Meetings, etc.

On Monday evening both the Jasper County BZA and the Jasper County Planning Commission met. I was hoping that they would have another CAFO item and a rezone for the scrubbing station of the proposed methane pipeline on the agenda, but apparently the notices for those items were published too late to include in the agenda. There will probably be a special meeting on September 30 at 7:00 to consider those items.

However, there was one CAFO item on the agenda, something left over from last month's meeting. At that meeting it was observed that a couple of houses seemed to fall in the buffer zone, which is within 1320 feet of a foundation for a building on the CAFO. So the project's organizers were back seeking a variance for that regulation. One house owner had no problems with it, but a second, who were just within the buffer zone, being more than 1200 feet but less than 1320 feet from one of the foundations, objected, arguing that rebuilding the CAFO would seriously reduce the value of their property. They had purchased it after hogs had been removed from the site and had assumed that it would remain abandoned. Despite this objection, the BZA passed the variance.

The rest of their meeting and that of the Planning Commission were occupied with changes in policies and procedures. These will be presented in a clean form and voted on in a future meeting. Among the changes were a change in the normal meeting date to the third Monday of the month and a limitation on length of public comments. The argument here was that sometimes comments get disorderly or ramble, and the limit may help keep meetings orderly and that it can be waived whenever the Board or Commission (both meetings discussed policies and procedures) felt that public discussion and comments were helpful. There were several other changes that each of the meetings approved.

On Friday the Tourism Commission met. It received a report on the Touch of Dutch festival, which attracted an estimated 7000-8000 people. It ended up in the black and the proceeds will be used to fund other Chamber of Commerce events. One thing they found useful this year were two-way radios, which were loaned to them by another festival. The Touch-of-Dutch spokeswoman suggested that this might be something that Tourism Commission might purchase for use by County festivals.

The Commission also heard reports from the International Woman's Day event held in March and the JC Cruisers Car Show and Cruise. The Director of Tourism is planning a Jasper County bike ride for October 2020. The Remington Ride is no more and there seems to be considerable interest in this kind of event. It may have an agri-tourism focus.

The Memories Alive Weston Cemetery Walk had its dress rehearsal over the weekend. Some people think this is a event that is supposed to be scary or creepy. It is not. It tries to honor various people who have contributed to making the community, state, or nation a better place, or who have an interesting and informative story to tell. It takes the form of theater to make history entertaining.

If you know the Cemetery well, you might be able to figure out one of the persons honored from the picture below.

Saint Augustine's had its Fall Frolic on Saturday night. There where a lot of little kids there. They seemed to really enjoy trying to dunk people in the dunk tank.

The big earth moving machines are busy working on the new ball fields. John's Brothers is installing drainage tile and other equipment is smoothing the surface.