Local Government Management Internship Program

May 30th, 2007
 I was placed at Chippewa Falls City Hall for the initial four weeks of my internship. When we first arrived at City Hall, Dan Elsass, the City Administrator, gave us a tour of the building and introduced us to all the employees. I was surprised that there was such a small staff in charge of the town. After lunch I met with Cynthia, who is my supervisor for my project with the city. We spent most of our time getting to know one another, but we did look into the city code book and discussed what I already knew about ordinances and how a code book worked. Once we finished looking at some of the codes we talked about my project, which is re-writing the personnel policy handbook. This policy is put into the city code book for everyone’s use.  We have not gone into much detail about the laws and regulations, but we discussed that we are going to be writing our own policy instead of just updating the old file. Later, Dan had asked me to also go along to a hearing, at Chippewa Falls County Hall, involving the Police Department’s health insurance after retirement. The meeting was interesting for the most part, but confidential, so I am not allowed to discuss the details of the topic. Their collective bargaining meeting on the topic is tomorrow and is still a private matter, so Dan is going to discuss with the Police Chief how he would feel about me sitting in on the meeting. I believe that it would be an incredible experience that would help me in the future. –Posted by Katie Tallman

5/29 Day 1
 After settling into our dorm at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, we had a day of orientation from the staff of both Chippewa falls and Eau Claire County.  I was then told I would be working for the County in the Planning & Development Department with Zoe Monahan from the University of Oregon.  Our supervisor is Todd Andrews, the planning advisor.  We walked into the county building not knowing what to expect, but the County Administrator Tom MaCarty made us feel right at home, and we were taken to human resources and given ID badges to make us official.  Since there is a jail on the first floor I often joke that the ID badge is the only thing that separates us from the prisoners.  Zoe and I went to a GIS conference with Chris Martin and his supervisor Peter Strand.  It was a little over my head, but I learned a lot.  Todd also gave Zoe and me our first project.  We have to write a Staff Report for a rezoning in the neighboring towns.  Hopefully we can do a good job!  –Posted by Kris Boppel

Wednesday May 30, 2007
Today was my first official day to report to work at Eau Claire County. I was told that I would be working on the county’s comprehensive plan. Therefore, I went into work thinking that I would find out where the planning department is at in the comprehensive plan process. I was surprised when Todd Andrews (my supervisor) proceeded to describe an intensive address recovery project. The project entailed looking at each town and unincorporated entities, in the county; mylar and map to determine which addresses were recorded. For the parcels that there was not a listed address I was supposed to find out if an address had been assigned by the town. After asking a number of questions, to make sure that I understood what the task entailed, Todd decided that it may be too difficult to start off with. Instead he decided that I would work on a zoning staff report. I was thrilled to hear about this assignment because I have past experience with staff reports from a former internship. After a crash course in the county’s zoning specifications I attended a Wisconsin Geographic Information Coordination Council Listening Session with Kris, Chris, and Peter (Eau Claire County’s GIS specialist). At the meeting we learned about a proposed council that would steer the compilation of all GIS information from around the state to make it available for everyone’s use. The intentions of the council, how it would be evaluated, and the structure of the council were all discussed. It was interesting to hear about the technology. I found it interesting that one of the challenges the state faces is that counties, cities, and tribes all have the information in their databases but they can not be connected because of different systems, data encoding and other differences. Tomorrow I will have the opportunity to start on my staff report.  –Posted by Zoe Monahan

Day 1- 5/29/07

 The day started at the usual 7 A.M. for me. After getting in the van at 8, we drove the half hour to Chippewa Falls City Hall. After going on an interesting tour of the old building, the time to start the
real work began. When I walked into the Parks and Recreation Building, I was struck with a sense of incompetence. After meeting my supervisor and going through what I was to do, I felt like this was going to be a looooong summer. I am working on updating the city’s recreation plans for the next five years. I first had to look through the plans from 1971-2007, which let me tell you was a lot. After getting adjusted to what I was looking for, I began to get into a rhythm looking to find the items that came across multiple times, seeing those were what needed to be worked on. I soon found myself enjoying the experience and was interested in what I was reading. I look forward to seeing what I come up with in terms of ideas for improving the recreational areas in the city. What helps this long process is the fact that everyone on the trip is great, so there is no added stress there. I think this is going to be a fun, productive summer.   — Posted by Dylan Owens