 Hello, welcome to the Donahue Group, glad you could join us. We're very excited with this episode being the very first episode filmed in the brand new Martha Stewart-designed and implemented TV studio right here. It's quite, quite lovely and we're just very happy to be a part of this glorious setting and everybody but Ken Risto dressed up today in order to celebrate that. It's summer you can tell. It is summer. He's delivering beer for some distributor as far as I know. His teacher's never made enough. So we'll start with Ken Risto and Snappy Blue doing something other than being a productive member of society this summer. Tom Paneski, also a teacher, so kind of like having an easy summer as the professor of mathematics. Oh yeah, you got to ask. I get beaten like a pinata and you go to pass. Cal Potter is retired but working hard at a wide variety of other things and me, I'm in a new law firm and I'm just working my little fingers off so. I'm Maryland Donahue leading the discussion or the charge today as the case may be. We're going to talk a little bit about city and county issues as they come out and as we are speaking and recording today it is a glorious day in the city of Sheboygan's history because the police station bid came in under budget. The sky is falling. One would have thought with the various contamination issues that had been brought up I think in May, contamination of the land and so forth, apparently not so much a problem as originally expected. So the final cost is nine million dollars, five hundred thousand dollars less than budgeted. My dim memory said it came in at eight million but I could certainly and apparently am wrong. Good deal, bad deal. What do you think? Spend more. Oh wait till it's done then there will be over budget. Originally the original guesses was seventeen million and so they haggled and haggled and got it down to the current bid and reading the paper today the construction bid was six point five million and then you have the design and you have clean up and you have a few other things so I think it's a good deal. It's just they got to get started and hopefully they'll get started at the end of August as they said. I think it was my understanding that at least some of the money was designated for a renovation of City Hall because once the police station is out they'll be, when you walk into that building now it's not the loveliest public building I've ever been, no. I think there could be a wonderful collaboration between once the building is reconfigured whereas the mayor's office is going to be do we save some money by moving the city attorney back into the into City Hall instead of renting a separate space you know is there consolidation that can happen here and there. Well you have the plan department too in a separate space right right and in that cute little red building across the street oh that's engineering is across the street from City Hall but you're right plan plan is on the second floor with the city attorney so I think when they reconfigure that my idea is is that and it's not my idea but I'm hoping that it will be that the Kohler Art Center in a municipal art collaboration kind of decorates the place makes it more of the people's place to come into because it's a nice old building where we did our set there you go that's right I mean look at that clock that cost them a lot in eBay I'm here to tell you so you know it's going well one or the other. My grandmother had a clock like that. I love it it's the sun is shining on all of us but in any event do you think that the controversy about the police department excuse me the police station is finally done? Well I think it'll be dependent on how it fits its needs when they move in and we might hear about the squeeze on space I mean there's a big difference between you know what six billion construction than 17 million as what they wanted is ideally grass space training space whatever else they needed to have to fit a force of that size I hope it really is adequate not that they have to say we need another building in about two years. Kind of like the Sheboygan Clinic. Yeah. Yeah. Alderman Boren I guess was congratulated by another Alderman for his requiring that the garage be what's steel frame constructed or something like that and according to that was worth about a million dollars on the bid. It's interesting too the last time I looked at the plans the municipal court had space in the police station and that didn't make a lot of sense to me. Municipal court right now is held in the I mean when the court is actually in session it's in the city council chambers and it's certainly not an ideal setting but considering that it's not a full time every day sort of court that seemed to be fine and then the clerks have a little office off to the side and the finance department is there people want to pay their forfeitures and such and I think if that municipal court space is in the new building it shouldn't be in my humble opinion. I think people like to see a little distance between the prosecuting agency and the adjudicating agency maybe just a little space in between but I don't know it's neither here nor there but. What about the dead controversy of having the county pay for the communications part of the. Well we can kind of segue into what I think is a complex issue and I don't know how as an elected official you play it or work it but shared services was certainly a key campaign issue back in 2005. I think theoretically we all think it's a terrific idea. It seems we've gotten back into more of the Hatfield McCoy kind of conflict between between the city and the county both I think having issues and points on each side. Can it ever happen when we negotiate a peace settlement between the city and the county that that helps the taxpayers. Well anytime the city. Way too boring to talk about. It upsets the balance really the city residents say well we pay for the sheriff's department we pay for county services that we don't use therefore for going to joint dispatch or something we want to take and have you pay for the the cost while all of a sudden your budget which you're not contributing a certain amount on a certain account then the budget is out of balance and then what do you do then you have whoever has to make up the dollars now isn't a difficult position and they're not going to raise taxes. So it's sort of you know nice concept on paper but when it comes to who's going to pay what all of a sudden it gets comes to a screeching halt. I mentioned that to Carl Beesing the attorney and he says well on the other hand who resides in the jails and who gets the most of the city welfare services I mean the welfare services he said it's the city folk and who's paying for that the county folk. So it's a mixed bag. There's a lot of services the city people get that are paid for by the county and there's a lot of services the county gets that are also paid that are paid by the city like the sheriff services so he was saying 80 percent 95 85 percent of those services are city folk. Although the county my dear partner I will not contradict but a significant portion of county welfare money comes from state and federal sources there's the remnants of general relief and that is that is county based and but that's true I mean poor people generally can't live out in the county because they don't have any way to get into the city to avail themselves of much of anything and so but it is isn't it it's so complex there's no easy answer. It'd be nice if we go back at the genesis of having seven police departments or whatever we have in the county and say well how many do we need to serve 110,000 people we'd come up with a different conclusion a different organizational model but when you have to go back now and dismantle police chiefs and you have municipal boards and people who know who and whatever I mean it's just terrible to try to unravel what's been in place for you know 50 years or more. And people take great pride I mean it's the old town form of government I mean we have all these towns all villages as well as as county 72 county governments and there are hundreds and hundreds of municipal units of government not to mention school districts and but we all take pride in those those the democracy seems a little bit pure and more participatory the smaller it gets and so I think you're right it's really hard to go back and unwind unwind what has been in place and wound up for years and years especially in Wisconsin where you have a lot of units of local government and it's not just getting to the town level you get into sewage districts and water districts and this district where as you start going south and particularly southeast in this country you'll find more county-based services because the county was the basic service for servicing plantations the sheriff used to go out and round up runaway slaves and so on you it was very much more centralized larger unit of government when they went out west and they surveyed and the surveyors plotted out townships and so on you started getting into a lot different government setup and we do have more units of government I think than many states for our size which is again a history that you can't undo very easily and you saw that playing out in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel there was that panel discussion they had all Walker and they had Barrett and all sorts of folks from around the metropolitan area Milwaukee and it's the same discussion that we're talking about here the very same one they're wrangling about well you you want to do light rail but that'll destroy the county you know bus system and it only serves this municipality but what about well yes that's true but what about water over here and you know shared resources resources and water and it's the same issue of trying to untangle who benefits and who pays and what's an equitable way of doing that I think also there's still some folks who really think that the city pulled the county the rug out from under the county on ambulance service and yeah that's there's going to be some backdraft to that yet that's still there that's some hard feelings that this this city made this decision from their perspective unilaterally and if the city wants to go their own way on this well then why are they why we've been talking about cooperation over here in this in this issue and I I'm a little more I'm pessimistic that they're going to make any real progress for another couple of years yet it's gonna take a long time I think the issue almost has to be reframed and leadership coming forward in a reframed kind of way that gets people not thinking about this little thread that's wound here and that little thread that's wound here but a bigger picture that says what's good for everybody and let's do some zero-based planning if we could start over what would it look like and and get people excited about those concepts and that's fairly utopian I mean I don't know is how that's ever going to happen but from my perspective that's the only way to do it because there are grievances you know this is the you know this is this is the Middle East this is northern and southern Ireland you know I mean they're just these long entrenched kinds of conflicts and what what does it take to to bring it forward into it to a solution I don't know and we don't seem to be making a whole lot of progress but it'll be interesting to see how that plays out the go ahead but no the police station is going to be built so that's good yeah yeah and and I think that I think that's a I think it's a good deal and redoing the City Hall in my view is going to be just a whole lot of fun I think of course I'm partial to the Art Center I think all of us here are but the municipal art projects that are out there and bringing arts and municipalities together to enhance public spaces to me is exciting stuff that's going on all around the country and to kind of get it going here in Sheboygan will be fun AT&T is sticking it to Charter I was actually away when this news broke but apparently AT&T has a new service called you verse you dash verse kind of like you versity I don't know W. versity I'm not sure and it's certainly a competition with charter communication which hasn't had a lot of competition as far as I can tell at least locally here we are in this wonderful Martha Stewart decorated studio and with high-quality camera people and you know the top-paid producers in the land and so on and so forth courtesy of Charter's payments to the to the city and AT&T says it doesn't have to do that doesn't have to make those payments that Charter by virtue of its exclusive cable contract does need to Alderman Manny is not very happy he said there's some real concerns one of them is the hundred fifty thousand dollars a year that Charter pays for this TV station in all seriousness and police cars and so forth now AT&T says it's going to pay voluntarily a quarterly fee of five percent of gross revenues what do you think voluntarily I don't know you know they could say that and they may do that for a year and then they could say well change my mind business practices say we shouldn't do that so we won't because they won't be held by any kinds of contract or anything so my own view is that and it also will go to the state I guess that's correct well under that new bill bill go to the state it wouldn't go and then the state has to send it back to the local community right as an extra step when we've talked about that on this show and it's doesn't sound like a very good plan at least for local local cable TV stations and so forth technology is changing at such an extraordinary pace just think now of the things that I just got back from a nice little vacation in Boston I booked my airline tickets I booked my hotel you know I found out what the weather was I checked on things to do you know just for a two-day period of time my computer is on at my desk at work constantly I do a whole lot through the internet in terms of legal research and so forth in other words I'm just saying my world is totally different than it was even five years ago where are we going to be in five years is this internet telephone TV service all bundled in one is probably going to be wildly anachronistic I don't know it's futurists are saying that futurists will tell you that your television set will be your computer will be an interactive one station that you have wherever you have it in your house right you will do everything it there be your visual telephone the videophone it will be your computer it will be your television on demand what program you want from what date from what year and that will be delivered to you by wireless by wire or whatever you choose to to have so I think the issue of franchises is not going to get any easier for anybody because the delivery system is going to be so diverse it'll be pretty wild I think and it's going to be more and more wireless as well we had to buy one of our televisions at the house finally gave up the ghost and we bought a high high definition television and there are portals in there for things I'm not even sure what they're there for one for the compute one is for the computer and I'm still sort of going through the manual to learn well what is this for and what's that for and so I had we've had some high definition channels through charter has it happened to be at the point it's pretty nice and I bought me one of them they're blueberries blackberry and what fun that is I mean the 128th of it that I can figure out but in any event I would just suggest that rather than futzing and dutching with worrying about I think that cable purveyors particularly if they have exclusive contracts should support cable TV but the budget for this particular television station is not very large and somewhere this is a public good we're going to get into the the the budget that creature that creeps out of the lagoon in our next episode or our next segment but a hundred fifty thousand dollars a year to bring quality television programming to a local community to me is the no-brainer and it shouldn't be that it disappears because we take another action if we're going to take an action to to deal with with one thing or another we ought to be able to find the money to keep this kind of programming going a little clarification the paper did say the franchise fee is 450,000 150,000 of which goes to right TV 8 and 300,000 goes to which you said squad cars please and I don't know what 5% of gross revenues from AT&T is going to be yeah well I assume that means 5% of the gross revenues of the city they get from the city of Sheboygan so the more people that enlist in AT&T the more money then supposedly the city of Sheboygan would get. I am not a big AT&T fan I had a bad experience with AT&T some years ago. Well let's not get into defamatory. She's an attorney but she doesn't want to be sued. I have so much grief in my life. I'm sorry I know that AT&T got an exemption for the first amendment but maybe they do. But in any event well just settle down. I don't really understand why I mean it raises the question of what's the responsibility of a large corporation to a local community when they provide a service to that community I mean there's the there's the you know pure economics model which says they're offering a service and their responsibility is a service to the to the person they're selling the product to and they're promising people in Sheboygan telephone service long distance and local distance television and computer you know connect connectivity and you know for a price and that's our responsibility we don't have any responsibility to the you know we don't need no stinking local stations that sort of thing well that's one philosophy and I understand that there are people out there say I don't want to I don't want to have any of my money going to to channel 8 and listening to Risto you know bloviate over here my concern is where does the local government pick up that lost revenue and it's true and there isn't a whole lot of room in the state budget point at what point is it important well me a lot of people to watch the local school board proceedings or the county board or the city council you would be surprised it is there and it should be because that is your government and people don't go down to city hall or this school building to see what's happening and they're paying for all of this and they ought to have some access to what's going on and I think these local channels are the only thing that really going to connect people with their their local officials and their democracy on a day to day regular basis yeah and yeah well it'll it'll be interesting to see how it goes and we'll see how AT&T does and we'll charter reduce its prices in terms of competition that other economic model and it'll it'll be interesting to see totally different subject there was an article in the shabuagan press not so long ago about restaurants and bars in town going smoke-free now I was in Dublin Ireland for a week in November of 2005 so almost two years ago and when my husband and I had been there previously in 84 the smoke in the pubs was so thick that you went in and kind of clawed your way to the bar and through the smoke and and we we weren't able to stick it out very long Ireland is now smoke-free in pubs and restaurants now talk about a revolution so there does seem to be in shabuagan a fierce streak of independence that says if I want to smoke I ought to be able to smoke and yet I'm seeing that places that are totally smoke-free now actually are prospering and the economic model people come they enjoy not having to smoke around my wife will go into a place you could smell it she leaves let's let's go oh I know I know there's a great cartoon in the New Yorker of and this is what is happening in Dublin is that there are these great heaters and outside and all the tables and of course people that are still smoking like crazy but they're all outside and so the cartoon in the New Yorker is the people on the outside of the bar saying I'm gonna go inside for some fresh air I'm not I'm not quite sure quite sure it works that way but well you look at the demographics of it what if you're lucky twenty some percent of the people smoke so you got almost eighty percent of the people who don't smoke if you're offering a product or a service where are you going to target I mean you're not going to target I think what will happen you're going to get most restaurants and bars are going to be smoke-free and then they're going to be people who are going to say well there's that special they group out there that I'm going to target and so you're going to have a few cigar bars or something where people you know people can smoke and do those things and they'll congregate in certain areas which is basically maybe what it what it should be and you know that's the model that should be out there people really want to smoke and go with the other people want to smoke but eighty percent of the people who want to have fresh air that's it's interesting well we'll see the the thing that I liked about the newspaper article it was the a sign in a brand new restaurant in town that says if you're smoking in here you better be on fire and I thought that was kind of cute so speaking of fire rising from the ashes the landmark apartment complex is starting to be built again and it seemed to me to take a very long time to get started which makes sense I mean obviously construction people at other other venue or other jobs and other commitments and so forth but it is nice to to see it to go back up takes a while for insurance companies to cough up that amount of money to it was a big loss I think it went pretty promptly compared to something yeah I think it went pretty promptly only and I only know that because my spouse was involved in some of that what's the reward for information to sit up to a hundred grand is it 100,000 yeah I was just raised a hundred thousand for information for the yeah they are well just how many could provide it yeah nice to catch the person yeah persons yeah it really would just just as we're coming to a close here because I had such a good time and it is not a new colored printer but show and tell it is technology and action I just thought this was kind of interesting and I'm just gonna hold it up and absolutely nobody is gonna be it is kind of a peace sign but I just am interested in your comments this is a national survey of county elected officials in 2007 so it's pretty recent political affiliation of county elected officials 40% Democrat 42% Republican 18% independent ideology however self reported 58% conservative middle of the road I love that middle of the road 30% and liberal 12% so I thought that was a kind of a stark contrast I just think it's easier calling yourself conservative especially when you're in a local level that in many cases spends property tax dollars a regressive unpopular tax how many liberals are gonna say I like to spend property tax money and this is this is illustrative in just to end our our little discussion today gender of elected officials we have 17% female and 83% male boy doesn't change that much does it and race of county elected officials 88% white 5% black 4% Hispanic and 3% others so that's a reflex society yeah it's it's it's very interesting that I think at the county level things perhaps move even slower of our 34 county board members who are nice group of folks one woman yeah and you know we had balance of the district she went to your school district board for a little while it's almost 50-50 but it's been drifting the last few election cycles to I really think what Barb and Maeve and that's it lower my voice right yeah okay yeah exactly so well nice to talk a little disjointed here today but well thank you for joining us and we'll see you again I hope