4th of July

I hope you are having a fine Fourth of July. I have been hearing lots of explosions at night. If you are one of the people making the booms, watch the ears and keep your fingers intact.

On the 1st there was a community fireworks at the fairgrounds sponsored by the Tourism Commission. I watched with a number of others from Brookside Park. We could hear a competing display that was going on at Front and Grace.

 Blueberries are in season. The variety available when we went had almost all the berries ripening at the same time.

 This year the corn in many fields is only knee high by the fourth of July. I think someone once commented that it was supposed to be knee high when you were on horseback. Very little of the corn is that high.

Japanese beetles are out in force.

Lairdscape won a technology competition recently. See here and here.

The not-yet-open O'Reilly store got a new sign on Saturday.

 I think all the roads into SJC are now blocked. Some have cement barricades and others gates with locks on them.

On Saturday I asked a customer service rep at Strack and Van Til if their fate was sealed yet and was told that the auction had been delayed until July 6. Jewel has a bid in for a number of stores including the Rensselaer store, and unless someone comes with a higher bid, our store will probably soon be a Jewel.

On Monday the Commissioners met for their July meeting. There were public hearings for abandoning right-of-ways in the Forest Park Subdivision and the Woods Addition to the Forest Park Subdivision. Usually these public hearing attract little or no comment, but these took a while as several people wanted right-of-ways kept so lots they owned would not be landlocked and could be developed. The Commissioners agreed to all requests.

A person from Honeywell did a followup on energy savings. The company wants to sell the County services but I think the Commissioners are skeptical because of bad experiences with other vendors. They rejected the idea of a contract that guarantees energy savings because they said that these contracts meet the goals by adjusting the thermostats when they otherwise do not do enough to get real energy savings. They allowed Honeywell to investigate further and there will be another report in the September meeting.

The Speedway gas station project was back with new plans for the roads. They were accepted. The engineer for the company was scheduled to appear at the Drainage Board later in the day with revised plans for drainage. I had other commitments so did not attend that meeting.

The Sheriff reported that repairs had been made to the Northern annex/morgue. He asked for and was granted permission to replace three positions where people are leaving or retiring in the next 30 days.

The Commissioners heard a presentation on insurance for next year. If I heard correctly, the bill will be about $20,000 lower, almost entirely due to lower Workman's Compensation costs.

There followed a long series of things of little interest except to the people directly affected. I left at about 10:30 when they had a break.