More long meetings

Monday's City Council meeting lasted an hour. There was only one really important item, a review of a grant application that the City is making to the Rural Development, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The City will be asking for $5,211,500 for sewer improvements. The largest part of the project will be a new lift station just to the east of Weston Cemetery. The existing plant (shown below) was built in the early 1960s and it is beyond its useful life. The grant application notes that sewer gases including hydrogen sulfide and methane can permeate the entire building, causing both a safety hazard and degrading electrical equipment. In addition, the project will extend sewer service to 41 new customers, 20 on the Owen Street line, nine on West Washington, and 12 along Clark.

The City has a combined storm sewer system where storm water from the streets goes into the sewer system Heavy rains overwhelm the system causing sewage to be dumped into the river. The State is monitoring the progress the City is making in separating the storm sewers from the sewage system, and in recent years the Melville project and the high rate treatment plant have been undertaken to meet State requirements. The reason for moving on this project now is that Rural Development has extra money this year and that means that the project has an excellent chance of being funded. The deadline for getting the application in is August 1.

In other business the Council wrote off some bad debt and closed an account fund. I did not understand exactly what this was about but it seems to be related to new software that utility billing is using. The Council decided to change the meal allowances from set maximums for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to a daily per-diem maximum. They established a tipping policy for reimbursing employees traveling on City business; the tip cannot exceed 20% the cost of the service. (The City auditors had said that without a tipping policy the City cannot reimburse tips.) There was also a discussion of whether City employees should be able to charge expenses of spouses traveling with them to the City credit card and reimburse the City later. The City attorney was asked to find if there were State regulations on this issue.

The Police Department will be doing a big move to their new offices next week. The parking lot at the new building may not drain properly so will be fixed so water will drain to Harrison Street. Plans from Autumn Trace, the company that plans to build an assisted living complex south of Fountain Stone, will have a technical review Thursday and the company should break ground in the next month. Walnut Street from Cullen to McKinley will be repaved by Town and Country for a bid of $21,695.

The meeting adjourned at 7:00 and I hurried across the street to get to the BZA meeting at the Court House. I arrived as the Board was in the process of approving the minutes and I found a seat in the packed room. The first item on the agenda was a variance for Interstate Farms for setbacks. This item had been on the agenda in the June meeting but a tie vote on a finding of fact had brought consideration to a close. The attorney for the Board had researched the law to see what the next step would be. The opinion of an attorney representing a group opposing the CAFO was that a tie vote ended the matter and the next step for the applicant was to go to court. However, the BZA's attorney said he could find no case law supporting that and other case law suggested otherwise. Further, the matter had never been closed with a final vote. So his opinion was that proceeding with rehearing the matter was appropriate now that all members of the BZA were present.

Don Shelman again made the case for the variance. He noted that State law requires that actions of the BZA needs majority approval and that had not happened at the previous meeting. He made essentially the same presentation that had been made in a special June meeting for the Planning Commission in seeking the rezone from A1 to A3 and at the BZA in June seeking a special exception and a variance. He did note that on July 17 the hog farm had received a permit from IDEM, so the variance was the last remaining regulatory hurdle to overcome.

The variance was for setbacks from property lines. The current regulation requires setbacks of 1000 feet to adjoining A1 properties. Mr Shelman noted that all property owners except one on the Northwest supported the project and that the closest residence was almost a mile away. A representative of Carpenter Creek Winery again expressed his opposition, arguing that the hog farms had the potential to seriously injure his business. However, when the votes were taken, two of the findings of fact passed 3 to 1 and the other, the one that had had the tie vote, passed 4 to 0. (At this meeting the Chairman did not vote, which is why there were not five votes.) The variance was granted by a 3-to-1 vote.

The second item on the agenda was a request for a use variance from Von Excavating for 3.68 acres of a 65 acre parcel in Kankakee Township on SR 49. The land in question is being used for storage of materials and may in the future be used for retail sales of those materials. The question that immediately arose is why they were not requesting a rezone and the answer as that none of the zoning categories seemed to fit. After discussion, a motion was made and passed that consideration on the matter be delayed until the petitioner discovers what the State requires for them to access the site from SR49.

The BZA adjourned at 8:45 and the Plan Commission began its meeting. However, this post is long enough so an account of that meeting will have to wait for another post.