By Josh Staloch
Correspondent

BELLEVUE – The Bellevue village board heard from residents concerned about late-night noise from a local business at its Aug. 25 meeting.

The board revisited an item from the July 28 meeting, when a Bellevue resident complained about noise coming from the Carnivore Meat Company facility at 2878 Ontario Road.

The issue stems from noise coming from an array of equipment on the rooftop of a 5,373 square-foot building added to the company’s structure in 2018, following site plan approval from the village.

The equipment, used for filling the facility’s nitrogen tanks, has, according to area residents, been running early in the morning and is loud enough to keep people awake.

“The frustration that I have with the whole thing is that I hear it at 2 a.m., but everyone else who needs to hear it isn’t there,” Jill Bielinski, who made the initial complaint, said. “When it’s during the day, I get it. But when it’s happening at 2 a.m. and you can’t sleep, I don’t understand.”

The Brown County Health Department has been contacted about the possibility of getting a late-night decibel reading but has yet to do so.

In the interest of getting the department more information to work with, Bielinski has been keeping track of when the rooftop machines are running, so the county might determine the best time for obtaining a decibel-level reading.

That information was presented to the village board Aug. 25.

“It puts us in a difficult place,” Trustee Tom Katers said. “There’s no question that there is noise coming from this facility. We have recordings from a resident, I have recordings from my perspective. But what can we do as a board? The business wanting to participate in maybe making some possible changes, that’s what it’s really going to take. The business is going to have to want to be a good neighbor.”

Sign of the times

The board is working on a set of standards for signage to reflect a 2015 Supreme Court decision that deemed it unconstitutional to regulate signs based on content.

“If you have to read a sign to determine how to regulate it, that’s a violation based on this decision,” Interim Village Administrator Andrew Vissers said.

With this in mind, the village is in the process of eliminating content-based regulations.

The proposed changes will regulate signs based on size, height, placement, duration, materials and number, rather than the sign’s content or message.

“A lot of the issues come along with temporary signs,” Vissers said. “Your real estate signs, your political signs. There’s not an easy answer on how to address this. If you don’t regulate, then it’s kind of a free-for-all. But we want to start somewhere. We want to start somewhere. Knowing it’s not perfect, but as we get feedback, we may have to adjust.”

With the provision to modify the amendments in the future, the board unanimously approved moving forward with the proposed amendments, which can be found on the village’s website.

Finally, the board unanimously approved a motion to go forward with renewing dental insurance coverage for village employees through Delta Dental.

The renewal goes from Nov. 1, through Oct. 31, 2022, with a 9% rate increase and no changes in coverage.