Meeting notes, second week of July 2021

 Below is a picture showing the rise and fall of the Iroquois River after the six days of rain in late June. The river rises quickly and falls quickly because we are so close to its source.

I checked Weston Pond a few days ago and it is full of tadpoles. The recent rains may not have done much to slow the fall of the river, but they will give the tadpoles a few more days to mature.

The Rensselaer Board of Public Works met on Monday evening and approved an invoice from Commonwealth Engineering for work on a water study. They also approved the submission of a SWIF (State Water Infrastructure Fund) grant to help fund the project that Commonwealth Engineering is studying. The grant must be submitted this week and the SWIF program is one of the uses that the State of Indiana is making of its ARP (American Recovery Program) dollars. The City will discover if it gets the money in early August. It is asking for about $2.5 million and the City will need to match that for the project that includes a water tower near I-65, back-up generators, and some street improvements that involve replacing water services. If granted, there will be some quick deadlines to get the project moving forward. In addition to approving the submission of the grant application, the Board also approved a contract for design, bidding, surveying, permitting, and other services.

The Board approved two applicants for the Fire Department. They will bring the force up to 25. The Fire Chief would like a force of 30.

The City Council meeting that followed began with a citizen expressing her concern about happenings at Cruise Nite. She said that some people were pouring bleach and others had bypassed their catalytic converters to issue black clouds of smoke from the beds of their trucks. In the discussion that followed, it was pointed out the the J.C. Cruiser part of Cruise Nite ends after the cars loop through the route and everything after 6:30 or 6:45 is not part of the J.C. Cruiser Cruise. There were about 20 officers for 
Rensselaer, the Sheriff's Department, and the State Police patrolling during the night and they stopped a lot of cars. Anyone can call to report infractions and though that is not enough to issue a ticket, it is enough to initiate a traffic stop and sometimes those stops find offenses that can be charged.

The citizen also announced that there will be a ceremony on August 8 at 1:30 in Weston Cemetery to honor five men buried there who served in the War of 1812.

The Council passed an anti-loitering ordinance that resulted from a discussion at the last Council meeting. A first offense will result in a written warming and a second offense will carry a $50 fine, with further offenses having higher fines. The ordinance applies to all City property and will take effect 30 days after it is advertised.

The gas tracker for July is an 11.5¢ increase per hundred cubic feet. The City Clerk-Treasurer asked if the City wants to continue paying employees who quarantine because they test positive for Covid or have someone in their household test positive for Covid. The alternative is to have them use sick or vacation time. Both the County and State have stopped paying quarantining employees. The question may come back at the next Council meeting. Before the meeting adjourned, there was a discussion of whether the City departments were doing enough with succession planning, that is, preparing for retirement of key personnel. 

On Tuesday evening the joint Commissioners/Council meeting started at 5:00 instead of 6:00 because the Commissioners thought that one hour would not be enough time to discuss issues of mutual concern. The first issue on the agenda was EMS funding. The three township EMS services keep complaining that they do not receive enough County funding and the Commissioners would like to replace the private EMS service for the central part of the County with a township service. The question of the evening was whether the tax revenues that will no longer be needed to retire the bonds used to fund the jail can be used to fund EMS services and the answer was that these revenues could not directly be used in that way. The tax to fund the jail was the result of a special State bill that applied only to Jasper County. However, the revenue from the tax may be used to fund expenses for criminal justice facilities and that would free up revenues from the general fund. There was discussion of other financial options and an ordinance will probably be passed before the end of October.

The meeting then moved on to workforce issues. The County finds hiring and retaining part-time employees a problem. There was no pay raise for County employees last year and the feeling was that there needs to be some kind of raise this year to reduce turnover not only of part-time employees but also of full-time employees.

The County will be getting $6.51 million from American Recovery Program funding and will have four years to spend it. In addition the four municipalities of the County will receive a total of about $2.5 million. All spending must fit into one of five buckets: public health, reducing negative economic impacts, replacing lost revenues, pay for premium workers, or water and broadband infrastructure. There was agreement that the County should take its time to find the best way to spend this money so it will have a long-term impact. Decisions made today may not have their full effect for many years. During the discussion it was noted that there was a housing boom in the northern part of the County and that many of the people moving in were retirees from Illinois.

The last item discussed was a counseling program at the jail. People liked the idea that the County was trying to reduce recidivism by trying to get people to make better choices and to change their lives, but there were questions of whether the benefits were large enough to justify the costs when there were other useful things on which the money could be spent.

The regular monthly meeting of the County Council followed. The Sheriff explained some additional appropriations that were not advertised in time for this meeting and that he will bring to the August meeting. They all involved spending for COVID purposes that were reimbursed with CARES Act funding. The reimbursements put the money into the general fund and the additional appropriations will put them back in the Sheriff's budget. The Council approved additional appropriations for the Sheriff, the Coroner, the Recorder, and the Health Department. In a Covid update, 41.1% of the County has been vaccinated, which is low for the State. The State will be at the County Fair for three days offering vaccinations. The Health Department food inspector has 175 places to inspect, though some of them operate seasonally or only on a very few days.