Snow is melting

 We survived a couple weeks of the temperature never getting above freezing and now the snow is slowly melting. I checked the river gauge to see how much the river was rising as a result, and it is very minor. The high-water records for late February were set in 2018. Do you remember the flooding that year?

I mentioned recently that the Main Street Bakery of Medaryville was planning to open a store in Morocco. It apparently will not do baking there but only sell what is baked in Medaryville. However, downtown Morocco has more good news. Bieser's Gourmet Kettle Corn has purchased a building in the downtown and will use it as their factory. The company is fairly new and its product is not sold yet in Rensselaer. 

The Weston Cemetery Walk committee has met a couple times to begin planning for the 2021 walk, which will be on third Saturday of September. This year will again feature the eastern part of the cemetery. There are lots of interesting stories there, in part because the world that these people inhabited was so different from our world.

The beginning of the snow melt resulted in some large icicles in the alley behind Fenwick Farms Brewing.

The Rensselaer City Council met on Monday for their second February meeting. It was another Zoomed meeting, hopefully the last. The next meeting on March 8 will, if all goes well, be an in-person meeting at City Hall.

The first item on the agenda was a proposal from the electric department to begin charging for meter bases and transformers when they are needed by a new industrial customer. The proposal was tabled until more information about how other communities are handling the expense of installing these items.

Next were two items that were mostly procedural. An additional motion needed to be passed to finish the contract extension with IMPA that the Council approved at the last meeting, and an ordinance to return outstanding warrants is bookkeeping that is passed every year.

The Council amended the salary ordinance to allow a full-time fire chief. Also in the ordinance was a change for the Park Department. All the youth league games will be at the Blacker Fields so there is a need for a field director for Blacker Field and no need for field directors for Columbia and Staddon Fields.

Bids for the Fire Department's aerial truck were opened. There was only one bid, from the Brook-Iroquois Volunteer Fire Department for $175,000. The City will transfer ownership 90 days after a signed purchase agreement, which will leave the City without an aerial truck for several months. (Delivery of a new truck is expected in October or November.)

Bids were also opened for 2021 street maintenance. There were two bids received, one from Walsh & Kelly for $815,525,74 and the other from Town & County for $868,484.30. These are for the Community Crossings Grant in which the State pays 75% and the City 25% and the bids were below budget. The bids were taken under advisement and a recommendation and an award letter will be presented at the next meeting.

There were a couple of public relations requests, one for a retirement party for an employee with 41 years of service.

The Mayor suggested that the meeting time be kept at 4:00 when they resume as in-person meetings. The Council had recently passed a resolution setting 6:00 as the meeting time and decided not to change the time because they felt 6:00 allowed for more public comment.

Gas usage was high during the cold snap and may affect our gas prices in the future. Mr Haun said that some business expansions are coming. He also said that the Fire Department will celebrate its 125th anniversary in May with an open house.

On Wednesday morning the sun was shining the temperature was about 40 degrees.  On my way to the Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals (PTABOA) meeting at the Sparling Annex, I noticed that the Iroquois River still had ice on it. 

Below is a photo of the same part of the River taken on Friday.

The meeting of PTABOA began with the swearing in of the Board members and the election of officers.

The purpose of the meeting was to accept an agreement with NIPSCO. NIPSCO will drop previous appeals and agree to a change in their 2020 value. NIPSCO plans to shut down two generators this year and the last two by the end of 2023.

Housing values have risen in the past year as has the cost of new construction and building materials. These increases may be reflected in the new valuations that will be mailed to County residents on April 30. 

Walmart has begun setting out lawn and garden supplies, a sign that spring is coming.

Brown's Garden Shop is reminding people that it is time to start garden plants indoors for transplanting later. I notice from where the sunlight hits in my south-facing porch that the sun is getting higher in the sky. Today (Wednesday) we have 11 hours and 6 minutes of daylight. In a week we will have 11 hours and 25 minutes. 

Ribbon Cutting for the House of Grace

 There have been very few ribbon-cutting ceremonies lately—the last I can find was in June to mark the end of Phase One of the Parks for People campaign—so when I saw in the Rensselaer Republican that there was a ribbon cutting planned for the new House of Grace, I wanted to go. The Republican did not include a time, but I learned that with a quick e-mail.

The House of Grace is a recovery program for women with alcohol or drug addiction. In January it opened a branch on the Saint Joseph's College Campus. The organization is only four years old and began in Thornton, Indiana. Given that I had not seen any public announcements about the ribbon cutting other than the article in the Republican, I was surprised to find about forty people gathered near the northeast entrance to the Core Building. I recognized only three of them.

Most ribbon cuttings are quite short. This one may have been the longest that I have attended.  The event began with short talks by Sheriff Williamson, Mayor Wood, and Beth Graf from Saint Joseph's College. Sheriff Williamson has been an advocate for drug recovery programs because so many of his inmates at the jail have addiction problems and those problems fuel recidivism. He was a strong supporter of the Recovery House west of Rensselaer that serves males and was trying to find something similar for females. So when he heard that Tammy from the House of Grace was interested in expanding to Rensselaer, he did all he could to help her. Mrs Graf noted that Saint Joseph's College and its founding order of the C.PP.S. has as part of its mission to serve the underserved.

After the short talks several groups posed for pictures.

After prayers and a blessing, the ribbon was cut.

Then everyone was invited into the building for some snacks and a presentation in the small lecture hall.

As we milled around before the presentation, I got a chance to ask Tammy a couple questions. I asked how she found women for the program and she said most of the women were referred from jails. The organization has its literature in county jails, and being in jail apparently convinces people that they really do need to change their lives. I also asked how she decided on Rensselaer. She said that they were near capacity at Thornton (currently that location has four women and a capacity for six) and was considering expanding. She briefly considered Lafayette but she had had a number of referrals from our part of the state and had connections to some of the churches here, so she decided to try Rensselaer.

Eventually everyone was in the auditorium and Tammy told her life story, of how she went from a shy, introverted kid to a prison chaplain to founding the House for Grace. She was a very entertaining speaker. Her religion played a key role in her development and religion plays a key role in the House of Grace. The women in the program have to have a change of heart if they are to be successful in staying drug or alcohol free once they leave the program. They also need a mentor to help them on the path to change. Most of the people attended were there because of their churches and one could tell that by the many "amens".  

After Tammy, four women, two currently in the program and two who had been through the program, spoke and told of their life stories. Common to them were chaotic childhoods and chaotic lives as addicts. Two were fairly young and two were middle aged.

Women who enter the program do not work for the first two months and then get daytime jobs. There is a cost of $100 for an intake fee and a fee of $125 a week for rent, but if a woman cannot pay that, she is not turned away. The program lasts nine months. The Rensselaer branch has one woman enrolled and another ready to join. The capacity of the apartment is four, and if they expand beyond four, they will need to add another apartment and house manager. Naturally the program needs outside financial support. They encourage donations of money and also gas and food cards. There are a number of other items that they have on their wish list, from paper goods to hygiene items. See their website or Facebook page for more information. (More pictures here.)

The House of Grace joins a number of other local non-profits that have the goal of helping people in need including the Good Samaritan Food Pantry, The Crisis Center, Fuller Center for Housing, CDC Resources, the Jasper County Recovery House, and Birthright of Rensselaer.

One final picture. This is the view looking out the door of the Core Building to Halleck Center. There has been no one walking on what was once a heavily used path.

Snow, snow, and more snow (updated)

I have not been able to get out enough to find really good winter pictures. Below is what my sidewalk to the street looks like. Many in the city have much higher snow canyons.

The river alongside Weston Cemetery had nearly frozen over a couple days ago. There is a swift current in this stretch that has kept parts of the river open.

It is not a good time to check out old gravestones.

At least we are ready for cold and snow. The people of Texas were not. 

Are you curious about the generating from the two Rensselaer solar parks? You can see what they are doing here.

The County Council met Tuesday in a rather routine meeting. The meeting was supposed to be in-person at the Sparling Annex with a Zoom option, but it appeared that everyone chose the Zoom option because of the weather and the uncertain status of the roads. First up was a report from Valley Oaks. They receive over $300,000 in property tax dollars and that amount of support seems to be mandated by State law. Valley Oaks provides services in nine counties, the largest of which is Tippecanoe. It started in 1938 and until a couple years ago it had a different name, Wabash Valley. It provides services for mental health and addiction. It employs 28 people from the Rensselaer office, with two more ready to start and three open positions. The bulk of their payments come from Medicare or Medicaid. Last year they served about 400 Jasper County adults and about 250 youths. They closely cooperate with area schools.

Next up was Judge Potter, who mentioned that relations between Jasper County government and Valley Oaks had improved over the past couple years. He also mentioned that Tippecanoe County has been hiring away our public defenders because they pay considerably more, but that was not his concern at the moment. Rather it was the pay discrepancy between what the local CASA director is paid and what CASA directors in comparable counties are paid. (Judge Potter oversees the CASA program.) His suggestion was to use grant funding to supplement the pay in the same way outside funding supplements the salary of the director of Community Corrections. The Council accepted his suggestion and he will draw up an agreement for the next Council meeting.

Sheriff Williamson returned this month with two options to allow the northern School Resource Officers to use overtime to patrol roads before and after school hours. The Council approved the five-day option.

The Council approved some additional appropriations that had been tabled from the last meeting. Most had been in the budget book when the Council set the County budget but for some reason had not been approved in August during the budget meetings. 

Members of the Council expressed appreciation for the State, County, and local plow crews for clearing the roads.

Covid vaccinations took a break on Monday and Tuesday because of the weather but are otherwise proceeding smoothly. The Coroner reported he has had 35 cases so far this year and has spent a third of his budget. He expects to be before the Council to request an additional appropriation in the future.

My other Zoom meeting this week was with the White County United Way where I serve on a review panel for grant requests. The White County United Way received a substantial grant from Lilly to help not-for-profit organizations in Jasper, White, and Pulaski counties that have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. The grants are supposed to be awarded and spent by the end of July. If you are part of a not-for-profit organization that can make a case that your organization has been harmed by the pandemic, contact the White County United Way to see if you might qualify. They are prioritizing funding for programs and agencies that:

•  Ensure sustainability of our regional social service network
•  Reduce gaps in services, particularly for healthcare and mental health access
•  Increase services offered via alternative or virtual delivery
•  Increase the # of individuals who access services for basic needs
•  Increase the # of individuals participating in healthy food access/nutrition programs
•  Increase the # of children enrolled in childcare or education/engagement programs
•  Increase the # of volunteers engaged in addressing community needs
•  Increase the # of social sector jobs retained through organizational financial supports 

****

A couple of quick additions.

Main Street Bakery of Francesville Medaryville is planning to expand to Morocco. It will remodel a building in the downtown and hopes to be open by August. Main Street Bakery bought the equipment and recipes of the bakery that formerly was in downtown Rensselaer.

A recovery house for women called the House of Grace will open their second location on the campus of Saint Josephs’s College. Apparently this has been in the works since October. Here is an announcement by SJC.

More winter weather, but hints of spring

 The forecast says that we will have real winter for the rest of this week and then next week we will finally get above freezing. This has been a cold and snowy February.

On Sunday I saw a couple of robins. They chose a poor time to come back north, but they are a sign that spring will be here soon. I also scared up a group of ducks on Saturday when I crossed the Iroquois River on the Talbert Bridge. 

The days are getting longer. In the next week we will gain about 18 minutes of daylight. 

In the previous post I mentioned that the Rensselaer City Council had passed a solar ordinance. It sets the rates and charges for any citizens who want to install solar panels and includes this:

Solar installations in residential areas will be limited to rooftop installations and the total capacity of a residential customer’s solar array on a rooftop is limited to the maximum capacity of the resident’s household requirements.

So the citizen who was thinking of installing some ground-based panels will not be allowed to do so.

Last week City workers  were removing snow from the downtown and other places. They took it to the lot west of the dog park on Bunkum Road. The pictures do not give a good indication of just how much snow is there.

Reith Riley, a paving company based in Goshen, has bought out Town and Country Paving, headquartered in DeMotte. 

I stumbled on an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that features a person who   grew up in Rensselaer.  (Alternative link.)

Last week the local invasive species group met via Zoom. They approved a logo and a mission statement and then discussed plans for a weed wrangle. They decided to hold the first one on May 15 at the Prairie Border Nature Preserve, which is near the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area. The property is owned by the Nature Conservancy, which I had not realized owned property in Jasper County. The event will be to pull garlic mustard, a plant that grows in woods and crowds out native species. For more information, check out the invasive species page on the Soil and Water Conservation District's web site or the Facebook page for the Jasper County Invasives Initiative.

The Jasper County Airport Authority had a very short meeting on last Thursday. There was an update of airport operations and a short discussion of insurance, but nothing that struck me as particularly interesting.

One more winter picture:

Mostly Zoom meetings

 A week ago we got real winter snow. Now we are experiencing real winter weather and it is forecast to last into next week. During weather like this I am happy that I can attend public meetings via Zoom.

Last week the City was moving snow from the downtown streets.

I attended the Tourism Commission on Friday via Zoom. It was an unusually long meeting, lasting nearly two hours. They had only one funding request, for $360 to update Court House planters. The Commission agreed to do this a few years ago so fulfilled their obligation. They then heard an update on tourism. The most interesting item there was an update on work on a master plan for the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area. There are three Purdue graduate students working on this plan to find ways to make the Area more attractive to visitors. There is no desire to curtail any current uses, which includes hunting. Jasper County Tourism is interested in this as it has the potential to increase the number of people visiting the County. 

The bulk of the meeting was taken up with a presentation by HVS, a firm that offers consulting services for convention, sports, and entertainment facilities, among other things it does. The two presenters  began pointing out some national trends. The number of people participating in team sports has dropped slightly over the past decade, but the intensity of those participating has increased. At one time young people switched sports as the seasons changed. Now many focus on one sport year around. 

They noted that Jasper County has a vacant sports complex, that of Saint Joseph's College. It would seem to be in the College's interest to have their facilities used and maintained rather than allow them to gradually deteriorate. However, the meeting was very pessimistic about the possibility of having those facilities opened to the public. Saint Joseph's still has a lot of bank debt that will not be paid off until at least 2027. They are unsure of their future and may still believe that they can restart as a college. As a result, they want to keep options open. They will not and perhaps cannot fund the costs that would be needed to bring these facilities back into use for the public. But because they want to keep control of the facilities, no outsider would be willing to spend the money needed to re-open the facilities.

The consultants then looked at possibilities of building either a dome or a field house. They would serve very different needs. A dome would be useful primarily in the winter when it could be used for baseball, soccer, and track. A field house would be more an all-season facility serving basketball, volleyball, and perhaps tennis or pickle ball. Either would be quite expensive to build, in the $5 to $10 million range, though a dome might be cheaper than a field house. I got the impression that if any building results from this study, it probably will begin in the northern part of the county. The north has the most population and would be able to draw from Lake and Porter Counties. Those counties have sport complexes, but they are often at capacity so something in northern Jasper County could draw people from further north.

The benefits to the County from a complex would be more people visiting and spending in Jasper County. It would also reduce the number of locals who now travel out of county for sports opportunities, keeping some of those dollars local. The Commission agreed to have HVC continue with their study, giving a better picture of whether any project would be financially feasible.

On Monday afternoon the Rensselaer Board of Public Works had a very short meeting to approve a payment to Commonwealth Engineering for their continuing work preparing for the upcoming sewer extension. The City will need to buy some property north of town for part of that project.

In the City Council meeting that followed, the Council passed an ordinance establishing new electric solar rates and charges. The explanation of that ordinance had been sent out to the members of the Council before the meeting so there was no explanation of what the ordinance will do at the meeting.

The gas tracker for February will be a one cent increase per hundred cubic feet. The Council then passed an extension to their contract with IMPA. The extension adds eight years, from 2042 to 2050 to the contract and changes the termination notice from ten years to 30 years. IMPA argues the longer termination notice is needed to lock in customers so they get more favorable rates and terms when they borrow money. So far 33 (now 34 with Rensselaer) of the 61 communities served by IMPA have agreed to the extension.

The project manager is hoping the third time is the charm. He asked approval to purchase a new service truck for about $1900 more than had been approved at two previous meetings. The truck is in stock at Gutweins in Monon.

The Council agreed to make the position of fire chief a full-time position. It will need to amend its salary ordinance before this happens. Once Mr Haun becomes the full-time fire chief, there will be a new person heading the Building Department.

In the Administrative Comments section of the meeting, it was noted that some people along Mt. Calvary Road would like City water because of the high iron content of their well water. There are two avenues they can pursue. One is to petition for annexation, which would require almost unanimous approval of those living there. The other is to pay a surcharge to pay for the extension of the water line so that it is not funded by City residents.

During Superintendents comments, the question of cleanup week was raised. No decision has yet been made. A notice for bids for the City's aerial truck have been placed and the bid opening is planned for February 22.

I am disappointed that I have not been able to find things to write about other than public meetings. 

First big snow of the winter

 We finally got a big snow this winter, one that had people using their snowblowers to clear their sidewalks and driveways. The temperature was near the freezing point and the snow was sticky, so there are lots of snowmen around town. The timing of the snow, on Saturday night and all day Sunday, meant that it did not interfere with school or many people commuting to work. However, area schools went to e-learning on Monday. Most City streets were cleared and because the temperature was near freezing and because Monday had some sun, most streets were dry by Monday afternoon. 

This is a comment left on the previous post:

Something to maybe check in to is the Baymont Inn out by 114 & 65 has been sold and will be a Quality Inn. Doing some huge renovation. Like over $1 million from what a guy there told me this afternoon.

I checked the County's GIS site and it revealed that the property had changed ownership on December 2. I tried to check the hotel prices on the Internet and was told that nothing was available, so it seems to be closed. 

Nick Fiala, who was a reporter for the Rensselaer Republican until he was downsized, is now working for the Indiana Attorney General as an outreach representative.

The County Commissioners met on February 1 for their monthly meeting. They approved a couple of buried cable permits. One of them, the Phase 2 of REMCs Fiber Optic project, was also on the agenda of the Drainage Board in the afternoon. At that meeting there were questions about how far it would be away from ditches when it ran along them and the project will be back before the Drainage Board in March. 

The Commissioners approved the annual contract with Porter County for housing juveniles. This year the County contracted for only one daily bed rather than two because it has over 300 bed-days left from the previous contract. The Commissioners also approved proceeding with the preparation of a Comprehensive Plan for the County. This is a project of the Planning and Development Office. The Office received a quote of $38,000 to prepare the plan from a firm in Indianapolis.

The Sheriff received permission to replace three employees, one a part-time dispatcher and two full-time correction officers. He reported that the solar field is up and running. The connection took place on the 27th. The power to the jail had to be turned off to make the connection and the jail did several other maintenance tasks while the power was off. Trane would like to have a ribbon cutting for the solar panels but no date has yet been set. The Sheriff reported that other than responding to slide-offs, the winter storm did not cause any unusual problems for his department. He did mention that there had been car thefts from the Dodge dealership in DeMotte and the thefts had resulted in a car chase.

The Health Department has done about 1000 vaccinations for the Covid virus and is expecting 700 vaccines per week through the end of March. Vaccinations are now available those 65 and older and appointments can be scheduled at ourshot.in.gov. (That link takes you to https://www.coronavirus.in.gov/vaccine/.)

The Commissioners then dealt with the miscellaneous stuff that pops up every month. They approved an agreement with a company called Spyglass that looks for ways that the County can save money. The company does not charge an upfront fee for their service but instead gets a percentage of any savings that they identify (for one year only). The Commissioners approved some increased fees for the County Highway Department. The fees will not be effective until after an ordinance with the fees is approved in the March meeting. They made an appointment to the Animal Control Board. It appears that the County may go into orange status from red and that will allow County meetings to be in person (though the Zoom option will remain). The Redevelopment Commission meets on Tuesday to pledge TIF moneys to DeMotte and NORWEJ to fund the bonds that they will be issuing, perhaps by the end of the month. In March there will be discussion of an exemption to encourage the building of a super-fast Internet infrastructure. The meeting was continued until the 16th if necessary.

The Drainage Board met in the afternoon. In addition to discussing the REMC optic-fiber project, they examined a proposal for a methane pipeline. This project had been approved in September of 2019 and then again in April of 2020. It needed the second approval because the company building the pipeline changed. This third round was necessary because the new company building it decided to change the route. There were questions about where they had to bore and where they could cut. Cutting a gravel road has a fee of $1000 and cutting a paved road has a fee of $2000. Since I had heard nothing about this project since April, I wondered if it had died and was happy to hear that it is still being considered.

The Rensselaer Park Board canceled its meeting for Monday evening.