A few more meeting notes

On Wednesday evening the Airport Authority Board met for its monthly meeting. They mostly discussed routing things--drainage, the proposed fuel farm, a nepotism policy, the courtesy car. One new item was the approval of the purchase of a new truck and snow plow that will be used to clear the runway in the winter. They hope to get ten years of use from it.

The airport manager challenged them to come up with goals for the next two to four years. They will apparently take this up at future meetings. One member suggested that a goal should be a website. Presently neither the airport or airport authority has a website.

Across the road, something has happened at the MacAllister site. A green box is in place--one of the essential items on any construction site.

On Thursday evening the Park Board had its monthly meeting. There was discussion about the Staddon Field. The School Corporation owns the land, and earlier this year the Park Board or maybe the city offered $40,000 for it. That offer was rejected on a 5-2 vote. The School had the land appraised and the result came back at a bit more than $90,000. One member of the Park Board wanted to see if negotiations might move ahead if the Park could get the Blacker Trust (or the City--the Park Board does not have the money to purchase the property) to offer about $60,000. This idea was met with resistance. One member said that the School should be left to sit on the property, maintaining it. If they decided to sell it, it would not fetch $90,000, but it would fetch a lot of criticism for the school board members. There was agreement with this sentiment, so the matter did not go further.

Then there was more discussion of proposed ball field in Brookside Park. Again, the Park Board has no money to do this, but it is trying to put together a proposal that will be acceptable to the lawyer who controls the Rex Blacker Trust. The Park Board will try to get cost estimates for the various parts of their plan.

There was some discussion of the proposed Dog Park in Iroquois Park and how that project could be advanced.

It was noted that Kentland spent about $1.5 million to update their swimming pool. It apparently has added water-park features. As for the Rensselaer pool, on the last weekend the water level was unusually low. After the pool was closed, a crack in a pipe under the pool was discovered as the reason that the water level was not what it should have been.

And in completely unrelated news, a very long utility pole was delivered to the Melville substation this morning.