By Rich Palzewic
Staff Writer

GREEN BAY – The Green Bay city council met remotely Tuesday, April 21 as Mayor Eric Genrich gave an update on the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our reality is getting a bit worse in Brown County,” he said. “Cases have been increasing fairly significantly in recent days, many of them associated with a few clusters – JBS Packerland probably being the biggest source of new cases according to Brown County Public Health. The CDC is in town to assist our county public health. When the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) comes to town, it’s not good news. We are hopeful they can offer our county public health department some guidance as they work through this difficult time.”

Genrich said he wanted to make it clear there isn’t a neighborhood, a zip code, a type of person or a type of employee that needs to be avoided during these times.

“Unfortunately, we all need to keep a distance from all of our residents and anyone outside of your household needs to be kept at a safe, social distance,” he said. “We need to do what we can to assist our community members and to strengthen in whatever way the community and the economy. We have taken some steps to help.”

He said the city has offered liquor license relief to bars and restaurants and a new program has come online which establishes a relief loan program to businesses in Green Bay which have been impacted.

City Clerk Kris Teske gave an update on the April 7 election, which saw numerous people not receive their absentee ballots and others standing in line for hours to vote.

“I’m sorry to anyone who didn’t receive an absentee ballot,” she said. “The clerk’s office felt horrible. We did everything we could to get ballots out. As for the comment from (Brown County Clerk) Sandy Juno saying the election was mismanaged, she has no idea how to run a polling location because that’s not in her job description. The Brown County Clerk’s office programs the election, prints the ballots and uploads the results to its website on election night.”

She said more than 2,000 ballots were sent out in the first batch on March 17, and people are already requesting ballots for the August and November elections.

The process to request, receive and return an absentee ballot is time-consuming, Teske said.

“To get a set of labels out for one person, it takes 18 clicks (on the computer),” she said. “That doesn’t include putting the labels on the envelope and putting the ballot and instructions into the envelope. We had many devoted city staff help day after day in the process.”

Teske said the WEC (Wisconsin Elections Commission) system allows voters to request an absentee ballot as many times as they want.

“We had one individual request 11 times,” she said. “Others sent their requests to every email we had in the office. With the size of Green Bay, there was no way to find out who was asking multiple times. The clerk’s office staff couldn’t answer the phones anymore because we had over 200 phone calls coming in on one day, so other departments stepped up.”

She said as the number of absentee ballots requested rose, the number of poll workers and polling locations dwindled.

Teske said everyone in line at the two polling stations (Green Bay East and West high schools) got to vote, but lines were long.

In total, 1,338 people voted at East, and 1,320 did at West.

“The lines were long because not everyone got their absentee ballot, and we are sorry for that,” she said. “We had more than 17,000 emails coming in requesting ballots, and it was overwhelming – we couldn’t keep up. The requests were coming in faster than we could print them out. On election day, not every voter is the same. Some might need to register filling out a form showing proof of residence, some people come prepared and voters have to show photo IDs to get their ballot. It’s not a machine on a conveyor belt – each situation is different, and it takes time.”

In other news, District 12 Alder Jesse Brunette was elected as the common council president, but it wasn’t without an unusual process.

The initial vote between Brunette and District 1 Alder Barbara Dorff was a 6-6 tie.

After the vote remained tied after two more rounds of voting, the council voted via email four more times, with each outcome remaining tied.

After the seventh tie vote, the city council voted 8-4 to decide the outcome of the election with a coin flip, and Brunette was victorious.

Two other times during the process, the council voted down the idea to decide the election with a coin toss.

“I’ve been on the city council for four years, represented two districts and lived in three different neighborhoods,” said Brunette. “I love the city and have lived here much of my life. I’d like to keep the Green Bay city government non-partisan. That’s what I’ll try to do as the leader of the city council.”

Dorff was elected vice president with a unanimous vote.