Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name's Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Van der Steen. Chairman Mike Van der Steen, effective once again last night. Mike was just re-elected for a second term of Chairman. So Mike, it's good to have you on the program with us yet. Thank you very much. It could have been a change today. True. And thank you for joining us. As you know, every month we try to focus on a different department. There are program services and today we're very pleased to have Mr. Dave Such with us from UW Extension. Welcome Dave. Thank you for having me. Dave is our, not only the department head for UW Extension, but also the resource agent. In fact, it's the community resource development agent, quite a mouthful, I always think just department head. He leads the charge with UW Extension, has some very good employees that he works with. And Dave, please begin by sharing a little bit, kind of high end, what is UW Extension and what types of services do you provide? Sure. Well, we're the local source of information to the University of Wisconsin system. There's an extension office in each of the 72 Wisconsin counties in Sheboygan County. We have the professional staff for our university educators, jointly employed by Sheboygan County, the state of Wisconsin via the University of Wisconsin, and the federal government through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We are known as community-based faculty, so we have to jump through the same tenure hoops as our campus-based colleagues. So that's something, again, we're affiliated with the University of Wisconsin. We're educators. That's the name of our game. And as a result, again, we're evaluated on our ability to teach and deliver and evaluate programs in that. So again, we have to jump through like every seven years you've got from the time you start an extension to be granted tenure, otherwise you're out. So it's quite a grueling evaluation process where a VEDA or promotional materials have to be prepared on that. So basically, what that does is ensure that we are delivering quality programs to meet the educational needs of our citizens. So if someone walks into your office here at UW Sheboygan this afternoon or in the future, what types of departments or program areas do you have? We have four program areas. Extension kind of prides itself on those four program areas, one of which is 4-H. A lot of people have heard of 4-H in the clover. That seems like that's a pretty well-known commodity out there. And extension has been around since about 1914. In Sheboygan County, probably in the late 1917, I think, is about the furthest I could trace the records back. So that's one program area. Ag, Ag Business and Natural Resources is another. In fact, if you remember the show Green Acres, the county agent, Hank Kimball, extension for the farming community, probably they recognize extensions having the county agent, the agricultural agent. In our county we have, because of the number of farms, we have two Ag agents. One specializes in crops and soils, the other in Darien Livestock. We also have a family living education program. Two people in that one, Jane Jensen is her family living educator and Missy Geibel is our nutrition education coordinator. And then the fourth program area is mine, where the program had in addition to the administrative app, which is community natural resource and economic development. So those are kind of the four program areas. And if somebody came into the office, typically people are bringing in soil for soil tests and we train farmers for the pesticide applicator training, we're required to provide that type of training. Man, we get hit up with just about every question under the sun being affiliated with the university. That's one of the unique things about UW Extension I think is the breadth of programs that you provide as well as the tremendous resources you have available from soil samples to how to operate a farm, to economic development opportunities, land use planning. So clearly a lot going on there. So how do you break that all down into a mission statement? What's the mission of UW Extension? Well our mission is helping people both in Wisconsin and Sheboygan County apply the university research, that's an important component, university research knowledge and resources to meet their educational needs wherever they live and work. And I think that distinguishes our agency from others because we do have that university connection with research based information. And in this day and age with the internet and all of that, there's so much information out there. We are in the information age and a lot of people do come to us to say, okay, help us fair through all that information out there. What really is the truth basically? And we're not trying to advocate or take a point of view or trying to sell people products, we're trying to help them find the best information to meet their educational needs. A real important role and again, research based information, we hang our hat on that. Now UW Extension as I think many of our viewers know is now co-located with UW Sheboygan. And every now and then you hear folks who might be a little confused, well what's the difference between UW Extension and UW Sheboygan? In fact, when we were relocating to the campus, people would say the extension is moving to the extension. You know, they couldn't figure that out. Well probably back in the 60s the two-year colleges were known as the extension. Basically they were an extension of the four-year campuses and although cooperative extension who we are had been around much longer than that. So there was a little bit of confusion with cooperative extension which is more lifelong learning versus the extension, the two-year colleges which were more formal classroom type education. Our focus is more on again helping individual families, businesses, communities learn about things kind of after the formal type of education. Probably the best way to understand it, the University of Wisconsin system is very large and complex but the way I kind of look at it is similar to a corporation. You have the Board of Directors which is very similar to the Board of Regents. They kind of guide the overall direction and under the Board of Regents just as you wouldn't of private corporation would be like a chief executive officer and that's the president of the UW system who is Kevin Riley. Then there are 13 four-year campuses in the UW system such as Madison, UW Madison, Milwaukee. Each of those 13 campuses has a chancellor and then the colleges, the two-year colleges and there are 13 of those as well. One of them is right here in Sheboygan County which we're located today. Each college has a dean and then previously until about 2006 the 13 colleges had one chancellor and there was this other thing called extension and we had one chancellor at the time and there were four major divisions one of which was like public broadcasting which is public TV and radio. That came under extensions umbrella. There's a continuing education extension which does a lot of training for like say real estate agents help them meet their continuing credentials, things like that. Let's see who are the other ones. Oh and the small business development center is another component division and extension and then cooperative extension. Where cooperative the term implies a partnership between the county in which we're located and again there are 72 county extension, cooperative extension offices throughout the state, one in each county. So it's a partnership, cooperative arrangement between the county, the state of Wisconsin via the University of Wisconsin and the federal government through the US Department of Agriculture. Our salaries and that's a little bit different too like we're funded, the agent salaries are funded 40% by the county in which we work and then 60% by the state and federal government and then the county is responsible for providing the support staff and the operating budget in each of those 72 counties which is a little bit different than the campus here because the the faculty and staff here are 100% funded by the University although the building as you well know is provided by the county. A lot of people don't recognize it and we we often try to bring it up at county board meetings or occasionally I get that word out that but a lot of people in Sheboygan County don't recognize that Sheboygan County as an organization owns the building and grounds here at UW Sheboygan. However it's run by state employees, professors, staff that are funded by the state and back to the question what's the difference between UW Extension and UW Sheboygan? The way I simplistically think of it is you have all these experts with tremendous knowledge and resources but one UW Sheboygan you can get a two-year degree from. UW Extension you can't, UW Extension you're going to get assistance with questions from A to Z everyday problems. And we're also looked upon as kind of a two-way door. We are the doorway to the university but also that university research and knowledge flows through that door out to the citizens of Sheboygan County but also any problems issues concerns that they have we'd like to bring that in through that door and pass it along to those researchers to focus on real world real real world problems that people have. So again a two-way door is a good way to look at it as well. And that was one of the great things about I think co-locating here as you mentioned the 4-H program earlier please share a little bit about that because I know a lot of information is flowing out to 4-H. Young men and women kids in this community and they're also now becoming more aware of this beautiful UW Sheboygan campus. Tell us a little bit about 4-H and what kind of participation we have. Well actually as it turns out we do have a large program we're second largest in the state of Wisconsin. We have over 1,000 enrolled members in 4-H as well as there are 404 adult volunteer leaders and we have about 113 youth volunteer leaders. And they usually work through 34 clubs throughout the county. So there's a significant number of youth that are involved in the program and again I think we'll talk a little bit later about one of the the advantages of being here on the campus is also this outreach. The campus itself here I think really looked favorably upon our co-locating because of our our outreach connections. We bring youth in here in fact you know our meeting rooms here are used every night and youth are coming in they get exposed to this great facility and hopefully that's a you know an incentive to pursue their their lifelong learning. Last question for you you mentioned what a thousand kids are in 4-H is that what you said? Over a thousand right. Over a thousand second largest program 4-H program in the state it takes a lot of volunteer time to organize that. What kind of volunteer rate and what kind of hours do these folks put in? Actually we did a little study in fact this is National Volunteer Week so it's very appropriate. Our extension programs rely heavily on on the volunteer efforts. The 4-H program again we said we have 404 adult volunteer leaders they each contribute about 65 hours annually so multiplying that times 404 we've got about 26 over 26,000 volunteer hours and if you put a dollar amount about $15 is about the average rate for volunteer services that would translate to about just under a half million dollars of volunteer effort. So I like to look at it we have two 4-H youth development agents and one supports that. Three people that basically are managing a department of over 1500 people again over a thousand youth and 400 adult volunteers those three people are just doing a fantastic job of managing that that number of youth. My work with local governments over the years has also showed me that what the 4-H program is teaching like leadership skills and parliamentary procedure we have so many of our local officials out there town board chairs and supervisors and village board presidents that have gone through 4-H and you know that's just a great testimony to what we're trying to do in terms of building leadership skills and having people volunteer and take part in their community. Thank you Dave. Dave I know that you supply a lot of services to the agricultural community could you give our viewers a little bit of the scope of of the agriculture community here in Sheboygan County and the services that you provide? Yep well agriculture definitely is an economic force here in Sheboygan County no question about it a study we had done a number of years ago showed that agriculture does generate about 1.6 billion that's billion with a b dollars in terms of economic activity activity or about 20 percent of Sheboygan County's total. So usually we think of things like manufacturing tourism and that but again agriculture is definitely you know about one-fifth of our economic activity is is associated to the agricultural industry in terms of jobs we have about there's over 1900 jobs or about 12 percent of the county's workforce is tied up in agriculture agriculture pays about 44.2 million dollars in taxes which obviously is important to keep keep public sector job like ours going it contributes 478.2 million dollars to the county's total income and Sheboygan County farmers manage the resources on about 100 and almost 200 000 acres in the county which is about 60 of all the land so when you look at that I mean farmers are are very good stewards of land and we do have programs in terms of conservation you know proper application of pesticides things like that the farmers are managing you know a significant portion of the land surface here in Sheboygan County which is extremely important. Dave could you give us a little bit of a picture of the role that just the dairy industry plays here in Sheboygan County? Sure and and dairy is the major part of the agricultural economy it contributes about 1.14 billion dollars to the county's economy on farm production of milk accounts for about almost 70 million dollars in economic activity the average Wisconsin dairy cow generates about $2,200 in direct income to the producers of the farmer and it contributes more than $20,000 annually in economic activity right here in Sheboygan County we have about 26,700 cows on 199 dairy farms the average herd size is 134 cows so you can see you know with $20,000 per cow in economic activity multiplied times that 26,700 cows I mean there is a lot of economic activity associated with the dairy industry. Well you said that there's a lot of land involved here and you know land use is very important issue and you've been doing a lot of work with smart growth plans and I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what a smart growth plan entails and and how your your department's involved in that. Sure well actually planning land use planning in particular has been around in Wisconsin since the 1920s back in 1999 the state legislature passed a law known as a smart growth law which defined what a comprehensive plan was basically to give everybody kind of a level playing field so that we all knew what went into a a comprehensive plan the legislature also provided a direction that every municipality in Wisconsin every town village and city if they wanted to be in the land use regulation business had to have a a comprehensive smart growth plan prepared by January 1st 2010 so the past decade we pretty much an extension has worked with add in them up we work with 24 of the 28 units of government in Sheboygan County we have 15 towns 10 villages and three cities we work with 24 of the 28 in helping them prepare their smart growth comprehensive plans and that entailed things like doing community-wide surveys trying to identify issues and looking at where people wanted to be 20 years in the future the legislation directed every smart growth plan to look at a where they wanted to be 20 years ahead of time so we were trying to help communities establish goal statements vision statements and all of that came from the citizenry so we we've done substantial community-wide surveys everybody had a chance to participate in all the communities we work with obviously when you're sending out tens of thousands of surveys it takes a while to compile all that and analyze it and then break it down into goals and objectives and all of that was kind of fed into the smart growth plans which also compiled tons and tons of information about the community again kind of looking at the past and trends for the future and pulling all of that information together again to help people pretty much maintain or enhance their quality of life you know smart growth planning i think initially was perceived as a very expensive academic exercise but i think as people understood you need to think about where you're going in the future if you want to maintain the quality of life that you have so like say many of these smart growth plans took a minimum of two years to to complete some were even five years so again working with 24 to 28 years of government and and let me just say we did get them all done some almost as the clock was striking but we met the deadline with all of them so we were very fortunate there and in fact we did say we looked at every year we probably saved the municipalities out there about a little over three hundred thousand dollars by doing it themselves teaching them how to look at the information to help them analyze it in terms of consulting fees we we did save communities a significant you know six digits every year but not every municipality saved three hundred thousand dollars each that's collectively collectively right i would say the average community saved anywhere from fifty to seventy five thousand pretty good that sure is a lot of work and and we really appreciate the efforts that your department made there are any other programs that you're involved in in addition to the smart growth sure have in fact just prior to this i had a meeting on on water testing with there's something we we have done probably for the last 15 17 years here in sheboygan county and we've we've got a long ways to go we've probably tested over three thousand wells but we figured there are about 16 000 households in the county that have private water supply systems and that that's a very important program and i guess water is one of those resources we've taken for granted here in wisconsin and in sheboygan county a lot of people don't understand it is their responsibility to have their water checked and we're providing that opportunity for them so water testing in fact with follow-up on the smart growth plans we're now involved in the implementation of them one of the elements that was required in the smart growth plan is economic development and we've done consumer surveys business surveys in fact in the random lake sherman a del area one of the things that came out of the smart growth plan was a consumer survey and business survey of citizens in that area which kind of determine the need for a mid-sized grocery store and we're working with them to get that established so it's kind of interesting all that time spent on the planning and now we're getting into kind of the the mortar and brick kinds of things and it's nice to be around that long to see some actual things happening out there on the land service and then also some of the skills and tools we established through the smart growth process we're able to apply those with departments like here in the county strategic planning i'm working with the health and human services department and a number of their divisions on strategic planning helping them identify priorities and kind of plans for the for the future so that's one of the nice spin-offs of going through all that planning stuff and and applying it to non-profits i've got a lot of requests for different non-profit agencies to help them with strategic plans on that so it keeps keeps me going yeah i'm sure it does the uw extension has changed over the years could you give us a little bit of an idea of of how you've peeled to a broader and more diverse audience sure one of the things we've been focusing on for the last couple of years was this nutrition education program which focuses on people that are eligible or receiving food stamps are now called food share we have a in fact last year we that program address the needs of about 3 000 families in shaboyan county and the focus of that program really is to help participants learn how to purchase and prepare healthy meals keep food safe to eat and more importantly in in these tough economic times develop a spending and savings plan and live within that plan so that their food dollars will last through the month so that's something you know family living in years past did some nutrition education but this is also looking more at helping people budget their limited dollars appropriately and and again in these tough economic times that's been a real real important program our family living educator also has provided adult family caregiver education last year to over 447 families we're all kind of in that call it sandwich generation where we're caring for elder parents and young children that we're all getting older so that caregiving is becoming a more important aspect of our society and our family living educator has developed a number of programs in fact we've surveyed county employees to take a look at how many people in the employee of shaboyan county are in the caregiving situation and then she's also following up with providing some of the educational materials to help them kind of manage all these things being a caregiver an employee and things like that so it's not just the farm stuff anymore like it was back in the 1920s I mean we're we're changing with the times to meet the needs that's great and turn it over to Adam to wrap up only have a couple of minutes left but we mentioned it earlier in the program that obviously being co-located here at UW-Shaboyan and I can't believe it's been two years since the the movie April of 2008 in a nutshell Dave what's your impression what do you hear more importantly from the people you serve has it been a has it been a winner for us what's it meant for shaboyan county definitely a winner one of the problems shaboyan county generally has a a lack of meeting facilities and by co-locating here on the shaboyan UW-Shaboyan campus that's one of the first things we realized is access to a significant number of meeting rooms and classrooms that's just that's helped us in our our audiences tremendously not only just standard classrooms and meeting rooms but we also access to technology the smart classrooms compressive video things like that which we couldn't do at our at our old site in shaboyan falls you know that's that's where we're at we're just in the information generation the information age and moving information and you know via those high-tech means is is so important in our business and we're in a facility now where we can do that so that's been just a a significant advancement for us also we have the theater and we have in for example in 4-H a big performing arts theater and performing arts program so we're right here in a facility that that has those types of facilities that we can utilize so that's been tremendous also you know just from our budget standpoint there have been cost savings in terms of utilities and like shipping and things like that where we've noticed a significant decrease in terms of our expenditures by being located here and it's not all one-sided I mean we've definitely seen benefits but I think the campus has as well because of again I said earlier our outreach for example you know you bring in over a thousand 4-H young people to this facility they're seeing that you know part of it is always that mystery and I think this campus was a long time kind of out of sight out of mind people didn't realize it was here and and now by bringing young people into the campus you know again the mystery is being lessened and it's there's probably going to be a greater likelihood in fact the enrollment at the campus did go up the past year we'd like to think we had something to do with that because of our presence so it's been definitely a positive some of the naysayers out there now when they see the facility and they see the high tech I think that they've changed their mind Dave I want to thank you for your leadership I know that you know three four years ago when we started talking about the possibility of it you and Dean Ray Hernandez who blesses heart is no longer with us but he was a big champion and of course Mike van der steen and and I was engaged in jack van Dixhorn who was chair of the resources committee at that time a lot of people pulled together and and it was a difficult proposal because it was a big change and we had been out and falls for a long time but as you said it it's really nice to hear people who at the time did not support it now following up and saying you know what it turned out to be okay and in fact it's been a it's been a huge win for our community so thank you for your leadership and the good work you and your staff and yours we really appreciate the support you gave us we have one of the best extension offices in the state no question so we really appreciate the support the county has provided for UW extension well thank you for joining us today thanks again for your good work and thank you for joining us on behalf of the Sheboygan county board and chairman Mike van der steen we're looking forward for looking forward to monthly programs and again sharing some of the very important work that county employees like Dave Such and others are doing and next month we'll have our information systems director here Joyce Schneider talking about information services IT technology may not sound like a real exciting field but every department relies on it and as you know if you have a computer if something goes down you're not happy so Joyce Schneider is going to be here to talk to us about the good work that she and her staff are doing so again thank you for joining us