 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name's Adam Payne. I'm the Sheboygan County Administrative Coordinator and co-host of this program with Chairman Bill Gehring. And today we're very pleased that our guest is Roger Lanning, the Highway Commissioner for Sheboygan County. Roger, it's good to have you with us. Thank you. As you know, it's that time of the year when temperatures are dropping and snows on the horizon and Roger and his staff have been gearing up as they do every year. And we're pleased to have Roger today to share a little bit about what's all involved with the Highway Department's roles and responsibilities and how can we make your driving conditions a little safer this year. So, Roger, why don't you start by sharing with our viewers a little bit about yourself and your role as Highway Commissioner. Okay, thank you, Adam. I've been employed by Sheboygan County now for 25 years, the past 18, as the county's Highway Commissioner. And every four years now, the position of Highway Commissioner is elected by the county board members. So, for the last 18 years, I've been able to serve the county. And in that capacity for the last 18 years, you've done a tremendous job working with a very important department. What are the roles and responsibilities of the Highway Department? Primarily with the County Highway Department, of course. We have the responsibility to maintain, design, and construct the county trunk highways within the county. For example, our mission statement says that we, our goal is to create safe and reliable transportation today and tomorrow. So, how many employees do you have? We have 117 employees. And the 117 employees are broken up, as everybody knows, we have two seasons in Wisconsin, construction and snow removal. And during the summer months, the 117 employees are broken up into various construction crews. For example, crushing gravel, building the roads, blacktopping the roads, and doing the routine grass cutting and things like that. And then, of course, winter time, we're broken up into the six different area garage locations. Many of the viewers will realize that we have a garage near Howard's Grove, Elkhart Lake, Plymouth, Cascade, Adel, and of course, along the interstate south of Sheboygan. In each of those, what I call district garages, are responsible for maintaining on an average of about 190 miles of roadway for plowing purposes. 190 miles of roadway. Can you break that down a little bit for us in terms of town, county, or state highways? Total in the county, we have about 1,500 miles of roadway, 452 miles of county trunk highways, 172 miles of state and interstate highways, and about 880 miles of the town, city, and village roadways. And of course, these are not, this doesn't take into consideration the four lanes, but it's just that many linear miles. So 117 employees working on construction and road improvements in the summer months, obviously keeping our roads safe and snow-free in the winter months. Can you describe a little bit of that organizational process? Obviously, there's no way you can communicate with 117 people each day. And you mentioned the different garages throughout the county. How does that work? How's your organizational system? Well, the way we're set up for a management team is set up, of course, we have crew foremen. Each of the crews I mentioned, the construction crews has a foreman and a lead person for them. And then each of the district garages, as I mentioned, has a supervisor in them to coordinate the workforce. So we have somebody coordinating the workforce at the district sheds and on the various construction crews. They have two patrol superintendents who basically move the men around to the various jobs, shift them around to where they're needed to get the work done. And basically everything follows through my office and the jobs that we have and that we get in are all broken down as to what the manpower, machinery and materials are needed for each one. And then they basically set that up to get that done. So if someone has a question or a concern about a role that's being improved or a slippery intersection, do they contact your office directly or are they better off calling one of those sheds? Usually they're better off contacting the area shed. For example, of course, during the winter time, they're better off if they're in the area of Elkhart Lake Cascade, Plymouth, whatever the case may be. They're probably as well off calling the district garage in that area to report anything that needs to be taken care of versus during the summer, it's probably easier to call the main office in Shpoig and that's where our administration offices and repair shop is. And they can put you in touch. And if anyone ever has a problem contacting Roger, or one of his district sheds, certainly they could contact the county clerk's office, which is in the phone book and the county clerk or her staff can refer to the appropriate area. So you mentioned all these roads, over 1,500 miles of roads in Sheboygan County. What are the roles and responsibilities of the highway department? The primarily with the county highway department, our main function, as I mentioned, is maintaining the county roadways. The county trunk roadways are the ones with the letters, be it J, V, P, P. Those are the county roads, which is the county highway department, Sheboygan County's primary responsibility. So of the 1,500 miles, about 450, I think you said were county trunk roads. That's correct. And then again, the town roads, some of those you are responsible for, taking care of some you don't. Out of the total of the 1,500 miles, during the winter months, we maintain about 77% of those 1,500 miles, which means we maintain for the state on the state and interstate roads and the majority of the roadways in the townships. And so in other words, we work with the townships and the state highway department to do their many and most of their maintenance items, snow plowing included. Very good. And that's probably a good segue to Bill. Okay. Being the county board chairperson, I'm also the town board chairperson in the town of Sherman. I'd like to say that I'm very grateful that we have the highway department to rely upon for contracting for various types of work. But could you tell our viewers about black topping and other construction that you do for municipalities? Sure, part of my role as highway commissioner is to market the highway department services to the local units of government. And just to back up just a step, not only do we work with the state and the towns and villages, but also interdepartmentally, be it all of our various county departments, be it the airport or here at the University of Wisconsin, to Boygan or any other county facilities where there are maintenance work or roadway related or driveway related items, we also work with the county departments. But as my role to market the highway department services, I work with the townships and sometimes putting together budgets, but also estimating their black top work if they have some or seal courting of the roadways, grading, ditching, anything that is needed to maintain the roads, we basically are able to help and provide that service to the towns, cities and villages. And of course the state highway department. Now Wisconsin is unique in the nation in that the state department of transportation contracts with each of the counties, the county highway departments to maintain their roads in the state of Wisconsin. And that's really the only state in the union that does it entirely. Some of their states have a varying degree once in a while, but generally, for example, if you drive to Minnesota or Illinois, you have those state highway departments that have all of their own equipment, for example. State of Wisconsin doesn't have any of their own equipment other than maybe a centerline machine and maybe a signing machine, but they're really getting out of that business too. So they basically are labor-intensive and have no machinery of their own. So really there's a cost benefit to the local municipality to not have to own the equipment to be able to contract with the county for doing things. I think so, and that anytime that you can pool manpower, machinery and materials to get the work done, for example, the townships where we do the work, you don't have the capital investment to buy the equipment, maintain the equipment and really maintain the labor force that's required and pay the wages and benefits. From the cost-benefit standpoint, the more that our workforce is utilized, the more economical or the cheaper that the work can be done. It's just like in manufacturing, the more called the widgets that you can produce in a certain amount of time, the cheaper the unit costs. And it's no different with the highway department. In working with the villages and the city of Sheboygan, and for example, the city of Sheboygan, we share some specialized equipment and they work with us purchasing blacktop or gravel and other services that we provide. In addition, in the county, there's 237 bridges and the county does all of the bridge inspections for all of the municipalities within the county so that we do a lot of varying work with basically all of the municipalities within the county. And it's, as I said, to get the word out as officials change in the cities and villages and towns to remain in contact with them to show and share the services that we can provide. What is the department's total budget and what percent might be involved in snow removal during the winter? Total budget, that is 13 million and that's the expenses for working with all of the entities which I mentioned. About a million dollars of that on an average is for snow removal on the county trunk roads. And about 300,000 of the million is for salt and sand, just materials. And on an average snowfall, let's just say, a one to two inch snowfall. We would, that would probably run about $15,000, $18,000 and you can get that done in about six to eight hours. But that depends on all the, so many variables. The wind speed, the wind direction, if the temperature is dropping, sometimes when it snows, the wind is in one direction but then the storm is done, it's all the way around the dial and you've chased it all that time. So in the perfect world, yeah, about $15,000, $18,000 for an inch and a half or two inch snowfall. How many snowplows do you have and what varieties? I remember as a kid watching the old Oshkoshes move down the highway. Well, we have sanding, salting units and of course have the plow on the front. We have 39 of those. And once again, they're split up amongst each of the district garages as I mentioned. If it gets to a point where you have to push back the drifts and the shoulders and whatnot, we have 12 graders we can take out in addition to those. And then if it gets really bad, we still have a number of the old Oshkosh trucks that you can get off the four-wheel drive that you can get off and push and bench the snow drifts. We've been fortunate we haven't had to use them a lot in the last few years but they're there and they're paid for and it's like a fire truck. They're there if we need them. What are the normal working hours of your department? The normal working hours are seven to 330. What we've done during the winter months now, starting November 15th, is that we have two guys who work, call it a second shift, 330 to 11, and then two guys that work 11 to seven. The purpose of that is to handle any emergencies that we would get in during the winter months, whether you have black ice or icy intersections or accidents or just simply calls from the sheriff's department when calls come in to them or to different conditions around the county that we're able to respond quicker and basically to stay on top of a storm. Because in Sheboygan County, most of us know that east to west and north to south, there's a tremendous variable that occurs. We always, they've ever heard about lake effect snow. Well, you know, there's different zones in the county. For example, traditionally if it's snowing, you'll see a difference between the lake and maybe highway 32 and 32 to 57 and 57 to Greenbush and then Greenbush to the west county line. All the different changes in elevation are affected by the lake, for example, and of course north to south. So having the guys, the two guys in the second and third shift help us to stay ahead of the changing conditions that are out there so that we aren't all sudden caught with an emergency. Do you still have a summer construction schedule that you had a number of years back? Yes, yes. Traditionally, as many of the viewers know, we work four 10-hour days from Memorial Day to Labor Day. And that helps us to of course get the work done, work into 10-hour days during the summer is certainly a must because you can't, you really don't want to put in good weather at 3.30 in the afternoon. The next, that's worked quite well for us. And of course, if there is a pressing workload, we have the ability to work on Friday if needed. So that's worked quite well. Do you have any winter tips for people in the area, snow removal, when they're plowing out their driveway, should they plow it to the middle of the road and let the highway department clean off the rest? Well, unfortunately, in that regard, when property owners push snow across the road or leave a deposit on the road. Now, in essence, they're creating a liability for the traveling public. If there's an air and vehicle for whatever reason if it gets solid and packs and hard and someone hits that vehicle, it's whoever pushed it out there has created that hazard. And yes, there's some liability on the property owner's part to keep that. They need to keep the snow off of the roadway, really off of the shoulder. If they can get it off of the shoulder, that's great. So if they can keep the roadway and the shoulders clear, that certainly helps the safety of the traveling public as well as their snow plow drivers because when you're coming down the road and you hit this hard snow, it'll spin that truck right around and go the other direction. And of course, you can damage the equipment severely. So I strongly recommend keep the snow off of the roadway and the road shoulders. The most important thing that we see in the snow removal is people following too closely. Now, in the last legislative session, a law was passed that indicates that people should stay behind the snow plow if they can't stay back 200 feet. Keeping in mind that when you get to an intersection, you're not gonna necessarily stay back 200 feet. But at the same time, don't pull up behind the snow plow because the operators can't see the vehicle necessarily in the rear view mirrors because of the width of the truck. You can't see that car right behind the truck. And in many cases, when we have to clean up an intersection, we have to back up in order to take a second swing in order to clean up the intersection. And so, and this historically, I think this goes back forever, trying to clean up snow is you have to back up to clean up the intersection and backing accidents has been the primary. If there's accidents gonna happen, that's been the primary incident. And so, and then of course, speed to people to know the conditions that they're dealing with, just because the sign says 55 or 65, don't necessarily have to drive that. You have to keep your, don't use cruise control. Keep your hand, I mean, your hand on the wheel and your foot on the accelerator so that you can brake if necessary. Many times, if you're on cruise, for example, and say you're coming up by 43 and you don't know that the bridge decks are icy, if you're on cruise and you hit that icy bridge deck, you will lose control many times. Finally, any tips for the motoring public on how to find out what the road conditions might be before they start out? Yes, sir. One of the things you can do is to go on the county website and we have these numbers available and I'll give these to the viewers. The state road condition report, you can get at 1-800-762-3950. 4-7 and then the Sheriff's Department also has a phone number that the viewers can call to get the local road conditions and that's 459-4304. Thank you, Ronsher. And a comment I made earlier that if people had questions or wanted to get in touch with you or one of your staff, they can contact the county clerk's office which is a general office that people seek information from. But if it's after hours, a lot of people contact the Sheriff's departments, don't they? Yes, and we stay in close contact with the Sheriff's Department. We have an excellent working relationship with the Sheriff's Department because there are also eyes and ears out on the road and there's emergencies, we all have to pitch in and take care of them. The other point I wanted to come back to is you mentioned for every snowfall, on average, then we're looking at, what about 15? 15, $18,000. $18,000. Every time it snows out there, the public can essentially appreciate that there's 15 to $18,000 of tax money that's going to go into cleaning up those roadways and obviously that's critical. And to put in perspective the size of and importance of Roger Landings' department, of the Sheboygan County's 23 departments, and of course we cover all the departments and programs briefly during this program, Rogers is in the top five in terms of size of $13 million department and in the top five in regards to the number of staff too. So a very vital service that Sheboygan County provides and again, as Roger mentioned earlier, he's been doing it for the past 18 years. So we've talked a fair amount about snow and what drivers can do to improve not only the safety for your staff but themselves. Let's move on to another area. This summer folks have pretty much concluded now stopping at those slower stop signs and getting passed on through and the trucks have moved by. What types of projects has the county been working on over the last year? Well, I'll start with some of the work that maybe the state DOT has worked on this year and then I'll double tail into the county's work. But for example, State Highway 32 from Sheboygan Falls to Cedar Grove was a contract job that the State Department of Transportation let out for basically the resurfacing and blacked up shouldering and of that roadway. There were some minor rebuilding on a couple curves but that was completed this late in the fall. State Highway 23, there was an extension on the four lane and out near Plymouth on that this year and right now some of the viewers as we're speaking have been dealing with the ramp closures on the I-43 at the State Highway 42 intersection where they're rehabilitating the off ramps for I-43 at 42. From the county standpoint, we just opened up a bridge that we reconstructed on County O over the Sheboygan River in the town of Sheboygan Falls. We did a number of inter-departmental jobs. For example, as I mentioned, at the airport, we worked on the area for future private hangar, they call it private taxi lane extensions. We worked on that job for Chuck Mayer out at the airport. We recently completed an extension of the State Highway 23 rect trail near Greenbush. That was a little over a mile extension. As you know, the rect trail lies on the south side of Highway 23 and we extended it from Plank Road to County Highway T once again on the south side of the roadway and right now, that's as far as the recreational trail is planned which gives access to the rect trail to the to the weight house and then County Truck Highway S in the village of Glimbula. We reconstructed that. That was a joint project with the village of Glimbula from a rural street with what I call with ditches to an urban section or street which has curb and gutter and it was fully reconstructed right now. So those are the main projects that we worked on this summer. In addition to our normal asphalt resurfacing and seal coating of the various roadways. A lot for people to get their arms around. As I drove to and from home in the town of Plymouth to work here in Sheboygan, obviously some work being done on 23, very important to the economy and that's work that your department isn't doing. And I think perhaps you could clarify to our viewers who was doing that and what's the status of the work on 23? The State Highway 23 four lane extension is this phase of it is from County OJ to County Road P, a distance of about two and a half miles. And that was a Department of Transportation job which was a big contractor and Machuda was a contractor out of Princeton which did the grading work on that. And that'll be a two year project. They have the lanes roughed in now, the extended lanes roughed in and they've worked on some of the bridges. Next year, they will be building the County Road C interchange which is on the west access to the city of Plymouth and it feeds the industrial park where there is a Sargento and some of the other major Plymouth businesses are. And that will start in spring where they'll build the bridges, build more structures and then surface the roadways which were graded this year. So by this time next year that four lane extension should be completed. In the long range, State Highway 23 between County Road P and Fond du Lac is in the works and in the process of going through the environmental review and design alternatives. And that's scheduled in, it's gonna range from about 2009 to 2011 where they'll probably start work on the major four lane extension to Fond du Lac. And that'll all occur. Many of our viewers who traveled to Fond du Lac realize that they're building the 151 bypass. And so once that's completed then they'll probably start on Highway 23. And it'll be here before we know it as Whitby's time passes. Another improvement that's been in the press in the past and I know that you and the Transportation Committee have really helped follow and get initiated is the work on LS. And those folks who do any golfing out that way at Whistling Straits or just enjoy that drive up to Manitowoc know that that's getting increasingly close to Lake Michigan. What's the status of the work on LS? Well, the work should be completed by the end of November. And what's being done there is because of the 60 foot bluff that's out there is extremely unstable because of the subsurface and ground water and the type of soils that's out there. And as you indicated, the roadway itself has been, the road has been eroding to a point where it sits up near the road shoulder. So in conjunction with the Corps of Engineers and of course County Dollars and some Department of Natural Resources help, we've been able to essentially stabilize that 500 foot section of Lake Michigan bluff which was in the most severe, the most dangerous erosion where it was really gonna affect the roadway itself. But we're hoping to have that done the end of November. And in the couple of minutes we have remaining, when you're dealing with 450 miles of County Road out there and the tremendous expense associated with not only maintaining it, but resurfacing what have you, there's no way you can do that all in one year. And I know, Roger, you have a very good planning process. What are, give our viewers a snapshot of what you see coming in the next couple of years ahead? Well, in the next couple of years right now we're in the process of a number of different designs. The one where probably the most traffic is is on Superior Avenue. We have plans to rebuild Superior Avenue or County O from Taylor Drive eventually out to State Highway 32. The first phase, which is being designed right now for construction in 2007 is the part from Taylor Drive to I-43. And then in 2008, 2009, 2010, eventually get out to State Highway 32. And that piece of roadway, you know, was just a rural section with ditches. And what we're in the process of designing is an urban section of roadway, which would have the two travel lanes and a anti-middle turn lane. So people make left turns and right turns. You can get in that middle lane to make your turns because of the amount of businesses and residences along that stretch of roadway. That's probably the best way to rebuild that roadway. That's one of the jobs. County Highway V, we're continuing the design of that from State Highway 32, westerly, this next stretch to County Highway I. And then we're still working with the reconstruction of County, each one, County Highway P and A between Glenbula and Elkhart Lake. And, you know, those are the major ones we're focusing on right now. For, you know, we have a bridge in County Highway SS in the town of Sherman over the Milwaukee River. That's scheduled to be rebuilt next year. You know, with as many roads as there are and as little resources you have to work with from a standpoint of the cost associated with resurfacing, what have you. What is it, a 10-year plan that you have? I mean, it's a very extensive outlook and process. I actually have a 20, 25-year plan set up. And from the beginning to the end, it takes four or five years. By the time you send a survey crew out, by the time you actually get the road built. Well, Roger, thank you so much for being our guest today. A lot of information in a short period of time. Certainly, if you have more questions or concerns, don't hesitate to contact Roger, one of his staff. He's got a great team in place. I think we all know from time to time there's jokes occasionally about guys out there working on their roads. But let me tell you, I am so proud of the work that Roger and his staff do, vital service, a very important county service representing one of the largest departments that we have. So, Roger, thanks for joining us. You're welcome. Next month, you're gonna hear from another department head that's Anne Wunderjim. And Anne Wunderjim directs the largest department, the Health and Human Services Department, number of very vital and important services as well. So until then, thank you for joining us. And on behalf of County Board Chairman Bill Gehring and myself, Adam Payne, thank you.