Leaving February

The County Council met a week later than usual this month with only two items on the agenda. One was to sign the farm leases that the Commissioners had approved and the other was for a transfer of funds that turned out to be for the grand total of $10.00.

With the item agendas taken care of, the Council spent about twenty minutes in a meandering discussion. There was mention of interest in another solar farm in the northern part of the County, this one near Kniman. It is at a very preliminary planning stage and may depend on whether or not NIPSCO is willing to buy power from it. It is projected to cover about 480 acres and have a capacity of 65 megawatts. Time will tell if anything results from this.

Mr Eastridge from JCEDO is working to have Remington, DeMotte, and eventually Rensselaer adopt a tax abatement ordinance similar to that which the County recently adopted. The idea is that if both County and communities had similar tax abatement policies, it would be easier for businesses to evaluate the desirability of locating here.

The Probation Department will be moving into the former PNC Bank building next week. The Council joked that the building should be named the Andrew Andree Building for all the work that Councilman Andree has put into organizing and supervising the building renovation.

Someone said that the Sheriff would like to add a greenhouse at the jail to grow vegetables with hydroponics. This past year the jail added a garden plot and the Sheriff was happy with how that worked.

County fair planning is mostly complete. I think I understood a comment to say that there was a plan to move the old office building to the track area.

Jasper County does not have enough day care and pre-K education but there are citizens working to alleviate that.

PTABOA met Thursday morning. The meeting began with the swearing in of members and election of officers. There were two items on the agenda. Hope Community recently purchased the building it has been using and applied for a property tax exemption, which was granted. Valley Oaks has changed its name from Wabash Valley and the exemption was continued with the new name. The Board will meet again soon to consider land value reassessment, which is done periodically to reflect market transactions.

(In case you are wondering, PTABOA stands for Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals.)

The Fendig Gallery in the Carnegie Center is now exhibiting the annual high-school art show. It seems a bit smaller than in the past. Below are a few items that caught my attention.

Type-art drawings such as the one below appear each year. I am not sure how they are done but I am impressed by them (because I like typefaces.)

 I was surprised to see Japanese anime.

The show has a short run, only until March 8. The Gallery is open Tuesdays and Thursdays from noon until 4:00 and on Saturdays from noon until 2:00.

Despite the snow on Tuesday night and Wednesday that caused schools to go to e-learning again, there are signs of spring. I heard a flock of red-wing blackbirds a few days ago. Garden seeds are on display in several stores. Walmart is starting to stock the outdoor garden center.

It has been a mild winter with only a very few days in which temperatures got below zero. I can remember only one.

This may be my last time to post about demolition of the Town Mall. The fence is gone and crushed stone has been placed where the old Long's Gift Shop was.

I have heard from several people that the northern part will be planted in grass and that where the crushed stone is will be parking.

Last week WorkOne moved to a new office in what was the laundromat space on Drexel Drive.

Their old office was in the Town Mall. The new office is much bigger and has windows.

Once washing machines or driers lined the walls. Now they are lined by computers for use by people looking for jobs. Everything connected with job search seems to have gone on-line.

There is a small classroom with more computers. It is used for adult education. I remember that after the renovation of Drexel Hall, adult education was located there, but that was a long time ago.

A century ago, in February, 1920, some citizens of Rensselaer were trying to raise money to build a swimming pool. Below is an article I found quite by accident as I was looking for something else. Obviously this effort to get a pool did not succeed because Rensselaer did not get a pool until the mid to late 1940s.

I wonder what the cost of a pool would have been in 1920. The article mentions that Wolcott had a pool. Does it still have a pool?

Meetings, meetings, and meetings

The Rensselaer City Council met on Monday evening with a short agenda. At the beginning of each meeting the Mayor asks if there are any citizen's comments and on Monday Mr. Eastridge of the Jasper County Economic Development Organization (JCEDO) had a request. JCEDO has recently purchased the building at 104 West Washington (next to the Horton Building) and plans to renovate it, putting its offices on the second floor and renting the ground floor. The work will require a building permit that will cost abut $1700. Mr Eastridge requested that the fee be waived. JECED is a non profit organization that tries to recruit businesses to the County. It received financial support from the County and the cities and towns of the County. Rensselaer contributes about $10,000 to its budget. Councilman Watson was concerned about ADA access. There is no plan to install an elevator to reach the second floor because the expense would make the project economically unfeasible. The request was granted, with Mr. Watson voting against.

The Council approved a request from the Water Department to replace a 2005 pickup truck with a 2018 truck that will cost $24,975 with trade in. The truck is used daily by the department. The Mayor appointed a committee of Hollerman and Watson to look at the possibility of increasing the minimum natural gas charge, which is $3.63 for City residents. The Committee will review information that the Gas Superintendent has collected about minimum fees that other gas utilities charge.

The Mayor reported that the first planning meeting for the Colts Fan Fest went well. The Colts would like it on the Court House lawn and the City plans to ask for permission for that use at the Commissioners meeting on March 2. The City grant application to INDOT for downtown revitalization was denied for 2024 but INDOT encouraged the City to reapply. Work on a second application is proceeding. The Council meeting lasted about 30 minutes.

After this meeting I wandered over to the Court House for the County BZA and Plan Commission meetings. I was surprised to see a big crowd. I wondered which of the items on the agendas had attracted them: another variance for a CAFO, a renewal of a use variance for the drug rehabilitation house, a natural gas peaking plant, or the rezoning for a wedding-event venue.

The BZA met first. Its first cause was a frontage variance. The petitioners want to split off a house from farm land and give the house a 37.5 foot access via the current driveway in order to keep the farm acreage as large as possible. It was granted. Next was a variance for lot coverage from Northwind Pork, which had applied for a zoning change and a couple of variances in September.

The zoning ordinance says that CAFO facilities cannot cover more than 15 percent of the acreage of the lot and the plans here will cover about 24%. The current operation uses about 50%. There was one objection from the audience and the variance passed with one opposed.

The final item on the BZA agenda was a use variance renewal for Jasper County Recovery House. The original use variance two years ago had attracted considerable opposition. This year there was none. There have been no complaints received in the two years that the House has been operating and some of those opposed two years ago have become donors. The House has a capacity for eight but comfortably holds five. After a month or six weeks at the Jasper County facility, residents move to the much larger Elkhart facility to complete the course. Those coming from Jasper County have had great success at Elkhart, perhaps because they get intensive individual attention. The Board approved a permanent use variance that is limited to the current operators of the facility. If another organization were to take over the operation, it would need to reapply for the use variance.

The next meeting will be March 16 if there is an agenda, and nothing had been submitted as of Monday.

The large, standing-room-only audience was still in the room as the Planning Commission began its meeting. This was the first meeting of the year, so they needed to elect officers. They opted to continue with the same officers from last year.

The first item on the agenda was the one I thought was the most interesting. A company called Primary Energy wanted a rezone from A1 to I2 for a 30-acre parcel near the current NIPSCO plant to build a natural-gas peaking plant.  (I think this is their website.) They had submitted a proposal to NIPSCO but it is still pending. The purpose of getting a zoning change is to be able to show NIPSCO that if selected, the project has met the necessary regulatory requirements.

A peaking plant produces power only when the grid needs extra electricity. This is what the City of Rensselaer's electric plant does. It is most likely to operate on extremely hot days when everyone is using their air conditioners. The reason for locating the plant near the current NIPSCO plant is that it can be tied into the existing distribution structure. The plant would not become operational until after NIPSCO shuts down its coal generation. The plant would employ only six to eight people. The Plan Commission recommended that the rezone be granted and sent that recommendation on to the Commissioners.

Next up was a one-lot replat from a subdivision that would allow the resident to put install a driveway. The original plat does not allow a driveway directly to the street. The request was approved.

Finally, I discovered why this meeting has the big crowd. It was for the next item, a rezone from A1 to A4 in Wheatfield Township for a wedding-event venue. There were about a dozen people who spoke against it, mostly citing problems of traffic and noise. One woman gave the Commission a petition with two pages of signatures of people who opposed the rezone. The Commission passed an unfavorable recommendation for the zoning change to the Commissioners. The room then emptied.

Next up was a 3-lot subdivision in Union Township. The person who owns the land, about ten acres, wants to split it into three parcels, which could then be sold for building houses. I believe one of the parcels currently has a house. It passed.

The final item was a discussion of some changes to fees and requirements. Nothing was done at this meeting, but I suspect that fees for filing variances and rezone requests will soon be raised. Also possible is a requirement that a site survey be obtained before construction. Often people build and do not get the site survey until they apply for a mortgage and the banks require a site survey. The home owners can then find that they have setbacks problems and to get the mortgage they need to get a variance.

On Saturday morning there was a forum featuring the three state legislators who represent Jasper County in the State Legislature. Jasper County is split for the State Senate, with Brian Buchanan representing the southern third of the County and Ed Charbonneau representing the northern two thirds. Douglas Gutwein, who represents all of Jasper County in the State House of Representatives, was scheduled to attend but missed because of illness. The meeting was held in the classrooms in the basement of the hospital and almost all the chairs were filled.

The State legislature is in session, but this year is their short session, which means they do not consider the budget. The legislature passes a two-year budget, so long sessions that consider the budget alternate with short sessions that do not. Legislation supported by the two senators included raising the smoking and vaping age to 21 and making texting while driving illegal. The legislature would like to address health care cost and availability but finding an effective way to do that, one that does not create more problems than it solves, remains a challenge. They pointed out that 50% of the state budget goes to K-12 education.
Senator Charbonneau said that the comments he received on the Red for Ed day indicated that mental health was a top priority for teachers. Kids are different today.

After their opening comments, the floor was open to the public. Many of the questions were about education—there were many teachers in the audience. There were complaints about testing and a suggestion that the State stop spending so much on testing and spend it on the schools. Someone noted that teacher raises were completely eaten up by higher health insurance costs. The senators were surprised to hear that Rensselaer has an appointed school board—there are only seven or eight in the state, with Valparaiso also having one.
Several people did not like any money going to charter schools, saying they lacked accountability. They were reminded that charter schools are public schools and cannot be selective in who they serve. (My past reincarnation as an economist whispered to me that charter schools would not attract students if there was no dissatisfaction with conventional public schools.) There were questions about medical marijuana and a concern for the continuing population loss of rural counties.

And on a completely different topic, dirt replacement at the town mall site in nearing completion. What seems to be a final layer of new dirt is being added and it smells of manure. I am ashamed to admit that I cannot tell if the smells is of cow manure or pig manure. As a resident of Jasper County, I should be able to distinguish the two.

Odds and ends, February 2020

The company that owns Indiana Beach north of Monticello announced early this week that it is closing the amusement park after it could not find a buyer for the property. Right now this appears that the impact on Monticello will be like that of the closing of SJC had on Rensselaer.

Speaking of SJC, the acting head of the College gave an interview on the local radio station that you can hear here. I hope they are able to find other colleges that are willing to offer classes on the campus, but I do not see why those other colleges would be interested in helping SJC regain accreditation.

Demolition of the Town Mall site is finished and now dump trucks are bringing in dirt to level the site.

Dugouts are being constructed at the new ball fields in Brookside Park.

A couple businesses dislocated by the Town Mall fire seem to have relocated to the small office building behind Ayda's. Nail Bumpers and the Sune Salon are both there and I believe they both were in the Town Mall. Also there is Wilson Events by Design, which rents for weddings and parties, and The Hair Station, which I think has been there for some time. The Marion Township Trustee used to have his office in this building but is now at the Fire Station.

The HoneyComb Salon, another business that was burned out, has moved to the back of the building by the bowstring arch bridge. Also at the back of this building is a new business, Trammel Mental Health, LLC. It offers individual, couple & family therapy. Serenity Health and Wellness was scheduled to have a ribbon cutting on a space across from the Marathon gas station by the railroad tracks but it was postponed and I have not seen a reschedule.

On Tuesday evening the Jasper County Soil & Water Conservation District held its 74th annual meeting at eMbers venue. The featured speaker was Scott Pelath, executive director of the Kankakee River Basin Commission. The Commission was established a year or two or three ago by the State Legislature and replaced another group that dealt with the Kankakee. Pelath is from LaPorte and served 20 years in the State Legislature. His topic was "The Future of the Kankakee River." Kankakee River floods, such as that of 2018, cause serious damage. When the pioneers arrived in this area, the River was a meandering stream with a huge wetland area associated with it. In the early 20th Century it was dredged and straightened. This created thousands of acres of fertile farm land, but it left a river that flows much faster and that keeps eroding its banks. The goal of the Commission seems to be to alleviate the harm caused by the decisions of a century ago without abandoning the benefits. One thing they want to do is find places to store water during floods. The water must go somewhere, and if it goes to land designed to be flooded, it will not be as deep in farm fields. The Commission has purchased some land along the River in Newton County for that purpose and I expect they will be purchasing more.

On Thursday evening there was a meeting of the Jasper County Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area. It is a group that is trying to get organized. As the name suggests, its goal is to control invasive plants such as honeysuckle and garlic mustard.  One announcement at the meeting was that the Jasper County Soil and Water Conservation District is having a native plant sale this spring. Details and an order form are here.

I learned at the meeting that the Nature Conservancy has a number of land holdings in northeastern Jasper County. Most are adjacent to the Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area, but several are north of the NIPSCO Shahfer power plant. One of them, the Prairie Border Nature Preserve near Jasper Pulaski, has a walking trail open to the public.

Less than a month to the equinox. Days are lengthening by more than two minutes each day.

RENARTWLK Phase 2

Given the weather, a decent number of people attended the RENARTWLK meet and greet on Thursday evening. After people mingled for a while, Ryan Musch gave a presentation outlining what the plans are for this summer's mural week. He began by recognizing the late Bob Lewis (d 2014) for his vision of public art that planted the seeds for the mural walk. Plans for murals had been drawn up several years ago but it was Main Street Rensselaer's decision to put murals on the wall by the river that was the spark the led to the 2019 murals in the alley.

This year the goal is to have five outside artists do ten works, one major and one smaller work each. The goal is to saturate the two alleys that already have murals. Bigger cities may have more murals, but none have the concentration of murals in a small space that Rensselaer may soon have. Mural week this year will be from June 28 to July 4 and there will be more structure to the week. There is a goal of having some kind of small event on each of the days or evenings of mural week that will allow locals to be involved in some way.

The budget for mural week is $30,000. About half has been raised. Last year 88 people donated and the hope is that at least as many will this year. If you want to know more, go to the Rensselaer Art Walk website and subscribe to their e-mails. (There will be a dance party in April as a fund-raising event. Details here.)

Wednesday night was bitterly cold and the sky was exceptionally clear. I took advantage of the clear sky to check out Orion, one of the most recognizable constellations in the winter sky. The star Betelgeuse has been in the news because it has faded considerably in the past couple of months. Astronomers are not sure what that means but some are hoping that it might go supernova. Betelgeuse seemed to be a bit brighter than its neighbor Bellatrix, but normally it is much brighter.

Wednesday's Rensselaer Republican had an article about Indiana farmers getting into the hemp business to produce CBD oil. While scrolling through microfilm this week, by chance I happened on a another article (and picture) about hemp in Jasper County. They were in the September 27, 1943 issue of the Rensselaer Republican. The caption on the picture said that the building was being built by the Defense Plant Corporation and would be operated by an agency of the Commodity Credit Corporation.  Hemp was being grown to make rope because the pre-war sources of rope fiber had been cut off by the Japanese. The article said the best hemp was 7 to 8 feet tall and 3 inches in diameter. There was a tract near Remington of 4,000 acres devoted to growing hemp.

There was no mention of where the building was being built, but I assume it was near Remington. Does anyone recognize the building? Is it still standing, and if so, what is it being used for today? The war-time hemp production left a legacy of ditch weed in Jasper County that resulted in sustained efforts to eradicate it.

Finally, the Indiana Colts have announced that Rensselaer won the vote for a Colts Fan Fest.

Update: A comment from the Facebook link to this post:
Lanny Sigo: The Hemp plant was directly south of Remington, later to become Vermont Marble Plant, Remington Forge, and now OMNI Forge. Come to the traffic light at 231 & 24, go south out of town, it is on the east side of the road. My Dad, Art Sigo, talked about the Hemp Plant in his book, Born at the Right Time. (1994)

Trucks

The Rensselaer City Council quickly moved through the first items on its agenda on Monday evening. It approved the canceling of outstanding warrants, which is a bookkeeping measure that I do not understand. It approved an ordinance that raises Weston Cemetery fees that the Council had accepted at the last meeting and passed a gas tracker decrease of about a ½ cent per hundred cubic feet. It also passed three requests for public relations funds, two for flowers for funerals of relatives of City employees and one to sponsor a scholarship given by the Little Cousin Jasper organization.

The Fire Department's aerial truck is back in service but the pump is not working properly. The Fire Chief would like to sell this truck and buy a new one. Aerial trucks are built to order and it takes about a year from ordering to delivery. The cost is estimated in the $1.2 to $1.4 million range. There are several options to pay for it. The Council voted to give him permission to follow through in developing the specs for the truck, getting ready for a bid, and looking into financing options. One of the reasons for the interest in purchasing new is that the manufacturer of the current truck is no longer in business, which makes repairs difficult.

Later in the meeting there was a short discussion of the need to purchase or repair another truck, the 20-year old vac truck that the City uses for water-line and sewer repairs. It cost $233,000 new and may need $65,000 in repairs. The Council gave the Project Coordinator authority to explore options on repairing or replacing.

There were a number of announcements. There are still openings for Census workers and at least two people stressed that it is important for the City that everyone be counted. The house on Clark Street next to Brookside Park has been demolished. The City has been installing new storm drains at Cullen and Rutsen. The City noticed that water was unaccounted for in the water system so hired a company to find leaks in the water mains. Five leaks were fixed, including two that were large. It takes about five days to check the 30 miles of water mains that the City has.

The Council approved paying a bill for road salt that had been misplaced and had not been submitted previously and also approved getting bids for tree removal for this year. There are about 60 trees, mostly dead or dying ash trees, that are in City right-of-ways and need to be removed.

The meeting lasted a little less than 40 minutes.

Johns Brothers has removed almost all the the remains of the Town Mall. The metal has been taken to the scrap yard and the concrete will be ground up and used as fill in the future. The rest is being taken to the Newton County landfill. There is still quite a bit of concrete flooring that needs to be broken up and hauled away.

The Jasper County Economic Development Organization announced on Wednesday that it had purchased the building at 104 W. Washington. The organization had been looking for a new location but the Town Mall fire forced a quick decision. It plans to rehabilitate the building to allow a retail business, so it seems that they plan to have the offices on the second floor. Until recently this business was Dreamers Solution, a music store, visited here.

Here is another photo of Town Mall demolition. I may not  be able to take these pictures much longer.

Snow had just begun falling when I took these two pictures on Wednesday afternoon. There is a lot more on the ground as I write this.
Update: Another e-learning day for Rensselaer schools.

Bikes, golf cars, guns, and cats

The Commissioners met on Monday morning, a week later than usual. They began the meeting by approving four buried-cable permits in Walker Township, two for fiber from CenturyLink and two for gas from NIPSCO. They then approved several requests for hiring replacements, for the Health Department, the Prosecutor's office, and Community Corrections. They looked at quotes for various services such as lawn care, carpet cleaning, and building repairs and approved them.

At 8:45 they opened farm-ground bids for four parcels owned by the County or the Airport Authority. There were five bids and the Commissioners and the Airport Manager accepted the high bid, which was $262.53 per acre for all four parcels.

The elevator in the former PNC Bank building is now operating. A DSL line has been installed for Internet connections but it does not provide enough bandwidth. The Commissioners looked at three options to bring fiber to the building and chose one. They also approved using a technology that will give people a menu when they call the Court House rather than having all calls to the Court House number answered by a person.

The Sheriff received a grant for $104,000 for counseling for inmates that needed a County match of $17,000. The Commissioners approved. They thanked him for seeking a grant to pay for something that otherwise would have come from County funds.

Then it was time to discuss bicycles. There is a national bicycling route network in the United States and it includes three routes in Indiana. (You can see them here.  ) A person from Tippecanoe County came to the meeting to seek County approval for a fourth route, US Bicycle Route 37, which will connect Chicago with Indianapolis and then points further south. All the local jurisdictions through which the route will travel are supposed to approve their part of the route. There is no extra obligation to the local governments. If they wish, they can sign the route and use it to promote tourism. The Commissioners want to  examine the proposed route before they commit. The item will be back on the agenda in March.

The next bicycle item on the agenda was information about an event that JCEDO and the Tourism Commission will be hosting on August 1, the Jasper Jaunt. It is a bike tour, with two options, a 33.5 mile ride or a 63 mile ride. Featured stops along the way will be a hops farm, a mint farm, and Jasper County's only winery. (I recall recently posting a picture that had hops in it.) The organizers want to avoid any roads that are being paved or chip and sealed and also roads that have been recently chip and sealed. More info at brinin.org/aug/jasper-jaunt.

Non-traditional transportation was the subject of the next item as well, the question of a golf-cart ordinance for the Valley View Subdivision. This was a followup from a request at a previous meeting. The matter was left unresolved because there were too many unanswered questions, such as whether the ordinance should be for all subdivisions or only Valley View, and whether the carts would be allowed on County roads.

A man who claimed to represent 1100 Jasper County residents asked the Commissioners to consider making Jasper County a Second Amendment Sanctuary County. Apparently some Indiana Counties that have already passed resolutions of this sort, but there are two that have not, saying it is not necessary. Switzerland County had taken this position in 2013, way before events in Virginia got the current interest in this movement started. No actions were taken by the Commissioners.

Next on the agenda was a citizen with a complaint about animal control. She was outraged that the County Animal Shelter kills animals when there is no room and it also apparently kills feral cats. She said that she was willing to foster them, keeping them until she could find a home for them but she does not want to pay a $50 adoption fee to take them. She also said that feral cats could be domesticated. After she ranted for a while, she was told that the proper place to take her concerns was to an Animal Control Board meeting.

The Commissioners were scheduled to go into executive session at 10:30 to discuss insurance, but they had time for one last item, the Joint Council Tax Abatement Ordinance. This ordinance had been passed by the County Council but by having the Commissioners pass it as an ordinance makes it part of the County Code and makes it more difficult to change. Making it more difficult to change reduced uncertainty for businesses planning to locate or expand in the County. After some discussion, the ordinance passed.

The Commissioners were planning to come back to public session after the executive session to discuss county highways, some legal items, and whatever else was left in the file of things that needed a decision. I decided I did not want to wait for that, so I went to lunch.

I did come back in the afternoon to attend the first part of the Drainage Board meeting to see what the bids were like for the Kankakee River project. There was only one bid submitted, for $140,959 for labor only. Since it was the only bid, it was accepted. The rest of the meeting was scheduled to look at things affecting tiles and I did not see anything I thought was very interesting, so I left.

Before I left the Court House after the morning meeting, I wanted to figure out the lineup of candidates for County offices in the upcoming primary. Kim Grow, the current auditor, is term limited so she cannot run again for auditor. Instead she is running for Recorder.  Beth Warren, the current Recorder, is also term limited, but she is not running for any office. Donya Jordan, the current Treasurer is also term limited, I believe, and she is running for Auditor, a position she held before Mrs Grow held the office. Tammy McEwan, who works in the Treasurer's office and who ran against Ms Jordan in the last election cycle, is running again for Treasurer. Only the office for Recorder is contested in the primary. The most interesting of the County races will probably be for Councilman at Large. There are seven people, including two incumbents,  running for three slots.

Finally, have you see the video that Monon has prepared as it seeks to be featured on a TV show that will renovate the downtowns of several small towns or cities? It is embedded below.

Tourism news

The Jasper County Tourism Commission met on Friday morning to consider four funding requests. The first was from Rensselaer Art Walk to help with their phase 2 scheduled for this summer. The plan is to have three to five mural artists chosen by Cameron Moberg spend the week from June 28 to July 4 doing an additional ten murals, five large and five smaller, for the mural walk. The week would be much like mural week 2019 but better organized and structured. Last year was a first year and a lot a decisions were made as necessary. One of the concerns expressed by the Commission was if insurance for the murals was possible. That issue will be investigated. The budget for the project is $30,000 and the ask from the Tourism Commission was $10,000, which was granted.

If you want to know more about phase 2 of the mural project, there is a meet and greet event at eMbers on February 13 from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. The public is welcome to attend.

Demolition has knocked down the wall had the Rensselaer Indiana mural done by Cobre. It was one of the two murals that Rensselaer lost in the Town Mall fire.

The second request was for support for the International Woman's Day event scheduled for March 8 at eMbers. It will feature three speakers in the morning and a boutique market in the afternoon. (The complete schedule is available on the eMbers website here. Click "Live at Embers" and scroll down.)

This will be the events second year and this year they are reaching out to interest people from DeMotte. Their biggest expense is marketing and this year it will include a banner that will be hung over College Avenue. They asked for $2000, which is down from last year, and they received it.

Next up was DeMotte Little League, which is trying to put lights on their Field-of-Dreams ball fields. Installing lights is expensive and the request to the Commission was for $30,000 and that is for phase 1, which will install a transformer and light two of the fields with lights that were salvaged from the Kankakee Valley High School when they replaced their football field. (See here for last month's discussion with DeMotte Little League.)

Lighting will significantly enhance the usefulness of the fields. Last year they began having games in the fall, but because the days are getting short, it limits how many games can be played. In addition, without lights the fields are not desirable for many tournaments. The commission reminded DeMotte Little League several times that the Tourism Commission likes tournaments because they draw in tourists who then spend money at local businesses. Their request was granted. In the past it probably would not have been because most of the budget was meant to support events and festivals but this year priorities have changed and there is much less money for events and festivals and more for physical improvements that can help attract visitors and keep people entertained locally.

The last of the requests was from the Little Cousin Jasper Festival. They asked for $5000, which was less than the $7500 that they had received last year. This year the festival will have  a circus act on Saturday. There were questions about the best time to have the 5K, which competes with a very popular 5K in Valparaiso. The request for $5,000 was granted.

The last item the Commission heard was a presentation from two ladies representing the Indiana Office of Tourism and Sports Indiana.
They explained what they did and stressed that they are a resource. One thing that they do is facilitate networking so communities can see what other communities are doing and what works and what does not work. They suggested that the County needs to figure out what it can specialize in and build from that. They also noted that sometimes tournaments are hosted that break even but are worthwhile because they fill hotels and increase local spending.

Clearing away the debris from the Town Mall fire continues. It seems that this part of the building did not have a basement.

Finally, a picture of the windows of the east end of the bowling alley, what was the drive-up window when this part of the building was a bank or later a credit union.

Renewables

On Thursday the Jasper County Economic Development Organization (JCEDO) held a panel discussion, sponsored by IMPA and NIPSCO, about renewable energy. The panel was moderated by an official from NIPSCO and was supposed to have four other members, but only two showed up. One was a commissioner from White County and the other a former commissioner from Warren County who now runs an organization called Hoosiers for Renewables.

The gentleman from NIPSCO said that generating with natural gas is now cheaper than generating with coal, in part because of combined-cycle power plants that use gas to run turbines and then capture some of the heat from the exhaust to make steam to generate additional power. (I had never heard of this technology, but you can find information about it on the Internet, for example here.)

He said that currently NIPSCO generates 71% of its power using coal, 25% with gas, and only 4% with renewables. NIPSCO's goal is to generate 65% with renewables, 25% with gas, and 10% from other sources in 2028. NIPSCO has signed agreements with four large wind turbine projects that are not yet built: Jordan Creek in Warren County, Rosewater and Crossroads in White County, and Roaming Bison in Montgomery County.

Steve Burton, a White County commissioner, noted that White County currently has 600 megawatts of wind generation capacity and that the two planned wind farms will lift that to a gigawatt. He noted tax payments from the wind farms as a major benefit from the projects. He also stated that desires of the landowners were the reason that White County has its windmills in rows rather than the scattered siting that some of the Benton County wind farms have.

JCEDO has added a new employee, an economic development coordinator. Next week it will finalize the purchase of a building for new office space. (It is the building that until recently had the music store.)

Other relocations from the fire: Serenity Health and Wellness is moving to a location on Vine Street and will have a ribbon-cutting ceremony on February 13. I heard through the grapevine that Work One will move to the former laundry on Drexel Drive. And I was happy to discover that Cliff Robinson moved his law office out of the building that burned two weeks before the fire. He is now located with Todd Sammons.

Genova has permanently closed its Rensselaer plant. 89 employees are affected. The company has defaulted on its loans.

The Jasper County Historical Society is looking forward to becoming the Helenor Alter Davisson interpretative center. She was the first woman ordained in the American Methodist Church. Read about her here.

 Demolition continues at the Town Mall site. The snow added contrast. It also resulted in another e-learning day for the local schools.

 The debris is being loaded into trucks and taken to a landfill.

Saint Joseph's College has released a three-year plan. It wants to partner with other colleges to offer college courses. It cannot do that on its own because it surrendered is accreditation when it closed. It hopes to start with junior-college courses in the fall of 2021 and expand offerings to four-year courses in the fall of 2023. It hopes to be able to apply for Accreditation Eligibility Status in Spring 2024. Simultaneously it will offer non-degree professional certification. It is currently trying to find students for Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), Certified Clinical Medical Assistant (CCMA), Electrocardiogram (CET), and Phlebotomy (CPT) certifications.

A ribbon cutting and a lot more

On Monday the Jasper County Airport had a ribbon cutting to celebrate the purchase of an airplane that will be available for rental and that will be used to start a local flight school.

The plane is a 1975 Cessna. The model is popular for flight training.

It even has a name, though who gave the plane its name and why are lost in history.

The plane will initially rent to pilots for $115 an hour, which is considered cheap for plane rental. Currently those who want to rent a plane must go to Valpo or Lafayette.

Before the ribbon was cut, airport manager Ray Seif gave those attending a rundown of what is happening at the airport. The new fuel tanks allow the airport to purchase complete truckloads of fuel, reducing its cost. The airport has the lowest general aviation fuel prices in the area and it frequently has planes arriving to take advantage of the low price.

Plans for the near future include building another hangar and removing the 80-year old hangars that are next to the taxiway. Their location no longer meets FAA specifications but they are grandfathered in. Longer term the airport would like to add a longer runway, one running east to west, so it could handle bigger planes.

Did you know that there are two businesses that operate from the airport, Excel-Air Services and Von's Aircraft Service?

Demolition of the buildings destroyed by the big fire began Monday morning. First order of business seemed to be separating out the metal.

As I was trying to find vantage points for interesting pictures of the demolition, I noticed the sign below in the window of R&M.

The Rensselaer Park Board met on Monday evening in a lightly attended meeting. The members discussed the possibility of raising fees for ball teams for 2021 but will not make any decisions until the fall. They also discussed possibilities for staffing the concession stand for the new ball fields, which also does not have to be finalized until the 2021 season. Work continues on the various Parks for People projects. A tournament has been scheduled for the new ballfields for the third weekend in July and there was concern if the facility would be ready by then.

The new ball fields have the fences 200 feet from home plate and that is enough for softball and 12 & under baseball. Larger fields would have meant cutting into the existing tennis courts.

The Upper Elementary Art Show is now installed in the Fendig Gallery. It is another short show, running only until Feb 16. The Gallery is open T-Th 12-4.

One class got to use glitter in their pictures.

Work continues with the restoring of the windows.

Plans for RENARTWLK 2 will be discussed at a meeting on Feb 13 at Embers from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. If you are interested in being part of phase 2 or just interested in what is being planned, attend the meeting. It is open to the public.

Last week trees were being cut down in Milroy Park.

The house that was demolished to enlarge Brookside Park was once a one-room school house. There are still some of them in existence in sparsely populated areas. Here is video about a couple. (One of the kids in the video is related to me.) There is activity in the old bowling alley. I have heard from usually reliable sources about what is being planned but do not know if I should share that yet. What have you heard?

We had a couple beautiful days in which people were out and about in short sleeves. Now we will get some more winter.