Highlights from 2021

A number of new businesses opened in 2021: Main Street Bakery,  A&B Auto, Sage Bridal, Royal Scoop, K&G’s Overstock Outlet, Rule Auto Care, and Erica's Boutique. West of Rensselaer a small event center, the Heritage Barn at Pumpkin Vine Trail opened. Rensselaer Pet Care moved into new office.  GRG Auto Repairs closed, and the building that housed Balloons Galore and More is empty, though the business may have closed before 2021. Moonshiners closed in early 2021 or perhaps sometime in 2020. Several businesses remodeled: Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Alliance Bank, and Walmart. Genova, Indiana Face Masks, and Pipestone Veterinary Services expanded their buildings. The House of Grace, a substance rehabilitation center for women opened on the SJC campus. 

At the end of December the former Arby's on the south side of Rensselaer was demolished. Walgreens will build a drive-through facility there.

The City of Rensselaer gas utility completed a new pipeline that provides a second tap into the trunk line going through the County. The electric utility replaced their old storage building with a new one. The Fire Department celebrated its 125th anniversary, sold their old aerial truck, and took delivery of a new one in November. It was a busy year for the Rensselaer Parks. The new Blacker Fields saw about a dozen baseball and softball tournaments during the spring and summer. A new disc golf course saw considerable use. The basketball court in Brookside Park was totally reconstructed. There were some short walking paths added in Foundation and Iroquois Parks.

2021 was a good year for murals. In July Rensselaer added several new murals. DeMotte, Francesville, Medaryville, and Kentland also added murals.

The Court House celebrated its 125 anniversary. Jasper County moved to voting centers during the year. The Jail began to receive electricity from its new solar farm and had other changes designed to improve comfort and cut utility bills. Construction of the huge Dunns Bridge Solar Farm began in the northeastern corner of the County. REMC began installing the equipment needed to bring broadband to most of Jasper County. The airport hired a new manager. Jasper County Tourism launched the first Jasper Jaunt, a bicycle ride.

Although Covid cases continued in 2021 and several citizens died from it, the panic about the virus resided and several events that had been canceled or scaled back in 2020 returned, including the Little Cousin Jasper Festival, the Christmas parade, Oktober Fest, and the County Fair. The Children's theater had a performance, though it was outside rather than inside. 

Finally, a large crow now welcomes visitors who come from the north to our City.

St. Peter and Paul Church, Goodland

A year or two ago the Diocese of Lafayette in Indiana combined many of its parishes into groups called pastorates.  The Saint Augustine parish in Rensselaer was combined with the The Sacred Heart of Jesus parish in Remington and the Saints Peter and Paul parish in Goodland to form the St. Michael the Archangel pastorate. One priest serves all three parishes. The church building in Remington had a fire and the repairing of the building is not yet complete, so Sunday services are currently held in Goodland and Rensselaer. 

I visited the church recently and took some pictures. St. Peter and Paul looks like hundreds of other small Catholic churchs in America. It was built in 1902.

 Below is a look at the inside.

The altar piece is ornate with large statues of the Holy Family flanked by Sts. Peter and Paul. 

Few churches have stations of the Cross as large as these.

The stained-glass windows are rather plain but do let in a lot of light.

The parish is the smallest of the three in the pastorate.

Hope you had a Merry Christmas.

Up, up, and away

Last week I wanted to take a picture of the sign on the door of Dollar Tree. As I approached the door, a woman and a small girl came out. The girl was holding a balloon and I thought, "I hope she holds it tight." A second or two after we passed, I heard the woman say, "Oh. There it goes." I turned to see the balloon racing to the north, carried by the strong south wind.

What is surprising about the announcement on the door is that they were able to maintain the $1 price for as long as they did. For the past 80 years the U.S. has had inflation, mostly mild. When I was young, the cost of a postage stamp for a letter was 3¢. Ben Franklin and Woolworths were called dime stores because that was a common price of things that they sold. My father sold candy bars for a nickel each. When it was  founded in the early 1960s, the 6 in the Motel 6 name referred to the cost of a night's stay. The odds are that we are entering a period of more rapid inflation because inflation is the way that governments with big deficits handle their debt problems. How long will it be before Dollar Tree will be 2-Dollar Tree?

On Saturday volunteers put wreaths on the graves of about 700 veterans buried in Weston Cemetery.

On Wednesday the 15th the auction for the former Monnett School building closed. The winning bid was $75,500. 

December 21 is the winter solstice. Now days will start getting longer, though very slowly at first.

On Monday evening both the Jasper County Board of Zoning Appeal and the Planning Commission met. There was only one item before the Plan Commission, a rezone request from Heavy Commercial (HC) to Parks and Recreation (PR). The Love's Travel Center at the DeMotte exit would like to use 20 acres of their land to build a RV park. This development was encouraged by the running of water and sewer lines from DeMotte to the Interstate. The proposed development would be separated from the Travel Center by the drainage ditch. Love's has done a few small RV parks but, with spaces for 65 RVs, this would be by far the largest. The spaces would have water and electric hookups and most would have a sewer hookup. There is a dog park planned for the facility as well as a playground and a pickleball court. A 3200-square -foot building would have an office, showers, and a small store to sell items that RVers use. The park will be gated, and a code will be needed to enter. There will be a stay limit of 28 days. Loves will add a turn lane and a bypass lane on SR 10 at the entrance. The rezone was approved and will go to the Commissioners. Later the BZA approved the special exception needed to establish the park. There are still some regulatory hoops to jump through, including Drainage Board approval.

The other item of the night was approval of a special exception for Phase II of the Dunns Bridge Solar project. This was a continued item from the November meeting. There were questions from the Board about topsoil, getting border trees to grow, and updates on project construction. The findings of facts were the longest I can recall; they took about 15 minutes to read. They were approved as was the special exception.

A lot of pictures and Greyhound

The Jasper County Historical Society Museum has a new exhibit featuring advertising items from their collection. This calendar from 1944 was issued by the Snyder Funeral Home. I had never heard of it. When was it in business and what happened to it?

The Iroquois Roller Mills was located on Front Street where the dentist office is now. It burned, I think in the 1970s. I am familiar with the name Sprague because when we moved to our present home, we were told by old-timers that we were in the old Sprague house. Ralph Sprague died in 1933. His daughter married Emory Harrison for whom the RCHS football field is named.

I do not know anything about Blue Ribbon Bread of the Rensselaer Bakery. 

Jesse Chambers Gwin served in the Civil War and died in 1935 at the age of 90. A son was a doctor in Rensselaer.

I vaguely remember this. Some of the businesses mentioned are still around.
 

Below is a picture of some fairly recent items. 

Another picture of small but fairly recent items.

The Museum is open the first and third Saturdays of the month from 10:00 to 1:00.

In somewhat related news, the Jasper County Public Library received a grant for almost $25,000 to begin to digitize old newspapers that are on microfilm. The project will begin with Rensselaer papers from 1853 to 1920 and the KV Post News from 1932 to 1950. 

On Friday night and Saturday morning strong storms blew through the area. The winds knocked out power to many homes and toppled several trees, including a large tree in Weston Cemetery.

The old Monnett School building is for sale on an on-line auction that ends December 15. 

There was an open house on Saturday and I could not resist the opportunity to peek inside.

Whoever buys it will need to do a fair amount of repair work. Below is a large room on the second floor. The contents of the room were sold a few days ago but it appears that the person who won the bid did not want some of the toys.

I missed a few Christmas trees in the pictures I posted pictures of Potawotomie Park in the last two posts. Below is a pretty tree that has no identification of a sponsor that I could see.

Franciscan Health's tree is below.

This tree is sponsored by the law office of Lori James.

I had posted the Donaldson's display, but that was before the big storm knocked down the filter men.

The tree below is not in Potawotomie Park. Do you know where it is?

The Rensselaer Board of Public Works met Monday evening and approved paying invoices or spending about $100,000. There were three invoices from Commonwealth Engineering, two for work on the main lift station and unsewered areas and one for work on the Water Main and elevated storage tank. The work on the first was for bid assistance. The City is waiting to hear from the Federal government what kind of financial assistance it can expect. The second project is still in very early stages. There were two small invoices from Riley & Ahler for bid assistance. Finally, the Board approved a refreshing of an engineering report about the wastewater treatment plant. The report was part of the control plan that IDEM approved for the City and the purpose of updating it is to make the City ready to apply for funding if any becomes available as a result of the infrastructure spending that was recently enacted.

After the normal preliminaries, the City Council meeting had a public hearing on the new trash ordinance. No members of the public spoke. About 150 people older than 65 have signed up for the smaller trash container and the new containers should be in and distributed in early January. (To sign up, visit the utility office in City Hall.) The Council approved waiving a second reading of the ordinance and then passed the third reading, making the new rates official. 

After some transfers of funds, The City approved a electric tracker of $4.20 per megawatt of usage, which will increase the average monthly utility bill by about $2.94. Some of the large increase of the gas tracker from last month was reversed for December with a 32¢ decrease per hundred cubic feet. 

Perhaps the most interesting news from the meeting was that Greyhound is planning a new route between Chicago and Indianapolis and would like to stop in Rensselaer. The preferred location for the stop would be the Amtrak station but the City needs to get permission from the railroad to have that happen. Until that happens, the bus stop will probably be by the parking lot next to Fenwick Farms. The bus schedule will have stops at 7:00 am and either 12:15 or 12:50 pm. (It was not stated which way the buses would be traveling at those times.) Other stops planned are Crown Point, Lafayette, and Lebanon. The Council approved bus service to Rensselaer.

The City's vactor truck, used to vacuum sewers among other uses, is a 1999 model that is rusting and needs repairs. There is a used truck the City could buy, a 2015 model for $265,000. A new truck would cost $440,000. The current truck has no trade-in value. The Council approved the purchase of the truck if funding can be arranged. The old truck would be sold if a buyer can be found. The Rachel Street water tower is currently used by Sprint and T-Mobile for cell-phone equipment. Sprint/T-Mobile has informed the City that they will terminate the contract in February. They are paying $1800 a month to the City. The Drexel water tower is used by Verizon, which pays $1064 a month. Sprint/T-Mobile will remove all of their equipment from the tower.

The Council reaffirmed that the Christmas holiday for employees will be December 23 and 24. The front door of the police station was damaged in the Friday-Saturday storm and is (or was) unusable. The electric department was busy Friday night and Saturday morning restoring power. The company that manufactured the new firetruck for the Rensselaer Fire Department has been given permission to use pictures of the new truck in their advertising brochures. 

More trees and tiny houses

 Below are more pictures from the Christmas Tree walk in Potawotomie Park. The first is a tree from the Middle School's 6th grade social studies class.

The sign clearly says who sponsored this tree.

The tree below is from Bombers for Academic Excellance and has school supplies that children who need them are invited to take.

Hope Community may be the only church with a display.

I am not sure why a dinosaur is emerging from the IBEC tree.

This is the Rensselaer Park's giving tree. People are encouraged to take the envelopes, which contain requests for gifts from needy children, and fulfill the requests.

This appears to be a tree decorated by young children. I could not find the sponsor's name when I took the picture.

One of the 2021 projects that Main Street Rensselaer wanted to finish was a path from College Street to the shelter and restrooms in Iroquois Park. There are no restrooms in Potawotomie Park, but the rest rooms in Iroquois Park are only a very short distance away. The path should help people find them.

On Thursday evening the Rensselaer Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) met. The first item on the agenda was a request for a conditional use permit. A Hispanic woman wanted to sell food from a residential unit in an R-2 zone. People would order over the phone and then stop by to pick it up. After discussion and questions, the Board learned that although she owned the residence, she was not living there so her case did not fit the business-in-a-residence provision of the zoning code. They suggested that she find another site and will try to help her. She withdrew her request so no vote was taken.

The second item was for a conditional use permit for an Air B&B in a B3 zoning district. The property in question has a Front Street address, but it is in the alley behind Fenwick Farms. (A property cannot have an alley address.) The owner of the property combined a small empty lot with the lot that has the old carriage house (once used for storage by the Fendig Summer Theater and currently without a roof). His plan is to add a tiny home to the existing building and make it a short-term rental. It will have a connection to the larger building that will, when finished, have an office and space devoted to art on the first floor and a rental on the second. The tiny home exists and is currently in San Francisco. It has only 160 square feet of space.. There was a discussion of why a motel is allowed in a B3 zone but not an AirB&B, There seems to be some technical differences that I did not understand. The permit was granted.

Before they adjourned, the Board discussed how they should handle these short-term rentals going forward. Rensselaer currently has two that are operating and both seem to be quite busy. There is another being planned on Washington Street north of downtown.  The expectation was that because there is a demand for this type of alternative to motels, there will be more in the future. The lawyer for the Board said he would research what regulations other communities have for this type of rental unit and report back.

There was mention during the discussion that some organization was interested in doing a little village of ten tiny homes in Rensselaer. I did not catch what type of renters or owners they were interested in.

The Airport Authority also met on Thursday evening but I chose to go to the BZA meeting because I thought it would be more interesting. I do not know if I was right or wrong.

In October the City Council had a public hearing for a planning grant it was seeking. KIRPC announced that the State had approved the application.

If you are over 65 and would like to use the smaller garbage cans for 2022 (with a lower garbage fee), stop by City Hall to sign up. You will need to fill out a form and show proof of age.

Decorations, parades, and a meeting or two

Below are some pictures from the Chirstmas parade that was held on Saturday afternoon. Better pictures in a video of the entire parade can be found on Facebook.

There were a lot of big vehicles in the parade. D-1 towing had four or five trucks, including some massive tow trucks. They could be very loud.

Rensselaer had several fire trucks in the parade, including its new aerial truck. It also could be very loud.

Not loud was this large John Deere tractor.

The Girl Scouts marched and gave out candy.

The Jasper County Highway Department had several snow plows in the parade. I guess that is appropriate for a Christmas parade.

The Cub and Boy Scout rode on a float.

Retired Iron had three tractors.

Near the end of the parade there were some horses. This year there were no camels.

Santa was at the end of the parade. I asked him what his new reindeer was called. He said, "GMC."

After the parade I stopped by Potawatomie Park to see what was happening with Frosty Fest. There were people checking out the trees and a long line for a visit with Santa. While I was there, Santa was not terrifying infants. Earlier in the day I saw him with a baby and a small child who desperately wanted to get back to momma.

The bowstring bridge is decorated.

I updated the previous post with a link to a complete explanation of what the Kentland mural shows. 

The County Commissioners met Monday morning in a long meeting that dealt with a lot of little issues. They approved a buried cable permit for Century Link to bore under a road in Fair Oaks. A citizen wanted a speed limit on a section of CR 1000 N. There will be a public hearing on her request in the January meeting and the Commissioners may make a decision then. A rezone request that had been recommended by the Plan Commission was approved. The Commissioners approved juvenile probation contracts with Lake and Porter Counties. The Lake County contract was the same as last year's, for 200 bed days. There was no Porter County contract last year because Jasper County had enough carry over from 2019. (Jasper County does not house juvenile offenders at its jail.) The Commissioners approved the Purdue extension contract. This is an annual contract that details how Purdue and the County split the costs of the local extension office.

The Head of Animal Control wanted to be paid for comp time that he cannot use and the Commissioners approved payment for some of it. He also wanted to upgrade his phone service which was not upgraded when the rest of the County switched to NITCO. The County IT people will see what can be done. The Commissioners appointed a person to fill a vacancy on the Animal Control Board. 

Commissioner Culp proposed EMS subsidies for township EMS providers that increased payments by $66,190, a 13.1% increase that was not split evenly. His proposal was passed.

 Next was a discussion of whether the County recognized a road as a County road. A person wants to develop a property along an unmaintained extension of CR 1000 N and needed to know what the legal status of this extension was. One document referenced was prepared by Lura Halleck, a lawyer from a century ago and mother of Charles Halleck. Some further research may be needed.

The County has a problem with its insurance for cyber security. I did not understand exactly what the issue was, but heard mention of multi-factor authorization and remote access. The Commissioners decided on a new policy and will work to correct whatever the problem was that the previous insurance company objected to.

The County formed a task force to make recommendations after NIPSCO announced that it was closing its Wheatfield coal operation. It suggested that getting utilities to all four interstate intersections in the County should be a priority. The one that is least served is the 205 intersection. The Commissioners approved a contract with Wessler Engineering to do a preliminary study to determine what it would cost to extend water and sewer from Remington to the intersection.

There was a long discussion of the problem of water leakage and humidity in the basement of the Court House. The heavy rain (in late June?) resulted in water in the basement. An examination of the downspout system showed blockage and some damage in the very old drainage pipes below ground. The water from the roof goes into the sewer system after passing beneath the theater and draining into a sewer pipe on Front Street. The Commissioners approved a contract for work to correct the problems.

There was another long discussion about Health Savings Accounts for County employees. As I understood the discussion, at present employees can contribute to HSA accounts with after tax funds. Some want to have the contributions deducted by the County, which would make the contributions pre-tax, reducing the tax obligation. The Commissioners set in motion efforts to get the change done for the 2022 year.

There was a short discussion of what is happening with the proposed central Jasper County EMS service. The Commissioners voted to approve the contract with Phoenix for 2022. It has the provision that allows either party to cancel with a 60-day notice so if the new EMS service is up and running by mid 2022, the switch from Phoenix to the new service can be made.

The Commissioners finished the meeting with a number of small items. They approved a bridge contract. Normally this is a four-year contract, but the State wants to get them staggered so this new one is for only two years. They certified ten voting center locations. The closest to Rensselaer are the fire station and the fairgrounds. Seven properties that did not sell at a recent tax sale were approved for a Commissioners sale. The difference between the two is at the tax sale the buyer must pay back taxes. At the Commissioners sale the back taxes are removed in an effort to get the property back on the tax rolls. They did not act on holidays for 2022 but set meeting dates for Commissioners meetings for 2022. The meetings will be on the first Monday of the month except for July and September, when the first Monday is a holiday. The meetings will be on the Tuesday. The joint Commissioners/Council meetings will be on July 18 and September 15. Finally, they approved replacing an officer at Community Corrections. The individual leaving will be joining the Rensselaer Police force.

I skipped the Drainage Board meeting because nothing on the agenda looked blog worthy. The Tourism Board had a very short meeting last Friday and nothing discussed there seemed blog worthy either. 

Mentioned at the meeting was the identification of the John Doe buried in Old Settlers/Makeever Cemetery. He was murdered by a serial killer in 1982 and DNA analysis identified him as William Joseph Lewis from Peru. After the paper work is done, he will be removed from his present grave and buried next to his father at Peru, Indiana.

Below are a pictures of a few of the trees in Potawatomie Park. Donaldson's has some snowmen made of filters.

The Little Cousin Jasper Festival's tree salutes American verterans. 

SJC has a tree this year.

Supercuts has an unusual tree.

Rensselaer has new street decorations this year. I think the snowmen are part of the new lights.

Also part of the City decorations are those in Milroy Park.