Long meetings

The Rensselaer City Council met on Monday evening for an unusually long meeting. It lasted an hour. First up was a request from Rensselaer Baseball Inc (RBI) for a donation of $10,000 from the City to help match a Patronicity Grant the group had obtained. The grant was for $37,500 and they need to raise a matching $37,500. The main use of the money will be to upgrade the rest room at Foundation Park, making it ADA compliant. With the construction of the Blacker Fields and the move of the Park leagues to those fields, the Park Department has allowed RBI to use Staddon Field as its home field. The Council approved the donation for what will upgrade a City facility. Near the end of the meeting one of the Board members of RBI said that with the City's donation over $23,000 had been pledged.

Next up was a public hearing on a preliminary engineering report for a water project that will add a water tank near the Interstate, add back-up generators to the various water facilities (pumps, water-treatment plant, and towers), and replace some water mains that are old and subject to frequent leaks. The City and its engineering consulting firm want to submit this report to the Indiana Finance Authority and a public hearing is necessary before it is submitted. The City would like to finance as much of this project as possible with grants and this submission is needed to seek those grants. At least two resolutions were passed to meet the requirements for submitting the report.

The Council then passed an ordinance vacating a previous ordinance that established pay for employees quaranteeing at home due to Covid. It passed another ordinance to clarify pay for City workers who needed to work when the City was closed due to weather. 

The next big item was a sewer bond ordinance. The City is planning to replace its lift station east of Weston Cemetery and provide sewers to several unsewered areas. Some of this project will be funded by grants from Rural Development but much of it will not be. The ordinance allows the City to borrow up to $7.2 million in two stages. The Council suspended the rules in order to pass the ordinance in one meeting because the City would like to lock in a low interest rate of 1.25% and to do that everything has to be done within the next month. More than one motion was needed to satisfy the legal requirements. 

The Council approved the purchase of a vehicle for the City Planning Department. It approved the signing of a required annual Rural Development report pending its completion. The Mayor reported that the City had sold one of the engines at the power plant. A Council member asked the Chief of Police if there had been any problems resulting from the new Greyhound Bus stop. He said no.

Leaving the City Council meeting, I rushed over to the Sparling Annex for the Jasper County Plan Commission meeting, arriving about ten minutes late. The main item on the agenda was a rezone from A1 to I2 to allow a meat processing plant on the SW corner of CR 800W and SR 10 (across the highway from Castongia's). The plant will be 12000 square feet and will process 100 cattle and 15-20 hogs per week. 75% of the work will be custom processing, for customers of farmers. The other 25% will be purchase of animals by the new business and sale of the meat in its retail store, which will be part of the facility. The facility will employ about 30 people. If demand exists, there may be a phase two for the project. Because the County encouraged DeMotte to run water and sewer lines to the Interstate to encourage development along SR 10, this facility will use DeMotte water and the recently installed sewer line. Hence no water well, septic system, or wastewater lagoon will be needed, which dramatically cuts the need to get various permits. There were several public comments before the rezone was approved. It now goes to the Commissioners for their approval. This business will be in the TIF zone approved when the DeMotte sewer and water project was approved.

After the Plan Commission adjourned, the Jasper County BZA met. Their first issue was a sign variance for the recently approved Love's RV Park at the SR 10/I-65 interchange. Love's wants to put a sign for the RV Park on its existing sign pole for the Travel Stop. The Board was unclear exactly what their sign regulations were and there were no public comments. Love's said they had sent out letters to neighboring landowners but the receipts showing that the letters had been sent had not been received by the County Planning office. The BZA approved the variance contingent on the Planning Office getting those receipts.

The second issue was a request for a special exception and variances for a cell tower to be located at the southwest corner of CR 1100N and CR 300W. The proposed tower would be a three-legged lattice structure 305 feet tall. The owner of the tower would be Parallel Infrastructure and the main tenant would be AT&T with two other tenants, FirstNet, a network for first responders, not the public, and the Defense Department. There would also be room for other users on the tower. In addition to the special exception that is needed for any cell tower, the proposers wanted variances for height, type, and setbacks. 

After the Board asked various questions, they opened the floor to the public. The first speaker represented SBA, another tower provider. He said that AT&T currently uses one of their towers and would move from them to this new tower. He said that all the needs of AT&T are being met with the current tower and there was no need to build an additional tower. I do not think the members of the Board found his reasoning persuasive.  He was followed by several women who lived near the proposed site of the tower. Several were from the Beverly Woods subdivision. They had concerns about property values, safety and health, and aesthetics. The spokesmen for Parallel responded by saying that several studies said that cell towers did not have a significant effect on property values and that SBA should not be trying to stifle competition. The rent AT&T pays on the SBA tower is 2.5 times what they would pay on the new tower. Either they or the Board's attorney said that Federal law prohibits consideration of health effects for siting cell towers. 

The company representatives realized that the discussion among Board members was not going well so asked to have the matter continued so they could meet with the concerned neighbors. Instead a member of the Board made a motion to deny, which was seconded. They then went through the findings of facts and half were voted negatively by a 3 to 1 vote. The special exception was denied, to the applause of most in the audience. The Board then needed reasons for the record of why they denied. They mentioned safety, harmony with surrounding areas, property values, and quality of life. Because the special exception was denied, there was no need to discuss the variances. I do not know if Parallel has any way of reversing this decision, but they did request the audio recording of the meeting.