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?