Meetings 2-25-2019

Monday's City Council meeting was very short, lasting only twenty minutes. The two senior members were absent, on vacation to Florida. After a transfer of funds to pay for engineering costs of Community Crossing and other grants items, City Project Coordinator Jerry Lockridge reported that the City had submitted a grant proposal to the Next Level Trails program. (See here.) The proposal would be for a trail that would connect Brookside Park with the Fairgrounds and the requested amount was $700,000 to $800,000. The grant is an 80-20 match with the State providing the 80%. Rick Odle suggested that there might be some blowback if the proposal is funded because there are many sidewalks in Rensselaer that are in bad shape. On the other hand, a sidewalk to the Fairgrounds is something that people have suggested in the past and it would fill a need. As someone who has biked, jogged, and walked a great deal, I have found sidewalks on lightly traveled streets have little use because it is easier to walk in the street. They are important along heavily-trafficked roads and this is why I was so happy that the south part of Grace Street got a decent sidewalk last year.

The Council voted to proceed with the grant. The City should learn in a month or two whether the grant proposal is accepted.

The Council voted to approve Kevin Armold as its appointment to the Rensselaer Central School Board. There were three applicants for the slot and this appointment fills the remainder of the term to which Jacob Ahler was appointed. (He resigned when he became attorney for the County Council, which usually meets at the same time the School Board meets.)

The strong winds that we had over the weekend caused three power outages. The wind also forced open the Police Department door, causing minor damage.

The Gas Department has received a grant of $2600 to cover the cost of the Pipeline Awareness Open House that is scheduled for May 3. The money comes from fines imposed on those who hit gas pipelines when digging. Well # 8 (on Sparling) has been in operation since February 15. The City now has three water wells supplying City water.

The other meeting on Monday night was the Jasper County Plan Commission meeting at 7:00 pm. I was very surprised to see a packed room when I arrived because the only item on the agenda was a proposed ordinance for solar energy systems that had been discussed at the previous meetings of the Plan Commission and tabled for changes. It had not appeared to be controversial at the previous meeting. I suspect that most of the audience was there expecting something related to wind turbines.

The proposed ordinance was put together by a group of people, some of whom were not members of the Plan Commission. They had started with an ordinance from Shelby County and then made changes suggested by other ordinances that they found. Very few counties currently have a solar farm ordinance. The floor was open to public discussion and there were only two comments, neither of much significance. The discussion by committee members had periods of long silence as they looked over the ordinance. There were questions about setbacks. From what I could discern, there is a 200 foot setback to a residence and a 50 foot setback to a property line. There was one change made to the draft and it struck me as procedurally strange. It was a motion to amend, but there was no motion on the floor to amend. Finally a motion was made and passed to send the ordinance to the Commissioners with a favorable recommendation. It should be on the March Commissioners agenda.

The floor was then open to public comments. One person suggested that a committee be formed to review wind turbine setbacks and Mary Scheurich said that such a committee had already been formed but it had not yet met. Another person complained that the setbacks in the wind turbine ordinance would prevent him from selling his land for residences. He was told several times that the setbacks were not reciprocal (that is, the setbacks applied to the wind turbine developers did not apply to people building houses) but he did not seem to understand what that meant.

I found a map showing electrical generating stations of the U.S. on the internet. (See here.) It is not quite up-to-date because it does not have the second Rensselaer solar plant. If you zoom in, you can see the location of every large wind turbine in the U.S. as well as the solar farms, the nuclear plants, the hydro plants, and even facilities generating energy from biomass.

I saw an early sign of Spring in the Walmart parking lot.

I noticed a large flock of Canadian geese in the Babcock Quarry. There were three white geese with the flock. Anyone know what they were? Snow geese? Domesticated geese?

With all the discussion of setbacks to protect people from injury, annoyance, and inconvenience, I have been wondered what the appropriate setbacks would be for some of the common things that are dangerous or annoying. Based on the number of people injured or killed in automobiles, roads should have setbacks. I think 500 feet from any residence would be sufficient for highways. Maybe city streets could get by with 200 feet, though when people ride past on deafening motorcycles or in cars with music so loud that it rattles windows, 500 feet would be better. Railroads carry hazardous materials and they can derail, as we experienced in Rensselaer late in 2017. They are also extremely loud. A setback of at least 1000 feet seems reasonable. Trees can cause conflict among neighbors when the leaves on one person's tree fall on the yard of another. A setback of at least 50 for a tree would reduce this problem (and we could eliminate it by banning trees). The setback could be adjusted to the species of the tree. I have heard farmers complaining about neighbors who do not apply herbicides carefully and as a result injure or kill the crops of neighbors. A simple solution would be to have setbacks: prohibit farmers from planting within 100 feet of the property line. If there needs to be setbacks for solar panels when they are in solar solar farms, why shouldn't the same setbacks apply to anyone who wants to install solar panels on a roof? I think I have just scratched the surface of where setbacks could be applied.