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.