Heavy Hauling – Progress for Kewaunee County

Attention all haulers, farmers, big and small throughout Kewaunee county.  A plan for heavy hauling is being developed in Kewaunee County that has great potential for success.  The Kewaunee County Committee for Heavy Traffic (KCCHT) met last Thursday evening to discuss the ramifications of Assembly Bill 648 relating to the operation of agricultural vehicles (husbandry) on highways and providing penalties for non-compliance.

The KCCHT committee is chaired by Brian Paphlam and has members from the public sector, large farms, small farms and independent haulers.  This group has made terrific headway in the past two years with regard to assisting the State in developing new standards for the operation of implements of husbandry on the roads of the Wisconsin.

For years, the lament of townships has been that they have no control over how much weight is being hauled on their town roads.  AB 648 deals with that issue and more than likely will pass through both the Assembly and Senate in April 2014.  Assuming it does pass, the Governor would sign this legislation into law in late April and this new law governing the size and weight of husbandry implements operating on our roadways would then go into effect.

AB 648 will change many size, length, width and weight limitations for husbandry equipment. There are many changes and it is not possible to list them in this article.  If you’d like some challenging reading, go to: https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2013/related/proposals/ab648.pdf. 

For Kewaunee County, the most notable changes are that road and bridge weight limits can now be set by each township as to the weight (within reason) any given road will accommodate.  Also, now all haulers will be required to obtain a no-fee permit from each township for hauling in, or through, those townships.  

What was impressive in this KCCHT Committee meeting, is the cooperation and idea sharing that occurred between all the parties, CAFOs, Smaller Farm operators, Public Sector, University Extension Personnel (Erica Bjurstrom, Kewaunee County and Cheryl Skjolaas, Madison), Independent Contract Haulers, Towns Officials and Sheriff’s Department.  The overall planning and implementation of this new law (assuming it passes) on a local level will be a bit tedious but this group came up with a very workable plan.

The basic premise for operation will be, first to have all the Towns in for a meeting to explain the process and procedures.  Following that meeting (assuming all the towns buy in), will be to have the towns leadership color code their roads and bridges.  A color code will be established for various weight limits and then each road would be coded according to the weight it would bear.  Once that is completed, those maps would be distributed to the haulers.  The haulers would then calculate their routes and apply for permits from each township on their planned hauling routes.  This part of the implementation will require good communication and cooperation between the Townships and haulers.

This whole process has taken over two years to develop and Cheryl Skjolaas from the University Extension group in Madison complimented the KCCHT for being one of the leading groups in the State for cooperating and developing the procedures being implemented.  I recall a meeting a couple of years ago when this process began and it was a bit rocky at that time.  We’ve come a long way on this issue.

I am glad I attended this meeting, it gives me hope that when various groups from the community get together and have respectful conversation and brain-storming good things can come from it.  Let’s continue to work together to make Kewaunee County a better place to live!

Let's Work Together

LET’S WORK TOGETHER 

By Ron Heuer, District 12 Supervisor

On Wednesday evening Feb 12, I, along with a contingent of concerned Kewaunee County residents, spent several hours either providing testimony or observing testimony with regard to the DNR permitting the expansion of the Kinnard operation.  This expansion included a 70M gallon manure storage facility at the Kinnard Farm in Lincoln Township.  Five Kewaunee County residents and Midwest Environment Advocates (a Madison based environmental law firm) are contesting the DNR approval of this expansion without assuring the farm’s manure management plan would meet state water quality standards.  As an observer, I can honestly say I learned a lot about the entire issue.

I have empathy for those people who testified as to their personal experiences with degradation of their water source and how that, in some cases, has directly impacted their quality of life.  I equally have empathy for the Kinnard farming operation who have worked long and hard to build their farm and have followed the procedures the DNR has set and now have to spend their hard earned money to defend themselves and their business.

In addition to the sworn testimony of the petitioners, about 18 Kewaunee residents provided sworn testimony in support of those petitioners.  Their testimony was heartfelt and as I listened to all the testimony I experienced a range of emotions to include empathy, concern, outrage, sadness, dismay and, yes, hope.  

Empathy.  How can you not empathize with someone who, as a result of their water source being polluted with coliform, e-coli and nitrates can no longer brush their teeth with water from their own well?  At the same time, how can you not have empathy for the Kinnards as they have suffered through personal attacks and character assassination because they operate a CAFO.  This is where I disconnect with the logic of some of the testimony, here are a couple of examples why. 

A dairy farm is determined to be a CAFO when they have 700 head of milking and dry cows.  And as a CAFO, operates under the rules set by the State DNR and EPA.  They must follow the guidelines set by the DNR when it comes to applying manure to fields and cannot, for example, apply any manure to a field from January 1 through the end of March.  Meantime, you have many farms in this county of various size that are not CAFOs and they haul manure daily throughout the winter and spread manure on the snow that is sitting on frozen ground.  It is logical that when this snow melts (and it will melt before the ground is unfrozen), it will run off into the creeks and rivers and make its way to the lake and other areas it shouldn’t be.  I only cite this one example, because a cow is a cow and all those cows produce manure and manure is manure.

Some would have you believe that organic farming is the “right type” of farming for Kewaunee County.  However, what they don’t mention is there are organic designated farmers in Kewaunee County that apply manure as a fertilizer to their fields from the same large CAFOs.  Once again, manure is manure.

Even though the Kinnards farm is in Lincoln Township, it is not just Kinnard Farm manure on the Township fields.  Manure travels, various farmers, big and small, haul their manure from township to township wherever they own or lease land.  Manure is manure.

We all understand Wisconsin relies heavily on agriculture, and Kewaunee County is more dependent upon agriculture than many counties.  Mr. Luft, a former Paper and Plastics Industry executive provided testimony that was very logical.  He knows first-hand how stringent the EPA and DNR can be when they have a mind to be.  He cited a well-documented incident in Kewaunee County where the EPA levied a fine against an ag-business and virtually, during the same time period, the DNR issued an expansion permit for the same operation.  To me, this is part of the problem of government being so big, no one knows what is going on and then the system fails us.  Us, includes all the residents of Kewaunee County including owners and operators of all farm sizes.

To me, there is thinking in our country today that condemns hard work and success.  We should all be grateful for folks like El-Na Farms, Eberts, Pagels, Dairy Dreams, Kinnards and many other farmers in our area who are trying to make a living and pursuing the American Dream while putting food on America’s table.

Mr. John Rybski, a very articulate Ahnapee Township man who provided personal testimony summed it up better than anyone else when he said, “We need to change this together”.                       

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Character assassinations and personal attacks won’t do anything but further divide the residents of our County.  Although the DNR has the final say today, that should not deter us from having heartfelt dialogue with each other to see what things CAFOs, large farmers, small farmers and the balance of the residents can do to make our County a better, safer place to live.

Houston, We Have a Problem Here!

by Ron Heuer, District 12, Supervisor

Schedule II employee salary increases.  This is absolutely a mess and one more time the taxpayers took it on the chin. The reason it is a mess, is, our county does not have a viable employee performance evaluation system in place. Salary increases for the Schedule II employees are simply justified by the Personnel Advisory Committee with little input from any source.

I sat at the table as this committee met (twice) and it was a matter of pulling numbers out of the sky.  For example, Mr. Dorner walked into the meeting with recommendations for five employees to be increased.  In a matter of minutes the list grew to nine employees, and then almost as an afterthought, Mr. Barlow suggested adding an additional $1,000 for the Corporate Counsel.  No justification other than that employee hadn’t had an increase for a while.  The following Board members are on this committee: Weidner, Barlow, Hutter, Wagner, Paphlam, Shillin, Sinkula Heidmann and Mayer.  Shillin and Sinkula were the only two members that voted against these increases.  At the December Board meeting, I made a mistake.  As in that meeting because when I presented a motion to table these increases until the January board meeting, I assumed the Personnel Committee would revisit the proposed raises and take action on them before presenting them to the board again in January.  I gave them way too much credit!  I forgot I was dealing with the government where common sense does not prevail.  However, following the December meeting I did send a letter to each of the board members with details of this salary increase in hopes they would take this issue up with members of the Personnel Committee.  Guess what?  With exception of two board members, nothing, nix, nada, zero, zip, was done with this information.  The do-nothing board one more time lived up to its reputation and delivered to the taxpayer another unjustifiable salary expense. The motion was brought up again in the January meeting and I again offered a motion to send it back to committee to have them do their homework and that motion was defeated.  The December Motion that was tabled was brought up and that passed; the following people voted against these salary increases Larry Kirchman, Ron Heuer, Dennis Cravillion, Linda Sinkula, Donald Delebreau, and Kaye Shillin. The rest of our voted for the mostly unwarranted raises.

Have you heard the Kewaunee County Highway Commissioner is retiring?  Commissioner Dale Jandrin announced his retirement to the full Board at the October Board meeting.   Not so fast! Now, at the County Highway Committee of Jan 21, it came out that Mr. Jandrin is lobbying with the County Administrator Mr. Dorner to resign (not retire) from the position as Commissioner and would come back into the Kewaunee County Highway Department as a hourly wage employee. 

This is a bad idea for the following reasons:  An employee who holds what would be considered a Director level position (Commissioner) has forged relationships with their staff; there are loyalties to consider.  Normally that Director knows the operation very well and forgets he is no longer the boss.  This causes conflict with the staff.  What about those employees that were disciplined by the resigning Director who now is working daily with the person who handled their disciplinary actions. Will or would this perhaps cause dissention within the workforce?  Also, the new Director just coming into the organization has to deal with the likelihood of being undermined by the previous Director both with the office staff and those employees with loyalties to the previous Director.

Are we setting yet another precedence with this kind of appointment? Should this be left up to the Administrator to make this kind of “deal” for an employee? Should this not be a decision made by the board? Let your District Supervisor hear your position on this. Call the Administrator and let him know your thoughts. Mr. Dorner has not yet made a final decision about this.

Twenty-two months ago at the second board meeting I attended I correctly observed that the only way we could change things in this County would be to change out some of these board members who are not adequately representing the taxpayers of this county.  We now have, for the first time since 2000 a good number of qualified, concerned citizens who are running for the County Board. 

Now it’s up to you!  Notify friends, relatives, in-laws, outlaws, neighbors, and all those who are registered to vote.  Make them aware how important it is they vote in this election.  Encourage those who are not registered to vote to get themselves registered and to participate in this important election.  If you want further details or be part of my newsletter recipients email me at: ronheuer@gmail.com

Schedule II Employee Salary Increases

At the Kewaunee County Board Meeting on Tu, Jan 21, the issue of Schedule II Employee salary increases will once again be placed in front of the board for consideration.  I would suggest to those Kewaunee County Taxpayers who have been following this topic to contact their District Supervisors and make them aware of how you stand on this issue.

The Schedule II resolution that was placed before the board had request for approving $21,442 of salary increases for various Schedule II employees.  No justification for these increases were provided to the board for these increases and therefore the resolution was tabled.  On my blog, posted Jan 1, I laid out current salaries of those employees who were to be considered.  My salary research results showed only four of the employees should be considered for increase at this time.

Schedule II employee salary increases

The following letter was written to the members of the Kewaunee County Board in hopes they will get involved in this process rather than allowing certain committees to dictate to the Board.

At the December 17^th Kewaunee County Board Meeting a resolution titled “Resolution Approving Schedule II” was put forward to the board for approval.  The personnel committee did not have that data available to the board until 3:30PM on Dec 17^th on the county website.  The first time board members saw this resolution was when you sat at your desk for the county board meeting at 5PM.  As you know, that resolution was tabled by a vote of 10-9 with Ron Paider not in attendance.  The resolution was tabled for one month and will, unless the Personnel Committee changes it’s resolution, appear on the agenda in January for approval. 

So, it is up to us to let the Personnel Committee know the resolution as submitted is not acceptable as presented to the board and needs to be revised prior to the Jan board meeting.  The following table displays the salary increases as proposed by the Personnel Committee. 

Employee Name	Title	Current Salary	Salary Increase	% of Increase	2014 Salary
Cornelius, Dave	Chief Deputy	$65,815	$4,500	6.83%	$70,315
Treml, Joseph	Jail/Lt	$64,255	$3,000	4.66%	$67,255
Gulbrand, Chris	Lt. Sheriff Dept.	$64,255	$3,000	4.66%	$67,255
Wallander, Andrew	County Conservationist	$57,256	$1,500	2.61%	$58,755
Aulik, Joe	Veterans Service Officer	$48,565	$2,500	5.14%	$51,065
Halada, Mary	Public Health	$66,685	$1,500	2.24%	$68,185
Loining, Ross	Dir. Info Systems	$74,759	$1,500	2.00%	$76,258
Payette, Matt	County Parks	$56,869	$3,000	5.27%	$59,869
Hanson, Steve	Land Information Dir.	$55,058	$4,942	8.97%	$60,000
Wisnicky, Jeff	Corporate Council	$49,566	$1,000	2.29%	$50,566
TOTALS		$603,082	$25,942		$629,523

Important Note: The three highlighted employees each received a $1,500 bonus (included in table above) as a result of the management contract the county entered into with the city of Algoma for management of the Algoma City Police Force.  There was no mention of bonus money in the contract and it seems our Sheriff and his management team were confident they could manage the Algoma force with existing staff.  The proposed  bonuses were presented to the board on Dec 17th and passed the board by a vote of 13 to 6 with the following board members voting in favor of these bonuses: Barlow, Heidmann, Abrahamson, Paphlam, Weidner, Wagner, Swoboda, Hutter, Mayer, Dax, Rueckelberg, Koenig and Garfinkel.

Total increase in base salaries and bonuses for this group of Schedule II employees totaled $25,942.  But when you consider the fringe cost of retirement, workers comp, and SS, the real cost of those increases is $30,984.  And if one considers this over a period of, let’s say ten years, it is $310,000 cost.  Let’s face it.  Algoma will re-sign the management deal.  So you can assume a request from the Sheriff’s Department will be made to enure those bonuses will be continued going forward.  Given the proposed salary increases for the lieutenants, perhaps this resolution should be revisited.

So for these three Public Safety employees combined, the increase in salary would be $10,500, (that includes base salary & bonus and does not consider increase in fringe benefits).  My salary research supports the increase for the Chief Deputy, but nowhere can I find any salary data that supports the increases for the other two lieutenants.

If the resolution proposed by the Personnel Committee is left to stand, the following table shows the results.

Employee Name	Title	Current Salary	Salary Increase Includes Bonus	% of Increase	Salary Before Fringe	% Cost of Fringe Benefits	Cost of Fringe	TLL Cost of 2014 Salary To County
Cornelius, Dave	Chief Deputy	$65,815	$4,500	6.83%	$70,315	27.95%	$19,653	$89,968
Treml, Joseph	Jail/Lt	$64,255	$3,000	4.66%	$67,255	27.95%	$18,977	$86,232
Gulbrand, Chris	Lt. Sheriff Dept.	$64,255	$3,000	4.66%	$67,255	27.95%	$18,977	$86,232

Personnel Committee Decision on these salaries

I was able to attend both personnel committee meetings when the sub-committee, and then the full committee took up the issue of these salary increases.  Mr. Weidner chaired both of these meetings and he was the only person at that table, other than me, that had any salary research data. 

Chairman Weidner elected to use the August 2012 Carlson Dettmann study data to argue the salary increases for these employees.  Note: The following table shows the counties that actually participated in the Carlson Dettmann study that were compared against Kewaunee County.  Keep in mind, Kewaunee County has an equalized value of $1.4B with a population of 20,500.

County	Equalized value in Billions	Population
Calumet	$3.4	49,400
Door	$7.1	27,820
Manitowoc	$5.1	81,000
Marinette	$3.6	41,600
Oconto	$3.5	37,400
Shawano	$2.9	41,700
Waupaca	$3.7	52,600
Average of 7 Counties	$4.19	47,360

I called 10 counties during the week of Dec 3, 2013 to specifically query either the HR person or the County Clerks as to their 2014 salaries.  I only considered those employees who were to be considered for increase by our Personnel Committee.  Following is a table of those counties I called that displays their equalized values as well as populations.  Note: I include Kewaunee, Door and Manitowoc counties to arrive at my averages.

County	Equalized value in Billions	Population
Ashland	$1.2	16,000
Door	$7.1	27,820
Jackson	$1.4	20,499
Vernon	$1.7	29,954
Clark	$1.7	33,557
Langlade	$1.6	19,997
Manitowoc	$5.1	81,000
Marquette	$1.6	15,404
Price	$1.4	14,159
Taylor	$1.2	20,689
Kewaunee	$1.4	20,500
Average of 11 Counties	$2.31	27,234

Compare the averages of the two tables.  I would argue the data that I have assembled for the 11 counties is much more in line with what Kewaunee County is than the data in the Carlson Dettmann study.  Carlson also had included, for some positions, private sector jobs.  But one could argue the job descriptions we have for our public county employees are not comparable at all.  For example, I am not aware of any private jail lieutenants.  Also, for the most part, the private sector jobs do not enjoy the generous retirement program or the health insurance we provide the Kewaunee County employees.  Another argument often heard is; “Our Kewaunee County employees are often times multi-tasking, completing not only their assigned tasks but other assigned duties.  In smaller counties, this is the norm, not the exception!

So what did my salary study show for these positions?  The following table shows the average salary for the 11 counties along with what should be a reasonable, fair salary increase.  (Lieutenant bonuses not included in this table).

Employee Name	Title	Current Salary Without Fringe	Ave. Salary Eleven Counties	Recommended Increase? Y0U DECIDE	2014 Salary Without Fringe
Cornelius, Dave	Chief Deputy	$65,815	$72,562	$ ?	$ ?
Treml, Joseph	Jail/Lt	$64,255	$61,588	$ ?	$ ?
Gulbrand, Chris	Lt. Sheriff Dept.	$64,255	$59,538	$ ?	$ ?
Wallander, Andrew	County Conservationist	$57,256	$56,351	$ ?	$ ?
Aulik, Joe	Veterans Service Officer	$48,565	$49,498	$ ?	$ ?
Halada, Mary	Public Health	$66,685	$66,852	$ ?	$ ?
Loining, Ross	Dir. Info Systems	$74,759	$66,564	$ ?	$ ?
Payette, Matt	County Parks	$56,869	$63,418	$ ?	$ ?
Hanson, Steve	Land Information Dir.	$55,058	$66,692	$ ?	$ ?
Wisnicky, Jeff	Corporate Council	$49,566	Not checked*	$ ?	$ ?
TOTALS		$603,082		$ ?	$?

*I did not check the Corp Council 2014 salaries with other counties as this was originally not on the list, however in my 4/23/2013 salary study results, the Corp Council of Kewaunee Co was underpaid.

Now that you have “the rest of the story” and an opportunity to compare, make your own decisions concerning these salary increases and make recommendations to the Personnel Committee.  Remember, the Personnel Committee is a recommending body and they are not in place to dictate policy.

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