MMCMXCIX

Are you enjoying the amazing fall colors, the red, yellow, and orange leaves? Here are some pictures I took on October 20th showing our brilliant fall colors.

Maybe next week they will be brilliant.

The construction at McDonalds may be finished. The fence is down and there appeared to be people eating inside.

The Jasper County BZA met on Monday evening to consider an item that had been continued from the September meeting. There were only two of the five members present but they were able to connect with a third via phone so they had a quorum. The cause on the agenda involved a property that had been split so the house was separated from the outbuildings. It needed a variance for frontage because it did not meet the 250-foot requirement. However, there was a concern that it also did not meet the setback requirement for neighboring buildings. The property had been resurveyed to meet the setback requirement and the new line was acceptable to the people who had purchased the house. The variance was granted. After the vote, there was a short discussion of whether it might be wise to have some alternate members available to fill in when members miss meetings.

The BZA meeting was very short. The County Council meeting on Tuesday was very long, lasting about two and a half hours. The meeting has a Zoom option and as has been the case with most of the hybrid meetings, it took a while to get the audio to work. There were more than a dozen people using Zoom to attend the meeting.

The first half hour of the meeting was spent in budget reductions, additional appropriations for the Recorder and Coroner, and transfers for Animal Control, Highway, the Prosecutor, and the Assessor. The Sheriff told the Council he will be asking for $50,000 in the next meeting for repairs on the HVAC system. He gave a presentation similar to that given the Commissioners on a system to reduce water usage at the jail. He wants to increase pay for part-time help from $17 to $19; no action was taken by the Council.

The Council then discussed the LIT Levy Freeze and the Jail Special Purpose fund and I do not understand exactly what they did. I think they reduced one tax that had to be put into a fund that they could not tap so that later they will be able to raise another tax that will give the County money it can use. But that is just a guess.

The Council then adopted the inter-local agreement for ambulance service for the center of the County. The Commissioners had passed this at their meeting earlier this month.

The Council then approved the budget of four groups that must have Council approval: The Rensselaer Central School Corporation, the Airport Authority, the Northwest Indiana Solid Waste District, and the Iroquois Conservancy. These presentations were hard to follow when the discussion was directed to the budgets that the Council had on paper in front of them. By far the largest was the Rensselaer Central School Corporation, which needs Council approval because it has an appointed school board. The State gives $7,000 to the Corporation for each student, and the Corporation has been losing students (as have most rural schools) for the past decade. The total budget was $18,687,000. The Airport has a budget of $716,214. Right now they have an independent contractor working as a bookkeeper but will hire someone for that at the beginning of 2022. The Northwest Solid Waste District is completely funded by tipping fees at landfills. Jasper County approves its budget because Jasper County has the highest assessed valuation of the counties it serves.

The Council was asked questions about salary changes in their new budget. One department wanted to know why another department got bigger raises than it did. At the end of the meeting a department head asked why she was paid less than others with similar rank.

Nextera, which has begun construction on Phase I of the Dunn's Bridge Solar Project in Kankakee Township, told the Council that it wants to start construction of Phase II in the Spring of 2022 and will begin to get all the regulatory approvals it needs. It will seek a variance at the BZA meeting on November 15 and a tax abatement at the next Council meeting (November 16). The project is a $335 million project with a capacity of 290 megawatts. There will be an official groundbreaking ceremony for Phase I on November 10. There was mention that Pulaski and Starke Counties have a large solar park in the planning stages.

Councilman Brian Moore, who attended via Zoom, remarked that he was disappointed in the performance of Zoom.

The meeting was continued until October 29 at 4:00 pm when it will pass the 2022 budget.

Jenna Morello, who painted the purple coneflower mural in downtown Rensselaer, is back in the area, doing a mural for Otterbein. Rein Bontreger's mural in Kentland is almost finished and looking great.