 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name's Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Roger Distruty. And as you know, every month, we strive to bring you an exciting program about your county government. And today we are gonna exceed expectations because we have the Transportation Director with us, Mr. Greg Schnell. Welcome, Greg. Thanks, Adam. It's a pleasure to be here, Roger. Thank you. It's a pleasure to have you here. And it's that time of year. The roads are starting to get slick and the snow plows are out and it can be a dangerous time of the year and one where our highway department really shines because obviously we're relying Greg and his staff to get to and from work and school and whatever we need in this community. So Greg, welcome again and please share a little bit about yourself and your background. Sure, thanks. I started about 25 years ago working for Manitowoc County and I started at the bottom being a labor equipment operator, worked my way through the process as a foreman and obviously back into a superintendent's position and fortunately I was lucky enough to land here to be your highway commissioner. Over the years I've learned a lot about construction maintenance, just the things I learned there and working with the DOT and what their philosophies are and trying to provide the best services we possibly can and I hope I brought most of that with me for the last seven years I've been here. Seven years already. How the time has flown. And tell us a little bit about the highway department. You started as highway commissioner. Obviously now you're our transportation director overseeing both the highway division and the airport and we're gonna get into that more in a minute. But tell us a little bit about the highway area and how many staff you have budget. We have 87 employees that's including myself, our mechanics. We have a full engineering and surveying department that includes our mechanics. I think administration people. We have a budget of around $14 to $16 million depending upon the year. Our airport division adds about $400,000 to that as well. So and that has a staff of three full time and one part time staff. Currently working on filling one position. And one of our big four departments, highway sheriff, health and human services and Rocky Null. So what do you say about a $14 to $16 million budget depending on the year? And a lot of that budget obviously is road maintenance, infrastructure but this time of year especially you gotta get your equipment ready, purchase salt and prepare for winter. What all goes into ramping up for winter? Our preparation starts with salt. We have to look at our inventories. We start looking at that in May already so we can procure salt for the remainder of that year and the following year's winter. We average about 10 to 12,000 tons of salt a year which ranges about $61 a ton. So we spend anywhere between 600,000 to $750,000 just in salt purchases alone. That's not implying it. So we budget, the county board budgets about $2.1 million a year. That's the overtime, the application, the salt included in that, blades for the trucks, snow fence installation and marking that type of thing that we need to have prepared for winter. So it's huge. It is huge, big expense. And I've heard you say it before and depending on winter conditions that can have a big impact on the budget. And put that perspective a little bit for our viewers. You get a one, two, even just a three inch snowfall out there. It really requires about the same manpower and amount of equipment as if you get 10, 12, 13 inches of snow, is that right? It varies, one to two inches. We're gonna send out 43 trucks. That's including the state and the county and then we take care of 11 out of the 15 townships as well for their snow removal. So in a three inch event, we're gonna send those 42 trucks, 43 trucks, if we get a little wind with that, we're also gonna add our 12 graders as well. So, and then if it ramps up even further than that when we get to 10 to 12 inches, we'll send out our Oshkosh trucks with big V-plows and wings on so we can shelf and push the snow back, gives us a little bit more horsepower to get to stuff. We don't technically like to use those too often. Some of them are getting up there in age. It's a little more difficult to find parts, but we are one of the few counties that has a few left just in the event of that big blast that we need to take care of. And how many roads are you carrying forward during the winter? Our county trunk system is comprised of 450 miles. We have 465 miles of township road that we're responsible for and 170 miles of state road. And the reason I asked you that is because people sometimes lack patience this time of year and if we're gonna be safe out there, you gotta slow down and you have to be patient. And when you're dealing with over 1,000 miles of roadway, you're not gonna get to everybody's road first. So talk a little bit about that. What can people do to better understand, to take some time? What are your priorities, number one? And then number two, when they come upon a plow truck or someone working out there, what's the best way to manage that situation? Well, in an average snowstorm, we will start, if it's overnight snowstorm, we will start at four o'clock in the morning. If it's a little lighter snow, let's just say one to two inches, we'll get going at four. If it starts to get a little bit more than that, we'll come out at three o'clock. We're gonna hit our state and our county roads first. Simultaneously, those guys will be dispersed. And as we can get those cleaned up and get everybody to where they need to be off of those roads, then we'll start moving into our municipal roads that we have to take care of. You know, we just need time. That's what it is. It's nothing that we can control. We want to be safe when we're operating our equipment, so we have to take our time and pushing that snow. Give us space. You come upon a snow plow, give us a couple hundred feet. They have a very difficult time seeing behind them, especially when they're using, just this year, we've added quad axle trucks to our fleet, which are just a huge truck that it's hard to see what's behind you. So if you give us the space, give us the time. We'll get you where you need to be, but you just gotta be patient. Give yourself a little time to start earlier in the morning and obviously slow down. We don't want to have an issue like they did down south near Milwaukee with the 60 cars that piled up. I know from time to time, any of us or board members might get a call from a constituent saying, doggone it, that plow truck just went by and my mailbox got wiped out. And I've heard you give me this explanation a number of times that it really depends on the weight of the snow and the conditions out there. So what generally is the cause for someone losing a mailbox? And then secondly, what do people do? As you can imagine, when you have a 10 or 12 foot snow plow and then you add a 13 or 12 foot wing on the end of that and you're taking the snow from the center of the road all the way to the shoulder, if the truck's going 25 miles an hour, by the time it hits the end of the wing, it's coming off a lot faster. That snow and that volume, depending upon that weight, will take off of the mailbox instantly. Even if our guy's going 25 miles an hour, if it's not secured properly. But it's the snow hitting the mailbox, not the wing. That's correct. So folks are clear on that. So when we get the call, what our action is is that we will send out our shed supervisor from that local area to investigate whether we hit it, backed over it. And it has happened that we wrecked them and did hit them. If there's no physical evidence of us hitting it with the wing or the plow, it is the responsibility of the homeowner to fix that. If it's us, we will replace it or fix it with a like, I should say that, it would be just a normal mailbox that you'd pick up at Fleet Farmer Bernard's. So again, it's more often than not, just the weight of the snow. If it's heavy wet snow coming off that at 25 plus miles an hour, that can damage it. And in those instances, the owner's responsible, but if it's our fault where the wing literally hits it, then obviously we'll replace that. And they contact the highway department. That's correct. Very good, very good. We'll send somebody out. And last question before I turn it over to Roger. What about driveway entrances and the easements along there? What's the responsibility of the county versus the responsibility of the landowner? Your driveway is your responsibility. And what we're running into, we see more and more issues of people pushing their snow across the road in order to get rid of it or just to have it out of their yard. The county does have an ordinance against that. It's ordinance that placing things, obstructions in the right-of-way. The fine is not much, it's only $10, but I know a lot of people don't like the fact when we go and visit with them and say, hey, don't do this anymore. But when you look at it from our perspective, when there's a pile of snow that's typically not there and if it's not pushed down level with the ditch, as we go through our freeze law cycles throughout the winter months, that turns into a rock. If we hit that wood or our wing or our plow, one, it'll damage the truck. And two, it could send our truck across the road into oncoming traffic and cause a severe accident. And that's not something any one of us want to deal with. At that point, when it's placed in our right-of-way as an obstruction, it then is the responsibility of the person that placed it there. So there's gonna be some shared liability with those types of situations. Very good. And as you said, though, we're not looking to fill people's end of the driveway up when we come by and plow. It's their responsibility to clear that, not ours. We don't want to put it there on purpose. We don't want to deal with the snow anymore than anybody else does. Very good, thank you, Greg. Thank you, Adam. The having served on the county board for a number of years and on the local town board for 12 years, I have maybe more of an appreciation than some people do of how the highway department helps local municipalities. And we work together. You offer a service and we receive a good service for that. And we don't have to buy equipment as expensive as at the local level. So it works both ways. But another thing, not just the snow plowing, but in the summer months, would you tell us a little bit about your summer operations and how the blacktop plant fits in and how you work with local municipalities with these things? Sure, we do have an asphalt plant. As Roger mentioned, we produce anywhere between 60,000 and 70,000 tons of asphalt a year. And that is shared on our county system, on our town system as well as the state. We don't allow to do a lot of stuff on the state, but patching that type of stuff, we can take care of for them. It's a tremendous asset to all of us as taxpayers because it does help control the cost of having to purchase that outside from a different vendor. Along with that, we also have a crushing operation where we have contracts with some local property owners where we produce and create the aggregate. So we're not having to buy a lot of that and haul it into our asphalt plant. We're in a situation where it's all stationary and it does control or reduce the cost of our asphalt. The other areas that we can, what we assist in is mowing operations with the townships, patching, ditching. There's quite an onslaught of things that we offer that helps control the cost and you could use all of our county-owned resources. And getting back to the blacktop plant a little couple of years ago, we purchased, let's see, the RAP system and you were able to use recycled material if sometimes people see a blacktop being grown up. It can be used. Do you want to explain that a bit? Sure, as years have progressed on a lot of our highways, we continue to put overlays on, which could be between an inch and a half to two inches and we keep on raising that pavement year after year or not a year after year, but every 10 years or so when there's a surface treatment done to it, eventually you start to lose your shoulders and your slopes going into your ditches and also messes kind of with the profile with the roads coming onto it or driveways. So we want to knock that down so we can take a milling machine, come through, mill off to that top couple inches, whatever we want to take off, we haul it back to the plant, re-crush it, put it back through and utilize the oil and the aggregates that are in there and we're saving ourselves anywhere between three to four dollars a ton that we don't have to make out of virgin material. So it's a tremendous savings for us and has paid for itself, I would say almost twice already. And even in villages, you often see the curbing and the curbing is in good shape, so that gets milled off so there's not a, the curb is lost and nowhere to go with the water also. Correct, yep. What does your department do if there's an emergency in the summer? How do you handle that and do you work with the Sheriff's Department or just how does that work? If it's during the off hours, yes. We're paid by the Sheriff's Department. We have on-call staff that are available at any time and one thing about highway departments is and we're kind of the, I guess the, one of the last calls, first calls but the least visible. We're there for the traffic control and setting up the perimeters and a lot of times with chainsaws. So our application, we have to have enough stuff in order as far as controlling traffic and setting up detours. So we have specific trucks that are set up for that. We have specific trailers with enough signage on them so we can make our detours longer if there's a bridge out or that type of thing. So when you look at the highway department, it's not just putting asphalt down, rebuilding roads and snow plowing. There's a lot of other emergencies that were involved and if it's heavy wind or hail or, you name it, flooding, we're gonna be involved in it. Roger, did he just say that they control traffic with the use of chainsaws? This is something like that. That's why dropping a tree in the way, that's awesome. I see, I see. You have to go a different direction. There you go. Well, it's much appreciated. Sometimes the windstorms not only affect the electrical lines when they get knocked on, but people are sometimes trapped. They can't get around on dead end roads and everything. So sometimes it's just a matter of getting the tree out of the way and clearing up the debris afterwards. Just opening it up to traffic. So that's always appreciated. We do have a large project scheduled for this coming year and we had some funds coming from the state and that's the Dairyland Drive and LS project. You wanna explain to our listeners how that worked out and what the problems are and how they were solved? Sure, we worked with the town of Mosul as far as what their need was and what our need was. And I'll start with our need, first of all, on Coney Trunk LS, north of the Whistling Street, it's called of course, or north of Coney Trunk MM. The bluff was eroding away due to some groundwater problems as well as the elevation of the lake. It's gotten to the point now where it's become dangerous that the road almost needs to be closed if we don't do something immediately. So we started probably back in 2010 to develop where we're gonna end up with this road and at this point we are gonna be moving the road to the west of the properties alongside the lake in that area. Along with that though, we've had some participation from the state to I guess integrate our systems if you will with a town road versus a county trunk and we're gonna be swampy roads with the affected communities along Coney Trunk LS, which is the town of Sheboygan, town of Mosul, town of Centerville and the village of Cleveland and Manitouaw County. The counties will be taking over Dairyland Drive, which was an old federal highway which is built to a very good standard with concrete big wide shoulders and that's gonna be where we wanna try to force the bulk of the heavy traffic or the most of the traffic and then LS will be created into a town road which they would like to limit it to traffic as much as possible at least the heavy traffic. So when this is all said and done, hopefully by the end of September next year we'll have all new pavement coming out of the city of Sheboygan all the way into the village of Cleveland on LS as well as on Dairyland Drive. Dairyland Drive's name at this point hasn't been changed yet. We're working through some of the issues with that same with LS it will no longer be, it'll be Dairyland Drive as far as an address goes but as far as the designation of whether it's gonna be D-L-D-S-D-D whatever that's gonna be will be named probably sometime in early January and as far as LS goes, my assumption is gonna be Lakeshore Road because out of the five minute disabilities four of them are already using Lakeshore Road for an address, one is not. So there'll be a minimal change there when it does happen. So all in all it's about 70,000 tons of asphalt that'll be going in that corner of the county. We're getting $4 million of outside funding from the state of Wisconsin to help assist this and by September I hope my gray hair will start to turn black again. Well thank you Greg for all the work that you and your crew do to keep the road safe in the winter and upgrade them in the summer. Thanks very much. And it was interesting listening to Roger set the stage a little bit because obviously he is in a unique position as both county board chair, he's been on the county board for nearly 30 years and working in the town of Holland and he truly does appreciate that relationship between the county and the towns and all the good work that happens and we talk a lot about shared services and sharing resources and I think our highway department under Greg's leadership has been an absolute model of working together. I know Greg has really raised the bar to make sure that we're providing good services to the towns and municipalities but also he's doing it with less staff. I've been here 15 years now and there was a point where we had about 115, 120 highway department employees and now we have 87. So Greg like most departments has streamlined and done his best to work with limited resources and yet at the same time I think we've maintained an excellent service and continue to make good things happen in the community so we thank you Greg. Thank you. And speaking of doing more with less there's been a lot of consolidations in the county and one of them was consolidating the highway department with the airport department. So we now have one department head rather than two which is Greg is our transportation director and let's shift gears a little bit to the airport. We have one of the nicest airports in the state of Wisconsin. That's a public airport. It's one that a Chuck mayor, you may recall that name was our airport manager for probably around 30 years as well did a wonderful job working for Sheboygan County and we continue to do good work out there. What's the most recent new development that's in the plans? Well we did get some federal funding for the apron area out in front of the aviation heritage center. That's our last remaining piece of asphalt that was put in 20 plus years ago and starting to fail. Some of the seal coat material that's on there is getting sucked up into some of the jet motors and obviously those two aren't conducive. So that construction project did start a little bit this fall we put in an accident on a haul road in order to shave some time off the construction project for next year but that will be starting. Hopefully we're getting going in April ground conditions permitting. Should be hopefully completed where our push is to have everything done by wings and wheels if that happens this year, which is Father's Day weekend and that's our drive. If at all possible, maybe it won't be entirely open but we'll be able to park some planes on the new concrete that'll be installed. So that's our push. So we've made multimillion dollar improvements with extending the runways. We've now fenced in the entire airport. We've improved the parking. You're now looking to improve the tarmac or the apron area. We have the Heritage Museum out there which is a beautiful amenity and you really have done all this with the same number of staff. Just how enormous is the airport department staff and then also just how big is the airport state when you look at it statewide? The airport staff consists of airport superintendent which we're in the process of hiring for now. We have two full-time and one half-time individual. They take care of plowing all the runways which if I have a committed memory, it goes to five miles but they're real wide and you have to plow along around the lights and that type of thing. So it takes a fair amount of time plus we have 1,030 acres that we maintain of grass. That's inside and outside of the fence. So those are all of our responsibilities, the lighting, the navigation system, the fencing, the gates. So that's an enormous staff that we have out there and they do a wonderful job. We are, I'm finding out more and more as I get into this job that we're recognized as one of the jewels of general aviation. We also are home for 39 individual private hangers and I think 13 commercial and industrial hangers. So we have a busy airport. There's a lot of people, I think we run through about 800,000 gallons of jet fuel a year and so that's a lot of stuff and we have an FBO provider out there that supplies those airports with that fuel and we're working on building more of those relationships with more commercials as we have the property to facilitate that. If memory serves, it's about the 10th busiest public airport of the state and you said, I meant that Tunga Cheat obviously, three and a half staff essentially maintaining the entire multi-million dollar airport that is critical to our economic development and success as a community. That's correct, it takes a lot to get it done. The guys that we have out there have been doing it for a long time and they take a lot of pride in keeping it up. So as you, in the few minutes we have remaining, I know that you're always looking down the road on necessary infrastructure improvements, things happening at the airport. You just talked about two key projects, Maryland Drive and LS, the apron at the airport. What else do you have on Slate for next year or in the next five years? We're looking at, not next year, but the following year putting in a safety improvement down at the intersection of County Trunk A and EE, just south of the Deer Trace Mall. We've had numerous accidents there and we did receive some federal funding to build, we're looking at as a roundabout. That'll be happening in 2015. We're working on design of County Trunk OK where we left off this year at the intersection of OK and EE to go south down to the interstate. That would be a 2016 project. We have a couple bridges, County Trunk DE's a bridge that's gonna get replaced this year. Next year, I think we have County Trunk FF, there's a bridge that's got some structure problems on it we're gonna have to take care of. So we're looking all pretty far in advance. We have some pretty big significant investments to make in our infrastructure and we have probably about 16 to 18 miles of, besides what we're doing on L.S., we have about 16 to 18 miles of over-related dew next year, some seal coating and a bunch of maintenance work. So there's a lot of things that we're picking and parting and we're getting it done, but there's a lot of miles to cover. The work goes on and as we all know, it gets more and more expensive, whether it's new black top or the cost of oil or what have you, it's getting increasingly expensive to maintain and improve these roads. Yep, equipment's getting larger and it's getting more expensive. We just purchased two new snow plow trucks and they're $300,000 a piece. And years ago, that was considerably less, but it's a cost of doing business and unfortunately we have the other animal and that's you got construction, you got winter and we all heard what winter can cost us. So it's just a constant moving, cyclical thing for us. It's just the change of the season. I think when you did start your seven years ago, your hair was jet black. I know budgets can get us all going. Final question before we wrap up here, Highway 23, there's been discussion of four lanes all the way to Fond du Lac for some time. I think now they're targeting 2015 or 2016 to really get rolling on that, but living in the town of Plymouth and driving that road every day, it seems every year there's work going on on Highway 23 and most recently it's been the J-turns that I think some folks are still getting accustomed to. Briefly explain who does that work and why did they make those changes? The changes were made for the fact of safety. There was each one of those intersections had somewhat of accident history at them. And so the state applies for the same types of funding that I get. So there's some federal funding in order to improve those intersections or make them safer. It's not out there yet if they're the best thing that we can possibly put out at Green Bay that was built last summer as well. So for a timing standpoint, but some of that work, they have a private contractor coming in and build them and it's for safety improvements to try to keep us all safe as traveling because obviously we all know like 50% of the state work is completely up to factors there that I know I'm getting a little impatient with at all but in the end they've got much better. It's, you know, because it's a short little time window to get everything completed and that's hard for me to end summer but we need it on both ends. The work needs to be completed. We can only work during the day in most cases we are trying to do a little bit more night work now but it's still an inconvenience no matter what because people are constantly moving. We've got shifts in the manufacturing that has to go on so we have to work around everybody and work well in the sandbox if you will. Well Greg, thanks again for joining us today and thank you for joining us. I hope you learned a little bit more about our highway department and airport and if you have additional questions or something you'd like Greg to think about or respond to don't hesitate to contact him directly. He's one of team departments, one of 19 excellent department heads and I hope as you got a feel for it really making good things happen in Sheboygan County. We didn't talk about it but Greg also collaborates very well with our planning and conservation department, Erin and Erin Brault our department head there on the old plank road trail improvements and other non-motorized trail improvements and next month that's who's gonna be here. Erin Brault, planning and conservation director to talk about the very important work they've been doing not only with trail development, recreational opportunities but the huge, huge achievement of cleaning up and dredging the Sheboygan River and Harbor. So Greg, thanks again for joining us. Thank you and your excellent highway department employees for the good work you do and thank you for joining us until then on behalf of Roger Distruty and myself. Merry Christmas and happy new year.