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Wisconsin Rural Partners Committee Reports

– I’m Steve Peterson, the Monroe County Economic Development coordinator, also a member of the Wisconsin Rural Partners board of directors, and on behalf of the board, we really appreciate all of you being here today. This segment is going

to be interesting because we’re going to be touching on some of the hot buttons that we felt are real topical in the state of Wisconsin. And whether it’s housing, or infrastructure, agriculture, healthcare; we could’ve gone on, but those four always

seem to percolate as one of the top things that we always have as an issue and we’re always trying to tackle on a day to day basis. So the group that we have is this panel are getting up and they’ll be talking about that specific topic and the first person

I’d like to introduce, and most of you know him in the room, I probably don’t even have to read much of a bio, but, Dave Armstrong is a true crusader when it comes to economic development. I’m lucky enough to work

with him on a lot of things and he’s got a great vision for, not only work for Barron County, but for this whole area, and works very, very hard to make it a great place to live and work. Dave’s the executive director of Barron County Economic Development Corporation,

Barron EDC has three primary areas of focus: business services, community development, and tourism. And please welcome, Dave Armstrong. [applause] – Dave: I’ll tell you a little about how we came to look at

the housing challenge, the perspective we’ve got, but then also some of what we’re looking at across the state. Ours came from a prompt more from workforce, is kind of where it started. Right now, unemployment is very low ‘cross the state,

but especially here, in Barron County. So from my standpoint, I’ve got 6 to 700 open jobs right now in Barron County that aren’t being filled, and don’t really have the people to fill them at this point. And I hear it weekly

from the employers that I’m dealing with. All right, so we started looking a couple of years ago at how do we address workforce? Number one, I’ve got about 50% of the high school students, I’m losing each year, that are going off to four year colleges.

All right, so I got 50% here. So we started an initiative, how do we get that 50% that are staying here, involved in training, involved in workforce? That’s working, slow in some cases, but it’s working. Then we looked at, we’ve got about 11 to 12%

poverty right now in Barron County. So we worked the president here, Laurie? If you raise your hand? We created an entity called, CCP: Community Connections to Prosperity. The idea is to create a bridge

from poverty to prosperity. That’s working. We’ve got a new mentoring program we just put in place, which, we got high hopes for that, so that’s working. We approached the county. We’ve done tours and videos in the past, which have done very well.

So we approached the county and– let’s take a tourism video and tweak it for more of a– relocate to Barron County. And so we did that. We spent 40 grand on a TV show, we’re hitting the Twin Cities hard, the rest of Wisconsin hard. And so that’s working, but then,

we came to the realization: This is great! What if people want to move here? Where am I going to put ’em? So that kind of brought up the housing, so we jumped into housing about two years ago pretty strong, from a standpoint of, our

region like most others, if you think about it, housing is aging. All of our housing stock is aging. We’re not building a lot of new houses, traditionally. People are healthier longer, so they’re aging in place longer.

Not necessarily keeping up their homes, like they once did. And so from that standpoint, we started looking at, what do we have, what are some of the needs? We’re lucky enough to work with DOA, Dawn Vick. Dawn’s here somewhere. Right, way in back.

Last year, and we brought five state departments up and had meetings with four communities here. It was fantastic. We got all the needs of the communities, including businesses, all the needs, sat down with the

state agencies, and started working on where do we go from here? The first thing we did was, we launched a housing study. ‘Cause we wanted to know, all right, if we’re gonna push for new housing, what do we got and what do people want?

So from that standpoint, we worked with Regional Planning Commission here. They’re doing the housing study for us. We first started with a housing survey ’cause we wanted to reach out to the workforce and try to find out

what type of housing does our workforce need? What gaps are there, et cetera, et cetera. We’re just got done with that portion of it. Now we’re going into the community portion. A few things that we gleaned out of it real early is,

we got big gaps, all right. The sweet spot in some of the discussions we’ve had with individuals, workforce, is kind of your 90 to $150,000 house. That’s what’s wanted by the workforce. Rice Lake, God love ’em, we went to Rice Lake, found out,

last year, what’s your average house that was built? 244,000. So we see we’ve got a gap. And even with apartments, we started looking at apartments that are out there. Again, sweet spot, kind of your 750ish for your two

bedroom, 6 to 750ish? Swiderski is doing a great job here in Rice Lake building new apartments. More your 8, 900, for your two bedroom. So we’ve got gaps in that as well. Now, we’re not done with the housing study.

What we’re looking at doing, the whole idea behind this was, working with WHEDA: Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development, I know George is here. . . somewhere.

Yep, all right, there he is. We started working with them as far as, all right, how do we incentivize development here, what’s the best. . . and the first thing we ended up with is,

to get developers to come here versus building in Madison, or Eau Claire, or Appleton; we need numbers. So we pulled together all of the cities in Barron County, and the thing that was kind of amazing about it was how easy it was to get all of the cities talking,

to work together. So the idea behind the housing study is once we get done, we’re gonna know how many single-family homes we need. We’re gonna know what multi-family needs we have. In two of the communities, there’s a big need right now that’s very loud,

for senior housing. Not assisted living. Apartments. They want out of their single-family homes, they can’t keep up. They want apartments. We don’t have any place for ’em to go. So that’s a piece

of the quotient. We started an immigration program with an employer, couple of years ago, that’s starting to work. We’ve got 40 individuals from the Philippines starting next week, coming in. The first nine. We have no transitional

housing at all in the county. Where we going to put ’em? We got to put ’em some place, until they can find apartments theirselves, and part of it is, where’s the apartments they’re gonna find? So we got a lot of catch-22s going on.

So what we’re looking at in all the discussions I’ve had throughout the county, virtually every county has a variety of these exact same issues going on. We all have aging housing stock, we all have a lot of workforce openings right now,

we’ve got the migration of seniors, you know, high school kids out, trying to get ’em back. We’ve been successful in some cases on that. But that’s kind of what we’re looking at from across the state perspective,

from Wisconsin Rural Partners is, we’ve got an idea of what the needs are throughout, but how do we address them? Well, what, employer-assisted housing? I’ve had two employers, nameless, that have come to me and said, “Bring us

best practices for “employer-assisted housing, ’cause we’re desperate. ” So there’s a lot of things that are cooking right now from a standpoint of housing throughout the state. We’re trying, and again, with us here,

it’s a lot of throwing stuff against the wall and see what sticks. You know? So we’re out there trying, trying, trying, and the things that worked, we’re gonna duplicate and– the one thing we’ve found is, I can’t do it alone.

That’s where, we can come up with harebrain ideas, but we bring in the state, we bring in the WHEDAs, the DOAs, the USDA, and we sit down with them and say, “All right guys, who can do what in this area?” And it’s been kind of fun to be honest with you,

to see the different agencies, “Well, we can do this, “we can’t do this, you can’t marry this with this,” but it’s been a fun process working through it. And the funny thing is, is as soon as word got out that we’re on this trajectory, I was thinking,

“We’re gonna get this all done “and then we’ll have to go talk to developers. ” Mm-mm. They’re coming to us, and it’s almost like, God, to a certain degree, slow down, ’cause I want to make sure we’re

building the right housing. But, Rice Lake by far, is leading. We’ve got townhouses going in like crazy on the south end of town. Townhouses now for the north end of town. Got a big group looking at doing another development

on the north end of town. But again, a lot of that’s new and that’s in that upper level of the gap that we talked about, that exists. All right, so now it’s like, what do we do with rehabbing some of this old, that we can get in

to fill those gaps; the affordable housing. The one thing that I always hear is, “We don’t want more affordable housing, “we don’t want any more Section Eight. ” And it’s like, all

right, first of all, let’s define affordable housing. All right, your market price and the quote “affordable housing” or Section Eight’s pretty darn close to each other in Rice Lake. So, when I talk affordable housing,

I quit even mentioning that, mine’s workforce housing, all right? ‘Cause everybody’s for workforce housing. And that’s what I need, is a workforce. So, that’s. . .

I’m done. Believe me. I told him to hook me ’cause, I have a, like, everybody’s familiar with, you know, you get your three minutes of beginning of an open meeting? I can’t say anything

in three minutes. [audience laughing] You know, and so, I told him, “Just hook me when I’m getting time,” but, that’s kind of the initiative that we’re trying here in Barron County, but it’s something that

we’re seeing is needed throughout the state. So we’re kind of looking that as, you know, in Wisconsin Rural Partners on a statewide basis. – Steve: All right, thank you Dave. – Dave: Yep. – Steve: You can

applaud for him. [applause] All right, the next person I want to introduce, some of you probably recognized him if you were at our reception last night. But Brian’s been a close friend of mine for years.

We’ve had a great radio career together and not only had he done a great job for me at the radio stations that I was running, but he went on and decided, you know, small town radio’s not dead. I mean, and he proved it

by taking on an AM station in Durand, that had been off the air for a while, and most of the community had thought it would never come back, and he made the commitment to them that he would not only bring it back,

but it would be that small town radio station format that was missing. The local news, the local weather, high school sports, and I think he does a ball game almost every night. Maybe two? I don’t even know. He’s always on the air.

But, Brian’s been very dedicated to not just the rural communities, but also to agriculture. He not only became a National Association of Farm Broadcaster, but he also became the president of the National Association for Farm Broadcasters

and is on quite a speaking circuit. I guess the only ag conferences that you go to are in Vegas, and I don’t know how that works, but he’s probably the biggest cheerleader for the farming community, and agriculture in general in the state of Wisconsin.

And he owes me for what I just said about him, but it’s great having him here. Welcome, Brian Winnekins. – Brian: Well, thank you Steve, and the easiest way, Steve, I’ve learned from the best. The reason I get to go to a lot of those events out in Vegas is, I

actually went on to, and I don’t know why I’m telling everybody my secret here, especially him. [laughter] I actually just have gone onto the Vegas Convention and Visitor Bureau website and a lot of the

events going on, the conventions and all of that, if it’s agriculture-related or something that I know something about, I send them an e-mail and ask ’em if they need some emcee help, and here’s how much it’ll cost, and they pay my

hotel and my airfare, and give me some gambling money. So it’s not my money. [laughter] Works really well too, just sayin’. I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the issues in agriculture.

Right now, there’s a. . . I could go on. If Steve doesn’t hook me, I could be going on for the next week, because there’s so many issues and I work in radio,

and as Steve knows, radio people go on and on and on, talking. But one of the biggest one’s right now for the state of Wisconsin, is trade. The trade issue’s huge. The USMCA, that’s the replacement

for NAFTA, is stalled. The reason it’s stalled is because the section 232 tariffs on aluminum and steel, that were put in place before the USMCA was negotiated, are still in place against Canada and Mexico, and they’re expecting

those to be dropped and a lot of folks in Congress want those dropped by the U. S. before they go ahead and approve the USMCA. For Wisconsin, this trade deal is huge. For dairy and for corn, our biggest customer is Mexico.

It’s simple as that. And as long as this is stuck, we are going to continue to have issues. We will continue to have issues with this. The next big trade issue has been China. And, of course the negotiations between the U.

S. and China, are about 97% complete. Unfortunately, the last 3%’s the toughest part. And, for our soybean growers, they need this done by fall. Right now, the Chinese have made a lot of commitments, you may have heard this.

They’ve made a lot of commitments to buy millions and millions of dollars of soybeans. Those are only commitments. And in a normal trading year, those soybean commitments might be made in the first part of the year, but it’s for delivery in fall,

when the U. S. soybean harvest comes in. So the Chinese, while they’ve made a commitment, that’s about as valuable or worth the paper it’s written on. Because they can cancel them. And so if nothing is done,

all these commitments that you’ve heard about, will be canceled. And that’s gonna be a disaster. The Farmers for Free Trade has been making a lot of tour stops across the country. They were in Bangor here

a couple of days ago, trying to get folks to start getting behind legislators, to get the log jam taken up, because the other part of this that’s working against agriculture right now is 2020. Every day that passes without an agreement passed by Congress, ’cause

we can have an agreement, but it’s got to be passed by Congress, every day that goes by, we are going to have, there’s less and less and less of a chance that these agreements will be passed. By December 31st,

I would actually argue by October 31st of this year, if these things aren’t done, they’re not done at all. Not until after the presidential election along with the congressional elections and all of that in 2020. So, we are running out of time

and it is a big deal and it will affect, if this doesn’t go through, it will affect Barron County and all of the ruraL counties in our listening area, in the WRDN listening area, agriculture’s a billion dollar industry. Over a billion dollars.

Those farmers are spending almost 750 million in farm inputs, tractors, all those other things, to get to that, to grow that billion, over billion dollars in sales. That goes away, we’re in a lot of trouble. A lot of trouble,

’cause agriculture’s still the biggest industry in this state. The other part of this that’s going on with trade right now as well is, with China, you may not have heard of this, this African swine fever, ASF for short.

That has decimated the Chinese hog herd. China’s the largest pork producer in the world. China’s the largest pork consumer in the world. That’s one of the mainstays of their diet. In the last year, China’s lost between 20 and 30%

of their hog herd. That is the equivalent to the entire hog herd of the United States. So, right now for hog producers, even though there’s a 62% tariff, hog producers are shipping, we are shipping pork over to China.

That is helping, but on the flip side to that, okay, for soybean growers, one in every three rows of soybeans were going to China for feed. For hogs, for poultry, that sort of thing. That hog herd has been decimated by 20 to 30%.

There’s also now the possibility that some of these hog producers in China will not get back into the business. They’re just done. They’re not gonna do it. So, while we may have an increase in hog demand from China,

we’re gonna have even, an equal or lower, equal or bigger decrease in soybean demand from China. And remember, Brazil and Argentina are our biggest soybean competitors. Right now, Argentina’s soybeans are so cheap, they’re driving down the

U. S. and Brazilian prices. And so, we’re losing market share. And that’s the other problem with this, is the longer these trade wars go on, the more the U.

S. loses market share. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, there was something that U. S. has pulled out, the countries that went ahead with it anyway without the U.

S. , Canda is now, has a big advantage over the United States with Japan. For a whole host of products. Because they are getting lower or tariff-free exports to Japan, and we’re under tariffs and quotas. The longer these things go, the

more we’re gonna be hurt. So that is a big thing that farmers are really looking, are watching right now. Obviously this last winter has been kind of the perfect storm for a lot of dairy farmers. In January, we had bitterly cold temperatures with ice,

and we’re just waiting to see how bad the alfalfa winterkill is this year. There were, when we had the big polar vortex in Durand, that was, I was supposed to go down Corn/Soybean Expo, that morning it was 41 below in Durand, air temperature.

My truck would not start. They couldn’t even move my truck to get it into the building to try and replace the battery, so they actually did it on the side of the road where my truck was parked and even with a brand new battery, the truck barely started. But again, we had that–

severe cold is going to really, could cause some issues for alfalfa. Then of course, after that, then Mother Nature said, “Well geez, “you haven’t had enough snow lately. “Let’s just. .

. here, here’s twenty inches of snow. “Here’s another twenty inches of snow. “Brian, you know what, we think the awning “at the radio station needs to fall down. ”

And so, because of these blizzards, and we had over 3 to 400 barns, pole buildings, all of that in parts of western Wisconsin, that collapsed. So farmers are dealing with that. Now, of course, when you get all of this snow,

and it starts to warm up, [chuckles] we’ve had flooding. A lot of flooding. It is not as bad here in western Wisconsin. It’s bad, but it’s not as bad as it has been in portions of southern Wisconsin or if you’ve seen the pictures

in Iowa and Missouri. Some of those fields will not be planted this year. They may not be planted next year. They may not be planted the year after that because of all of the mud, sediment, garbage, you name it, that went in the field.

Then there’s all of the stored grain that some of these folks had. ‘Cause they haven’t sold it because the prices are bad. That’s all contaminated. You can’t use it. It’s gone. And so, all of those things– and then,

on top of that for some of our folks in agriculture country, this came across yesterday: a new weed has now moved in to the upper Midwest, it’s called, Palmer Amaranth, some of you may be familiar with that. That’s really taken root here in the upper Midwest.

It’s more of a southern weed, but it’s been able to migrate up to the upper Midwest. North Dakota State University in a news release yesterday says that, some farmers, if they get this infested in their corn fields, 91% yield drop in corn.

Meanwhile, waterhemp, which has been around, glyphosate resistance, has been moving from Illinois up into southern Wisconsin. It’s now in western Wisconsin as well. So there’s waterhemp weed resistance to glyphosate. So there’s a lot

of things going on that farmers are having to deal with, and at the same time with the low prices, we have inability to get operation loans and all of that, and the big thing is, and we can talk a little bit about this as well,

has been the farmers’ mental health issues. You may have seen some of the videos, you may have heard about the farmer suicides, but that is a real issue, so those are some of things going on right now in agriculture.

A lot of serious issues and again, I know I got the two minute warning here from Steve. We could go on for a long time, but there’s a lot of things happening in agriculture. Hopefully though, at least with milk, dry milk, nonfat dry milk prices

are starting to rise and that could mean that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel at least, for some better class three milk prices. – Steve: Go ahead. – Oh, okay. I know with some of the

farmer mental health issues, for our station, we’re actually gonna be holding a forum in May, where I’m going to be having not only legislative leaders, state and federal, but also, mental health issues, or mental health experts from our county health department,

to give and invite farmers, to give them a chance to at least tell their story. They just want to be able to vent. And some of the farmers I’ve talked with, they’ve said, you know, “Please, just listen to us. ”

But the thought, you know, saying, “Our thoughts and prayers are with you,” doesn’t mean anything to them anymore. They just want someone to listen to them and be empathetic, but I’ll leave it at that. – Steve: Thank you, Brian.

Round of applause? [chuckles] [applause] And you know, and by the way, we are going to, hopefully with the Wisconsin Rural Partners, help out with Brian’s project, having a listening session, or a venting session for a better term.

As I told him when we were talking about it, it’s just, you know, it would be so nice when you have all these listening sessions, if the needle would move after we get done with them. But I know it’s a very slow needle to move,

but we definitely have to do something about our agriculture because, when somebody told me a couple of weeks ago, that you know, by 2021, if not sooner, Wisconsin can’t even really claim themselves as America’s dairyland anymore,

at the rate we’re going. And how do you feel about losing that legacy? That should be a wake up call for all of us, so thanks again, Brian. Our next presenter, Pam Guthman, is a clinical assistant professor at University of

Wisconsin-Eau Claire, College of Nursing and Health Sciences during the academic year, and then continues to teach the Rural Immersion nursing program in the summer for University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Nursing in rural

northwestern Wisconsin. She has spent much of her career practicing rural community and public health nursing with a focus on the determinants of health, health equity, poverty, and population health. Her previous work settings have included rural health,

public health, primary care, long-term care, educational programming, and home visitation. Please welcome Pam Guthman. [applause] – Pam: Well, thank you. – Steve: Is it working? – Pam: Yep. – Steve: Okay.

– Pam: So I created a presentation because I thought it might be helpful just to see some visuals, because I am honored and humbled to be actually representing a group of us that work together and as you can see, I’m representing this committee

that really pulled together to provide you a white paper, titled, basically information about our health care advisory council, and we’re focusing especially on mental health. And even though we’re talking about rural,

I think just the segue that we just had, and then I can also talk about some of the other issues too, just because I have this very broad background, so I can talk housing with Dave, I can talk agriculture. I am the daughter of a farmer, so even though I’m a nurse,

I certainly understand the broad spectrum of how health really interfaces with all these different things. So whether it’s economic development, whether it’s business development, whether it’s health care, is what I’m going to speak

on behalf of the committee, we can make those connections. So I know that some of my colleagues are here, Carrie, I believe is here, Wally as well, and I’m not sure if I saw others either, but if you are here, I hope that if you would like to,

please chime in. So it’s no, I would say it’s no surprise to any of us, right, that we are seeing a pretty significant issue around mental health and substance abuse, especially in rural areas. And when you take a look at the research,

you can certainly see that there is a phenomenal amount of things that are happening to our rural people. And I think what Brian just shared with you in regards to our farmers, that is really taking a significant issue and really putting it forward,

and that particular group of people that is being significantly impacted. The challenge for us is that, this is not only a large and growing issue, but is also that we don’t have a coordinated response to really address these issues.

And we do know that about 23% of the need for mental health is being met overall, if we look at the statewide ways to affect mental health, but we have about 53% of adults with mental illness in Wisconsin who do not receive any type of treatment at all.

So that’s like half, I mean a little over half, so that’s really of concern to me as a public health nurse. I tend to look at prevention. My love is in prevention. By the time we’re getting to treatment, I’m really concerned because we spend a lot more dollars in health care costs

and it’s not nearly as effective because then people are really sick, right? So, my brain kind of goes to prevention. So, we do know that even if people have insurance, or if they even have a clinic in their community, they still remain quite

isolated from getting there, and we’ll talk about some of those challenges that affect people. This is a map that I want to show you about the mental health professional shortage areas and you can see that anything north of

Chippewa and Eau Claire area, Dunn county, we’re certainly in a pretty significant health care professional shortage area. And specifically with the psychiatrist shortage, which we look at a ratio of anything where we’ve got 1.

0 full time equivalent to more than 30,000. I can tell you having worked home care, and having a significant number of people on a caseload, that is not doable. You cannot see the number of people that you need to, even at a high level psychiatry,

where you’re having to address more of the medication needs. And when we look at alcohol or substance abuse disorders, that adds in to the additional challenges. So what does this mean? Well, we have a ratio of population to providers and just to kind of give

you a context of this, if we look at some of our more urban areas, where people tend to like to go; Dave just talked about our housing issues; I have the same issues when I try to bring students up to our more northern areas. I don’t know where to put them,

and I’m talking about eight students in a cohort that I need to have up here for a month. It is really challenging, so I won’t go down that path. But, so when you look at where do people want to go, well, in Dane County, Milwaukee County,

the ratio is 270 and 390 to one full time equivalent. Our state ratio as an average is about 560 to 1. But now you start to come up north, and we just kind of picked out these couple of counties. I know that there are people from

the more southern part of Wisconsin, Buffalo County, I know the health officers down in that area. We’re talking 6,550 to 1. I mean that is just not sustainable. So, just on an average, we think that we need about 215, or more, additional

psychiatrists, which is at the high end, right? Then if we start talking about our minorities, and our immigration needs, bless the hearts of our American Indian natives, they have experienced significant trauma that we cannot,

we can no longer ignore. And if you look at the lifetime depression in the comparison to non-American Indian racial groups, there is a 4% difference in lifetime depression. Look at what happens with our males,

and I know that guys, typically in our society, don’t really like to talk about being depressed, which is a pretty significant issue when we’re talking about farmers, ’cause farmers and farmers’ wives, right, typically a dual,

where we’ve got the man doing a lot more of the physical hard labor, women are also along with. But, men don’t like to talk about their feelings because we have socially exposed them to that. Then if we take a look at female American Indians,

lifetime depression; look at the significant difference of our women and the type of depression that they are carrying. This is why you see such huge disparities that happen among our minorities. And then the frequent

mental distress as well. So we know that the absence of our mental health care professionals and services really increases significantly our risks of suicide, homelessness, and well as substance abuse. And I’ve got the research there, and at the end of our paper,

we have all of resources and sources of evidence. So we know that the ratio of population to the mental health needs, not only can include our psychiatrists, but we can also do some things with our licensed clinical social workers, our counselors,

marriage and family therapists as well. So we really do need to have much more of a workforce development. So this means that people in rural areas are on waiting lists much longer, but you know, I’ve been in health care

for a long period of time, and I’ve had women who have been very depressed, and we don’t have time to wait until three, six months from now, when they are dealing with significant issues. I think as Brian has identified, that these issues are today.

They were yesterday, And so when people are feeling hopeless, and they are suicidal, they need help now. And so, this is of concern to us, especially in our more rural areas. And what does this mean then,

when you think about community impact, and especially to us with Wisconsin? We have a significant financial cost. We can’t meet these health care needs, if we wait until tertiary care to try to address them,

it’s too late and we’ve lost somebody. If they die by suicide, we’ve lost somebody’s work productivity over those years and those months for a long period of time. And if they do end up dying by suicide,

they impact many people and I think that one of the statistics by people who commit, or die by suicide, is like, 18 people minimally that they actually have a rippling effect that causes additional depression and challenges. So we need to really keep

working on this issue and try to move a lot more upstream. Cultural and language changes also as Wisconsin diversifies, I think that Dr. Ivan earlier this morning talked about, we are changing in our landscape.

Dave talked about the housing issues, because we are changing and we are different and everything from Amish populations which would have a different cultural way, that we might work them in regards to our health care

and our mental health needs, to also our Hispanic populations as well. So we certainly are changing and moving and these are definitely the needs that we need to look at. And there are really good answers that we can address, so some of those things can be

is that we can start to work on developing networks. We can develop networks that are really addressing the competency and developing some of these things that we can do. And we can do the same things with our health care providers. And by doing that, what

we need to do is look at, how can we train our primary care docs and our nurse practitioners? Oftentimes, if we can have access to people who are already from our area, they will stay because they’re already invested in our area. So I’ve got two minutes.

I’m gonna try to breeze through this really fast. So anything that we can do in regards to loan forgiveness, is really important, and I think working with our policy makers, helping to work with our schools and our educational systems, I know that both UW-Eau

Claire and UW-Madison in the schools of nursing, we’re trying really hard. I know that they’re, also our schools of medicine, are working really hard to try to get rural care practitioners more up to date on the mental health issues. But, we do need to

have that partnership. Some other additional solutions is, we can improve our resource network by using some of our online systems. I know Colter here is going to talk a little bit about our needs for broadband

and that type of thing. So we can use some of those things because we can have farmers who are typically very proud and very independent people, they will try to find some self-help. So if we can make those things available.

Also there is more continuity of care. So we can’t rely on our psychiatrists, right, to take care of all of our issues at the treatment end, but we can do some things more on prevention. So peer to peer and professional connections.

What can we do as, helping with providing training, you know, mental health first aid, QPR: Question, Persuade and Refer; eight, ten years ago I was working down towards the Winona area, and I was already

starting to implement QPR for our nursing students because we need to have much more of a community of resilience. Care coordinators and navigators similarly, need to also be involved in this. And these are people who

really know their resources, who may have, or may have not, lived experiences, but they know how to go through the difficult navigation systems of our insurance. We also need to go where people are at. We can’t always expect people to come to the

psychiatrist’s office. Putting mental health services in our school districts, and perhaps, maybe even in our employers, in their facilities. Could I, as a person who’s working for a specific employer, go down the hallway and be able to

access mental health while I’m actually there? The other thing that I want to just spend another second on is talking about accessing care. I talked about that stigma around mental health. If I had come in here with my leg broken, some of you would say, “Oh,

what happened to your leg?” But nobody will ask you, “What happened to your brain?” “What happened to your emotions?” “What happened to your heart?” And as I listened to Brian talk about the farmers, I could feel the stress on myself.

I’ve been around the block long enough that I can feel that type of stress, and of course, nurses are trained to have a lot of empathy, but we’ve got to get over this thing about the stigma. And to do that, we need to

really use our peer specialists, really work on all of us, have a responsibility to develop resilience communities, and that means that we need to really address those issues in a much more holistic way, and for us to let go of that stigma. This is kind of a summary,

and I will just let it be at that. – Steve: Thank you, Pam. [applause] You know one thing, from economic development, and I think Dave could back me up on this too, is that it’s kind of interesting when you’re talking to

companies that are start-ups and entrepreneurs and creating new software and everything. One of the hottest things is setting up that connection between healthcare providers and the rural setting. It used to be where the rural people always had to go into town

and go to the hospital to get their treatments, and the follow ups, and everything. And now we’re finding a way, and of course, it’ll lead into Colton with the broadband side of things, but now we’re seeing the healthcare providers reaching out to the rural areas

and going out in the country, instead of the other way around. So, thank you again, Pam, for your presentation. The next person on this panel knows a lot about broadband and it wasn’t long ago, if you remember, we were all sitting in rooms and saying, “How in the world are we

gonna get broadband “to all these areas of the state? “Because we barely get dial up, “and how are we gonna survive?” And in a few short years, we’ve not cured the whole thing, but we sure have improved ourselves a lot, and now we’re actually

looking at, okay, now that we got the broadband, what are we doing with it? And so, Wisconsin Rural Partners thought this was a very topical subject to talk about, so we’re happy to have Colter with us today. He makes the Wisconsin’s broadband mapping data

and tools as current as possible, he works with providers, other government agencies, stakeholders, and PSC colleagues to develop improved internet mapping resources. And part of the PSC, since 2013, he has supported the Broadband Expansion Grant program

from its beginning. And when he’s not mapping the internet, you can find Colter traveling all over Wisconsin, especially within his native Chippewa Valley area. So, Colter, greet the crowd, I’ll get your presentation up on the screen.

– Colter Sikora: All right, so, as Steve said, I’m Colter Sikora. I am part of a four person team called, the Wisconsin Broadband Office, which is housed within the Public Service Commission down in Madison. And our big focus is, the

title of the presentation that you can see on the screens: Expanding Broadband Access here in Wisconsin. So we have a number of roles that we play and the biggest thing that I look at our office, you know for being responsible for is

really tying all of the stakeholders together in the Wisconsin broadband and internet connectivity community. Whether that be the providers both big and small– we have certainly, you know, nationwide internet service providers

doing a lot of work out there, and we have some really local folks who are pushing pretty progressive internet expansion within their own local and certainly rural communities across the state. We have other government agencies,

both at the national, from the national level all the way down to the very local level. Everybody looking at this from a different angle of, what can we do to improve internet access across the state? And certainly get out into

the communities themselves. You have everybody from Joe Q. Public to a mayor, a city administrator, a school district superintendent and everyone in between with those broadband needs, and our office really works to bring all those people

in the same room. Along with that, we have a few programs that we run as well. Some of them more famous than others, thanks to grant money, so I’m gonna go ahead and give a rundown of those and offer that as a summary of the work that we’re doing to improve infrastructure

throughout the state with all of you. So, bias getting thrown out here, as the mapping guy in the broadband office, we’re gonna talk about mapping tools first. So, we’ve been interested in seeing where in rural

and certainly urban Wisconsin too, there has and hasn’t been internet access here in the state. We’ve been doing this in our office since about 2013. And certainly, coverage has improved over time, in fact according to the

most recent FCC statistics on these things, about 86% of Wisconsin’s population has access to internet speed defined as broadband, defined further as 25 megabits download speed available to a user and three megabits upload speed.

While 86% for the whole state sounds all right, if we shift that focus to rural areas, we’re still sitting at just over 50%. And coming from eastern Chippewa County myself, I’m quite familiar that there and it’s a goal of both

the broadband office, well, the broadband office communities, the feds and so on, to work at filling those. If you’re interested in seeing some of the broadband mapping tools that we have, you can go out to the Wisconsin

Broadband Office website. I’ll have some links at the end of the slideshow, where you can dig into tools like, the Wisconsin Broadband Map, which you see kind of as a screen capture here. You can also download and print maps of your county

or voting district of interest. We also summarize some of our other programs and the impact that we’ve had with those mapping tools. What we’re most famous for, I think it’s safe to say, is the Wisconsin Broadband Expansion Grant program. We have run this program

about seven times in the last few fiscal years, going back to 2014, and we have rolled out 138 expansion grant awards, affecting almost every county in the state and sending about $20 million of broadband expansion funding to fund

all sorts of internet service projects. Basically to build up infrastructure, whether it be wireline, or fixed wireless solutions, to help a lot of the communities that don’t have access, or hadn’t had access, or much access up to that point.

In fact, we’ve awarded five awards here in Barron County, since the start of the program. So, we get a number of questions, and I’m not gonna plead that I’m the Broadband Expansion Grant expert, but our most commonly asked question is safely,

who can apply for a Broadband Expansion Grant? So if you just follow along the bullet points, I’ll walk you through those. But basically, to be eligible, each applicant must be an organization operated for profit or not for profit, including cooperatives,

a telecommunications utility, or a city, village, town, or county that has entered into a partnership with an eligible organization or telecommunications utility. Furthermore, with the recent budget proposal from Governor Evers’ office, we are aware that,

after a few years now, certainly some changes may be coming to the Broadband Expansion Grant program and of course, budget cycles being what they are, it will be a few months at least before we know exactly how that’s going to shape the Wisconsin Broadband Office

and the Expansion Grant Program. But do know, that we are preparing in our office to be ready for whatever proposals make it to final statue, and I’ll give a quick summary of those as well, and we are preparing to move forward

with whatever gets thrown our way. Certainly highlights include, an increase of up to $78 million of funding for the biennium for the Broadband Expansion Grant Program. Governor Evers is also interested in having a statutory statewide

broadband speed goal of 25 megabits down and three megabits per second upload speed for the entire state, matching that federal broadband standard as it stands. There’s also plans of having a $5. 3 million influx

of temporary assistance for needy families funding each year to help families in the Wisconsin Works program, access affordable internet service. And a little work that we are doing at the Broadband Office to help push for internet affordability

for families and consumers as well, comes through a tool that we call the Internet Discount Finder that we rolled out last year, accessible from the PSC website. Follow the link at the bottom of the slide. You can go ahead and enter

basically any address in the state that you’re interested in, and out from that search that you go ahead and perform via your address, you’ll get a list of different internet providers that offer, basically internet discount programs

for that location in the state. So it’s a really easy to use tool and by following the links that come out in the search results, you can get connected with an internet service provider, if one is available in your area,

that can help provide internet at a reduced cost. Taking another approach at the broadband access situation and issue, we have a couple of certification programs that we use to highlight different aspects of both broadband needs

and broadband use in communities across the state. Our first program, the Broadband Forward! communities program, basically serves as a welcoming mat for internet service providers to go to the communities that have gotten and

received this certification as Broadband Forward! communities. Being a Broadband Forward! community means that a county or municipality has gone through the steps to basically streamline the permitting process and the fee structure to

allow internet expansion to happen within their communities. We’ve had about 30 of those municipalities and counties in the state be part of this program so far. We also have a Telecommuter Forward! program, which takes a different angle

of basically letting employers and employees know that these communities and counties have internet access, friendly for telecommuting acrossed, you know, that locality so that, you know, if you want to work in a more vacation-oriented area,

you can go ahead and do so. We have about 15 of those communities so far in that program. I must note, there is not a direct relation to the telecommuter and the Broadband Forward! certifications and our Broadband

Expansion Grant program. Those all run independent of each other. We’re also aware of federal programs that are being deployed to improve internet access here in the state. One of them and probably the best known of them,

are the Connect America Fund Phase II programs and the A-CAM program, that combined are bringing in over $800 million in funding across our state to improve internet access. You can actually follow this link coming from basically a part of the FCC,

that will show you down to the address level, where internet access has been improved over the last couple of years, and where internet will be projected to be improved down the road. The US Department of Agriculture also has

a ReConnect Loan and Grant Program that has just kind of broken out of the gates and I would highly suggest being in touch with USDA folks to learn more about what’s going on there. So, any program or mapping tool that I’ve mentioned

up to this point, is referenced via links there. And by all means, if you can catch me, I can certainly take some questions, or certainly here in the panel as well. But our Broadband Expansion Grant expert, Dennis Klaila,

and our State Broadband Office Director, Angie Dickison, are also open for receiving questions and comments as well. So that should wrap things up for us. – Steve: All right, thank you, Colter. [applause] – Colter: Thanks.

– Steve: The one thing that we’re gonna be doing is we’re gonna be updating our Wisconsin Rural Partners website with some new additions and each of these categories: agriculture, healthcare infrastructure, and housing, will have their own separate resource page on the website.

And a lot of the information that you’ve heard today will be available on there, especially with the PSC programs, ’cause there’s some really good ones. And with the permission of all the presenters, if they okay it, we will

have all the presentations that you have today, available on our website in the next couple of days so you’ll be able to download ’em. So if you’ve been taking notes like a final, you can put your pen down because you can get the

presentations off the website. We’re gonna open it up for questions right now. I could run around with a wireless microphone and you could ask the questions, ’cause I do get paid by the mile, but I think the acoustics are pretty good in here,

and I think if you’ve got questions, just stand up and voice it and we’d be able to hear it. So any questions for any of our panelists, in any of the categories? Yes sir? – Man: For Colter, where are we at with the 5G?

– Steve: The question was, where are we at with the 5G? – Colter: So I’m not going to be able to speculate where things will shake with 5G at this point. As far as I’m aware, not a whole lot has been rolled out. To my understanding, it’s certainly not reflecting

in the mapping data that I work with, but I think we’re all aware that that’s something that’s still looming over the next few years. But I don’t have solid dates at this point. – Steve: Question over here. – Woman: How do we recruit

people to come to our county? – Steve: With the resources they have in Vernon County, if there’s a way to find a list of potential companies or entrepreneurs, that would be able to recruit for Vernon County, because of the systems that

you have in place there. – Woman: Well, telecommuter specifically. – Steve: Telecommuter specifically. – Colter: So I think that’s a fantastic question, and one of the things I’m doing while I’m taking questions in is certainly recording them

and running them back to the office because to me that sounds like a great interagency. And also you know, working with Vernon County, and anyone else who’s interested, sort of question, to pool those resources together

and see if there are ways to get the word out, more so, especially since the telecommuter community certification is a relatively new concept, not just here in the state, but in the nation in general. So I think that’s something worth exploring.

– Steve: Question over there, Matt? – Matt: Yeah, I have a question about the farmer thing, the instability there, is that something that you can do easily, [audience member coughing] – . .

. the soybeans? – Steve: Oh yeah, you’ll need this microphone, Brian. The issues with soybeans and probably other crops too, with the prices looking like they’re not coming back anytime soon, if there’s

other alternatives for other crops that they could be doing on those fields? – Brian: That’s a question I receive a lot. And when talking with a lot of the soybean growers, or farmers in general, they make a lot of these decisions actually,

a year in advance. So, it’s trying to change what you’re growing, and I see some farmers that I know here in the audience. They will tell you, it’s like trying to steer a battleship. And one of the big ones, one of the big crops is, hay has been a big deal.

By the time a farmer gets that field transferred over and this and that and then is actually being able to harvest it? He’s already missed out. And that’s been the biggest problem with agriculture in general is, is to try to adjust the supply

to what the market’s telling you. We’ve never been able to figure out how to be able to send the signal. Like, for dairy, everyone remember the dairy 20×30 program? That was initiated in

the state of Wisconsin to up the milk production. But by the time that was all in place, now we don’t need it. And so, to try to make those adjustments is very difficult. – Steve: Okay, well thank you. That’ll be it for the questions ’cause you want to stay

on time, but again, the reason that we came together with this panel today was basically a spinoff of our last year’s summit. There were topics that we talked about there and there was a lot of feedback from the attendees that they wanted to

continue our efforts to get even more information and more input from the people that are leaders in their areas. And I think you have to agree, we did pretty good with the four that we had here today. I think they did a fantastic job.

How about a big round of applause for our panel? [applause]