 and welcome to the Donahue Group. We're delighted that you're joining us for a half an hour of interesting conversation with four relatively interesting people who do have opinions on just about everything. So joining me today, Cal Potter, Tom Pineski, Ken Risto. I'm Mary Lynn Donahue and we're just gonna get launching right into talking a little bit about local issues this time, what's happening in the city and the county. For just a change of pace, I thought we would start with the schools. When I was on the school board, I can tell you that we were in the paper nearly every day or at least every week and there was one controversial decision after another. For those of us who read the Sheboygan Press, there just hasn't been much about the Sheboygan area school district and so it was with great interest that I read the great debate about how to use the extra money that had come in from the referendum. My understanding is that just from a financial perspective of the million dollars or so in excess that had been generated through interest and wise investing over a period of time and also some costs under runs, there's a million dollars left that about 758,000 of that would have to go back to the federal government. To me, that would be a convincing argument to hold on to it. Can't that money, as I understand it, cannot be put back in the general capital fund which had been my first ideas. You always have roofs that need to be repaired and trucks and things that have to be purchased but no, it has to be used for the purpose for which the referendum was voted on which includes some construction of classrooms and so forth. So the school board in a nine zero vote, it's kind of controversial but in the end they had a nine zero vote to hold on to the money and to invest it in what we're here calling the shell game, constructing some basic shells of classrooms that we may need at a different time. One, I think it's great that the school board is back and the school district is back in the news. They deserve it, it's been too quiet for too long. What do you think? Should the taxpayers have gotten their $10 back or not? Yeah, but that's what the math was when it was all of a sudden done, it was $10 and I don't even think actually that the money, the shelling process and I'm also quite, quite sure what that means. I just see this big egg shell but I don't even know if it's been committed necessarily to classroom space yet. I think there's some discussion about just really covering it, keeping it, I think minimally heating it at best. I don't think there's any electrical work being put in or any plumbing or anything like that and the list to keep that square footage and keep your options open about what that's going to, where it's gonna be needed. It's kind of tricky because we're looking right now at student population projections declining rather mildly, nothing dramatic but we're looking at right now a little over 10,000 students and maybe losing 150 over the next four years but on the other hand, capacity at the high schools anyway, if that's where they're shelling. Capacity is running around 90, 93% in other words, there's very few classrooms that aren't being used at any given time as you walk down the halls at North and South High School. So, you know, $10, I mean, do you wanna go back to the taxpayers, seven, eight, 10, 12 years from now and say, oh, by the way, here's another referendum because we need to have more space for labs or for those types of things. I mean, politicians always like to give away a surplus. Sure. Thompson did that and Dreyfus. Yes. And Dreyfus as well, only to be faced in short time in both circumstances with significant deficits and, you know, people don't really remember all that well with their $10 or $60 or $200, you know, it's nice not to discount, you know, getting that check in the mail but the long-term, you know, cost, it just, it seemed like a sensible decision that the board made. I think it was a good... Excuse me, I thought it was really an odd thing though. I mean, I don't think the board any really seriously ever really talked about sending everybody a $10 rebate and giving a big chunk of it back to the national government. That being said, I went to the district television channel and they were posing it as almost a serious consideration. I mean, I kept going back to it and there was a big question, should this money go back to the taxpayers? I don't know if they were just trying to get people to come to the meeting or what the intention was. You're just enjoying, not enjoying anonymity or what? Right, and certainly got, was it, I don't know, was it Sykes or was it Billings again? I think it was Billings. Billings took the ball and ran with that and gave him a livelihood for a couple of days and that was good for him. You gotta get a real job of that guy. Well, Dirk Seilman told me that he called in because he was so upset with what Belling was saying on the radio about what was going on and so forth and he kept calling, so to a certain point, Belling was calling him Dirk Rindfleisch. Ron Rindfleisch, of course, being the chair of the... Conflating two people. But accuracy, yeah, you don't have to worry about that. I guess Dirk was very articulate and Belling kept taking the calls until he asked Dirk what his profession was and he said, a retired college administrator and that was the end of that. I said, you're a retired banker, that's what you should have told him but it does seem to be a sensible decision that the board made but I thought it was an interesting discussion and you'd think that people would be happy that we invested the money well and that the projection or the project costs were kept under tight control and that it was financially a successful thing but... I think this is a good example of why we have represented government to study an issue. I think on the surface, the gut reaction is government took that money from me, now government give it back to me but when you start looking about you have to give something to the feds and it's only $10 a person and what building costs will be to do this same construction five years from now, you just say, hey, this is a, let's do it. This just makes a lot of sense and the vote on the school board of the unanimous vote I think showed that when everybody did the math and did the study, that's why you have represented government, to do some of the in-depth study and I think that proved to be wise people doing their homework and coming to a reasonable decision. Overall, I think that people do like the Sheboygan school district, remember that referendum passed with a 63% approval rating which it was a large referendum, it was $32 million if my memory serves me correct. Let's go west a little bit to Sheboygan Falls which is launching into its new building campaign for a middle school and that school board actually has been in the news quite a lot, I'm sure they would like to be in the news a little less but it appears that's going to go to the voters as to whether or not a new middle school should be built, I've been in the old middle school and it's old. It used to be the high school, it used to be the grade school. And I've been in that auditorium which really takes you back, I mean you feel like you're in the 30s, it's old, old, old buildings can be just fine but Cal, you're in the Sheboygan Falls. School district? School district, what do you think? Well, I think they're facing a sticker shock situation and I think a couple of years ago they just spent $12 million for our new elementary school and now you're talking about maybe $16 million for a middle school and people start adding that up especially someone who has years under their belt, $28 million in a period of just a short period of time is something that a lot of people feel is just a high figure but the problem is you don't build much today for a couple million bucks. I mean I remember North High School, what was it, $3 million? You could build a high school. Today high schools are $35 million to build one. It's unbelievably expensive but sometime you do have to provide adequate accommodations for kids and either you do extensive renovation or you do a new build and there again you gotta do your studies and that's what that school board is hired to do. Is that going to referendum? Yeah, that was my question. It is. It is going to referendum for the April election. And is that for a new building or do voters get a choice? I don't know. I don't remember the exact, they had their public hearing and I don't know exactly what the decision was on the referendum. The amount, the additional amount that a family would have to pay is a little, it's kind of substantial. Well, 16 million bucks is a lot of money in a small and relatively small school district, exactly. Because we were able to, in the Sheboygan area school district, finance that $32 million for a pretty small amount of like $30 a year. I may have that wrong but I mean it was a modest amount which I'm sure had something to do with the overwhelming passage of it. But it's interesting, school boards can live and die on those kinds of referenda. And it really kind of shows that a district needs to, as you go along, continue to build the facilities. Don't let it sort of dam up. I used to teach in the Plymouth district and the superintendents that were out there built, Plymouth is not that much bigger than Sheboygan Falls. And you look at the number of schools, Riverview, Parkview, Horizon, the elementary schools, the middle school, the nice high school. And when they had growth, it was easy to just add classrooms. People generally have a good feeling about adding four or five classrooms to an existing school. It's not sticker shock, it's just sort of yeah, I guess you need some room, your kids are climbing out of the windows, you need some more classes. And it's easy to do that. But you know falls at one time, I had very few people who did, it still does really relatively few buildings. And now all of a sudden in the short period of time, 12 million dollars from elementary school and 16 million for a middle school, had they had those buildings in place and they were having space problems, it would be easier just to add on. And falls has taken some, I don't think civic pride, but falls certainly has always liked having one of the lowest mill rates in the county. And you're right, it ends up coming back to haunt you. I know that because their pay scale is not as competitive as of course they have to compete against the big gorilla next door, my world, they have a hard time retaining staff. There's been a real migration of Sheboygan Falls staff over to the Sheboygan area school district, my I guess truth in lending my brother and being one of them. The district was successful I think in getting this referendum, our referendum passed because they spent a considerable amount of time really doing some strategic planning about which groups of people need to be talked to, the service groups and the various organizations and having a committee of concerned citizens that answer the kinds of questions that inevitably come up in a debate and in forum and figure out a way to make this work. I don't know that the conditions at in Sheboygan Falls are like that right now. I think the community is really polarized around the existing educational leadership there and I think there's a substantial number of people. I don't know if it's significant enough to have this thing defeated but there's a good group of people that are coming in saying given who's in charge right now, given the kinds of experiences we've had about football and all the other issues that have polarized that community, whether they're gonna vote under the existing leadership for anything and I think they're gonna have to overcome that hurdle. It's gonna be a challenge for them. And we are not going to ask Cal how he's going to vote, but instead. Instead, we're gonna move on and talk about, in fact, there was a Sheboygan Press editorial about uncontested elections. As you know, we have 34 county board supervisors and it appears at this point, one will be contested, one seat and it appears, and I didn't check out to see if any new folks. Is that a city seat or out of city seat? You know, I don't remember which one. I think it's obler's seat, isn't it? It's Keith Obler's seat, that's right. It's on Plymouth, yeah. Wow, okay. Yeah, out west. And I don't know if there are any more contested elections than anybody else who's come in to take out nomination papers, but wow. Yeah, and that's very service we can get out of this program is that there's still is time, because if this airs before, the 5th of January, which is the deadline, people need what? With 20 signatures, I think. 50. 50, is it 50? The editorial said 20 and they corrected it the next day, which is 50. Only 20 for older people, but. But if people feel incensed about some of the dealings that the County Board has undertaken over the last year, particularly in the area of nursing homes. That is their hot button issue. I think so. And that's why I think it's rather surprising that there aren't many people that have taken out papers. And it's indeed, as we tape this program, only one person out of all these seats. That's a sad indictment, I think, on people's desire to do something different, maybe. I'm just wondering why, given all of the discussion about nursing homes and county facilities, that those folks who are really irritated and unhappy with some of the direction that the County Board has taken, aren't generating candidates and aren't making an effort to find candidates to run against people that they know are voting the opposite of their views. Usually that's what happens. We saw it in the city of Sheboygan with Sheridan Park and all that sort of thing. Well, and there have been county board controversies that have resulted in significant turnover. And the one I remember is nighttime meetings and health insurance costs. And that really flamed people up. But you're completely right. I mean, why? Well, maybe their county administrator has kind of even things out so you don't have these contentions. I don't know. Maybe that's serving as a way to eliminate some of the possible infighting or the news that goes on with dealing with county issues. I don't know. Maybe that helps. The county board right now is struggling now just moving on to the nursing home issue. Again, with projections that the county will lose very substantial amounts of money on an ongoing basis and that number going up each year, looking at downsizing or realigning how nursing home services are provided by the county. There's even a struggle about how to word an advisory referendum, which the county board would like to do. Because as I understand it, and I may not have this 100% right, the advisory referendum on the April ballot can be fairly descriptive and give people a clue about what the issue is. In November, the statute that you, there's a certain wording that you have to use if you want to exceed your budget levy and or the levy caps. And it's not real descriptive. So the county board really needs to connect the dots in April through to November if it really would like some sense from the community as to what they want to do. And I think that's kind of tough. Well, I'm glad to see there's talk about if they haven't already formally done so, getting St. Norbert's College involved in their wordage. Because there are really two camps on that county board. One, the minority camp that didn't want a downsize who would probably like to see the wordage tie in to downsizing with people's willingness to pay more to sort of maybe compromise on the downsizing that's ultimately gonna occur. And then there's others who are gonna say, do you want to pay more for your nursing homes? Or do you want property tax relief or something rather straightforward and more fiscal in nature rather than the issue of the downsizing. So I think getting someone else in here hopefully will get some objective wording for the people to consider. Yeah, it'll be interesting. You know, when we talked about it before, didn't you say something that the states thrust in nursing home delivery and care is changing and that Cheboygan's having established nursing homes is kind of becoming a relic? Well, Cheboygan County is one of maybe half a dozen that still have nursing homes. The other states or other counties have gotten out of the business, but Cheboygan County made its conservative effort over the years to have three homes. And it's just a matter of do you want to continue that service that this county sort of historically has embarked upon? It's a push and it's purely fiscally oriented, I think. Well, not purely, but in great share to get people out of nursing homes and into a lesser restrictive environment because it costs so much. Community-based residential facility will run 1,800, 2,000 a month. Nursing home costs are now 5,000 a month. And it's a staggering amount of money. And those are private pay. And the medical assistance reimbursement certainly doesn't do it at full cost by any stretch. And so I think there's a change in how we're thinking about providing care. How do you get that issue across in a referendum? You don't get that issue across. It's an educational issue. Well, there's also another side to that. The community options program, where you can get people keep them in their homes and provide services. But one of the problems in many of these alternatives to nursing homes has been inadequate state funding. So you've got the commitment philosophically to do something as an alternative, but most people are not confident that the dollars are gonna be there to serve the clientele that need in home service. You've got the waiting list. You've got Jane and then Bob and then Highway 23 and then, so there's a limited amount of money to go around. So the county board's been pretty quiet other than this issue. The city council, on the other hand, has been anything but, is there a bloodbath in the streets? You know, I used to talk about the school board being the theater, the absurd or something like that. I think you got it wrong. I think, you know, just go to the county, go to some of the members of the common council. And I think that'd be a much more appropriate label. I was thinking about it. People are absolutely embarrassed by this as I talk to them. You know, they just wonder, this is something, it almost reminds you of middle school when I taught middle school. People are like, little kids on the playground and they're passing notes in class. I don't know how it's gonna play out when we get elections, but I got to think that somewhere along the way that some people are gonna get to come up inside. Well, I like the idea of Dixie Cups and String and maybe we could just pass those out. It was an interesting, certainly the article in the press was pretty long and pretty exhaustive and. I mean, just having the police department investigate just sounded so ridiculous. It sounded ridiculous. The people I spoke with, run around at Pigley Wigley's and all that kind of thing, Anthony Bonilla looked ridiculous. The police chief looked ridiculous. It's not that we tell it like it is here. Well, I mean, this is what I'm hearing. You know, and, you know, I guess to his credit, Alderman Manny, you know, at least put a public apology out there. And quite a graceful one. A very graceful one. And I think, you know, I mean, I think he understood that you had a, he was having a private conversation just about what was going on at council and somehow it took on a life of its own and he certainly didn't intend. So, I mean, he was able to exit the program gracefully. I think the mayor looks actually, I think the mayor looks reasonably good. He looks like a little bit, I wouldn't say quite like the older statesman here, but I think he ends up looking even better. And so I think you've got all, you know, you've got certain individuals who are continually trying to make mountains out of molehills. And I don't know if they perceive that they're creating a political advantage for themselves, but I'm looking at the camera and saying, anyone working? Yeah. Maybe the news media shouldn't have put this on a front page story. I mean, it was, when I read it, I could at least, you could just see, you know, Alderman Bonilla, Bendetta, so to speak, against the mayor because of past firings and so on. And I just wonder whether you should give somebody, you know, the motivation here and it's probably not well thought out or well-based. And as a result that got into something that maybe shouldn't have been a front page story. Yeah, I have to say, you know, Mayor Perez said something and it was quoted in that article near the end of the article saying, well, next time I won't be able to talk to these Alderman without my lawyers present. I thought he should have just zipped it right there and not said anything. That wasn't helpful. That wasn't helpful. That wasn't helpful. You were on the city council, we know. That does happen, yeah. And we were, the school board in my day from time to time was not quite as civil as it could be. But was there rampant incivility? Oh, you had, no, you have factions. I mean, they were anti-Sneider. Council members, I mean, council members. Initially they were anti-Sneider, but Sneider had a way of winning them over after a while. I mean, when he first won, it was this Sushia faction, Alderman-Techlag and others, who really wanted Sushia to continue. And there were just a couple of us that wanted Sneider. Sneider won and they were, Dulce Johnson was also on the council at that time. She was very supportive of Mayor Sushia. And there was a period where there was real animosity and there was a question of committees like we had the committee appointments, they had that. But Sneider had a way of winning them over after a while and then they all proceeded to work together at least and you'd still then have your normal conflicts. Some people want this, some people want that. Sure, but nobody calling the cops. But nobody calling the cops. And you know, to the police, maybe he had maybe maybe the law, I don't know the law required him to make at least some sort of gesture to do that. I don't know. But the public doesn't understand those distinctions and he got kind of tired with the same brush. Yeah, yeah. And I do remember, I just, as you're talking about it, I do remember at some point, this was maybe in his second term, not his first term, but the initial election results dissipated after about six months to a year, six months to eight months. But in his second term, he did something on the lakefront, tore down a lot of bushes and cleaned it up because he had an opportunity to do that. This is Mayor Schneider. And he didn't get the council's consent. So if you remember, they cited the mayor for, I forget what they call it. An ethics violation? No. Abuse of power? Something like that, I don't know what they call it. They censured, they censured the mayor. Contempted council, I was gonna say. For acting without council approval. Okay. But I mean, there was a group of them still that had that in the back of the mind and they went out and censured. And of course now we like the lakefront with the pathway and the shrubs gone and a nice little beach area. That lively tension between the executive and the legislative. So, well, I don't think there's any direct correlation but at least we have a few more contested city council seats than we do county board seats. Eight of the 16 seats are up for reelection and Alderman Vanderweel has opposition in the eighth district. And in fact, if everybody gets nomination papers and you only need 20 for an Aldermanic district, they'll be a primary. I believe Marge Segal is gonna have at least one person. The newspaper said that there was gonna be somebody running against Dan Berg who was certainly in the center of the bloodbath controversy if we can call it that. And, and Alderman Van Ackren of course is resigned or not resigned but indicated he's not gonna re-up. And so Jack Westfall is in that mix. So again, we may just, we may see a significant change in the city council. Mark Hanna will be running for Bill Steffen's seat because Steffen is not running again and at least so far as I know there is no opposition in that district. So... I think one of the distinctions here is that the city council districts, people seem to know who their older person is but they just don't know who their county board supervisor is and they don't know where their district is. And I think when people are not comfortable answering who's your county board supervisor or what district do you live in? They're not gonna even gonna run for it if they don't even know the basics of the district. Well, the county board keeps, I mean, they have quite frankly a whole lot more money than the city. You know, there's a bigger budget there. What does a county board get though? I mean, when you're a county board person, you get benefits. And you get a per diem for each meeting you go to. A per diem. And so if you're... But there's no salary associated. The county board chair and vice chair I think have a salary but you're right. And the city council, they get about five grand. About 4,800 I think is not a year or so. And they don't get per diem and they don't get about it. School board out of output. Yeah. Well there was, I think there wasn't that long ago some discussion about that and the political wins at the time just didn't make that even a viable proposal. And how things changed. My first year on the school board, the board just before I was sworn in had voted to cut their salaries in half. And devote their $38 or whatever to buying library books. Well then it was the great cookie debate. The great cookie debate. I mean the board spent time talking about because when they got there there were some central kitchens made cookies and so they had some sort of a little snack during their meetings and there was some discussion. Which only went six or seven hours. And the fiscal, fiscal, we needed more than that. You needed a drink, but there was, I remember them talking about this too. And the board was split about we should have cookies, we shouldn't have cookies. And I thought, oh my God. We're beginning to run out of time, but Calvus doesn't pertain to you because you're not a resident of the city. But did you guys get your citizen surveys and are you filling them out? I've already filled mine out. And what do you think? Good idea, bad idea? Well I didn't fill mine out. I read it and I thought, okay, I will fill it out and I will send it in. Okay. So I thought, I think, I don't know what it's gonna do. Because I don't know how many they're gonna get and how many people are gonna duplicate them. But I think it's a decent idea. Jack Westfield crafted the survey. Those questions, which are generating some controversy, actually were statements that came out of the 16 public hearings that the mayor had. And people can agree or disagree. And the questions, some are worded affirmatively, some are worded negatively, but that came out of those budget discussions, I know, because I was. I heard a discussion about one question that's ambiguous. Do you wanna keep the transit service at the same level we have now? Well if you wanna increase it, you say I strongly disagree with keeping it to say. And if you wanna reduce it, I strongly disagree. Leave it to a mathematician, but the survey from the public is, we're gonna keep the Donahue group. And thank you for joining us.