More meetings

We are finally getting spring-like weather.  On Sunday a large crowd was watching a soccer game at Brookside Park.

On Monday evening the Rensselaer City Council met. They heard about an escort ride that will begin the Vietnam Wall event. The ride/parade will be on May 23 at 4:00 pm and will go through the downtown. The Wall project still needs volunteers; they are about 60% filled.

John Julien from Umbaugh was there to support a bond ordinance for constructing a second gas tap into the trunk line, this one in the Pleasant Ridge area. The ordinance sets out the conditions of the the bond and is a long legal document. The target is to sell the bonds in late June or July. The City is trying to buy a 1/3 acre lot near Pleasent Ridge at the tap point. The Council suspended rules so they could do the final passage of the ordinance at the meeting.

The Council then repealed an ordinance it had passed in 2015. That ordinance set conditions for anyone who wants to produce their own power (with solar panels, for example) and wants to interconnect their generation with the City grid. Recently IMPA changed policy and will now purchase power from anyone who has their own generation, so the City will no longer assume that role. It will, however, check any installation for safety and to make sure it meshes properly with the City electrical supply. Currently no one in Rensselaer is supplying their own power.

The Council next approved a contract with First Group, a company that assesses roads and which the City has previously used to support grants from the Community Crossings program, which funds a lot of the road construction currently underway in Rensselaer. The Council also approved spending $1900 to remove two trees (in addition to the 60 that are currently being removed). They are large trees, one on Vine and one on Front Street.

Prairie Arts Council received approval to use Potawatomi Park for the Rock the Arts Festival on July 28.

The City received an award for being a 10-year Tree City and will fly a Tree City flag in Milroy Park.

The Park has rescheduled its Spring Fling event for this coming Saturday from 9 till noon. On May 4 the fire men will have an all you can eat dinner at the fire station from 5:00-9:00 and on the same day the gas department hosts its Pipeline Awareness event.

Tree cutting is about 60% finished.

Paving on Grace Street may begin on Monday. Below is a picture of the sidewalk being installed along Grace Street.

The water main for Well 8 on Sparling has been installed except for the junction where Milroy meets Sparling. The crew ran into many problems last week as the bore hole kept collapsing and they had to dig out many spots. On Friday I saw them still working at 7:00 pm and was told that they did not finish until 11:00 pm. The connection at Sparling and Milroy is tricky because they must avoid a large storm sewer, a regular sewer line, and a water main.

Later in the evening the Jasper County BZA met to consider a special exception for a storage unit along SR 10 near Wheatfield. The lot is zoned general commercial, but the code says that storage units must be separately approved. This is a case that was before the BZA a couple times a few months ago. After an hour of discussion and concerns from neighbors, the special exception was approved. Perhaps the most humorous part of the proceeding was when a neighbor asked why there were surveyor stakes in his back yard, only to be told that those stakes marked the property line.