, we'll start looking and we were thinking that we might try to come up with a couple of pilot projects just to test it, to go through the process, thinking of projects that are pretty widely accepted where people say, yeah, that's a good idea. And we'll then be able to work our way through that project just to see how it works. Getting from just the conceptual stage to the actual stage. And then we'll use that as our guinea pig. If something goes wrong, we tweak it a little bit and then we'll move on to the full accepting of proposals and evaluating them. Thanks, Drew. Shannon, people always like to see the first straight of shoveled turn. When ideally might that occur on one of the first projects here at Chewbacca County? It's really hard to say. I mean, I think our hope would be if there were a few that we could pick early visual types of things, maybe 2006, still, maybe for a few. But I think that is a little bit unrealistic. I think the most realistic idea would be spring of 2007 would be perhaps when you'd start to see things happening a little bit more. Hopefully there'll be an influx of education and outreach and just some smaller types of things. For example, bike racks. We do not have one in front of our administration building right now. So things that are visible in the community, but actual construction given the process that's involved, I would say spring early summer of 2007. We want to have a long-term positive impact. If it's a choice between doing it quick or doing it right, I think we're committed to doing it right. And then what is the actual timeframe for spending the money? Can we only spend so much each year? Or does it have to be spent all by a certain date? Sure. The allocation, for example, for this year are being 5.5 million approximately. Anything that's not spent this year will get rolled over into the next year. So that will continue to happen. The funding fiscal period is through 2009. There is definitely an expectation nationally that the majority of funds and implementation of the program occurs by then. We do have some reports that are due to Congress in 2010, early 2010. So it'll be critical that we'll be able to measure any impacts that we make. However, the legislation is set up such that it doesn't sunset, meaning it doesn't go away at the end of 2009. So if there are some dollars still available after we feel like we've implemented as much as we can, there is some opportunity to do some additional things after 2009 if that's necessary. But we do want to be cognizant of the fact that we want to try to get the majority of the program completed within that fiscal timeframe. Some people may be under the impression that this is happening all over the country, but this is really a test program in only four communities in California, one in Columbia, Missouri, one in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, and Sheboygan. So we have the whole country is looking at us, and that's why it's so incumbent on us to do it right. And wouldn't it be great if we could get the right measurement tools and we would say, look, these many more people are walking, these many more people are taking bicycles? Who knows? Maybe in five years, Sheboygan will have this national reputation as this green community where Adam bicycles his 15 miles to the car house. Certainly a major undertaking for both of you. We thank you. I was real pleased, Dirk, to hear you spend some time talking about the criteria and that this is going to be criteria-driven. We're all hearing a number of suggestions made, whether it's directly or through letters to the editor, what have you. And a lot of the projects that have been identified sound pretty excited. There's so many opportunities to make improvements in the community, but as you said, it'll be criteria-driven. A question for both of you. What are some examples of projects that you think may ultimately be supported? And not necessarily specific projects that have been suggested, but examples of projects that give our viewers a little bit of flavor for, well, what are they all talking about here? What kind of changes can we expect? One of the things we mentioned it before, but sidewalks in the neighborhoods of schools, that's something that could have a real impact and a very measurable impact. Pave shoulders in areas where it's otherwise narrow, maybe you have a low traffic, vehicle traffic count on a daily basis where it wouldn't be too treacherous to bicycle or walk. You can walk in a paved shoulder. That something intersection treatments, things that make drivers more aware of the bicyclists or pedestrians in that intersection so that people who are using those types of facilities have to be able to feel safe. You can build all the facilities that you want, but if they're not feeling comfortable and safe, they're not going to use them. So keeping that in mind as we move forward. And then there's educational things, bike to work week, bike racks on buses are something that our transit is really looking at and have been successful in a lot of other communities. Perhaps people who it's a little bit too far to walk to the bus stop, but maybe they'll bicycle. So getting more people on buses, though that's motorized, but those are types of things that we could do. And there may be some opportunities for trail development. Though trail development becomes quite difficult sometimes because unless you have an existing land, piece of land in a corridor or something like that, going through the negotiation and acquisition process with private landowners all along the length of a trail is typically quite lengthy. I anticipate in a lot of instances longer than what we would have. So we certainly would look at places I think where there are existing corridors that might be available and there are a few. However, there's not a lot. The rail program in Sheboygan County has been very successful and that's typically where you end up going or in a road right away. So there's not unlimited opportunities here. So looking at a variety of different infrastructure and projects that will help connect, you might have maybe four different types of things all in one route. And you just said something very key, connect. I know you're actively gathering information, looking at maps throughout Sheboygan County, piecing it all together, layering that so we know, well, where are the areas in the county that maybe we've got some disconnects or areas that we need to help better streamline so people can get from A to B. So that information as well as obviously the criteria you establish is gonna be critical. We're trying to build an integrated system, but something Shannon mentioned earlier, but Bear's repeating. I think there's sometimes a misperception that this is all just about recreation. This is all just about biking trails and that's a portion of it. But really the intent of the legislation is to get people out of cars, either walking or bicycling in manners that in the past they might have just used the car. And if we can do that, and if we can quantify that and show that we've had a real impact on it, that would mean that we were a success with this legislation. And we can, if we build all these beautiful paths and nobody uses them, we haven't succeeded. And hopefully if you build it, they will bike or ride. I believe they will, especially when you're talking four to five dollar gallon gas. I mean, I think that if that starts to come to fruition, even if- Shannon knows something we don't know. I'm worried already. Well, those are the rumors on national news last night. It just keeps going on. You know, we're at three 20 a gallon now. I think some people will almost, it will get beyond something that I've talked about briefly is it goes beyond a want. It becomes a necessity for some households to be able to have multiple transportation options that may not involve a car. And those households might not be, it might be, you know, anybody's household that four bucks a gallon that can get a little bit tricky. So- And you've raised that before, Shannon, and other settings that, you know, the nice thing about Sheboygan County is we have a diversity here of, you know, manufacturing or what have you, but we also have some smaller communities and cities Sheboygan. And if we can do it here, hopefully it can be modeled throughout the nation. Dirk, you mentioned just a few minutes ago, the four communities that were selected to be a pilot. How was it? You know, our viewers may be sitting and watching this and wondering how did Sheboygan County of all places become one of four communities across the nation to be selected for this pilot, for this grant? I think we have to give our public thanks to Congressman Petri. His office got very involved and was really helpful. When we started this process, I know that Shannon got involved and gave him the information and it was a close working relationship. So I think we thank Shannon, the planning department, and also Congressman Petri. With all Congressman Petri, we wouldn't have gotten it, would be my guess. Right. I would take, I would probably take a little bit further and say that Sheboygan County's longstanding reputation for commitment to trails. With when I-43 went in and disconnected Kohler with the city of Sheboygan, one of the things that whoever it was, I'm not sure that it was the, I think it was DOT that initiated that very first segment that goes under I-43 where the tunnel is. And that was really the impetus for the old Plank Road Trail and new construction that's occurring with the Interurban Trail. And I think that that's kind of put us out in the forefront as far as communities that are in Congressman Petri's district. I do believe he was looking for a community in his district. And I think that the work that we've done here, the commitment that we've had, it really stuck out. Congressman Petri, if it wasn't for him, we wouldn't have it. And I think it's an example, as you both said, of a Congressman stepping up. Because of his tenure and leadership in Congress, he was able to deliver it. And as you said, Shan, and if Sheboygan County hadn't taken the steps if the County Board hadn't supported some of the planning efforts and trail development efforts in the past, I'm certain we wouldn't have been selected. But I know personally from Congressman Petri that when he was looking to bring this home to Wisconsin, he contacted the Department of Transportation and the Department of Transportation recommended Sheboygan County. Clearly, that's one of Congressman Petri's districts. So certainly he's pleased with that as well. But because of the fine work, our planning department and the County Board and this community's done, we were selected. And it's our responsibility now to make sure that we do the best we can with those dollars, that we get the greatest benefit for that cost. And that's really a passion and a commitment of the Citizens Advisory Committee. And it's been a joy working with Shannon and Mary and the Planning Department here in these initial stages. And I think we're gonna have a real success here. We only have about a minute remaining. First, wanna thank you both for being here and sharing some more information about this. But if folks are watching this, they want to make some suggestions or they wanna, how do I get more information to go to these meetings or if they wanted to contact you, Dirk, or a member of the Advisory Committee or you, Shannon, what would you recommend? They can always call the Planning Department at 459-3060. One of the things I've been personally doing is people call and give me suggestions. I keep a log so that can be shared with the process. If there's certain things that routinely come up, obviously it's important. They can send emails, people have done that as well. So all of that is documented and shared, eventually, with the various decision makers. And in my case, they can phone. The phone is, my phone is obviously in the phone book. But I think one of the strengths of this committee, these 30 citizens, so many of them are very active in the community and they're out and about. And it's amazing how many people will come up and start talking about this. Number one, everybody knows about this $25 million. So somebody has publicized that, right? But they'll have their ideas and they'll have their suggestions and then we'll take those and bring them back and get them in the proper channels. Very good, Dirk Seilman, Chairman of the Non-Motorized Transportation Advisory Committee, Shannon Hayden, our Planning and Resources Director. A pleasure to have you both here. And thank you for joining us. Next month we're gonna have Tim Finch, our Finance Director here, to talk a little bit about the budget process. We're in the midst of that as we speak. And department heads, including Shannon, are working hard to meet the County Board's budget targets and work toward a goal to have a minimal increase. So Tim will be here to talk a little bit more about our budget process and how that works. So until then, on behalf of Chairman Gehring, the County Board and myself, Adam Payne, thank you for joining us. Thank you.