Late March meetings

The Rensselaer City Council had a short meeting on Monday evening. Former police chief Phillips announced that the Jasper County Drug Rehabilitation Center had officially opened on Monday. Then the Council opened a public hearing on proposed gas rate changes, at which no one spoke. The Council passed the changes, which had been introduced at the previous meeting. The Council next approved changes to the agreement with the AIM Medical Trust. Apparently this is some group to which the City belongs and the changes would affect distribution of assets if the Trust were to dissolve. The Cemetery Building Committee received permission to seek bids for a new Cemetery office and storage building. The Council gave the Mayor authority to seek bids on removing 60 trees that are mostly dying ash trees on City right-of-ways.

Mr Phillips said that a submarine called the U.S.S. Indiana would be commissioned next July and that a group was seeking to publicize the event. It wanted to form an endowment for scholarships. The Council approved a $250 contribution from the public relations fund.

Street resurfacing will begin on April 9. The biggest project will be resurfacing Grace Street from the bridge to College and the Street will be closed for that part of the project. Many other short segments of street will be resurfaced and I have tried to indicate which they are on the map below. (I do not guarantee it is 100% accurate.)

Progress continues on the water main project. The section of pipe from Iroquois Park to Milroy is finished.

I find it amazing that they can pull the pipe through the ground in the way that they do.

Work this week is on the pipe under Milroy. The directional driller is mid block, heading for the end of the street.

On Monday the crew working on the project hit a gas feed even though it had been marked and the gas department was doing repairs.

When they get to the end of Milroy, the water main must go below the big tile that drains Sparling. There are markings on Milroy that suggest that the pipe will be going from about six feet deep to more than ten feet.

The other meeting on Monday was of the Jasper County Planning Commission. It approved a recommendation of a rezone from A1 to A2 in the northern part of the county and then briefly discussed a change in the setbacks for CFOs. There will be a workshop on CFO setbacks and other CFO regulations presented by some Purdue people at the Fairgrounds on May 14 at 6:30. The Planning Commission will not take up the issue again until its May 21 meeting.

After the meeting I asked one of the County officials why the met tower item had not made the agenda though it had been mentioned at the previous meeting. She said that the promoters had not asked to have the item included. I got the impression that the wind farm people may not have signed up enough people yet for the project to proceed. Apparently there is a lot of opposition from farmers in the area and some is quite intense. Plus having a project that will be in two counties creates a lot more stopping points and regulatory burden.

Pulaski County is also discussing wind farms and had a meeting of their BZA and Plan Commission on Monday. They posted this on their Facebook Page: "Kudos to the P.C. Board of Zoning Appeals, Plan Commission, and staff, and most of all to the scores of residents who came out tonight to voice their opinions. Our community engaged over a controversial topic in a wonderfully civil, respectful manner, and the County will be considering the concerns of our residents seriously in reviewing and amending our Unified Development Ordinance."