A final post for 2020

 In April I mentioned a ground-breaking ceremony in Pulaski County for a large greenhouse that will grow lettuce and herbs. Last week I was at West Central High School and took a picture of the facility. (It is just to the south and east of the school.) It does not seem to be in production yet. The website is here.

I learned why the disc golf course at Brookside Park has ten goals on a nine-hole course. One of them, the one on the south east corner of the running track, is a practice hole. It is common for disc golf courses to have a practice hole.

I was able to see the grand conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. They are so close together in the sky that the casual observer might think it was one star. Jupiter is much brighter than Saturn. I did try to take a picture, but the results were very poor. A better camera with a telephoto lens would have helped.

(Jupiter is the bright smudge. The faint smudge to its right is Saturn. Some better pictures here.)

The Commissioners met for the final time for 2020 on Monday morning. It was not a very exciting agenda. A woman who is working on a wind farm in an adjacent county wanted shape files. I do not know what  shape files are. Next was one of the strangest requests that the Commissioners have ever had. A young man wanted permission to film the elevator in the Court House. He makes elevator videos that he posts on Youtube. His cause is autism awareness. The Commissioners gave him permission. If you would like to see what kind of videos he does. his channel on Youtube is here.  (None of them have gone viral. Maybe Jasper County can be his first.)

The County Health Nurse asked for approval for two grant applications. (The Commissioners need to approve grant proposals so when the State audits them, there is a record in the minutes.) One was for Narcan and the other was a funding opportunity from the Indiana Department of Health. Both Rensselaer and Wheatfield police have used Narcan and the grant would not be for money but for the product. The funding opportunity was for $40,000 to help with vaccinations. The first shipments of the vaccine should arrive very soon. The Health Department has moved and is getting ready to open in the Sparling Annex (my name for the building). Newton County has hired a nurse and will be able to do their own vaccinations. (At a recent meeting the possibility was mentioned that Newton County children might be coming to Jasper County for vaccinations because their health nurse position was open.)

The solar park at the jail is finished but not yet connected to the City's grid. There will be another update on progress at the January 4th meeting. There is about $8,600 that the County has in Covid funding for educational purposes that has to be spent by Wednesday. The Commissioners approved spending it for digital signs at the fairgrounds and the northwest corner of the Court House lot, where it would replace the banners that announce events.  The Sheriff was given permission to replace a Court-House security person who took a job at the jail. The Commissioners approved a memo of understanding with Soil and Water that divides up who pays the employee of that department. They also approved an change in the health plan that would waive the waiting period for those going from part-time to full-time status. Work on an office for the Superior Court is finished and the Commissioners approved the completion document.

The Commissioners approved the 2021 calendar with 14 holidays for County employees and their meeting schedule for 2021. Meetings will be the first Monday of the month except for July 6, which is a Tuesday. There will be a second meeting on December 28 and the first meeting of 2022 will be January 3.

On Monday afternoon the Rensselaer City Council met via Zoom and the meeting was a lot more interesting than the agenda promised. They approved an increase in the electric tracker of $5.33 per megawatt. (The average household uses about 700 kilowatts per month, or .7 megawatts.) They then approved encumbering funds for several departments, which means that when the bills are paid for work that has been done, the charge will be to the 2020 budget, not to the 2021 budget. A proposal to upgrade the computer systems at the water plant was approved. The equipment was installed in 2012 when the plant was built and it is having some problems. The cost will be $11,821. The Council also approved fencing Well #7 (I believe this is the well on Sparling). IDEM strongly recommended the fencing. It will be a six foot fence topped with barbed wire and will cost $9,700. The Council then approved the last items on the agenda, the yearly nepotism forms.

The item I thought the most interesting of the afternoon was not on the agenda. The Filson family, which owns the empty lot where the buildings burned in 2019, offered to give that lot to the City with the provision that it be named "Filson Park" and that for the next fifteen years it be used as a park or used in connection with the operation of a park . The City attorney pointed out that if the City accepts the offer and wants to build anything on the land, it would need a variance from the Rensselaer Board of Zoning Appeals because the land is zoned for business. Noelle Weishaar had concerns that a park was not a good use for the land. She wanted an option to have a business put there if the opportunity arose. She voted "no" on accepting the land but four other Council members voted yes. So Rensselaer will soon have a Filson Park, at least for the next fifteen years.

New exercise equipment has been installed at Foundation Park. I am not sure what these are supposed to be.

In a couple of other news items, the new Dollar General store in Goodland is now open. I see Dollar General stores in just about every small town I drive through, so I wondered how many there are. The Internet says 17118 as of 12/21/2020. They are in 46 states. (Dollar Tree and Family Dollar (parts of the same company) operate another 15,000+ stores.) Years ago people in small towns bought what they needed at a general store and now we have returned to the time when people in small towns again buy what they need at a general store.

Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Remington had a fire on Monday. It was detected by the fire-alarm system and was not visible from the outside when the first fire trucks arrived. The suspicion is that it was an electrical fire and though it did considerable damage, if it had not been detected as early as it was, the whole building would have been lost.