Meetings postponed

The storms that swept through the County late on Monday afternoon resulted in the postponement of the City Council meeting until Thursday at 4:15. Also rescheduled was the Jasper County Library Board meeting, which was scheduled to meet Monday evening. It will now meet Thursday at 6:00.

Below are a some more pictures from the parking lot at the high school. When I took them on Sunday, the north lot was still torn up and not yet repaved.

The addition to C&C Storage now has roof trusses.

Monday's storm blew down a lot of leaves and small branches. I did not see any big trees down, but did find a large branch down in front of the Library.

On Friday last week Food Finders was in town and Teen Mission was giving away school supplies.

The food giveaway started at noon and I was told by someone nearby that cars started lining up at 8:00. By noon the line of cars stretched back to Elza and on Abigail back almost to the highway.

There were some meetings on Monday and Tuesday that did take place. On Monday afternoon the Rensselaer Redevelopment Commission met to discuss a grant proposal to fund phase one of Downtown Revitalization Project. The major part of Phase One would be to reset the bricks on Harrison and Van Rensselaer Streets and would also include some  replacement of underground utilities, new street lights and sidewalks, and wayfaring signage. The grant proposal would not go to OCRA, which is not doing grants this year, but would seek U. S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) funding. If accepted the grant would require a 20% local contribution to go with the 80% federal contribution. The asking amount will be in the neighborhood of $2 million. The advisor from KIRPC, who is helping with the application, said that asking for more reduces the chances of getting a grant. The goal is to submit the application in September.

Members of the Commission supported the project and the grant but had concerns about the engineering contract that they were being asked to sign. The City had originally contracted with Remenschneider Associates to plan the revitalization. In 2018 Remenschneider merged with Kimley Horn, a much bigger firm. The firm is needed to prepare the grant but the contract under consideration would also lock in the firm for all future planning of the project if the grant is approved. The Commission, the City's Clerk-Treasurer, and the City Attorney want to make sure that the end product of the planning is recognized as belonging to the City, that the amount specified in the contract as engineering expenses are capped, and that the firm provide invoices and bills that meet the requirements of the State Board of accounts. I got the impression that there was some dissatisfaction with Kimley Horn. It is a giant company and the impression I got was that the City worked better with the much smaller Remenschneider. Because of the concerns with the contract, the Commission voted to continue the meeting until the 17th at 3:00 to give the City Attorney time to iron out their concerns with the contract. It is possible that if the contract is not acceptable there will be no grant application submitted.

Recently the Jasper County Plan Commission approved an updating of the Jasper County Comprehensive Plan and work on the update has begun with the aid of consultants from Purdue University. On Monday there was a fairly large brain-storming meeting via Zoom that I was able to attend. I saw features of Zoom that I did not know existed. The big meeting was broken into sub-meetings and participants were able to post comments on a whiteboard.

A comment that I thought was both funny and true was posted on the challenges page of the small group I was in: "CAVE—Citizens Against Virtually Everything". I was reminded of that when I saw that Pulaski County has a group of citizens vehemently opposed to a large solar project proposed in the County.

On Tuesday evening the Rensselaer BZA met to discuss a variance for a garage. I wondered why a garage would need a variance. It was needed because the garage did not meet the setback regulations of five feet from the property line. The neighbors were OK with the placement of the garage, so the variance was approved. I wonder how many old garages in Rensselaer meet the current requirements. I suspect that there are lots of cases in which neighbors have buildings that are less than ten feet apart.