City Council meeting, 6-24-2019

The Rensselaer City Council met for its second June meeting Monday evening. It approved an update to an old ordinance that goes far beyond the old ordinance. It establishes an ordinance violation bureau that can collect fines for various offenses. Seven pages long, it is hard to summarize. It includes a schedule of fines for violations of traffic ordinances, health and sanitation ordinances, animal violations, and other violations. It also lists a variety of nuisance violations that apply to the exterior premises of a property. Although at the meeting there was an opinion that the ordinance does not have to be published, I expect that it will soon appear in the legal section of the Rensselaer Republican.

The Council approved an electric tracker that is a $6.31 decrease per 1000 kilowatt hours and then approved four bids for road work. Three had been opened at the last Council meeting and given to the City's engineering consultant. The Council approved a paving bid of $1,136,103.45 from Town and Country, a crack seal bid of $7,466.50 from Pavement Solutions, and a preservation seal amount of $23,708.48 from RejuvTec. A fourth bid, for microsurfacing, was opened and because there was only one bid, Pavement Solutions for $33,404.23, it was approved by the Council pending approval of the engineering consultant.

Mr Lockridge asked for and was given approval to seek bids to replace two one-ton trucks. They are 2003 and 2005 models with more than $100,000 miles and are beginning to have increased repair costs. One is for the water department and the other for the street department.

Two requests for public relations funds were approved, one for the retirement of an employee of the electric department and the other for an employee picnic in August.

Carpet is scheduled to be installed this week in the remodel of the old police department into an office for the Clerk-Treasurer. The Fire Department will be budgeting for cancer insurance for its volunteers who lack a cancer policy.

The Mayor said that about 100 communities with combined sewer overflows are lobbying IDEM to adopt the EPA standards of 2012. He said that he would like a relaxed schedule. These are unfunded mandates that have already cost the City millions of dollars and will cost it more millions in the future.

Last weekend the Rock the Arts festival had good weather and sizable crowds. Below is a picture of one of the inflatables that was set up for the event.

 Tonight (Thursday) is the first of three performances of the Carnegie Players' The Drowsy Chaperone. On Saturday the Fair Association has a fish or chicken dinner from 5:00 till 7:30 and fireworks when it gets dark. The new dog park will have its grand opening and ribbon cutting on Monday at 1:00. This past week the park got last-minute landscaping.

 The new bakery will open on Monday.

Severe storms passed through Jasper County late Wednesday and early Thursday, affecting the area north of Rensselaer much more than Rensselaer. REMC reported about 1500 members had power outages and there was some hail damage.

From the legal notices in the Rensselaer Republican, it appears that Wheatfield Township is seeking a fourth round of bids for a new fire station.

Finally, on Thursday morning the Rensselaer Redevelopment Commission met and approved merging the Drexel and Fair Grounds TIF districts. This action was suggested by one of the City's financial advisors. The advantage is that it would allow the City to sell a considerably bigger bond issue if it needs to finance future improvements. (The new fire station, the renovation of the old fire station into the police station, and the Melville Street project are past examples of projects funded by TIF bonds.) The TIF merger still needs Plan Commission and City Council approval. A possible use for bond funding is downtown renovation. The City and the County seem ready to cooperate on the project.