First snow and a lot more

 We woke up Sunday morning to our first snow of the season. Fortunately most of it melted fairly quickly.

The cold, rain, and wind brought down a lot of leaves over the weekend. 

The final event celebrating the 125th anniversary of the Court House took place Friday. Hundreds of students from Kankakee Valley, Demotte Christian, Saint Augustine, and the Rensselaer Middle School came to tour the Court House. Their visit began with a guide telling them about the history and architecture of the building. They then entered the Court House and were told about Court-House security.

The students were then divided into ten groups with guides that would escort them to nine different offices in the building. I was asked to help and I became the guide for one of the afternoon tours. My group of RCMS eighth graders began our tour on the third floor in the Circuit Court and then went to the Superior Court. Judge Bailey explained that the Indiana Constitution establishes one court in each county, and that is the circuit court. If the case load is too much for the one court, the State legislature can establish additional courts, and they are the superior courts.

We then headed down to the first floor where we visited the assessors office, IT and Planning and Development, and the Veterans' Affairs office. When we got to the second floor, we were backed up a bit so we took a look at Jasper, the County bison. We talked to the auditor, had a short visit in the Recorder's office where we saw the first record book of the hundreds that the office has. It was damaged in a fire of the previous Court House in 1865. That fire was set to hide malfeasance. 

We had an even shorter visit to the Treasurer's office and we did not visit the last office on our schedule, the County Clerk, because time ran out and the students had to leave. They walked back to the Middle School.

The doors of most of the Court-House offices lists previous officeholders. The Commissioners Room, which used to hold many County meetings until they moved to the Sparling Annex, has a list of previous county commissioners. From the list, it appears that there is a lot of uncertainty about the terms of early commissioners. 

The list becomes certain in the late 19th century.

Christmas shopping has begun. On Saturday the Fairgrounds hosted the annual Mistletoe Magic Show. It was cold and rainy so I opted not to go. I did visit the annual Prairie Arts Council Holiday Art Show and Sale.

On Thursday the Veterans Day ceremonies were moved from Weston Cemetery to the American Legion Hall.

I hate the shortness of daylight in the winter. According to this site, there will be 9 hours, 54 minutes, and 32 seconds of daylight on Tuesday the 16th. We are losing about two minutes of daylight each day and will lose about 40 more minutes until December 21, when we have only nine hours and seventeeen minutes of daylight. However, the earliest sunset will happen on December 8 at 4:21:58 and then the sunset will slowly get later.  It could be worse. When I lived in central Minnesota the shortest day of the year had only eight hours and forty-two minutes of daylight.

On Monday evening both the Jasper County Plan Commission and the BZA met. It was standing-room only with over 40 people in the audience. The Plan Commission met first and was a bit late starting because it took a while to get the Zoom audio working. The Plan Commission approved a rezone from A1 to A2 and approved a 2-lot subdivision that will allow a son to build a house next to his father's house in Barkley Township. Their vote is not final; the Commissioners will have to agree at their December 6 meeting.

The first item on the BZA agenda was for a special exception for a confined feeding operation in Jordan Township. The property had been given a special exception in August of 2019 but it was not until this summer that the property was finally transferred. The 2019 special exception allowed the new owners to build on the old foundations but upon inspection they found that was not possible. So they had a new plan that needed BZA approval. The new plan was for two buildings,  each 101' by 277' and housing 3200 pigs. The total pig count would be less than what IDEM had approved for the site. There were no public comments and the special exception was approved. Construction is planned to begin in early spring.

The second item was a special exception for Phase II of the Dunns Bridge Solar Project in Kankakee Township. (Phase I is currently being constructed.) NextEra had several people attending who addressed the Board. They noted that this was a $335 million investment that complied with the provisions of the County's solar ordinance. The special exception being sought (which is required for any solar project) was for the new properties in the project, which will use about 4400 acres. The project will have a capacity of 291 megawatts. The output is direct current and it will be converted to alternating current by inverters that will be located toward the centers of the solar arrays. There will be a battery component that will allow some of the power generated to be stored and fed to the grid when it is needed. The projected timeline is for construction to begin in April of 2022 with construction finished and testing beginning in August of 2023 and the project to be fully online in December of 2023. NextEra had a property-value specialist who argued that studies showed that solar fields have no measurable impact on property values. NextEra will not operate the project but will sell it to NIPSCO when it is finished. 

My notes count 16 people who commented on the project when the floor was opened to public comments, ten who opposed the project and six who favored it. The main arguments of those who favored it were financial. The project will bring millions of dollars to the County and will help offset the decline in property tax revenue when the Schahfer plant stops generating using coal. It will also provide steady income for the farmers who are leasing their land to the project. One speaker noted that economic development is a challenge in rural areas and rural areas need to take advantage of the opportunities that exist.

Those speaking in opposition made a variety of arguments. Two were farmers who leased the land that they farmed and they said that they would be harmed if land that they currently lease is diverted to solar. A couple speakers suggested that the construction activities are bringing up sand and that the land will not be able to return to agricultural uses when the solar farms are decommissioned. Several speakers did not like the extra traffic on the County roads resulting from Phase I. There was concern about the safety of the batteries and also about the impact on deer and sandhill cranes. There were some who argued against solar power in general. A couple speakers thought that the companies were not paying enough for the leases compared to the revenue that they would collect per acre and one speaker implied that those who signed up with NextEra where too stupid to know what they were doing and that the BZA had the duty to protect them from their poor decisions.

Members of the BZA thought they needed to reflect on the matter so decided not to act at this meeting but postponed the vote to the December 20th meeting. At that meeting there will be no public comment. The Board members will be able to ask questions of NextEra if they need to. Until then the Board members cannot directly contact NextEra or each other. Any questions they have must be funneled through the Planning and Development office.

The meeting ended about 10:10 pm.

(There are two separate questions about solar farms. One is whether the federal government should be promoting them and the other is, given federal policy, should local governments encourage them. A person's position on the first issue does not necessarily determine a person's position on the second issue. And I wonder about how the contracts deal with inflation. I believe most people underestimate the possibility of severe inflation in the future.)