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?