City Council meeting and other items of interest

August's first City Council meeting took place Monday evening. There were a lot of little items discussed.

The Council approved four street closings, including Van Rensselaer for OktoberFest on September 22. Two closings were for weddings and another was for St. Augustine's on the 26th. The Council also gave the SJC Alumni Association permission to serve alcohol at Brookside Park for the Homecoming celebration.

The gas tracker for August is a two cent decrease. Weston Cemetery was given permission to hire someone part time to digitized records. The Council agreed to a demonstration at its next meeting of recording software that would, among other things, allow its meetings to be broadcast on the Internet.

The Council agreed to release funds that were obtained by the sale of the old Admin Building at what was the Monnett school to be used for construction of park projects. The Parks for People campaign would like to start some construction this fall on soccer fields, a walking trail, and new basketball courts.

There followed a long discussion of how to re-imburse an employee who paid for an airline ticket with a personal credit card rather than a city credit card. I could not follow some of the discussion, but there was frequent mention of the State Board of Accounts and their regulations.

Approval was given to replace the furnace/air conditioner that sits on the roof of City Hall above the Mayor's office. The Council also approved August 31 as a City Holiday. In superintendents' reports there were several mentions of how City employees enjoyed the City Employee Picnic held on Saturday. Kevin Cochran, Superintendent of Weston Cemetery, announced that tickets were now on sale for the cemetery walk to be held September 22. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children and are available at Jordans, Willow Switch, and Browns Garden Shop. The event is sponsored by the Jasper County Historical Society.

The City has finished re-routing the drainage tile that previously went under the land on which the new solar parks sits. Construction of the solar panels and related equipment should be completed about the middle of September. The new well house for the Sparling Avenue well has been delayed and also should be installed about the middle of  September. The Police Department moved into its newly-remodeled building last Tuesday. There are a few issues still being worked out. There are no plans yet of what to do with the old space they occupied next to City Hall. There may be an open house for the new space sometime in the future.

In other news, work on the US 231/Mt Calvary Rd intersection continues. The road has been shifted to the east but there is still some paving to do and it is not yet clear what the west side of the road will look like. Below are pictures from Monday.

 Above, looking to the north from south of the intersection. Below, looking to the south from north of the intersection.

There was an insightful update on what is happening at SJC on Facebook. Read it here. It appears that there is no future for Halleck Center.

The swimming pool held its last public opening on Sunday. The White House B&B plans to close as of September 1. Unique Finds is reopening Wednesday in its old Van Rensselaer Street location.

Rensselaer had a heavy but short downpour on Friday. My rain gauge said we got more than an inch. I saw the dark clouds approaching as I drove west on Friday and when I got back to Rensselaer a few hours later, the rain had moved to the east.

Finally, I found an observation from the Pulaski County Community Development Commission interesting. Rural counties have to work to keep from eroding away and declining.