A small town parade

In 2010 when I visited the Morocco Homecoming, I missed the parade. This year I was there early enough to catch it. Though every parade is different, it seemed to me that this parade was pretty typical of a small town parade. Near the beginning was parade's grand marshall  who is often driven in a convertible car, but not in this parade.

 There were some old trucks and cars.

 I saw only one tractor.

 And there was a really old car. Following it was a young man having a lot of fun driving a lawn tractor that was

 pulling a bunch of barrels mounted on wheels.

 A bit later there was another barrel train, though this one had no passengers.

From a kids point of view, this was a wonderful parade. The amount of candy thrown out was amazing for such a small parade. Representative Doug Gutwein was there dispensing candy. I did not bump into him after the parade, but I did have a long chat with another elected official, Paul Norwine, a Jasper County Council member.

Paul reminded me that the proposed transfer of assets agreement for the Jasper County Hospital was available in the Auditor's office in the court house. On Tuesday I stopped by to take a look at it. It is 53 pages long not counting the table of contents, which adds another four. It is a typical legal document spelling out exactly what is to happen and full of things that are meant to protect the parties involved. For example, there are sections that state that JCH has no outstanding issues with OSHA, the IRS, immigration laws, environmental matters, etc. The purchase price of the assets is the assumption of the hospital's liabilities. There is a reversion clause stating that if the hospital closes, after all liabilities are cleared, anything left will revert to Jasper County. The name of the acquiring party is Franciscan Health Care of Jasper County, Indiana. The new organization will set up a citizens advisory board of six to twelve people living in the area and not employed by the hospital, but it will be advisory only.

The most interesting section for many people will be pages 39 and a few that follow that discuss what happens to employees. They will be terminated by JCH when the agreement is initiated and hired by the new Franciscan Alliance organization subject to pre-employment screening procedures. Anyone on long-term disability leave will not be hired. FA will continue to employ enough people for 90 days so as to not constitute a mass layoff or plant closing. There will be a public hearing on this agreement on June 1 at the Fairgrounds at 7 pm. I suspect that most of those attending will be current employees and they will ask most of the questions.

I only skimmed through the document but I did not see anything surprising that was not covered at the working session of the county officials a week or two ago.

I do not know what or who the Morocco Stars are but they had kids pitching candy to other kids.

 Of course every or almost every fire truck and other vehicle from the area that has a siren was in the parade and more candy was tossed from some of them.

The parade ended the way a small town parade should end, with a few horses.

It was a nice parade. The only thing that was missing that if often in a small town parade was a marching band of some sort.

(I could not attend the city council meeting this week because they moved it to a night on which I had a prior commitment.)