Hello, everybody, and welcome to our next EDW session. We are in a session called The Most Common MDM Business Case Mistake and How to Avoid It, which is presented by Bill O'Kane, the VP and MDM strategist at Prophecy. All audience members are muted during these sessions, so please submit your questions in the Q&A window to the right of the screen. And our speaker will respond to as many questions as possible at the end of the talk. We also want to know that there is a linked form at the bottom of this page where audience members are able to leave evaluations for the session, and we'd really appreciate it if you were able to do that. So let's go ahead and get started. Thank you, and welcome, Bill. OK, thanks, Natalie, and thanks, everybody, for joining and for your time today. This is actually my favorite topic, The Most Common MDM Business Case Mistake and How to Avoid It. And for those that don't know, prior to joining Prophecy about a year and a half ago, I led Gartner's MDM and Data Governance Practice for eight years. I was the lead author and creator of the current version of the Magic Quadrant for MDM. Decided to make a change and decided to join Prophecy a couple of years ago as sort of a leading MDM vendor in the space. The reason I bring that up is just because the reason I'm so confident in saying what I'm about to say is that after about a half dozen pretty successful MDM implementations before that, at Prophecy, I had a documented 3,000 client interactions of 30 minutes or more over eight years. They actually tracked that, so that's how I know. And this particular topic took up about 80% of those interactions easily. And Prophecy still interacts with Gartner as an MDM vendor. And so we check with them pretty regularly. And they've told us that this proportion of this problem showing up or this issue showing up or this request showing up over the past couple of years since I've left is still consistent. So, you know, they're happy to have anybody talk about it inside or outside of Gartner at this point. So, again, this is why, how I formulated this, I didn't make a point of making slides about how it comes about, but it's a very, very common thing. You've probably heard it before, this is just sort of a really strong version of it. If you're already encountering this, you're gonna get a lot of confirmation and suggestions. They won't all be easy to implement, but certainly if you can sort of have the catharsis that this is meant to bring about at some point during it, during the session, then you'll certainly find this helpful. Just move forward, there we go. So, out of all those thousands of interactions and the half dozen programs I worked on, some sort of seemingly sensible trends and reasons for doing things like MDM and governance and data management, always seem to rear their heads over and over again. And they seem pretty logical. And we'll get into some specifics about what they are. I've seen really, really smart people, some of the smartest people I've ever met actually make these mistakes. And if they don't stay on top of the programs, they're in charge of, they actually revert back to those mistakes if they don't take an active role in steering people away from them. So why should you care about this? Well, there's some very good reasons. If we do just a few sort of non-intuitive, they're not rocket science, they're fairly simple, they're just sort of difficult to implement even though they are simple. And there are habits that you have to sort of... Habits and levels of fortitude that you have to develop in these programs, which can take a while as we all know. Why should you do them? They help you maximize delivery of business benefits. And the dirty secret is you end up doing less work. Okay, so this isn't all about getting everything done. In fact, that's one of the mistakes is trying to do everything. People use the cliche, boil the ocean. That's certainly something that comes up. And it comes up as a result more of what I'm gonna talk about. So if you can do what I talk about here, it'll naturally sort of lead to not boiling the ocean and delivering value very, very quickly. Something we're pretty fanatic about at Prophecy, which is one of the reasons I joined. Again, you avoid unnecessary effort and expense. In fact, you don't clean up data that's not really gonna add any value. And you'll be able to prove what you did. That's another thing that often happens is you do something very good. It's not out front because you're managing the data layer in the back. And you just never really get the sort of political capital that you need to keep moving in an effective way. So hopefully this helps with that as well. Some guy at Gartner was quoted over and over again as having said this years ago. And it's still true. That's a pretty good number still. By failing, when MDM fails, it fails. It's not like when a data warehouse fails and it's there and nobody decides to use it. They keep doing what they're doing. MDM, when it fails, doesn't get installed, doesn't get put into production, doesn't get fully modeled and populated. And when they fail, the biggest reasons are again because they've been justified by things that sound right and they're actually, they are technically correct, but they have a fatal flaw in them that we'll get to. And that flaw causes one of two things. And even this is not really intuitive. The first thing that happens, I like to say this, sometimes in certain situations, there are two bad things that happen when you go for funding for MDM. The second worst is actually you get kicked out of the room and you don't get funding. That's the second worst.  May or may not even be accurate. It may be accurate. It may not be, but you don't get paid. You don't get any money. And they say, come back next year. We'll talk about this again. We're not comfortable with it, that kind of thing. Keep talking to us. It sounds interesting, but we don't wanna do it right now. That's the second worst thing. The absolute worst thing is you get funding for one year and you justify it in the ways we're gonna talk about today and eventually someone's gonna say, what did I get for all that? And I had clients say things to me in the past like at Gartner as an analyst. You know, I got asked what business value I added and I heard myself respond with data architecture. And I knew I needed to call someone because I knew that wasn't gonna be very helpful to me or to anyone. Even though everything I was saying was correct, I could tell by the looks on the faces that I was kind of done for a while in terms of getting any additional funding to complete what I wanna do. And these things, I've seen them go 80, 85% complete and have this problem and literally get stopped at until another funding ground where somebody can give whoever this is some advice as to sort of what went wrong even though they did everything right. The idea is to have this discussion before, again, before you get any funding and before you spend it. I like to say this, you will have this discussion the one I'm about to describe. You will have it, it's just best to have it before you spend any money because again, it'll keep your scope down. It will ensure that you have buy-in. Not so much get you buy-in but show you whether you have it or not or you need to do more work because eventually if you don't have this discussion now a year later when you go back or maybe sooner someone will say, gee, what did I get for all that? What you wanna say is, what will we get for all this? What is it you want out of this? And there's some logic to not, people always say to me, how do I sell MDM? I would say more than half the organizations I dealt with shouldn't be selling MDM because they're business at all. I use the analogy, if you decided as an IT architect that you needed an enterprise service bus to stop doing a lot of point integration because they were counterproductive would you explain that to the business? How far would you go? And of course it's not very far. And I like to say, think about this you're doing that with data because you think everybody understands that. When in fact, the way we're talking about data in this context is just as infrastructure centric as that enterprise service bus I described. Somebody will see the direct results of it because they will see the cleaner, more trusted data when you're done but they don't really understand the idea of how you're trying to get there. And it may or may not be a mistake to try to bring them to that understanding. I like to say, the best MDM project I ever worked on was called new account opening for the 21st century. The business had no idea we were doing MDM all they knew was on that Monday morning when we went live, here's what was gonna happen. If they tried to enter a duplicate a pop-up window would come up and ask them if they really wanted to do it and make suggestions and things like that. That's what they cared about. They had no idea what master data management was and had I tried to explain it I'm sure I would have been fired. So again, just to reiterate the problem the failure to use a structured framework I believe that we actually did a survey of prophecy that these are quotes from forces ratification of the financial benefits and ratification is a critical thing that I'll get to as well. And failure to do this often leads to program failure. Our own surveys show that almost two thirds of MDM projects, no matter what vendor or if there's no vendor at all failed to go beyond piloting and experimentation and there are a number of reasons for that but one is, this looks very big no one's gonna pay for this over the long haul and the idea is the long haul is not really necessary. So common dysfunctional business outcomes I said people say things that are logical and even correct and they just don't work over the long haul, better data quality. So when I would get sessions with people while at Gartner I would ask them when they would say you know we're about to fail I can't get any more funding. I did all the things I said I would do my project plan looks complete for phase one something's wrong, I'm not at the top of the stack of prioritizations anymore. And I would always start the same way tell me what you said the benefits of this would be last year when you campaigned for funding in order of increasing frequency and popularity here the answers I would get they were always up the same one of the same four or two better data quality, better decisions single version of the truth this is usually where people start to feel like I'm getting personal with them because it's getting more frequent and finally 360 degree view of something and it's usually the customer sometimes it's product but usually it's the customer and these are all great things they're all things we should strive for but they don't make a good business case if you spend 500,000 or three quarters of a million or a million dollars or heaven forbid even more over a year and someone comes back to you and says what are we getting out of this again if you say any of these you're probably gonna have a tough week or month or year and I speak from experience and again talking to just thousands of people these are great things they are things to strive for absolutely I call them sometimes architectural goals but they are not business reasons to undertake data governance or MDM or even data management in general there's also a new one in the bunch monetize our data very forward thinking this is a great thing I've been, I was involved in a program to monetize data in 1995 that went pretty well from a data warehouse and so I certainly appreciate this I think it's great it's a great way to judge the value of what you're doing but again, if you don't have specific business use cases of who you're gonna sell it to and what you're gonna sell them and why they should buy it this is just as bad as the others better data quality, better decisions, 360 view single version of truth or even worse because nobody really knows what this is as much as they know what the other four are so if this is the only thing you're hanging your hat on and I'm gonna come up with an exception that's based on this in a little while again, you're just increasing your risk and again, I wanna say I would never say to anyone if you do X you're gonna fail we're talking about decreasing risk here and decreasing workload and decreasing risk by decreasing the workload that you have to model, have to manage have to implement in order to deliver value so just a quick saying here cliche means to an end is not the same thing as the end that's a brief way of saying all of what I'm about to say so how do you recognize a real business outcome? This is a great trick that I came up with years ago it trips up a lot of people that appear to be or that believe they're on the right track try to state why you're doing all of this or want to do all of this and don't use the word data now I said there'd be an exception for data monetization if you're in the business of monetizing data and selling data or trading data then this doesn't apply to you that you're gonna have business cases with the word data in them so it might be a little trickier for you to see to see one that may not be great but you can use the word data if so what do I mean when I say this? Things like this I want to hear sort of operational and analytical metrics that again don't really use the word data that it's a trick of the trade to sort of help you avoid the mistakes of the previous slide if you force yourself to try to do this it becomes it does a lot of other things for you in terms of mindset and the people you're dealing with on the business as well if you can't do this I hope this isn't too melodramatic we have a huge red flag and I say that from again talking to thousands and thousands of people about this who some said I wish I could go back because this was the beginning of the issue I actually I said earlier you're eventually gonna have this conversation where they're looking for these answers after you spend some money and for a year or two try to try to get something going based on those sort of ambiguous architectural concepts I had one client I'll never forget him he said to me once after a year I know you said to me last year to get them to give me what they wanted and to ask these questions they wouldn't give me an answer they threw budget money at me they said to get going and I got going and I did all the architectural stuff now they're asking me the exact same questions that I wanted to ask them last year that they wouldn't answer for me the exact same questions so again I usually stop here and say this seems melodramatic but over and over again for the last 10 years this is the thing that would have made the difference is if you couldn't and that doesn't mean you stop in your tracks dead if nobody can do this it means let's stop until we can come up with a bunch of these things because and usually two or three are plenty in the real world I've seen one be enough but I usually two or three are good we do a thing at Prophecy where we try to come up with two or three and prioritize them and get ratification and all that is called the business impact roadmap but that's the idea in the real world two or three is usually plenty for the accounting or financial horizon of most companies and what this means is if you can't do it you try to stop until you can have those conversations because like I said this is gonna get you less work because not only we're only gonna talk today about identifying these but this then informs whatever data model you're gonna use you should only model for the stuff that's gonna deliver these three things most MDM vendors now are multi-domain platforms Prophecy is as well they're model agnostic so they only have to model things from domains that are gonna make a difference for whatever outputs you want and they can always be grown sort of picture concentric circles growing outward as you get bigger and bigger but again I really wanna emphasize this is a good sort of milestone here if you really have trouble doing this if you can't have these conversations and I'm gonna try to help with how to have them in a couple of slides and how to measure them as well but again really think this through because it might be a year later it might be 18 months later but you're gonna have this issue you wanna be in front of it when it's still an idea and something that might be undertaken before so it's something that costs a lot of money and time and resources so this is one way to talk to the business I came up with this a few years ago and just never had a chance to really write a paper on it it is a quadrant the horizontal axis is what I call the financial axis everything below it is the classic below the line accounting stuff everything above it is the classic above the line accounting stuff so down below is saving money up above is making money the thing that's sort of new for me is the vertical axis and to the left are better things we do now and that we're really not that good at we're not accurate or efficient but we do it whatever it is maybe we use spreadsheets or pencil and paper or calculators but we do it and we get away with whatever it is that we're doing in the real world on the right or the interesting things those are things we can't do at all and maybe there are people that work for us that used to do these things at a competitor and wonder why we can't do them or they just assume our data is so terrible that we're never gonna be able to so why is this helpful so I will speak as a former worst offender at this so I'm allowed to say it most good IT people have some understanding of business problems to some degree or another the issue is and again I was one of the worst offenders I've ever seen at this early early in doing all of this is IT people left to their own devices will generally feel that the safest thing they can do is to save money by fixing current things that are not optimal because we already have them everybody knows what's wrong with them I know what's wrong with them I know what technology will fix them MDM is a big part of it so I'm just gonna do that that's perfectly fine and stuff that probably needs to be done and it should be done and it should be measured but they're not usually enough to make these things to push these things into positive financial or operational territory so what is so what is it what we wanna do is go sort of this upper right and that new processes that make us money that we're not making now the other quadrants are all important this just happens to be the one that usually where MDM and data management and data governance pay off where you can prove that something happened that was very good it wouldn't have happened if we didn't do all of this stuff behind the scenes and the issue really here so why doesn't everybody do this out of the gate to make a joke that's because people in IT have to meet new people to make this happen they have to go out find business partners take them to lunch find out what it is they really want or what they're unhappy about either because they don't have it hopefully or because they have it and they don't like it if they're really gonna stick to the left side of the vertical there so just a way to partition the thinking and that upper right is so critical you know the most difficult conversations I had I think in my career as an analyst and even before that as a MDM program manager and architect was my business partners aren't gonna talk to me like that they just wanna get to retirement they just want me to leave them alone actually I've had business people look across tables at me and say you're gonna be gone and I'm still gonna be here and they were pretty much right but I was able to do some things before I left that they probably weren't too happy about in terms of disruption if you will but that upper right is so important that if that's the conversation that's going on my response to that for people that were in trouble trying to get this stuff done was then go get some business consultants that have worked with your competitors and scare your business partners because we could never share it because of NDAs but I know people that are doing things that are gonna put you out of business if and when they're successful and if you don't do something you're gonna be in a world of hurt when they get to critical mass of what they're doing so I can only do you a service by saying I can't tell you because I'm under NDA but this is so critical that you should instead of spending money on trying to do all this stuff you'd be better off spending some money on someone telling you what other people are doing because you have no vision is the word I used to use you're all strategy but no vision and you need to get some because it's again very risky to pursue this any other way another trick if anybody's ever worked in HR or with HR or been measured by this there's this thing called the smart goals I won't go through all of them and some of them apply to a lesser extent but this is a way to think about your MDM initiatives and your data management initiatives what is it you know what is it you wanna do can you measure it better data quality there are ways of measuring it but they don't work in terms of business value usually they're quite technical is there a beginning a middle and an end MDM is a program it's a series of projects each of those projects has a beginning a middle or an end but the program probably doesn't the most successful people I've met that do this in the recent years will tell you I've still got five domains left to go but I've got an operating model everybody trusts me I'm gonna get funding I know I can deliver on the data I committed to I've got a whole risk mitigation program that's considered successful they don't think they're ever gonna be finished they know why they're doing what they're doing and that next thing that they wanna do they can tell you in business terms why they wanna do it and what the benefits are gonna be so again if you're not familiar with smart goals Google it it's a good thing to apply to things like data management just as a check a sanity check that says am I in the right place am I doing something that can't be measured how will I prove that this fixed anything or enabled something for the first time so people always ask how do I measure this the preferred way is obvious and we strive for this a prophecy in terms of helping people do this and we've been pretty successful I'm really kind of gratified by how many people step up to this in terms of prospects and clients for us but there are people that view this as risky if I put a dollar value to it and we don't save or make that much what's gonna happen to me kind of thing how will I look what will happen to my job I have to say that in the years I've been doing this I used to tell people take one third of it do you think you can you definitely deliver one third of what we're talking about or one half oh sure absolutely well then say that don't say all of it because I believe you're gonna deliver all of it and no matter if you just get out of bed in the morning you're gonna deliver half of it so again dollars is best however if you can't workflow metrics are effective so throughput rate of customer onboarding meantime to introducing a new products to market that kind of thing I'm happy with that if they can't be converted to dollars that's not optimal but certainly it will work and what's key there is consistency which is another great thing that if you use an ROI model like ours or somebody else's you'll get a yardstick that not only can you compare this to other things when you're trying to kick it off but when someone comes along after you're in business for 18 months and says I wanna buy a CRM system and I need the MDM money to do it and they say we're gonna make 15% more money if we do that and I pick on CRM and ERP because those are the ones I see the most but you have something to compare it to to say well wait a second we have something that everybody ratified that said the benefits of this were three times that are we giving up on that now and you wanna have a real discussion in effect what you're doing is replacing subjectivity I just know this will be great for the business with objectivity here's how great it'll be and here's how long it's gonna take and here's what it's gonna cost. Just a little sort of real life note there operational versus analytical MDM analytical MDM has real benefits and a lot of our prospects and clients start with that because it's less invasive to just populate a bunch of data warehouses in March and other analytic platforms than it is to send data back to operational systems at first that's often sort of the strategic goal in the second or third years to become operational to integrate real time with CRM and ERP prevent duplicates during entry and all of that good stuff and trigger business events like overextension of credit risk or fraud or whatever it might be those are easier to quantify of course they're harder to implement so this is the plan of there if anything that's really gonna help you it's gonna be harder to do you know analytical MDM it's harder to prove and I'm happy to have this discussion with anybody because I could be wrong but analytics the value of them unless they're operationalized which is sort of a hybrid here it's harder to say how valuable improving them is if you're already sort of getting the right answer and you're able to act on it getting it from 80% accurate to 100% I've had people tell me I'm just not interested in that but if you say you know I can stop you from extending credit risk where you shouldn't as soon as you implement this as provided you've got a credit reporting service that you already subscribed to or are willing to then all of a sudden they're interested of course again that takes longer to do but easier to quantify right so what do you do next? Where do you take all this? So go back to that benefits quadrant and there are a couple of other tools that people use and get a framework to capture, categorize and ratify I'm really happy I italicized that business benefits for strategic management programs so typical candidates are internal ROI methodologies and tools some companies I've worked for some very big enterprises they have things you have to use they're not all that friendly to data management but you have to do them I've used other tools like prophecies or Gartner has one as well that I worked on for a few years we used to use those as preprocessor sometimes to a client mandated ROI methodologies and tools because they just didn't have the kind of metrics generators that worked for data it was more of a throughput kind of thing which we could eventually talk to but we had to do sort of a data centric thing first consulting firms often do this and again software vendors like Prophecy we do it as well we use a Deloitte value map which is public domain by the way we're not stealing it from Deloitte I find it quite effective and again Gartner has a framework if you have a Gartner license that's very, very good as well and so I italicized the ratification step there because that's something that people enterprises often skip they generate some document that says how well this is gonna pay and they don't get anybody to sign off and say these are the right things to shoot at to aim for so what we want among other things is that sort of buffer against external events that these things provide so they not only result in less work but they give you that yardstick I refer to that if somebody comes along it doesn't have to be somebody that wants to take your money and buy a business application it could be a merger or an acquisition and someone says we're already doing this we're gonna shut you down well how much value is yours providing how much did your tools cost how far along are you how difficult is it you're paying a lot in implementation services compared to what we're paying who's got more data all of that kind of stuff and I've been through a few of those and they're made much easier when you can immediately show up with this thing that says a couple of these people have moved on internally or externally and we're buying a company or we're getting bought but here's the thinking and it still looks good to me what does everybody else think and at least you have a discussion a set of discussion points rather than we don't like you and we don't like this vendor so we're gonna move on and just absorb you which very often isn't the right thing to do so again you wanna replace that subjectivity with objectivity look we all did this work everybody agreed that this was it most of these people are still around not all of them and we should discuss this this is another sort of thing if you can do it if you can't you can't but if you can you should larger things like I get this all the time we're doing an ERP re-engineering or consolidation project should we do MDM now yes because you're gonna do most of the work anyway and then you're gonna let it decay if you don't put something in place to maintain the data quality I've written articles and articles about that about business apps don't get paid to manage data CX and CRM same thing if you're doing a CRM replacing one consolidating doing one for the first time if you've got some sort of one customer initiative or one enterprise initiative these things usually get funded pretty easily the idea there is instead of proving just the standalone value of what you're doing you have a little smaller scope there you can prove the value that you're gonna add in terms of not allowing further technical debt to accumulate after you go live with whatever the business app is ERP CRM something else and again you should have real numbers if you've actually done this work in whatever way you choose to do it again this is the ratification step get business and IT stakeholder agreement that these priorities and these measurements are the valid ones doesn't mean they can't be added to later which we'll talk about next but without broad based ratification the effectiveness of the framework is fundamentally compromised again if you get bought or somebody decides they need your funding if you lift this thing up what you don't want is everybody saying yeah I think I remember that but I never really believed it or I never really bought into it these vendors are taking me out to lunch and saying all I need to do is install it and get some data in there and we'll be doing great or I don't even have to put data in and I can just start using it and let people enter data manually as we move along as they adopt it you can short circuit those conversations and it's not about spinning and getting your way it's that's probably the wrong answer and you probably have the right one in terms of business value again you reflected in tons of conversations I've had over the years if we had just done the right thing three years ago we'd be so much better off now well there's a reason you didn't do it and it's probably gonna happen again unless we change our approach and again treat the completed framework as a living document again I've had people do this I alluded to this at the top of the session had people do this and then they're on the right track and you don't see them for 18 months and you get a chance to talk to them and they're in trouble again and you say what happened why are you doing this now oh 360 view of the customer wait a second we had three business use cases everybody agreed that that would be success what happened well we got entranced by integrating stuff on the IT side and it worked and we started the scope got bigger and bigger and now it's a 360 view thing and guess what we're not going to deliver on time so I need to go back to the well and there's not a single business use case that's been enabled by this thing the data looks better in the current ones and they were really the business were really psyched up about that in the beginning but now they're starting to kind of have the same problems and they're not too happy with us so again that can be avoided by going back every few months or if something happens that says I need to go look at this could be a management as simple as a management change if your executive sponsor changes you should certainly be going back and looking at whatever justification entities you put in place so I hope this was helpful we got a ton of questions I'm going to go down the list here somebody asked how to come up with actual numbers for the example so that's actually a great question and at least something I didn't say and I probably should have one of the biggest mistakes enterprises organizations make when they do this is baseline whatever these metrics are before you do anything to them to improve them that sounds obvious but I've had tons and tons of terrible things happen on my watch where people improved things and couldn't prove how much better everybody knew it was better but they just couldn't say you know it was worth spending this much money because we don't really have any documentation for how bad it was before so trap your onboarding rates over time even if you have to get acquire some tools to do it there's some very good tools out there now to do that operational if you decide those are your metrics operational productivity if you can quantify costs of you know I come from a lot of financial services non-compliance is a good way to say how bad your analytics are non-compliance with regulations so you know there are ways to come up with actual numbers we have a whole team of prophecy that does this I'm sure others have it too they're quite quite good at this and they work with with your business people and say you know why do you think that's a problem what do you think it's costing how can we get to a number how can we trap that how can we track it before we make the improvements which we know we can make and again we've had things come up where we find out the priorities are actually different than everybody always said they were we we worked at a large manufacturer who said you know my problem is really that my suppliers are duplicated and I can't really get any get the discounts I should be getting from them and it's really killing me and we went through a process with them and we discovered that yes that was a problem but they actually had a much bigger problem this was a big manufacturer with on-hand parts inventory they just had tons and tons of factories with parts sitting in them that they just didn't need to hold on to for that long and we literally changed the program sequence because of that so again you have to work with the business to get numbers you have to get baseline numbers it's it can be difficult there are people out there that can help we help there are consulting firms that help but they should be real and they should be agreed to again by the stakeholders that govern them someone said I think it's focusing on use cases for justifying MDM but does the total cost justify the limited use cases I'm going to go back to something on this slide what I should have said I hate to use buzzwords but that business IT collaboration up on the top right there I had somebody attend a webinar I did who interrupted me and said that's digital transformation that's what that is that's where it is that's what it is if you don't do MDM and I've done some writing on this it's out there somewhere either on our website or in some trades you're not going to do digital transformation if you don't do MDM unless you only have one CRM and it's completely clean and one ERP and it's completely clean and I'm pretty confident saying that nobody does based on what I've seen you can come pretty close if you're very small but if you do that successfully you're going to grow to a size where that won't be possible anymore and you know also down to there's another question similar how do we justify something that helps everyone but that doesn't help anyone buy a lot so again if it doesn't if it helps everyone it's helping them by some amount and again there's you know what if I do nothing there's there's the the old PMO PMP thing PMI thing of you know what if we don't what's the cost of doing nothing that's another good exercise I should actually put that on one of these slides that's you know there is a cost to that play out what's happening to your organization the trends that are going on on the business side over the next three years I've had two clients in my career who were able to prove for example that if they didn't consolidate their master data and leverage it as an asset and that's a big buzzword but it's the shortest way to say that if they didn't do that then every time they introduce a new product from six months on into the future it would cost them money no matter how much revenue that product generated because the fixed cost of adding that bit of technical debt in systems in whatever else they they had to do that dealt with data in analytics was going to be more than they would make because they just repeated infrastructure over and over and over again to support data and there's some of that was operational stuff too but most of it was data and I had two clients that were able to do that to say look we have to do this there's no more economy to be had and just continuing to expand our IT footprint in support of expanding our product set or our lines of business or whatever it might be so again it has to help somebody buy a lot or in the aggregate it should be a lot or I'm going to say something inflammatory you probably shouldn't do it then because it is it does take time but what I say you probably shouldn't do it in order to be provocative because what you should do is get help to do this because I've never seen it come out that it wasn't worth doing once you add up all the things now there's a difference between that and getting someone to pay for it and you know here's sort of the bonus answer I believe that data governance organizations that are usually virtual not always and not always totally but that are virtual should have their own budget to pay for the things like this that no one person is going to take out their wallet and see enough benefit to pay for if you limit yourself to only being able to pay that way and I understand why somebody would these things are going to be even more difficult to do for the reasons that were brought up in the question so my big answer to that is put in a data governance organization owned by the business supported by it that you know and I have templates for that that I use that are sort of logical models for organizations for to do governance that will actually have money to do this and they can charge back if it turns out it works out they can charge back if not they can eat it but again you know there are ways to do this it just again takes some shifting and I don't want to trivialize that uh how do companies measure the post MDM benefits again it's it's operational and analytical metrics analytical is harder you can do it so for example it's easier in financial services and maybe healthcare if you have regulatory requirements that you're better able to comply with and more efficiently able to comply with those are pretty easy to quantify because of the fines that you pay if you don't do that then I speak from experience on the financial services side there are many banks and other institutions that regularly pay fines as a cost of doing business when they really don't need to and you can pretty easily eliminate them with things like MDM so you know it is worth it to do it I will say that I've taken surveys in my career where the number of people that actually do it is very low I I think maybe there's they don't want to spend the money even if they're successful to go back improve it everybody knows quote unquote I saw somebody at a gaming company the best one I've ever seen is they actually did two time in motion studies pre and post implementation and were able to prove that every person sitting in their customer in their call center was you know like 50% more efficient per day those are very few and far between I think I saw one other one that sort of approached that but wasn't the same so again you know it should be done I've only seen a few do it I saw one do it unbelievably well and that was great but that's a very good question it's a good one it's kind of the dirty secret of the data management world almost no one goes back and I really think even when people are successful it's kind of a self-serving answer but the success is so evident that they don't really want to spend the money to prove it and you know that maybe that's okay it's probably unfortunate but if you are able to do it someone asks you know should we keep measuring and publicizing that I think again back to that governance organization and if you're trying to do MDM and you're not putting a governance organization together you're going to have other issues and some of them are going to be related to this but it should be there it should be related to the business in fact another sort of thing that's out of scope of this is while you're building this business case those stakeholders you're talking to are probably the same ones you're going to want to say I need somebody to be to run the governance council I need somebody to be data stewards and you know that it should be happening in the same discussion you know they're talking about what the benefits are going to be you want to have in some proximity sort of what you need back from them in terms of management and ongoing meeting and and prioritizing changes that might need to be made or additions that are going to want to be brought in once you see how well this works so again I believe I hate to say big governance but I like this idea that this organization does other stuff besides adjudicates fights between people arguing about what a customer is which they do need to do pretty early on but I really believe in this idea of they have money they prioritize stuff they don't pay for everything but they pay for things sort of like the question stated where no one no one area or person sees enough benefit to pay and so again take that concept away from you as well with you as well we have another question how do you justify data management for AI programs so I'll give you a long answer to this right before COVID hit I did a presentation interactive presentation for 60 CIOs in Phoenix Arizona and you know they were pretty much allowed to ask whatever they wanted and one of the things they want they were that they said they were the most afraid of was the inability to do root cause analysis and that was in so I'll tell you the way they said it to me you know this AI stuff and we do use some AI like prophecy we use AI to do matching we use some machine learning stuff we don't publicize it too much because we've been doing it for a long time and you know we we just don't think it's that cool but you know the other part of AI and data management is reversing the polarity you know how much why is why should we do DM if we're going to do AI well all 60 of these guys it was pretty much unanimous they said you know I want to say it exactly the way they said it if you're lucky you'll get recommendations from your AI engine or your models that are patently ridiculous and that you can tell are wrong if you're unlucky ladies and gentlemen you'll you'll get things that kind of look right but they're not and they end up being very costly and you could incur reputational risk or or any number of things they were they were pretty much they said this is the thing that keeps me up at night is we're low we're loading up data lakes or swamps or lake houses whatever you want to call them and then we're loading that into these AI models and we're acting on the stuff that's coming out and I have no idea if we're doing the right thing and you know I we have data scientists we ask them how to prove it to us and they always start with the same assumption that the data is trustworthy and I'm pretty sure it's not is what they were saying and you know the good news is sometimes it says something that's so crazy we stop other times we we sort of get a bad feeling and we stop even though it looks right the problem in both cases is it's it's very very very difficult to virtually impossible to do the kind of root cause analysis you do on regular sort of rules engines and data quality and integration rules so again it's going back to some sort of risk analysis that says you know what if we don't do anything and we just start doing this stuff what's happened to other people that might happen to us you know the problem with AI is and it's a little bit of a cop out on my part so I apologize the problem is it's still it's not new but it's it's broad based attempted usage is relatively new so the horror stories that people are willing to put out there and say don't let this happen to you are very very scarce but I can tell you just being around these 60 people is really stuck with me almost to to you know almost to a person in this crowd you know everybody there my response to them was ladies and gentlemen you're absolutely right and I don't have a good answer for you other than to do MDM I we just I don't think they're published yet but I just wrote a couple of magazine articles on this topic that say you know look you're playing with fire and you're not even going to know where the fire is or how to put it out the only way to effectively fight it is to stop this stuff upstream which is what MDM is designed to do conveniently for me but that's that's really the only way that's practical you know theoretically you could go up there and clean up everything but if you don't put in some sort of technology that keeps it that way it's immediately going to start to decay and you might be okay for two or three or four months but then that technical debt builds back up because again the things that are generating this data don't get paid to keep that data clean and you can put some things in like okay the company name has to be at least two or three bytes but that's not going to do it because that's not going to stop you from creating duplicates that kind of thing and anybody here that manages CRM and ERP knows what I'm talking about there's virtually nothing there and you know up until recently most of these vendors and again to their credit they didn't even pretend to take care of that stuff now they're starting they everybody says data is important so they're starting to say some things that sound sort of good but I haven't seen a lot of real execution and even if they do it it's only going to be within their universe regardless of what they say they still almost never do a lot of work on how to integrate external things with their data models for example because their data models work for them as well they should so again I can't offer a concrete suggestion other than that sort of zero-based risk analysis that says okay what if we don't do anything what do we think we can accomplish and what risks are involved there what's what could happen let's look and see what our anything happened and again the issue with that is there's not a lot of stuff out there like there is with data security you can find security breach documentation everywhere on the internet historically going back years you can't find that for AI yet because nobody really wants to put that out there I think eventually they're going to have to but they don't yet to be perfectly blunt and I wish I could be a little more helpful there but I can describe the problem for you and the fact that again I was with 60 CIOs before we went on lockdown who all said they had this problem and we're very very afraid of it so I think if you can make the argument that look the only way to fix this is to fix it up front so that we trust it 100% so that that's not part of the equation if we see something funny downstream we can assume it's a problem with the AI models whether it's ML or something else and work on it from that standpoint because if if it's could still be the data figuring out what data it is and what what what was wrong with it or anomalous about it that caused this is almost impossible and again I'm going by with 60 people with boots on the ground told me all at once in unison pretty much so I hope that's helpful kind of a downer but again it's a legitimate point that's the best way to do it today I hope it gets easier as people are more open with things that have gone wrong but I haven't seen a lot of that unfortunately about one minute left any final questions or thoughts stump the panel or they're trying to hear me talk which could be all right then thank you so much Phil for that wonderful presentation oh thank you guys and thanks for the great great questions really good yeah everyone is encouraged to continue networking and chatting within the spot me app as well when this video is posted probably by the end of the day the q&a will be live so we can go in and keep chatting if you want to do that I just wanted to remind everyone that our virtual exhibition booths are open until 1 30 p.m. Pacific today and tomorrow and we look forward to seeing you in the next session thanks so much thanks everyone


This study found that a prebiotic supplement and high protein diet reduced body weight and modulated intestinal microbiota. The combination of these two diets resulted in greater energy conversion efficiency, leading to increased body mass compared to either diet alone. Additionally, the study showed that the prebiotic supplement had a positive impact on the gut microbiome composition, with higher levels of Bacteroids Prevotella bacteria and lower levels of Clostridium leptome. This article was authored by Francisco Koch, Michael Derno, Martina Langema, and others.


I'd like to call to order the 16th meeting of the 2013 Common Council. The clerk, please read the quote for the day. Thank you, Mayor. Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. Thank you. Will the clerk please call the roll? 15 present. Next, we'll go on to the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand adjourned. The Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next, we'll go on to Approval of the Minutes. Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to approve the minutes of the previous council meeting. Second. Moved in second to approve the minutes from our previous council meeting. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? 15 ayes. Next, we'll go on to our first program. Tonight, we have John Dole, the executive director of the Sheboygan County United Way to give us an update on their 2013 campaign. John, would you please come forward? The city of Sheboygan is currently running the campaign for our employees and we're gonna be wrapping that up on November 21st. Thank you, John. Hi, thanks for having me here tonight. I really appreciate taking a little bit of time. I'll tell you, just briefly, where what the philosophy is right now of the United Way of Sheboygan County, if at this very moment, we really have two strategies that are running parallel. One of them is that we raise money from a major campaign every fall, which we're in the middle of and the city is part of. In that campaign, we raised roughly about two and a half million dollars. That's what we raised last year. That's what our goal is this year. We contract and grant money to about 21 different agencies around the county. And in those agencies, we grant money to 58 different programs within. So roughly each agency, about three programs, something like that. And what our goal is, we raise about probably a little over 95% of the money that we raise comes from people like you donating through a payroll deduction and then getting matched from their company at some level or another. And that's where most of the money comes to do our work through the granted agencies. In addition to that, we have another strategy, basically, which is to identify key systemic community challenges that we all face and we try to convene leaders to find long-term solutions to things. And one of the great examples that we have done over the last couple years is the Lakeshore Community Health Clinic where we partnered with a number of people in the community. We took money that some major donors had given and we matched that money by going around in the campaign. And then we took that money and we leveraged other money for the federal government to be able to open that clinic in 2012. And that's been a very successful operation. And we continue to support that clinic and it will be expanding over the next year or so. So we found that that was a need in the community that was a long-term need that had been growing over years and we found a way to make that happen and we'll continue to sustain that. So that's the kind of thing that we're looking at. In addition to all these programs that we're financing and funding through the agencies that we partner with and the programs that they create, there are two, the current programs that we have, these 58 programs with the 21 agencies, these basically fall into really three big buckets. First, prevention, things that we, prevention just basically getting ahead of something before it becomes a major, major problem. Intervention, which is kind of intervening as we get, as the problem has manifested itself and then we go in and we try to pull people and try to help people out and to have them emerge from the challenge. And then the final one is crisis management, which is really once the person has fallen into the river, if you'd use the analogy of somebody falling into the river and then floating way downstream by the time we are able to pull them out, it's kind of a crisis and there's not much you can do with the person but we still respond to those things. So our goal really as we go forward is to find more and put more and more of the money toward prevention so that we can attack a problem upstream one of the big analogies was that there was a, you basically, if there was an ogre, picture an ogre at the top of the headwaters of a river and the ogre is sitting there just kind of throwing people into the water and then they fall into the water and then they go down the stream and eventually they're bouncing off the rocks and at some point in time there's a community we're running in there and we're pulling the people out of the water and we're trying to do the best we can to revive them and keep them going and what we're hoping to do really is to go upstream, attack the ogre, try to put the ogre out of business before he can throw any more people in the water and find solutions for some of these challenges. Some of the big challenges that we see ahead of us in the county and which we're investing money in right now but also we wanna try to convene more and more leadership to really find long-term solutions for things. I mentioned access to healthcare, which is a good example is the Lakeshore Community Health Clinic. Other ones are parent education and getting our children ready for school at the earliest age. Programs such as parents as teachers which is in the Family Resource Center in Plymouth really works with children, works with parents and teaches the parents to become the child's first parent from the time they're born to the bird. It really focuses on children from birth to three years old. So that's one really strong preventive strategy that we've found is something worth taking a look at. Mental health awareness with all of the current challenges are united in the community. We have one of the highest rates of teen suicide in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has one of the highest rates of teen suicide in the country and one of the reasons we feel that's a challenge is the lack of a mental health awareness and attention and being able to talk about things like depression and anxiety in the schools and be able to get ahead of that challenge. We feel very strongly that mental health awareness and mental health challenges often drive a lot of physical health challenges as well. So getting ahead of those we feel is a real important thing. With the heroin crisis that's kind of ballooned in the community we think that a lot of that has to do with mental health awareness. And then finally the last thing is really finding a way to distribute healthy food in a manner that everyone can get food who needs it in the community. So we're currently convening groups of people to try to figure out ways to best distribute food in the most methodical manner. Working with the food companies like Sargento and Sartori and Johnsonville and then other community leaders, the pantries and the food bank to try to figure out the best way to get food to people who need it the most. I appreciate your time and I appreciate the fact that you're all participating in the annual campaign. Really means a lot to the community and every dollar that you give is really, really respected and held in high regard and we will do our best to make sure that it gets to the right place. John, thank you very much for that overview of your campaign. We'll go now on to a second program, Gary Dalmas, the president of the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation is here to give us an update on their 2013 annual meeting. Gary? Good evening, I'm Gary Dalmas, chair of the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation. And first of all, I just wanna say thank you to the Common Council and to the city of Sheboygan for your financial support. You're one of our largest contributors to the SCEDC and I wanna rest assured we appreciate it and we're trying to be good stewards of the money that you provide for us. So I wanna say thank you. I've been asked to give a brief update about the SCEDC, our past, our future and our present or our present and our future. We're here because in 2008 and 2009, Sheboygan County experienced a wave of large plant closings where 150 businesses closed their doors. Sheboygan County in one year lost over 5,000 jobs equating to $200 million in lost income and spending power annually. The remaining companies felt the strain. As an owner of a retail business, I can assure you the strength of my company depends a great deal on the strength of those companies around me. One of the worst feelings that myself and other business leaders realized how unprepared we were to deal with the challenge of this scale. We love our community and we know we have responsibility for the economic vitality of our communities. That is why late in 2009, the Sheboygan Development Corporation became the new Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation with a county-wide focus, a request for public support and professional staff. The mission of this partnership remains the same today as it did four years ago. It's to lead economic development efforts to improve the economic well-being and long-term prosperity of the businesses, retailers and communities of Sheboygan County. One of our first priorities was to stop the tide of companies leaving Sheboygan County. In 2010, 2011, we helped save dairy farmers of America's Plymouth facility. Over 350 jobs hinged on the ability of the company to upgrade its aging facility to cut production costs. Between the city of Plymouth, the state and Lakeshore Technical College, we were able to help the company secure $13.6 million in investments in the company by providing $1.6 million in assistance. Many of you are probably thinking this is old news, but today it's still a great company. It continues to provide 350 jobs, resulting in $220 million in payroll and benefits. In 2010, we undertook the Plymouth to Kolar Railroad Rehabilitation Project. This was an effort to restore 11 miles of railroad right away, connecting the city of Plymouth and the city of Sheboygan Falls. Okay, again to have freight rail service. The line was abandoned in 2005, leaving several companies demanding and requesting rail service. This $18 million effort was financially supported by nine entities. From our efforts and partnerships, freight rail is expected to begin service in August of 2012, making this project nearly a decade-long project. Tonight, I'm proud to share with you one of our recent successes. And this happens to be in the city of Sheboygan. SQL Polymers is a plastic compounding manufacturer that has an impressive track record for the past decade of providing 15% growth every year. To build on this success, the company has made a strategic decision to aggressively expand its business over the next five years. The company was considering expanding capacity in either Ohio, Michigan, or here in Sheboygan County by doubling the footprints of its existing research and development efforts, adding several production lines and the construction of a new 20,000 square foot office building. In October 2012, the SCEDC organized a coalition of partners to encourage the company to make their $10 million corporate expansion here. After working with the company for six months, proving that the resources of Sheboygan and Sheboygan County can best fuel their growth, SQL committed to construct their new 20,000 square foot corporate headquarters here in Sheboygan, calling it Sheboygan it's home. Construction will begin in 2012, as well as several new production lines that will be built in their current Sheboygan facilities. The company is considering adding 20 plus new jobs and expects continual growth. SQL Polymer knows that successful companies don't stand still. The same is true for successful communities like our own. By banding together, we can empower companies to ensure that Sheboygan and Sheboygan County can provide the attributes and resources needed by companies to maintain a competitive edge. After four years of empowering companies like SQL Polymer, the SCEDC to date has assisted 35 companies creating 728 jobs and providing resources to retain nearly 2,000 positions. We have exceeded our five year goal of helping companies invest $131 million in Sheboygan County. As these companies win, we all win. And as we all work together, we all can achieve great results. On behalf of the SCEDC, I'd like to say thank you to the Common Council and to the city of Sheboygan and to the county of Sheboygan for working with us when we look forward to a long, healthy relationship. Thank you for this evening. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Gary. Next is the public forum. Yes, we have one this evening, Carol DeSalt. Is Carol here? We have none this evening. Very good. Next, we'll go on to Mayor's announcements. First of all, I need to just say that Mark Herman was missing tonight and he's excused. Missed that on the agenda for approval of the roll call. We just finished several road construction projects. Eisner Avenue opened up last week. And opened to normal traffic. And today they finished up some work on South Business Drive and that should be open to normal traffic tomorrow. And we thank all our citizens for their patience as these roads projects progressed. Leaf collection will continue through 11-22. So this is our last week. Make a special effort to get all those leaves out in the street for the city to pick up. I'd like to point out that the JC Holiday Parade is set for five o'clock on Sunday, December 1st. And that'll be held in downtown Sheboygan. And the Rotary Making Spirits Bright Project Evergreen Park will open up on November 29th on Friday evening. And their hours are gonna be five o'clock to nine o'clock through 12-28 this year. City Hall will be closed on 11-28 and 29 for the Thanksgiving holiday. You can look to the city website for the change in holiday pickup during the week of Thanksgiving. And I wanna wish everybody a very happy Thanksgiving. And then one other note to our Sheboygan Firefighters from the International Association of Fighter Fighters, Local 483. They raised over $3,000 to provide about 70 children. New Winter Coats is a part of Operation Warm and their Coats for Kids program. So we congratulate them on that. Next we'll move on. Thank you. We'll move on to the Consent Agenda. And I need to point out that item 2.5, the desired action there is to accept and file rather than go to finance. With that, Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to accept and file all our O's, accept and adopt all reports of committees and put all resolutions and ordinances upon their passage. Second. It's moved and seconded to act on the Consent Agenda. Is there any discussion on the motion? Motion is before us then for a vote. Will the clerk please call the roll? 15 ayes. Under communications and petitions, item 3.1 will be referred to public protection and safety. Under number four reports of officers, item 4.1 will be held for 5.2. And items 4.2 through 4.5 will be referred to various committees. Under resolutions, item 5.1 will lie over and be held until 12, 2 of 13, our next council meeting. Item 5.2 is a resolution by Alderman Heidemann, authorizing and entering into a contract for the purchase of four tandem axle curbside trash collection trucks with a split packer bodies. Alderman Heidemann, I mean, Alderman Boren. Thank you. Heidemann, go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. Oh, excuse, I had a question on 5.1, if I may. Okay. I noticed when I read that resolution that the resolution was written, but the amount was blank. And I'm wondering if there is an amount currently or they're still working on that. That's why it's being held. Okay, thank you. Okay, then we'll go on to Alderman Heidemann on 5.2. Thank you again, Mayor. I need a motion to spend rules, second, or I'll... Yeah. Okay, suspension request is before us. Will you please vote on suspension? 15 ayes. Thank you. Okay. Then do I need to file a report of officer 4-1 first? You can do both at the same time. All right. Okay, then I put the resolution upon as pass, passage. Thank you for that motion. Is there a second? Second. It's been moved and seconded. I need discussion on the motion before us. Alderman Bourne. Is this discussion on suspension or on the document itself? No, we've already suspended the documents on the floor. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I do have a couple of questions on document number 5-2, the purchase of the garbage trucks. Back about three or four months ago at the Public Works Committee meeting, we were discussing this with Mr. Bebel. I guess it was in his chairperson's, the department had report that day and when we were discussing this, the purchase, potential purchase of garbage trucks, at least me and possibly other committee members I can't remember for certain, but we also asked that when Director Bebel was speaking to Mr. Amodio about the purchase of these trucks, that they also consider the option of leasing these trucks rather than purchasing them. This is gonna be a million dollar investment out of the Motor Vehicle Fund and I thought with the way interest rates are right now and some potential purchases that Mr. Bebel is going to recommend in the next two or three years, my understanding is if we spend this money right now out of the Motor Vehicle Fund, the Motor Vehicle Fund will be down to about three quarters of a million dollars and so I understand the urgency of this with the saving of the $50,000, but if Mr. Amodio or somebody else has some information on the possibility and whether it would be a prudent idea to possibly lease these trucks rather than purchasing them outright and therefore spreading the cost of this million dollars over a number of years, I understand there's interest involved, but with the idea of possibly keeping the Motor Vehicle Department in a better financial position as we go forward in the next couple of years and I understand in talking with Director Bebel this afternoon that we've been replacing only about $100,000 into the Motor Vehicle Fund on an annual basis, so it's shrinking and we have a number of large purchases coming up in the next couple of years, so if anybody have, before we vote on whether we're gonna purchase these, I'd like somebody to give the Council some information on the viability of leasing these rather than purchasing them, thank you. Director Bebel or an industry or Amodio, would you like to comment? On the leasing option, leasing options for a five year deal of 3% about $240,000 a year, there's roughly $20,000 of interest in that payment, so over a five year period we'd be paying about $100,000 more for the vehicles. Motor Vehicle Fund currently has about $2.1 million in it. This request is for a little over a million. There's another request in that we're looking at for three triple axle dump trucks, which is about $650,000. We can continue to lease and pay the interest expense and stretch out the Motor Vehicle Fund for three or four years, but at the end of the day, we're gonna have to borrow general fund obligation notes to fund equipment for the Motor Vehicle Fund. That's inevitable. My recommendation would be that we don't pay the interest expense. We're trying to save $50,000 in purchasing these now, but we wanna spend $100,000 in interest expense over the next five years to do that. Doesn't make sense to me. We should bite the bullet, spend the million dollars, save the money. When Motor Vehicle Fund runs out of money, we're gonna have to go to general obligation debt, borrow that to pay for any of the equipment we need as a city. We'll never get to the point where we'll be able to, excuse me, replenish the Motor Vehicle Fund because all of the money from that comes from the general fund, and we all know the pressure that the general fund's under. So we're never gonna get back to a position where we were six or seven years ago where we had four or five million dollars in that fund. Thank you for those comments. Is there any other discussion? Alderman Bellinger. Thank you, Mayor. Could Jim or Bernie just kind of give those at home in overview of the timeline for this, why we're suspending the rules, why we're gonna go with four trucks instead of two, which was what was originally budgeted or projected. I just kinda like to give those at home an understanding of why we're doing this and what's transpired in the last few days. Director Bebel, would you like to respond to that? Good question. The original plan was to buy two next year and then two the following year. Both are Motor Vehicle Superintendent and our supervisor of Motor Vehicle of Operations. It just recently attended a conference. They found out about this national joint powers purchasing, which we're able to piggyback on national contracts in terms of what they've bid for, for type of equipment. We found that the city of New York had the exact same specification of the split rear packer that we currently use in the city of Sheboygan for recyclables and garbage collection at the same time. We checked into it. There's four vehicles available under the 2013 model yet this year. If we wait and we go out to bid for 2014, the 2014 models are already in production and already available. If we look at them, there's about a $50,000 increase or about $12,500 per vehicle. We felt that although, yes, we're asking for suspension, this was an opportunity knowing that we have to replace our garbage packers and recycling trucks that we would come to the council this evening and ask purchase for and we can save the $50,000. David, could you also describe the total fleet I think you're shrinking at? Well, right. Currently we have six garbage packers with two backup, so a total of eight. Over the years, we've maximized and optimized our routes throughout the city. We used to have 24 collection routes. Now we're down to 20 collection routes. So we have four trucks, five days a week. We pick up the entire city with four trucks. So what we're planning on doing with this is purchasing the four brand new vehicles, which would be our primary vehicles for the fleet, then retain three of our older models that have had significant repairs in fairly good condition, primarily to be used as backups, either for heavier days, holidays when we add an extra truck here or there, and then to back up and rotate as preventative maintenance and other maintenance activities. So we have that backup for those vehicles. So right now we have approximately eight primary collection vehicles and we'll have four with three backups. Thank you. Alderman Boren, you buzzed in before. I had a question for Mr. Bebel. Director Bebel, would it be possible that that company would hold those four for us until after our, what is it, December 1st we meet again here as a council? I think it's December 2nd. I emailed them this afternoon. I was in contact with them about some of the lease rates and options and that. I did not hear back from them. They do have kind of what they've, a soft hold, verbal hold on it because we knew we could, going to be going to council. I think if they don't hear officially from us, they'll probably have to release that. And then we're going to take a chance for the next two weeks. I don't know. Unfortunately, I did not get an answer today. And follow up to what Mr. Amorio said. All indications and the sources I've been reading is that the federal government in early 14 is going to be doing away with some of their quantitative easing, which means interest rates are going to be going up unfortunately. And I believe me, I don't like debt, but my concern is, is if we're going to have to borrow money in 15 and 16, what are the interest rates going to be in 15 and 16? It might be better to pay some interest now, keep more money in the motor vehicle fund for as long as we can. And then when we do have to borrow in 15 and 16 for some of the things you need, we may be able to borrow less at a higher interest rate if we have more left in the motor vehicle fund. Also, I would like to see, at least from three possible leasing agents on their letterheads, what exactly it's going to cost. I don't like looking at figures that were pulled out of the sky this afternoon. I want to see something in writing on their letterhead so that the Public Works Committee can make a, I guess a good judgment on which way we should go on this. So I'd actually like to see this go back to the Public Works Committee. Next Tuesday, and I'm going to make a motion to that effect and so that we can make a more intelligent decision on spending a million dollars outright or leasing it and paying some interest with the idea of maybe saving money later on borrowing when interest rates are much higher. Free percent is still a good rate. What is it going to be in 15 or 16? And so I guess we can pay now or we can pay later. I would rather at least look at three different vendors where we could lease and at least see what their numbers look like and see if it makes sense. Thank you. So that is a motion to go back to send it to Public Works. A motion for re-referral has been made. Is there a second? Second. We have a second on that motion. Any other questions on the motion on the floor? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on re-referral to Public Works? We'll be referring 4.1 and 5.2 on the vote. Four ayes, 11 noes. Motion fails. We're back to the original motion. Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Bevely, you left too soon. Sorry, just want to see you get your exercise in for the day. Can you help me understand maybe these new trucks?  So what the useful life is, and before you answer that, just a comment on Mr. Bourne's, the Federal Open Market Committee released their minutes of their meeting recently, and according to them, and also the soon to be Federal Chief, Fed Chief Ms. Yellen have indicated there's no foreseeable change in interest rate policy. And now foreseeable would probably be mid 2014 and beyond. So I'm not terribly concerned as somebody that kind of lives and breathes this every day, that interest rates are gonna be going up in the next six months to a year, but I thought I'd just point that out. But Dave, the useful life of these trucks, I know it's given top winners, but. It depends. The new trucks will probably have a life cycle of eight years. The prior trucks, we thought we'd get eight years out of them. They lasted six, and we've been patching them and keeping them going as we've been. We've probably got an additional two years out of them. Now, even if the Council so wishes to approve this, there's a tremendous long lead time on these vehicles. It's probably gonna be another six months before we would even get them. So it just further delays, I guess, the inevitable. We're getting along. We have tremendous amount of maintenance expenses with our current fleet, as I mentioned. But it typically, a garbage packer should get eight years. And all of them in here? Thank you. You mentioned maintenance expense. By buying the new trucks, what do you believe that maintenance expense will be reduced by? Well, the three worst ones that we've have in the fleet, they're right around between 10 and $12,000 annually that we're spending just on maintenance on those. Between hydraulics, wear metal on the push plates and in the packing mechanism, they're tired. So they're taking a lot of extra time and effort and expense in terms of maintenance. Thank you. Is there any other discussion on this motion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? What are we voting on now? We're voting to pass the resolution and accept and file the RO that goes with it. All in favor? Thanks, Mayor. I just wanted to point out something when I was reading the document today, 5.2. There's a typo in there, which is under the final resolved on the first page, the second line. It says Bruce Municipal Equipment of Milwaukee for the purchase of two, TWAO. And then right after that, it's foreign parentheses. So if we're gonna have a document that's up the oil, that typo should be taken care of because there's gonna be a conflict. But what we're asking for, I do read the documents. We'll have public works done be a new one. All right, thank you. Thank you, any other discussion? Clerk, please call the roll. 14 ayes, one no. Motion passes. Next we'll go on to items 5.3 through 511. We'll be referred to various committees. Under reports of committees, we have item 6.1, which is an RC by law and licensing recommending granting alcohol beverage license number 2969, an extension until January 22nd to open for business. Alderman Vanderweel. Thank you, I move the RC be accepted and adopted. Second. We have a motion on the floor. Is there any discussion on that motion? The none will the clerk please call the roll. 15 ayes. Passes. Item 6.2 is an RC by salary and grievances recommending filing resolution number 81 of 1314 by Alderman Borne calling for an update and review on the compensation package for the city of Sheboygan fire chief on the basis that in 2012 the city updated the compensation package for all non-represented employees and under the plan the salary grade for the fire chief is a grade 15 minimum 91,037, midpoint 113,797 to a maximum of 136,556. Alderman Donahue. Thank you, Mayor. I move that the resolution be accepted and adopted. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion on the motion? Alderman Borne. Thanks, Mayor. When I submitted this document a couple of weeks ago I thought after the announcement that Chief Herman is going to be retiring I thought it would be a good idea to possibly look at the compensation package for our new fire chief and possibly get some comparables to what other communities in Wisconsin are paying their fire chiefs. And I asked, unfortunately I was not able to be at the Salary and Grievance Committee meeting last Monday night because of a wake but I asked in my email that I sent to the HR director and the chairman of our Salary and Grievance Committee that as a courtesy that the document be held until I could attend a meeting. Well, they decided to file it but I have done some, I would like the document to go back to Salary and Grievance because I've had some time this morning to do some research on some comparable cities, West Dallas, Walnutosa, Oshkosh, Manitowoc and La Crosse and without going, I'll save the big detail for if it goes back to Salary and Grievance but I found that with those communities the average starting salary for a fire chief is $81,280. Our starting salary is $91,000. So it's a difference of, we offer $9,757 more than those communities. The mid-range, I was able to get three mid-ranges and the average mid-range salary was $91,835. Our mid-range is $113,797 for a difference of $21,962. The maximum for the city was, as you read, Mayor, was 136,556 with the five communities that I mentioned, their average salary, their maximum average salary for a fire chief is $104,145.60. So if you take our maximum salary along with those comparables, we potentially could be paying $31,884 more for a maximum salary compared to those comparables. And when you look at what we're paying going back to the starting salary of 91037, I figured 13% of that salary going into the Wisconsin retirement fund that we have to pay plus 88% of our health plan, which is $18,304. So on a starting salary basis, the city of Sheboygan could be paying $121,446. The mid-range of our salary of $113,797, 13% of that into WRS is $14,794 and 88% of a family health plan is $18,304 or $146,895 all in for mid-range. And then on the maximum, taking our 136,556 and taking 13% of that that we pay into the Wisconsin retirement fund, plus if the new chief has a family plan, another $18,304, we have the potential at the maximum salary and benefits to be paying our new chief $172,612. And if we take those figures and compare those to the comparables, we're gonna be paying potentially all in for the maximum for the comparables is about 136,583. So we have the potential of paying our new fire chief at maximum $36,029 more than cities of like size in Wisconsin. And those are the only five that I call. But do I have a problem with us paying more than our comparables in order to get good candidates? Absolutely not. But I can see us maybe paying 1,000 or 2,000 more than the comparables in each category. The last time apparently our salaries were quite attractive when Chief Herman came on board because we had over 40 applications for the job back and I believe it was 2008 or nine. So our salary must have been quite competitive then. But in my humble opinion, what I found today and just making a half hour of phone calls were way, way out of line with what the comparables are. And again, I have no problem with paying more than the comparables but I don't think we should be paying $36,000 more potentially for a chief. So that's why I would like the Salary and Grievance Committee to take a look at this and see if we could come up with a compromise on the salaries that's a little bit more in line with our comparables. I remember when Mr. Amorio was talking about the budget for 2014, he was saying 79% of our budget is salary and benefits. Well, this is a good example of why 79% of our budget is salary and benefits when we don't compare favorably with other cities in Wisconsin or what they're paying their professional help. So I'd like to make a motion to send this back to Salary and Grievance for at least for us to take a look at a compromise when we hire the new chief, thank you. Okay, I have a motion to re-refer 6.2 to Salary and Grievance. Is there a second? Second. They have a motion and second and a discussion on re-referral. Be none or the clerk, please call the roll out. Alderman Donahue. Just to maybe put Alderman Bourne's numbers in perspective. Before I became an Alderman, I did have the honor to serve on the Police and Fire Commission. I chaired that commission for a year during my five-year term and was involved in the hiring of both a fire chief and a police chief. It is a complicated, difficult process because what you're looking to do is hire the chief executive officer essentially for one of our critical departments. Now, here's how the process goes so that Alderman Bourne can I think maybe be a little bit more reassured about the fact that we are not going to be spending probably $176,000 on our new fire chief. First of all, the Police and Fire Commission does have by a state statute and our ordinance the authority to make an offer to a candidate. Now, typically you do get a lot of applications. As with most positions of this kind, I think that the Police and Fire Commission is going to find that although the pool may be quite wide, it may not necessarily be particularly deep. So there may be a small number of candidates who are actually qualified according to our job description, which requires either a bachelor or master's degree. Once that offer is made, the common counsel, and then first of all through salary and grievance, will be meeting with the person to whom the offer has been made and negotiating a salary and benefit package. That gives us the opportunity to look at that candidate's qualifications, the range of abilities that that person has and also our own particular financial circumstances. Now, as always, I do appreciate Alderman Born's energy and resourcefulness in obtaining information for us and to get all of those numbers. For myself, I'm going to need, once we do have a candidate and once we've not scared off potential candidates who may be concerned about a possible atmosphere in this city that might not necessarily be conducive to negotiating a salary. I do look forward to reviewing those numbers and taking a look not only at the numbers that Alderman Born presented to us, but the job description, the qualifications of the candidates and so on and so forth. The re-referral now actually, what it does is puts the proverbial horse in front of the cart. In other words, before the police and fire commission can start to advertise for a chief within this pay grade, salary and grievance according to Alderman Born is going to be doing a pretty thorough review of all of the cities and all of the job descriptions because we want to get more than just numbers. We want to understand the entire picture. I don't know quite how long that would take. In the meantime, Chief Herman, who is leaving at the end of December and I'm sure there will be an interim chief appointed, but that process is going to be set back. Now, from my perspective, I would like to see what the pool of candidates looks like. I can tell you from my experience on a police and fire commission, you'd be surprised maybe 40 people applied, but probably 38, you know, I'm just pulling numbers out, but based on my experience, there aren't a lot of candidates to choose from. Let's just put it that way. So let's do this the way the city ordinance and state statutes presented. Let's give, first of all, the police and fire commission the chance to get the search going. And then I do believe, and I do appreciate Alderman Born's obtaining of this information and I think we can ask our HR director to do an even more thorough and more comprehensive search and just take a look at what we wanna do. To do it now is not good for the city in terms of getting that, in terms of getting that process going. And I don't know who would get 176,000 a year, maybe Smokey the Bearer, but other than that, I'm not sure. Thank you for those comments. Is there any other discussion? Alderman Born. Thank you, Mayor. I believe the Fire and Police Commission is gonna start advertising for the position soon. And if it's going out there that the starting pay is 91, the mid is 113 and the maximum is 136, those people are gonna be applying on that basis. And it's gonna be very, very difficult for us to moderate that at a later date if they're applying under those, under that scenario. And if they work for other departments, a lot of times they have to be applying in confidence but that doesn't always turn out. I would like, as I said, the reason for sending this back with information that I'm providing plus what the HR department can provide, I would like to see us come up with some kind of a compromise as far as the starting, the mid and the max to be more realistic as to what our other cities, like cities are paying. I don't think it hurts to have that discussion. I just don't. I just think putting that out there at 91, 113 and 136 and then having to possibly go back on that, I don't think that's a good idea either. Thank you. Thank you for those comments. Any other discussion? If not, would the clerk please call the roll and re-referral. Jim. Oh, sorry. Six eyes, nine nose. Motion's defeated. Item 6.2 is before us. The motion is to accept and adopt. Is there any other discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? Hold on just a second. 13 eyes, two nose. Motion passes. We'll move on to item 6.3, which is an RC by finance, recommending authorizing a transfer of appropriations in the 2013 budget, establish revenue and appropriations for industrial parkland improvements, utilizing the proceeds of land sale. Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to put the resolution upon this passage. Second. Moved and seconded. Item 3.6.3 rather is on the floor. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? 15 eyes. Motion passes. Next is item 6.4, which is an RC by finance, recommending authorizing transfer of appropriations in the 2013 budget to establish appropriation for advance to tid number 15 for development incentive to be repaid with interest from future increments. Alderman Hammond. Thank you again. I move to put the resolution upon this passage. Second. Been moved and seconded. Item 6.4 is on the floor for discussion. Seeing no discussion, will the clerk please call the roll? 15 eyes. Motion passes. Item 6.5 will be referred to the city planning commission under ordinances. Item 7.1 is in ordinance by Alderman Carlson, providing that the court cost collected by the municipal court shall be increased to $38. Alderman Carlson. Thank you, Mayor. I would first like to make a motion to suspend the rules. Second. We have a motion for suspension. Will the clerk please call the roll on suspension? Understood. Alderman Van Akron. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I would just like an explanation for the need on the suspension and why we're not sending it to committee. Alderman Carlson. Under suspension, the 2013 Wisconsin Act 23 just increased the possible ranges of the court fees. Traditionally, the city of Sheboygan has always been at that max. I believe the court has been pushing for this for a couple of years now. It has finally moved through the legislator so this does allow us to increase our fees by $10 up to $38. Five of that goes to the state and the rest stays here in the city within the court system. Thank you for that explanation. Any other discussion? Okay, then we're still voting on suspension. 14 ayes, one no. Okay, under suspension then, Alderman Carlson. I move to pass the ordinance. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. The ordinance 7.1 is before us. Any discussion on the ordinance? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? 14 ayes, one no. Motion passes. Item 7.2 will lie over. Item 7.3 through 7.5 will be referred to the city planning commission. Under matters laid over, item 8.1 is resolution 76 of 1314 by Alderman Carlson and Vercy, approving the capital improvements program recommended by the capital improvements commission for the program period of 2013 in adopting the program for implementation. Carlson. Thank you, mayor. I move to put the resolution upon its passage. Second. I moved and seconded to put the resolution under 8.1 upon its passage. Any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? 15 ayes. Motion passes. Item 8.2 is resolution number 77 of 1314 by Alderpersons Hammond, Carlson, Bellinger, Heidemann and Dassler to implement a post issuance compliance policy for tax exempt and tax advantage obligations and continuing disclosure for the city of Sheboygan. Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to put the resolution upon its passage. Second. I moved and seconded to put resolution 77 upon its passage under discussion. Alderman Boren. Thank you, mayor. I read this over this resolution over this morning and I'm just wondering if this is an update of an existing program or is this a brand new program that we're implementing? Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This would be a new program. Just a guideline of how we're going to deal with post issuance compliance matters and again, something that was uncovered during audit. Thank you. Thank you for that comment. Any other discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? 15 ayes. Under other matters, city attorney. 9.1 is an arrow by the city clerk submitting various license applications for the period ending June 30, 2014 and June 30, 2015. That'll be referred to law and licensing. 9.2 is a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute the joint powers agreement for Sheboygan County of city Sheboygan 911 emergency systems. That'll be referred to public protection and safety. Next we'll go on to closed session. Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to convene in a closed session on the exemption provided in section 19.851E, Wisconsin statutes for the purpose of deliberating regarding the proposals for management of the Harbor Center Marina where competitive and bargaining reasons require a closed session. Also under the exemption provided in 19851E, Wisconsin statutes for the purpose of deliberating the possible purchase of public property for competitive and bargaining reasons require a closed session. And finally under the exemption provided in section 19851G for the purpose of conferring with legal counsel for the city who is rendering oral or written advice concerning strategy to be adopted by the body with respect to litigation, which it is or likely has become involved in. Okay. Thank you for that motion and support. Will the clerk please call the roll for a closed session? 15 ayes. Motion passes. We'll take a five minute recess.