The travels of Jasper

On July 19 the Commissioners met for a second time during the month in a meeting continued from their July 5 meeting. The primary purpose of the meeting was to prepare grant submissions to the State for road repairs. The consultant was late because of traffic, so they heard an update on Bicentennial preparations.

The most interesting bit of that discussion was the news that Jasper, the county bison, will not be able to attend the Touch of Dutch festival. He will be vacationing at the Indiana State Fair. The State Fair will have a display of 50 county bison and the bison are not allowed to leave the grounds during their stay. The thought was that this would expose Jasper County to a lot of people and because Jasper is impressively decorated, he might have a chance to win one of the two awards given, on by the panel of judges and the other the people’s choice award.

The bicentennial  group would like to buy some large flower pots to decorate the Court House steps and to paint some green benches blue. There was also some discussion of buying a trailer to transport the bison.

The grant application for roads will probably be submitted next week. Kevin Kelly, head of Jasper County Economic Development Organization, is trying to round up letters of support for the various projects--they add weight to the applications. One comment that I thought interesting is that now that the state has gotten the counties to inventory and rate their roads, they will be better able to micromanage what the counties are doing with maintenance.

The county fair came to Rensselaer on Tuesday night with the annual Retired Iron parade to the farmers market. This year the route went down Jackson Street because Lincoln is closed for construction of the storm water treatment plant.

I recently posted some pictures of the remodeling of Halas and Gallagher Halls at SJC. Below are two that show many of the stages of work. On the left below are the original facades, and then to the right give different stages of work.

Two additional stages are shown on Halas, which is further along in the remodeling.

I also posted a picture of work on a state-highway building. It is now getting is covering replaced.

The city has been doing line work on the utility poles. Below three bucket trucks are being used to replace a pole.

The Rensselaer Urban Forestry Council has planted trees along Angelica Street.