A long and a short

There were two public meetings on Monday evening. The City Council meeting lasted about 15 minutes and the County BZA meeting lasted about an hour and forty minutes.

There were only three councilmen at the City meeting, which was enough for a quorum but any vote had to be unanimous to count. All three voted for the ordinance for responsible bidding practices that had been discussed at the previous meeting. Next the Council heard the recommendation from the ad-hoc cemetery committee. It recommended increasing prices and fees because they have not been adjusted in over ten years and they have fallen behind what other cemeteries are charging. For example, they recommended raising the price of a cemetery plot from $400 to $500 and charging for disinterments. Even with the increases, the charges will average about 70% of what other cemeteries are charging. The Council voted to approve the increases, but the vote was meaningless. The vote that will count will be for an ordinance that will be introduced at the next meeting. The changes will not go into effect for another 30 days after that ordinance is passed, so if you are planning to be buried in Weston Cemetery and do not own a lot, now would be a good time to buy.

Parts for the aerial truck have arrived and perhaps it will be soon fixed. The gas department gave notice that it would be replacing some regulators later this year. 

Forty five minutes later the County BZA meeting started. There were four causes on the agenda, none of much public interest, but still interesting for the stories behind them. Before the Board got to them, however, it elected officers for 2020. They decided no change was a good idea and kept Scott Walstra as Chair and Lance Strange as Vice-Chair.  

There were two petitions for setback variances and two for frontage variances. In the first of the frontage cases a lady who is now in Oak Grove Village in DeMotte wants to sell lots she owns. One lot will have sufficient frontage once a platted road is finished, but until then it does not. It is very difficult to sell a lot that does not meet requirements, so she wanted a variance to make selling the lot easier. It was granted.

The second frontage case involved a property with a house that is set back a quarter of a mile from the road. The owner would like to sell the house and not the crop land that surrounds it, so would like to separate the parcel with the house and outbuildings and include only a 30 foot-wide access. The Board approved that.

The first setback case was for a property that previously had a house but the house had burned down. The property then went into foreclosure and was purchased at a sheriff's sale. The new owner apparently removed the ruins and also the foundation and put in a new foundation. The applicant was a person interested in purchasing the property, but it is too close to the highway. If the original foundation had been left, it would not have to meet the new requirements of the code; it would have been grandfathered in. Further, the owner did not get a building permit to do the work that was done—rules were ignored. The applicant wanted to purchase the property, build a home, and sell it. Probably mostly because the rules were ignored and the people who ignored them should have known better, the petition was denied. The applicant may yet be able to build. If the concrete block that is evident on the site was placed on the original footers, there would be no need for an variance. If building is not possible, I wonder if the property will be allowed to go into foreclosure again.

The last case was for a lady who had built a barn on her property with living quarters that were occupied while the house was built. She financed the house with a construction loan and then went to the bank for a mortgage. The bank required that the lot be surveyed and the results showed that the barn was five feet too close to the road. She needed the variance to get the mortgage loan. (The barn should have been 90 feet from the center of the road and she apparently measured 70 feet from the edge of the road.) Because altering the barn was not feasible and it was a mistake made in good faith, the Board granted the variance.

The BZA would like to find a way to eliminate mistakes like one in the paragraph above. The matter will be taken up at a future Plan Commission meeting.

On Wednesday the house on Cullen  Clark that the City purchased last year was demolished. At 9:00 the garage was gone.

At about 10:30 most of the house was in the dumpster. The property will be used for parking for the new ball fields. One of the entrances may be at this site.

Here is what was left at noon.

At 2:30 it was all gone.

I believe it was Johns Brothers that did the demolition. In a week or two they may begin removing the wreckage from the Town Mall fire.

The SJC sign by the highway is functioning again. I thought it was funny that it was advertising Ivy Tech.

Finally, here is a mystery photo. Do you know where this was taken.

County Council and more

The Jasper County Council met on Tuesday evening for a meeting that lasted longer than I expected. It began with the annual election of officers. The Council stayed with the 2019 slate, Rein Bontreger as President and Andrew Andree as Vice President. It then rather quickly reversed a transfer of funds for the Animal Control that it had made at the last meeting (no clear explanation as to why the original transfer was a mistake), approved the annual contract for its lawyer, Jacob Ahler, and approved a 3.25% raise for the part-time building inspector. This last item was formally adopted later in the meeting when the Council approved an amendment to the salary ordinance that adjusted pay for the election board, public safety, and planning and development.

The discussion slowed as the Council took up an ordinance for financing the Kankakee River project. This project is partially funded by a FEMA grant. FEMA does not send the money up front but rather reimburses 50% of expenses. Hence, the County will need to write checks for large sums and after a delay will receive a payment from the Federal Government. It will be able to write those checks with a line of credit from a bank, which is a way of doing short-term borrowing. Initially the County was thinking of using DeMotte State Bank for the line of credit but the Drainage Board had an established a line of credit with First Merchants Bank (for a past project) and it is quicker and cheaper to utilize this line of credit than opening a new line. The ordinance establishes the framework for this financing and it is expected that the accounts will be audited by the Federal Government so the County wants bookkeeping to make that auditing as painless as possible. The ordinance passed.

Next there was a very long discussion about payments to the County Coroner. The Coroner, who also runs a funeral home, conducts some duties using funeral-home equipment. The County reimburses her for this. The State Board of Accounts is not happy with the documentation that the County has provided about how this reimbursement is handled. The gist of the discussion was how to make the State Board of Accounts happy and keep costs to the County and the Coroner as low as possible.

Next was an item not on the agenda but that has been discussed in several past meetings, an ordinance establishing criteria for tax abatement. The Council passed it but it will not become part of the County Code until the Commissioners also pass it. It should be on the Commissioner's agenda for the February 10th meeting.

Mention was made of the former PNC Bank building. The contractors and the County have been having a difficult time working with subcontractors getting the elevator operating. The Probation Department will probably not move into the building until the end of February.

The two ambulance services from the north part of the County were at the meeting and talked to the Council about the difficulties they are having financially. The 2020 budget did not give them as much money as they think they need to pay their staff a competitive wage and to keep current with equipment. At the last Commissioners' meeting I was under the impression that the Council would need to make an additional appropriation to cover the increases that the ambulance services received but apparently the existing budget was able to handle them.

Finally, the Sherif talked about adding a third canine unit to the department. Although the initial costs will be covered by donations, the addition will cost about $8000 per year. The Council made a commitment to take care of the extra expenses at budget time. With that, the meeting adjourned.

Flu is running rampant though the Rensselaer School System with absences at or above 20% of the students. As a result, Thursday and Friday will be e-learning days.

The Wednesday Rensselaer Republican had an article about the status of Genova Products. The company issued a press release (which you can find here) that suggests that the basic issue was financing. I suspect that they were having the financing problem—obtaining credit from a bank—because they were losing money.

We had a really cold weekend with temperatures as low as 5 degrees on Sunday morning. I shot the picture below of ice on the window of a door.

 The slow dismantling of the old bottling plant/laundry continues.

 Finally, I found the magazine rack at Strack and Van Til interesting. People must no longer be reading many magazines, though there are still some at the check-out lines. Speaking of people reading less, have you noticed that there have been staff changes at the Rensselaer Republican?

Ribbon Cutting ASG Staffing

ASG Staffing, which opened this year in part of the building that houses the 5/3 Bank, had its official ribbon cutting on Thursday.

ASG Staffing is a temp-to-perm employment agency. Companies that need workers contract with them and they do the initial screening of potential employees. When they find someone suitable, that person will go to work for the company but is considered an employee of ASG Staffing and gets the paycheck from ASG Staffing. If after a trial period the company decided that it likes the work of the person, the company hires the person permanently and the connection to ASG Staffing is cut.

ASG Staffing is a privately-held company with headquarters in Chicago. It serves Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. The Rensselaer office will serve not just Rensselaer but neighboring communities as well. With the Internet, the service area of agencies such as this one are expanded. A potential employee might never have to visit the Rensselaer office. Much of the paper work can be done on-line and the ASG Staffing representative may travel to the potential employee.

ASG Staffing is in part of the building that last was an office of Farm Credit, which is now located south of Walmart. The building is owned by 5/3 and there is still vacant space in it. Originally this wing had three or four different offices of accountants and other service businesses. I do not remember any of them.

The Jasper County Historical Society has a display of bank artifacts in the display case next to the genealogical section. A few of the items are really old, such as this note from the 1880. I think this was Zimri Dwiggin's first bank.

I do not know what the Trust and Savings Bank was. The two checks are from 1911 and both written by Charles Spitler. The Spitlers were an influential early Rensselaer family and Charles was mayor from 1914 until 1922. The State Bank of Rensselaer opened in 1904 and eventually was bought out by a larger bank, maybe National City Bank. In 1933 it moved into the building that is now CI insurance and later the building that now houses the County Prosecutor office and previously PNC Bank. The first fifty years of the bank are summarized in a document available in four parts on the Internet: here, here, here, and here. With the closing of the PNC branch, Rensselaer's connection with the State Bank of Rensselaer ended.

Also on display is a very old bank note from the Bank of Rensselaer. This may be the Thompson-McCoy bank. It is from the 1850s. If you search the Internet for images of <Bank of Rensselaer Indiana> you can find pictures of similar notes in much better condition (such as here).

In the 19th century most bank liabilities were bank notes, not deposits. There were payments by checks, but paying with checks did not become widespread until the 20th century. And now checks are dying out as we make payments electronically.

The Carnegie Center is currently hosting the annual Primary School Art Exhibit. It is a short-running exhibit, only until Jan 26.

The Carnegie Center is getting its windows restored. The goal is to recreate what was there when the Carnegie Center was built, so if you are expecting to see something modern, you will be disappointed. They are even using panes of glass that have the wavy imperfections that were standard a century ago.

Finally, I noticed a new office downtown. Attorney Lori James has moved into the space that until recently was used by Dr. Sheetz (who has moved back to the medical arts building at the end of Washington Street). Ms James had been in the office of Beaver and Beaver.

Finally, here is some news from SJC.

(edited)

Minor flooding

The heavy rains late last week sent the Iroquois River over the flood level as measured at Laird's Landing. The River crested at about 12.5 feet with flood stage at 12 feet. A couple roads in Weston Cemetery were closed.

The water covered the bridge that separates two parts of the Cemetery.

 The mural on the retaining wall got its feet wet. The sandhill crane looked like it was swimming with a reflection.

Below is the graph of the River level as measured by the gauging station. There were higher river levels in previous years; no daily records were set.

The Rensselaer City Council met on Monday with two new members. Russ Overton and Noelle Weishaar replaced  Scott Barton and Rick Odle.

The meeting began with the swearing in of a new police officer, Justin Wilson. The Council elected George Cover as president of the Council, which means that he presides over meetings in the absence of the mayor. It then approved the establishment of a Fire Billing Service Fund. The Fire Department will begin using a billing service to bill insurance companies for whatever can be collected and the fund will be placed in this account. The gas tracker for January will be a 5.25¢ increase per hundred cubic feet.

Next Jeff Phillips, who now works for the Foundation for Fair Contracting, (I think their web page is here) gave the Council members a handout that outlined what the organization does. He would like the Council to adopt an ordinance that would set some criteria for contractors bidding on City projects in excess of $150,000. The ordinance would give grounds for rejecting a low bid if the contractor seems to be one that performs substandard work. No action was taken at this meeting and the matter will be on the agenda of the January 27 meeting.

Police Chief Anderson was scheduled to talk about a software upgrade, but the County, which is taking the lead in this matter, still has steps to take. The software the department is currently using will no longer be maintained by the vendor so a change must be made. The County should be making a decision in late February or early March.

The Mayor appointed a committee (Overton and Watson) to review cemetery pricing. Prices were last adjusted in 2007.

The Mayor and the Council appointed people to a lot of commissions and boards. Many were re-appointments. The Mayor announced that a utility-pole contract is being prepared with NITCO and CenturyLink and will be presented at the next meeting. In other announcements, the Police Chief said that a newly hired officer is beginning his 16-week training at the police academy. Mr Haun said that the aerial truck remains out of service and may be fixed in February. Mr Lockridge said that design of the sewer project continues. Construction may begin by the end of the year. The meeting adjourned at 6:40.

I noticed that Fair Oaks Farms is getting ready to open its next attraction, a robotic dairy. The dairy is in operation now and tours will begin in a few months. There was an announcement of their plans in several ag publications in November and the first announcements of plans was in late 2017. Search the Internet for "fair oaks farms robotic dairy" for more information.

Things we welcome and things we do not

We are already ten days into 2010 2020. Tempus fugit!

A week ago I was traveling on SR 10 in the northern part of the County and was surprised to see many sandhill cranes. I had assumed that they would have flown south by now.

On Thursday evening there was a meeting that was part of an effort to form a Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area (CISMA) group in Jasper County. Its purpose would be to educate people about the problem of invasive plant species. Native plants have many different insects that feed on them and help keep them under control. Sometimes a plant from abroad, which has natural controls in its native environment, will not have insect predators when it arrives in the a new environment and will expand rapidly, crowding out native plants and thus harming native insects and animals. Starting sometime this spring selling, bartering, or giving any of 44 different plants will be illegal. (See the article here.) More information about invasives can be found at this link. There were 17 people at the meeting and the next meeting, if you are interested in the topic, is tentatively planned for Feb 20 at 6:00 pm in the Carnegie Center.

The Tourism Commission had a meeting scheduled for Friday at 10:00 in the Court House. The meeting did not have a quorum, so no actions were taken. Ed Feight, who is an appointee of the Rensselaer mayor, submitted a letter of resignation. Most of the meeting was taken up by a discussion of the DeMotte Little League program. (See their website here.) The Demotte Little League had received a grant from the Tourism Commission for $8500 to restore nine ball fields. DeMotte owns the fields and leases them to the Little League group. In addition to filling in the non-grass areas with new fill, the group replaced scoreboards, added dugouts to the five fields that did not have them, and renovated a concession stand. All of this cost much more than the $8500, but there were grants from others and fundraising. The next big project the group wants to tackle is lighting, which will be expensive and they plan to make a presentation at the next Tourism Commission meeting on February 7.

This past year DeMotte Little League added a challenger division, which is for kids with disabilities. They were awarded one of the State Little League tournaments for 2020, for the 8-9-10 year-old girls. They may get another tournament in 2023 for baseball.

I found a link to an article by Larry DeBoar, who writes on local economies. (See here.) He found GDP date for counties. (See here.) Jasper County had a GDP of $1,311,535,000 in 2018, which was the 45th highest in Indiana but was down from the previous three years. Our growth rate was almost the lowest in the State. I thought that might be due to the SJC closing, but I found another table (starting here, clicking GDP in current dollars) that suggested it was due to a drop in agricultural production. The numbers for agriculture seem to be very low, so I may be missing something.

Finally, I received an e-mail from Work One asking that I spread the word that Work One is still providing services. Below is the attachment they sent.

Did you know that good weather in the summer is good for the hotel business, but good weather in the winter is bad for the hotel business?

A couple of meetings to start the new year

The first of the 2020 Commissioners meetings took place on Monday morning. It began with the election of officers for the new year. There were no changes from the past year. Kendall Culp is chair and Jim Walstra vice-chair.

Tim Flinn, the Veteran's Service Officer for the County, had sent the Commissioners a letter asking for support for legislation that may be proposed in the next State legislature. The idea he was trying to get support for would allow gaming machines in the local VFW and American Legion posts with revenue split between the posts, four State-wide veterans organizations, and the county service offices. He said that Ohio and Illinois have something similar. The Commissioners were willing to support a request for additional funding but were hesitant to promote more gambling. They will seek additional information, such as what bills are likely to be introduced at the next legislative session, before they act.

Next was a continuation from the December 27th meeting of discussion of support for the three township EMS services. In the past the funding for the township EMS services had been based on the bid for the central EMS services, currently provided by Phoenix. That link will be cut going forward. Using a formula that takes into account a variety of factors, the Keener ambulance service will get an 8% increase, Wheatfield a 12% increase, and Southern a 1% increase. These amounts exceed what was budgeted, so the issue now goes to the County Council, which will need to approve an additional appropriation before the increases can take effect.

Next on the agenda was a request for additional stop signs at the intersection of 1225 N and 900 W. Nothing was done on this item because a public hearing is required before any action of the Commissioners. The public hearing will be held at the February meeting (which is on the 10th, a week later than normal.)

Stephen Eastridge, head of the Jasper County Economic Development Organization, gave the Commissioners an update. The JCEDO office was one of those destroyed in the Town Mall fire. They are temporally working from an office at the REMC building north of town. They should be closing on a new property across the street from the Court House by the end of the month. They will renovate it before moving in. JCEDO has hired an economic development coordinator who will be starting at the end of the month. They continue to push a development strategy based on adding value to the agriculture of the County and are cooperating with the neighboring rural counties in that endeavor. Mr Eastridge also reported on the recommendations coming from the task force formed in response to the NIPSCO closing news. The two focus items for this year are revisions the the County's Comprehensive Plan and creating TIF districts on three of the County's I-65 interchanges.

A variety of bids were opened at the meeting and the Commissioners, as they usually do, accepted all of them. Many of the bids are for materials for road repair and the cheapest price will differ depending on where in the County the materials are needed. Transportation of the materials can be as expensive as the materials themselves.

Work continues on preparing a Community Crossings grant proposal, and the final action of the meeting was approving and signing a letter needed for that proposal. The meeting adjourned at 10:00, an usually early end for a Commissioners meeting.

I skipped the Drainage Board meeting in the afternoon because the only thing that looked mildly interesting was a discussion of financing for the Kankakee River project. In the evening the Rensselaer Park Board met for another very short meeting. Because Scott Barton will not be on the 2020 City Council, he cannot be the Council's representative on the Board and he is replaced by Earnest Watson. Michael Manis was reelected as President and Sue Wing was selected as Vice President. There was brief discussion of Park updates. The exterior of the concession stand for the ball fields is almost complete and the utilities have been hooked up.

The metal work for the entryways for the Jasper Foundation Park may be installed before the end of the month. The question of who will work the new concession stand for tournaments has not yet been answered. The meeting lasted only half an hour. The next meeting will be on February 3.

Express Employment, whose office was destroyed in the Town Mall fire, is now working from a office on the southeast side of Washington Street.

The old bakery space has been gutted. Here is a picture though the window of the front door.

Fundraising is underway for the next round of murals for #RENARTWLK. See here for more information.

Last week I went for an open swim at West Central High School. There are a number of Rensselaerians who visit for water aerobics. The pool is heated and the water is very warm, which is a feature that the Rensselaerians who use it enjoy.

If you are interested in the topic of invasive plant species, there will be a meeting on the topic on Thursday evening at 6:00 at the Carnegie Center. The presenter is with Southern Indiana Cooperative Invasives Management.

Days are getting longer. Tomorrow we will have about one more minute of daylight than we have today.

Most read, least read

Happy New Year. May we all enjoy the year of good eyesight.

I missed a couple of meetings in late December because I was out of town. The Commissioners met on the 27th in their annual end-of-the-year meeting. You can read about it in the Rensselaer Republican. I have come to greatly respect the reporting of the author, Cheri Shelhart. I do not think those who do not attend the meetings realize how good a job she does. The minutes of the Rensselaer City Council meeting on December 23 are on-line here.

The Parks for People Campaign raised enough to get their second Patronicity grant of $50,000. Work on the concession stand in Brookside Park continues and the exterior of the building has been completed. On Thursday City workers were hooking up utilities.

It appears that the old bottling plant/laundry on the corner of Clark and Cullen is being dismantled.

There is a dumpster in front of the bakery and it is full.

Finally, beavers continue to be active along the river. The picture below was taken from the bridge over the Iroquois in the Cemetery and Bicentennial Park.

I saw several blogs that listed their  most-read posts for 2019 and decided to see what the list would look like for this blog. This blog runs on Google's blogger platform, which keep statistics post views, though I do not know how they are calculated.

The most read post of the year (and of all time) was one of the posts on the fire:
"The morning after the big fire". It was followed by a post that mentioned that Arby's in town was closing, "Goodbyes". A second post on the fire came in third, "Major fire destroys half a block of downtown". The reason that these posts attracted as many viewers as they did is that my links to them on Facebook were widely shared.

Trailing far behind in fourth and fifth places were two posts on the murals: "Rensselaer murals, finished?" (they weren't) and "Rensselaer murals mostly finished". In sixth place, "A lot of pictures," had pictures of the ruins from the fire and a tour of the construction taking place in the former PNC Bank building.

"August already" was a mix of odds and end and "More Wind", in eighth place, reported on one of the meetings discussing the wind turbine ordinance. The final two posts in the top ten were "Paint, spikes, and water" and "New Restaurant and City Council Notes".

The least read post of the year was "1908", which had several clippings from the local newspaper from 1908.