We have passed the vernal equinox

Sunday was the vernal equinox. The sun will now rise north of due east and set north of due west.

The Rensselaer City Council met Monday evening. First on the agenda was an ordinance that would charge new electric services for meter bases and, for commercial installations only, transformers. Currently there is no charge for either though many other electric utilities charge for these and other costs of providing new hook-ups. This matter had been discussed at a February meeting and tabled to get more information. The measure passed. 

The Council also approved the transfer of funds not spent from the general fund to the rainy-day fund. The amount was $250,000. It also approved the electric tracker for the next quarter. It will be a reduction of $12.20 per megawatt. The customer using the average amount of electricity will save $8.54 on a monthly bill.

The Council opened bids for a new pole-barn storage building for the electric utility. There was only one bid, from Farm Builders for $173,686. However, the bid submission did not include a non-collusion affidavit. Normally this would disqualify the bid, but there was only one bid. The matter was taken under advisement and tabled to the next meeting. The Mayor selected a committee to review the bid if the City Attorney can get a non-collusion agreement from FBI.

There were four bids received to remove 35 trees on City right-of-ways and the low bid was from Timber Tree Service for $14,475. This bid resulted in something I do not recall ever seeing in a meeting, concern that the bid was too low. (The bid works out to $414 per tree. Two recent contracts had per-tree costs of $772 and $580.) The project manager had talked to the bidder who said that he wanted to get his foot in the door for working with the City. Later there was some discussion whether all bidders on City contracts above a certain amount should be bonded to insure that they do the work properly.

The Council approved a request of $5000 to help purchase new Christmas lights decorations. 

The four-year term of the Rensselaer School Board member appointed by the Council ends in June and the Council is inviting anyone interested in the position to apply before the second meeting in April. The Council will interview and make an appointment in May. Several Council members expressed the opinion that the Board should be elected, but Mayor said that the townships oppose this so it will not happen.

There will be work this year on McKinley Avenue and it will be closed for several weeks. The City-wide garage sale is set for May 1.

(INDOT is working on the local I-65 interchanges. From the Facebook page of Indiana Department of Transportation Northwest: "The State Road 114 and State Road 14 bridges over I-65 will be reduced to one lane for bridge deck overlay projects beginning Monday, March 15. Temporary stoplights will be installed to direct traffic, and lane restrictions will be in place through mid-August, 2021.")

I have seen quite a few people enjoying the new disc golf course in Brookside Park. There is now a map of the course posted near the entrance from Lincoln Street.

Rules for the course are also posted.

In a little more than a month the first tournament at Blacker Fields is scheduled. Benches for the dugouts and stands for a few fans have been installed.

Newton County is planning a rather unusual triathlon on May 15. It features a paddle, bike ride, and trail run on a course that will have mud.

Benton County will be offering tours of wind farms this summer.

The County has listed for sale its former annex at 128 N Cullen. The former Cooper Tire building on the corner of Washington and Front also has a for-sale sign. The building has been closed for about a year but it has had lights on. I guess this means that they are not planning to reopen it. They have a second location near the SR 114 and I-65 intersection. A third downtown property for sale is the building that houses Balloons Galore and More.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

The arrival of spring stopped on Monday as we had a wintery mix of rain, freezing rain, sleet, and some snow. Fortunately most of the precipitation was in the form of rain.

Most of the snow piles from February are gone. An exception are the snow piles the City made along Bunkum Road west of the dog park.

There have several meetings in the past few days, none of which were especially interesting. On Monday the Jasper County Plan Commission and BZA were scheduled to meet. The BZA could not find a quorum so its business was postponed until the April 19 meeting. According to the legal notice in the Rensselaer Republican, they were supposed to consider a variance and special exception for an expansion of a calf operation in Union Township. The Plan Commission did have a quorum and approved a rezone from A1 to A2 in Jordan Township. The owner wants to put a residence on the lot but it is not large enough to do this if it is zoned A1. A2 allows a house on a smaller lot. They had a a second agenda item, an amendment to the UDO for solar farms, but continued that item until the May meeting so they can see what the State legislature will pass on the issue.

The County Council met on Tuesday evening. The approved the NIPSCO settlement agreement that the PTABOA and Commissioners had previously approved and also a CASA funding agreement that had been discussed at the previous meeting. The Sheriff asked them to think about adding another full-time security officer for the Court House. There have been incidents recently that rarely if ever happened in the past. He stated and Judge Potter agreed that society has changed and we live in a different world than that of the previous generation. There was no formal proposal at this time. 

The Sheriff reviewed some statistics for 2020. The average jail census was 62 inmates, down considerably from 2019, with an average of 9 females and 53 males. The lowest jail census for 2020 was 41 and the highest was 79. The average length of stay is 26 days. Several inmates have been there over a year.

The Sheriff discussed the efforts of C Pulver to work with the inmates to address their addiction and other issues. This work has been funded by a grant that will run out and the Sheriff wants to continue the program. The goal is to reduce recidivism. He also raised the issue of staff turnover, especially in the jail. There is not a big pay increase for experience and many people who get jobs in the jail will leave when they find jobs that pay more and are less stressful.

The Council approved additional appropriations for the County highway department, health department, and the Coroner. It postponed a transfer for elevator maintenance to next month and did not take formal action on a bill in the State legislature that would allow the State to preempt local restrictions on wind and solar power, though several members agree with the actions that the Commissioners took on this issue. They tabled the item on Heritage Barn Ordinance for Property Tax Deduction so they could learn more about it and agreed to pay $140 dues from a Indiana County Council Association invoice.

Before they adjourned, they got a COVID update from the County Health Nurse. The shot clinic has given over 5000 vaccinations. The total number of people in the County who have been vaccinated is over 9000. The Shot Clinic will probably be in operation for another 2½ months and eligibility age for vaccinations has dropped to 45. Jasper County is still coded yellow. 

Last week the local invasive species group met via Zoom. Less the 10 people participated and none of them wanted to become an officer for the group. There was discussion of an upcoming weed wangle. To do an event of this sort requires jumping through a number of hoops and they tried to determine which location had the fewest hoops. There will be another meeting on the 24th.

The Fire Department has scheduled the Town-Wide Garage Sale for May 1.

The Historical Society met Tuesday evening at the same time the County Council was meeting. After their business meeting, Shannon Anderson talked about her adventures in publishing books for children. A video of the meeting is on Facebook.

A short but interesting Council meeting

 On Saturday I was surprised to find a lawn full of crocuses. On Sunday I saw turkey vultures for the first time this year.

The geese that hang out around Donaldsons seem to be pairing up and there are a lot of them. Next Sunday we begin daylight savings time. Winter is ending and spring is beginning.

The Rensselaer City Council had a special meeting on February 26 to approve tax abatements for Genova. It approved a resolution establishing the area as an economic revitalization area, needed to pass the abatements. One was for five years covering the production equipment, which will be an investment of about $1.2 million and the second was for eight years covering the 22,000-square-foot facility which will be an investment of $1.1 million. You can read the minutes of the meeting here. (I did not attend the meeting.)

The Jasper County Tourism Commission's meeting on Friday was very short because key people could not attend. There were no funding requests or other voting items. The tentative date for the bike ride is August 7. The design for a DeMotte sculpture has been set and work is scheduled to begin on June 7.

On Monday evening the Rensselaer Board of Public Works met before the City Council meeting. Both meetings were in-person and there was no Zoom option. The Board approved paying two invoices, one from Commonwealth Engineering and the other from Eenshuistra Appraisals. Both were for work on the project to replace the lift station and extend sewers. Before the project can be bid, easements must be obtained for the route of the sewer line and a small quarter-acre lot on Wood Road must be purchased. The City must get two appraisals of the lot and only one has been completed.

The City Council approved a gas-tracker increase of 12¢ per hundred cubic feet. The Gas Department superintendent said that the City was lucky that the increase was not greater. At the last meeting the City opened bids for street maintenance and at this meeting it accepted the low bid from Walsh and Kelly. The City will pay $203,881.44 for the work, which is 25% of the total cost and the State through a Community Crossing grant will pay the rest.

The Council approved a public relations request of $1200 from the Fire Department for their 125-year-anniversary open house. This matches the $1200 that is being contributed by Marion Township. The open house is on May 8. On May 11, 1896 the town of Rensselaer became the City of Rensselaer and the fire department name was changed to the Rensselaer Volunteer Fire Department. As early as the 1860s Rensselaer had a fire company or hook and ladder brigade. One of the things that will be featured at the open house will be the history of the Department. 

The Council approved an annual report that must be submitted to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development, from which Rensselaer has received grant monies. The Council also approved a list of 35 trees in City right-of-ways that are ailing or dead and need to be removed. The City will seek bids for their removal. 

The Mayor announced that Kevin Cochran will be the new Building Commissioner starting March 15, replacing Kenny Haun who is becoming the full-time Fire Chief. The City is accepting applications to fill Mr. Cochran's current position, Weston Cemetery Superintendent. 

Mr Haun announced that Indiana Face Masks will be expanding its operations, building a new building and hiring about 30 more employees. Also, Dr. Mallory is building a new vet clinic east of the Fountain Stone Theater. 

The Council approved the hiring of up to four part-time summer employees. There will be an electronics-recycling morning on April 17. The City is planning to have a clean-up week this year on May 3 to 7. Work is underway on the high-pressure gas main that will give the City a second tap into the gas trunk line. Work began this week along CR 725 S. Some of the line is being trenched and some of it is being bored. If work goes well, the entire pipe will be in the ground by the end of the month. A small station still needs to be built.

Below is a picture of the construction of the pipeline. You can see some of the pipe that has been trenched. The long pipe on the ground will be installed by boring. The hole is bored and then this pipe is pulled through the hole. The City is doing most of this work and has four people welding the sections of pipe together. During construction the sections of the pipe are pressurized to check for leaks.

At the next meeting bids will be opened for a 80' by 96' pole barn building for the electric department.

The Prairie Arts Council has placed a video the the recently concluded Regional High School Art show on Youtube. It is about an hour long and you can watch it here.

Time March-es on

 At the last City Council meeting, Kenny Haun mentioned that a business expansion was being planned. Perhaps the expansion he was referring to was by Genova. A press release from the Jasper County Economic Development Organization said that Genova will spend $2.3 million to build a 22,000 square foot expansion to its current facility. When completed, the company will hire about 12 new employees.

The annual Easter Egg Hunt will not be a hunt this year but a drive-thru event. The children 2-10 must remain in the car to receive candy. The date is April 3 from 11:00 until the candy is gone or 1:00, whichever comes first.

A new month brings a new round of monthly meetings. The Commissioners met Monday in a hybrid meeting. There was an in-person meeting at the Sparling Annex with a Zoom option that used the new equipment that the conference room has. Only one of the Commissioners was in the room; two attended remotely, one from Florida. There were at one time 20 people on the Zoom link, more than were in the meeting room. I opted to attend the in-person meeting but sat in front of one of the monitors (there are two) so I could see what the meeting looked like on Zoom.

This was not the first meeting to use the new equipment. BZA and Plan Commission meetings had used it for meetings that I did not know about so I missed. I try to find the announcements in the Rensselaer Republican, but the paper has recently changed its format, publishing all the legals from the various papers that Kankakee Publishing owns, so there are now several pages of fine print to scan. 

There were three buried cable requests. The major one was for the methane pipeline that will connect two dairies to the natural gas trunk line. It will be over 7 miles long and will have two pipes in the same trench for most of that distance. The Commissioners requested that the pipeline not use the County right-of-way when it can be located on the properties of the dairies. With that provision, the request to use the County right-of-way for the project was approved. 

The Commissioners approved a rezone from A1 to A2 that had been recommended by the Plan Commission and also a new fee of $200 for filing an appeal. They also approved the NIPSCO agreement that had previously been approved by PTABOA. The agreement settles the tax issues from 2016 to 2019 and sets out how valuation will be computed as NIPSCO shuts down its coal generation.

The Commissioners approved Sheriff Williamson's request to replace two more positions in the jail that are vacant because people left for other jobs. They also approved filling a third position that will result after a retirement and some shifting of people among jobs. He asked the Commissioners to consider replacing three part-time positions in Court House security with one full-time position. He said that currently there were 59 inmates at the jail but the census has been as high as 70 recently.

The County Health Department had given 3670 COVID vaccines as of Thursday. It will give another 740 this week. It has been told by the State to give vaccines only to Indiana residents so people now have to show proof of residency. The Department is preparing to start giving home-based vaccines and has requested the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine for this use because it is a one-dose shot. The County should soon be given blue status because the number of cases has dropped. The truck that the Department ordered has arrived but does not have plates so has not been released to the Health Department.

REMC is planning to provide high-speed internet connections throughout the County. In the northern third of the County where population density is greater, they will provide it with fiber optic cable. In the southern two thirds they are planning to provide it wirelessly. To do that, they will erect 120-foot-tall poles that will provide coverage for a five-mile radius. They asked the Commissioners for permission to place them in County right-of-ways. They will place 8 towers in the first round of construction and 16 more next year. The presenter noted that some neighboring counties are ahead of Jasper in providing high-speed internet and that this service is important for economic development. The Commissioners decided that their previous approval for this project covered the poles. 

The Commissioners moved on the smaller matters. DeMotte and Norwej want to use the County tax statements to collect a hydrant fee. The County Treasurer does not want to add the fee and she has final say, not the Commissioners. The Commissioners opened bids for lawn-care service for the jail, the Sparling Annex, and the Surveyor's office and accepted the low bids. They approved a motion to sign a listing agreement with Jenkins for the now-vacant annex that recently housed the prosecutor. The State legislature is considering a bill that would allow the State to override county restrictions on solar and wind farms. At least 50 counties have passed resolutions opposing the legislation and the Commissioners added Jasper County to that list.

The farmers market will be open from May until October and it was given permission to set use a bit of the Court-House lot. A County auction was tentatively scheduled for the second Saturday in April. Departments that have items to sell need to provide a listing. The bonds for the jail will be paid off in 2022 and there was a brief discussion of the possibility of using the money saved for EMS. The County Coroner said that human remains had been found by two coyote hunters. The meeting was continued until March 15, if necessary.

The frost law is in effect, limiting use of County roads by heavy vehicles. 

The Drainage Board met in a Zoom-only meeting in the afternoon. It received three bids to clean five miles of the Stover Ditch and accepted the low bid. However, Newton County will also have to agree to accept this bid.

There were two items continued from the last meeting, the REMC Fiber Optic Build and the methane pipeline. Both were quickly handled. REMC had agreed to the changes requested at the last meeting so their plans were approved and the methane pipeline had been discussed at the Commissioners meeting and it was approved with the recommendations made there.

In the evening there was a scheduled Park Board meeting that was in-person with no Zoom option. Only three members showed up, which was not enough for a quorum so no votes could be taken. However, the new concession stand for the Blacker Fields needs to be equipped, and the Park Board needs to approve the spending. It will be done with an e-mail poll. There will be 14 tournaments this summer and groups are scheduled to work the concession stand for all 14. The majority are school groups. Someone in the County plans to dig out a small pond and has offered the dirt to the Parks. It may be used to build a hill in Brookside that could be used as a sledding hill in the winter. 

Recently I visited Monticello and noticed a statue in the plaza of the White County Court House.

It was erected as part of the 2016 Indiana Bicentennial. Below is a picture from a different angle.

A closer look at the head.

And the plaque that tells who he was.

I prefer our Milroy statue and I wish we could add another. We do have some local figures with enough prominence to merit a statue: Charles Halleck, Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson and her Greyfriars Bobby, and my favorites, Earle Reynolds and Nellie Donegan Reynolds.

Annual Regional Art Show 2021

It is amazing how quickly our snow has melted with the warmer weather. The big piles that the snowplows made remain, but almost all the snow that was on lawns or fields is gone.

I heard several groups of sandhill cranes flying overhead on Saturday but could not see them. I also heard a killdeer. Birds are coming north.

There is a new not-for-profit organization forming, the Jasper House. It does not yet have a website but it does have a Facebook page and a logo. The mission statement from the Facebook page is, "We are an application-pending 501c3 nonprofit. Working with local organizations and law enforcement, we are quantifying local homelessness in order to connect homeless with available resources including affordable transitional housing."

The Fendig Gallery at the Carnegie Center is hosting the annual Regional High School Art Show that will end this week. To visit, one needs to make an appointment, which is why I did not bother to visit the Primary School Art Show earlier this month. 

There are some colorful walls of pictures from surrounding schools.

Two of the self-portraits on this wall identify the year as 2021.

More pictures from a different school, but with another masked self portrait.

I saw only one work made with typefaces. As someone who has spent a lot of time with typefaces, I pay more attention to these than most other people.

I bought an op-art print 50 years ago, so this picture also caught my attention.

On Saturday when I visited, the awards had been made and this picture of bones had an award-of-excellence ribbon.

The runner-up for best of show was this ceramic fish. 

And the best-of-show ribbon was on this watercolor painting titled "Frenzy."