June is lovely

June is here and the warm, sunny weather this week has people dressing and acting like summer has arrived.

A bit of sunny news for Rensselaer arrived on Thursday when the City was informed that its OCRA grant proposal had been funded. The $550K grant will help purchase the land west of Sparling on which the City drilled a water well over a year ago and will also fund a water main that will take the water to the water treatment plant in Iroquois Park. The Rensselaer Republican was on the story and had it in today's paper.

On Friday morning the Park Department had an event called a Park Hop. It featured a proclamation by the Mayor about National Trails Day and then a walk on some of the City's trails. It appeared that most of the people attending were girls scouts.

 I took a look at the map on the table to see where our trails are. A lot of them use city streets and county roads.

 Lots of summer activities have started or are about to start. The Rensselaer Summer Swim Team has had its first meet (and had a record broken. That is impressive because the records go back to the 1970s.) Softball has begun at Brookside Park. LaRue Pool opens on Monday. I received a notice in my Rensselaer Adventures e-mail that St. Luke's Lutheran Church will host its Vacation Bible School June 12-16. The signs are up announcing Art Camp later in June, but registration closes June 9.

 The week saw a lot of changes at the Ember's Station Brewhouse. The last paving brick was placed, there are now decorative lights, and a fence is being erected.

 The manhole on Jefferson has been installed and the excavator is now in the back yard of the Jasper County Public Library where it will apparently dig a pit for another manhole.

 I noticed a crane doing something to the elevator north of the tracks.