By Rich Palzewic
Staff Writer

BELLEVUE – At its Aug. 12 virtual meeting, the Bellevue village board discussed work options for employees due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Because the Green Bay school district has gone to virtual teaching, Diane Wessel, village administrator, spoke to the board about the need for flexibility with employees.

“The off-site instruction of some schools has the potential to affect our village employees, which therefore affects operations,” she said. “We may need to allow flexibility with work schedules to accommodate parents of school-aged children. Right now, we haven’t had any requests, but we need to have it in place.”

Wessel said public works employees are one example.

“These employees can’t work from home,” she said. “Instead of working 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., there might be adjustments to that, maybe even working weekends.”

Wessel said if employees can’t make the situation work with an adjusted schedule, they’d be required to take time off.

“The Village of Bellevue is required to provide up to 80 hours of paid time off,” she said. “This is in addition to their vacation and personal time to stay home with their children, or if they need to stay home due to COVID-19. They’d also be eligible for an additional 10 weeks of extended family leave at two-thirds pay. That’s why we need to be flexible – to continue operations and protect our finances. We’ve already had some employees take advantage of the 80 hours.”

Andy Rowell, director of public works, said adjusting hours of street sweeping is an easy solution to improve flexibility.

“There are many communities that do their street sweeping at night,” Rowell said. “You don’t want to sweep busy roads in the middle of the day, so if we need to do this with an employee, we certainly can. I’ll talk to my crew to get other ideas.”

Wessel also said because of Gov. Tony Evers’ emergency order mask mandate, which went into effect Aug. 1, the public and staff are required to wear face coverings in village facilities open to the public.

In other news, the board unanimously approved a request from Dave Anderson, Town & Country Storage owner, to allow a development of more than 80,000 square feet.

The area is south of State Highway 29 located at the terminus of the future Delmar Lane.

“The idea is to create individual storage units, which would be condos and purchased by owners,” said Andrew Vissers, community development director. “They would then be a part of the association for the property and be able to utilize the unit as they see fit.”

Vissers said the village previously looked at this area.

“It went through an official map amendment, which vacated the future roadway of Delmar Lane,” he said. “The property is zoned LI, which is our light industrial zoning district, so the use as proposed in regards to storage is a permitted use.”