What a difference a day makes

Below is a picture of the old Monnett School building taken on Wednesday. (The white is fog, not snowfall.)

Below is a picture taken Thursday morning of the same scene. What a difference a night with temperatures in the 50s makes.

Tomorrow a cold front will pass and winter will return.

Below are two pictures of the river from the cemetery bridge taken a few minutes before each of the pictures above. The effect of the warm weather is less dramatic. The ice must have been pretty thick after the two weeks of very cold weather.

The construction crew at the old fire station took advantage of the warm weather to pour the new floor for the future police station.

 When I got there, most of the floor was already done.

 Mention was made in the last City Council meeting of problems with part of the floor in the office part of the building. I did not wait to see if they would pour this part as well.

 On Thursday the CSX crew was back at work, this time fixing the north rail spur. If you look carefully, you might see that the south spur has a gap to the west of the crossing. I had not noticed the road damage before. Perhaps it was there and covered with snow. They seem to be finished with work on the main line.

The Rensselaer Republican had an article about what is going on at SJC that will be of interest to those who are concerned about this topic. You can read it here even if you do not have a subscription. Their new model allows non-subscribers a limited (I think it is 5 or 6) articles a month. Choose your articles carefully (or subscribe).

The Park Board and the Park Corporation had their first meeting on Tuesday evening. (A brief explanation of the two is here.) The meeting had a confused start because there was no quorum for the Park Board, and the Park Board needed to approve the three members who are only members of the Park Corporation. About ten minutes into the meeting, the quorum was reached with the late arrival of a member and the routine business to start the year was quickly done.

The Board heard from a representative of the soccer program, which was happy with the arrangement from last year, though they had concerns about the need for an intermediate field. The Board approved continuing the contract on the same terms as last year.

Discussion then turned to what projects should be fast-tracked. Because a walking path in Bicentennial Park and the dog park are both fairly inexpensive and much of the work can be done without contractors, there was consensus that they should be started this spring or even before spring. The dog park currently is waiting for a big donation to earn naming rights, and if there is no such donation, it may be named the Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson Dog Park. (As for why, see here.)

There was brief discussion of Pop Warner football, which last year used the north end of Brookside Park for practices. There was also concern about how future construction might impact the various uses of the parks.

The final discussion was about priorities, and the group decided that the first priority should be in the Monnett/Staddon Field area, in part because it is more visible than Brookside Park. There was a meeting on Wednesday of the Parks for People group that ultimately decides where money will be spent and I have not heard what happened there. Maybe I will hear at the next Park Board meeting on Feb 5th at City Hall (6:00 pm).

Finally, the Jasper/Newton Foundation is hosting a "speed dating" event, not for romantic purposes but for not-for-profit organizations and potential volunteers. It will be on Jan 30 at the Carnegie Center from 7 till 8 pm CST.