First tournament

City Council meeting

The Rensselaer City Council met for its second April meeting on Monday. It approved an amendment to the salary and wage ordinance that set the wage of seasonal help to $13. This issue had been discussed at previous meetings. It also approved the write-off of non-collectable utility bills due to bankruptcy and death. My jotting down of amounts says that the total was about $37,000 with the majority for electricity.

This meeting had the annual review of tax abatements. Companies that receive tax abatements have to meet certain conditions to keep them and this is the chance for the Council to see if those conditions are being met. Most abatements run for ten years, with a decreasing amount of taxes abated as the company gets to year ten.

Abatements reviewed were those from ConAgra, IMPA, National Gypsum, Indiana Facemasks, Filtration Parts Inc, Geyer's American Melt Blown Filtration, and Genova. (Some of these go by other names in the tax documents.)  

The Council approved two expenditures from the Public Relations Fund, $500 for Little Cousin Jasper scholarships and $1500 for a City employee picnic. On May 6 the Fire Department is hosting its annual chicken and fish dinner. It will be drive-thru only. Clean-up week is May 2-6 and items will be picked up on the regular trash-pickup day. The Gas Department has an open house on Friday, April 29 from 11 to 1. 

Odds and ends

The Blacker Fields hosted its first baseball tournament last weekend. On Saturday the players had warm weather but a lot of wind.

After each game the players on the two teams shook hands with each other.

The tournament was rain shortened on Sunday.

There is still some activity at the power plant but nothing worthy of pictures. There are two storage containers that are scheduled to leave this week.

The weather remains chilly but there are more plants blooming and people are starting to mow.  Below are some very red tulips.

I am not sure what these tiny flowers are. They may be spring beauties.  I have a lot of them and also a lot of violets in my yard. The violets are pretty but they keep invading my garden.

There is now a roof over the outdoor seating area at Fenwick Farms, but when I took this picture there was still quite a bit of work left to do.

The new Walgreens needs to have paving done for parking and the drive-through lane. 

Since the picture above was taken, the site has added a sign.

The speaker at the Walk with a Doc event on Tuesday was Dr. Randy Lehman, a native of Rensselaer who is now a surgeon at Winamac. He recently purchased the Clinic of Family Medicine building and is planning to extend services to Rensselaer. 

Primary election day is next Tuesday. I have been surprised at how much campaign mail I have gotten this year. 

A long evening of meetings

Jasper County BZA and Plan Commission meetings 

The developers of the Brightstone Lake project were on the agenda for both the Board of Zoning Appeals and the Plan Commission meetings on Monday evening. The request to the BZA was for a variance to allow RVs in Brightstone Lake. At present there are no hook-ups for RVs but there are also no cabins built. The developers would like to be able to offer the site to RV owners who do not need hook-ups. As the project is developed, hookups will be provided. The request for the Plan Commission was to establish a three-lot subdivision for three lots south of the vacation rentals. Both requests were approved.

The Plan Commission then voted to recommend an update to the County's Comprehensive Plan to the Commissioners. It was last updated in 2009 and the process of updating it has been going on for over a year. 

Both groups would like to use the Commissioners Room in the Court House for future meetings but that decision probably needs to be made by the Commissioners.

Joint Commissioners/Council meeting

On Tuesday evening there was a joint Commissioners/Council meeting that lasted more than two hours. The first item discussed was the County Health insurance for employees. The question the group had was whether there were ways to cut insurance costs and improve services. I did not know enough about the current insurance plans to follow some of the discussion. It did not seem that the 45 minutes of discussion discovered any things to change other than to give employees better information about their options.

The next 30 minutes were devoted to a discussion of how to compensate for experience and years of experience for County employees. Again, I do not know enough about current policy to understand parts of the discussion. There were a number of questions and suggestions from County employees attending.

The remainder of the meeting was devoted to EMS. There is a shortage of qualified personnel, not just locally but nationally. The Southern ambulance service from Carpenter Township is all volunteer and is barely functioning. As a result, Phoenix from Rensselaer sometimes has to help out, and then Rensselaer has no ambulance. If one is needed, it must come from the north. The committee trying to get a township EMS service up and running for Marion Township has interviewed candidates for an EMS director and an offer will be made very soon. The first priority of the new person will be to get the Southern service running effectively. There is hope that the Marion service can be running by August 1. 

Staffing is a huge issue. Keener and Wheatfield argue they need more County help. Their calls are increasing as the population of the northern part of the County increases and also new residents seem to call for the ambulance for more minor issues than longtime residents. The County goal is to eventually have a county-wide service. That will take a while and has serious hurdles, such as the existing services use three different hospitals.

Jasper County Council meeting

The County Council meeting that followed started about twenty minutes late. It approved a request from animal control to use $5000 from its donation fund for concrete work associated with a donated catio and the purchase of a metal storage container to keep mice from animal food. It also approved funds for the probation department for radios for employees doing home visits. It then approved a series of additional appropriations. One for the Fairboard had an interesting note. The Board had gotten approval from the Commissioners to purchase floor boards for its bleachers and the Board had a source. However, that source decided to raise the price because the value of scrap aluminum had gone up. So the Fairboard is not sure where it will get the floorboards but it will have funds ready when another source is found. The Council approved enough money to pay the County EMS director when that person is hired. 

In public comments a citizen was interested in getting some public records. Something that particularly interested him was a check from 2013 that was mentioned in the Commissioners meeting of September of that year. Mr Culp questioned it, but he must have been satisfied with the answer given because the claim was approved. (It was noted that the issue with claims was not something to bring to the Council. It belongs in the bailiwick of the Commissioners. )

The Sherif was the last to speak and he gave an update on his quest to get license-plate cameras for the County. He thinks he has found funding for eight and asked the Council to fund three more. The Council was agreeable but formal approval must wait until the next meeting. He also said that there is a Department of Justice grant he would like to pursue that would pay 75% of the salary of new officers for three years. The officers must be additional hires and cannot replace officers who are leaving.

Odds and ends

The State recently announced that Jasper County was awarded $1 million for Community Crossings. The funds are used to improve roads. 

Rensselaer has a new street, Schuster Road or Schuster Drive. At the beginning of the year the City accepted a donation of land from NITCO near the water tower south of town and I noticed on Friday that the road has been constructed. It was not there a couple of weeks ago when I went by.

Walgreens has a sign that says they will be moving on May 25.

RBI raised enough to qualify for the matching part of the Patronicity grant. The money will be used to upgrade the restrooms near Staddon Field.

More equipment was trucked from the power plant this week and there cannot be a whole lot left. I did not stop by on Tuesday but on Wednesday some of the chimneys that had been taken down last week were being loaded on a truck. In addition to the chimneys, the truck was full of wooden beams that were used in moving the big engines from the power plant.

On Thursday more of the chimneys were being loaded, this time with the big crane. All the chimneys were gone on Friday morning.

A smaller truck had some equipment that was part of the cooling system. It left Friday morning.

The street was open on Friday afternoon but there were still workers moving things inside the building.

PAC Member Show

The current exhibit at the Fendig Gallery is the fifth annual PAC (Prairie Arts Council) member show. It runs until May 31 and the gallery is open for viewing on Tuesdays noon to 4:00 and Thursdays 2:00 to 6:00.

The show seemed smaller this year than in the past. I do not know if there were fewer pictures or if it was because this year there were many small works and no really big ones.

It is beginning to look like spring. I wish it would warm up enough so I can put away my winter coat.

Miscellany, 4-18-2022

Odds and ends

Fenwicks in downtown Rensselaer has begun roofiing over their outdoor dining area next to the City parking lot.

Schmidy's Pizza Palace is closing at the end of the month. It is only open on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. It seems their problem was not lack of customers but trouble getting workers.

The Walgreens building should look different in a week or two as decorative facings are applied. 

There was not a lot happening at the power plant since the last post. The third of the big motors was loaded on a truck and was gone on Thursday.

I believe the dismantling of the light green structure has begun.

The three chimneys for the three moved generators are down and waiting shipment.

Work seemed stopped on Friday.

Staddon Field was getting a new surface last week. This upgrade was funded by a grant from the Jasper Foundation. As of Sunday afternoon RBI had a little more than $600 to raise to get the match for its Patronicity grant.

I keep waiting for warm weather, but at least some fruit trees are blooming.

And magnolias are also starting to bloom.

My daffodils are feeling a bit under the weather. (Flower pictures taken Easter Monday morning.)

Airport Authority Board

The Jasper County Airport Authority met Tuesday evening and I attended via Zoom.  I have found that to best understand what is going on in a meeting, one needs to attend past meetings. Because I missed a couple recent meetings due to schedule conflicts, I had a hard time following discussion in a few areas.

The Airport engineer said that bids for construction projects are coming back very high. This is causing a lot of uncertainty in what grant monies will be available. The Board approved giving individual hangars addresses and putting those addresses on the doors. Fuel prices are fluctuating and the Board encouraged the manager to keep prices as low as possible. The grass runway was closed for a couple of weeks due to rodents burrowing. There are two internships available this summer for high-school students and the announcement has been posted. There will be a summer camp and a ground school this summer. The Board approved a Baker-Tilley agreement for accounting services. There was discussion of a couple of drainage issues.

RUFC

The Rensselaer Urban Forestry Council met on Thursday afternoon. They decided to open a post-office box so they would have an address for mail when people wanted to contact them. Arbor Day is April 29 and there will be a tree planting in Brookside Park at 4:00 north of the soccer field. The Council is planning to plant 50 trees this year. 

Rensselaer BZA

On Thursday evening the Rensselaer Board of Zoning Appeals met. It elected officers and then approved a conditional use application for Appleseed Childhood Education. Appleseed will be opening a 72-seat learning center in the former administration building of Franciscan Rensselaer. This is the building west of the hospital and north of the therapy building. It will serve infants to five-year-olds and will be open 6:00 to 6:00 M-F. The building needs some minor remodeling, mostly moving walls and adding bathrooms. It is expected to open late 2022.

The Board then discussed whether any sort of regulation is needed for short-term rentals, such as Airbnbs.  In the discussion that followed, it was noted that there have been no issues or complaints. Two persons that run short-term rentals were present and they noted that these rentals must be nice if they are to attract guests. Also, just as the units are rated by the guests, guests are rated by the hosts, so people who cause problems have records that discourage potential hosts from renting to them. I left the meeting for another obligation before the meeting ended so did not see what decision was made. The BZA can only recommend to the Plan Commission, which would be the body that would pass something and then the Council would have to certify it.

Holy Week

Continuing with Power Plant pictures.

On Wednesday last week the truck with the first of the Fairbanks Morse motors had left. A truck with the generator shaft from the big generator was loaded with other bits of equipment and it left shortly after.

Several smaller loads of stuff also left, such as this trailer pulled by a big pick-up truck.

Below is the view inside the power plant showing the three empty spaces previously occupied by engines.

A look to the north showed two of the engines left, including a newer Fairbanks Morse engine.

On Thursday the enormously-long truck left. I did not see it leave but many people did. They said it had two escort vehicles plus two or three police cars also traveling with it. It had some trouble making a curve (I think from Van Rensselaer to Washington) and then traveled south on US 231.

There was little or no activity at the plant over the weekend. On Monday a semi with a flatbed trailer arrived and I think it will transport the second Morse engine. On Tuesday the crane was busy behind the power plant taking down the exhaust chimneys that the motors used. I was lucky enough to catch the crane lifting the top of one of the chimneys.

A bit later it was lifting a section of pipe that has some role in making the engine work.

I wonder how much the cost of  dismantling and transporting this equipment will be. It must be many tens of thousands of dollars and perhaps much more than $100K.

Rensselaer Redevelopment Commission

On Thursday the Rensselaer Redevelopment Commission met at City Hall. The big item on their agenda involved a grant to the Economic Development Agency (EDA) that has has an excellent chance of being approved. The grant, if it is approved, will be used for downtown revitalization, specifically to redo the two brick streets next to the Courthouse square. The project has an estimated cost of $2,651,000 and the EDA is considering funding up to $1,855,700 of that amount. The EDA wants some additional information. One thing it wants is information on any TIF funds that might be used for the project, and that was the reason for this meeting. $530,000 of the almost $800,000 needed will be taken from ARP (American Rescue Plan) funding. The Commission was asked to approve the remainder of what will be needed. Two years ago the City submitted a similar grant application that was not funded and the Commission agreed to match $530,000. The Commission voted 3 for with 2 absent to pay up to $530,000 again, some of which may be needed for design work.

The Commission also considered the annual Redevelopment Commission Report prepared by the City Clerk Treasurer. The Drexel Park TIF (which actually extends through the downtown and then out to the Interstate along SR114) collects much more revenue than the Lintner TIF area and has over ten times as much money in its account.

BPW and City Council meetings

In its monthly meeting on Monday, the Board of Public Works approved paying a long list of invoices. The reason for the many invoices is that the bonds for the sewer project had closed and that many were in some way related to that. The City has FFA approval for the site it has proposed for the water tower by the Interstate.

In the City Council meeting that followed, a citizen said he would like to have EV charging stations in town and said there were grants available to help provide them. The City is looking into the matter.

The first item on the agenda is a ordinance to the salary ordinance. At the last meeting the Council had approved raising the wage for part-time seasonal workers to $13 and the ordinance was designed to incorporate the change. However, at this meeting there was support to include park and cemetery workers in the change, though the higher wages may cause them budgetary problems. The ordinance was tabled to the next meeting to make the adjustments. 

The gas tracker for April will be an increase of 2.84 cents per hundred cubic feet of usage. The Council approved a motion about the funds it gets from ARPA. Because the amount the City receives is only about $1.3 million, it can declare the funds will be used as revenue replacement and that declaration will allow it to avoid a bunch of paperwork.

The Council approved spending $37,070 for a forklift for the Electric Department. On electronics recycling day the City collected 3.77 tons of electronic items. By the way, it you have electronics you want to recycle, you can take them to the recycling center any day of the week. You not not need to wait for a special electronics recycling day.

The Gas Department will host an open house on April 29 from 11:00 - !:00. The first tournament for the Blacker fields is schedule for the weekend of April 23.

Odds and Ends

Brown's Garden Shop has new owners as the Browns are retiring.

Brookside Park has had another incident of vandalism. 

Work has begun on the sewer project.

The exterior of Walgreens seems to be mostly finished and work has begun on the curbs for the drive-through.

Water in the quarry continues rising and is now above the rails of the platform that once held the pump that kept the water from rising.

RBI has about $2000 left to raise to get a matching Patronicity grant.

The first Walk-with-a-Doc event took place on Tuesday.

A 74 wheeler!

Even more power plant pictures

The previous post had pictures showing that the large engine had been removed from the power plant by the end of the day on Sunday and that the generator and its casing were on trucks. When I stopped by on Monday just before 1:00 the truck with the casing was leaving. It drove to US 231 and then headed north.

The second old motor had been moved inside the building so it could be extracted. I was told that this unit and its twin were installed in 1972.

The big motor was on the street and wrapped in a tarp. It had been raised on blocks using a small hydrolic lift that would raise a corner about three inches, allow blocks to be inserted. Then the lift was reset and would lift another three inches. That took most of the day on Sunday.

In the evening I stopped by and was surprised to see the longest truck I have ever seen. I took some pictures but could not get a good angle. I counted the wheels and came up with 74. The truck trailer had three sections that allowed it to make turns. The back section could be turned by an operator on the back. 

On Tuesday morning the truck was positioned so the engine could be slid onto the trailer. 

I did not see the workers move the motor onto the truck. 

Later on Tuesday the truck had moved and I was able to get a better picture of it. Below is the front half of the truck.

And here is the back half. The truck seems to be owned by a company from Carleton, Michigan. Moving loads like this requires special permits that specify the exact route and times that the truck can travel.

Also on Tuesday evening, the second motor had been removed and was on the street. You can see both of the older engines in this picture.

In addition to these big items, small items like control panels are also being hauled away.

Commissioners' meeting

On April 4 the Jasper County Commissioners met for their monthly meeting. Among the buried cable permits was one that will extend the gas pipeline that connects the Hidden Valley farm and the de Jong farm to the Oak Basin Farm (which until recently was the New Berry farm). The purpose of the pipeline is to take the methane produced by the manure digester to the natural gas trunk line that crosses the County. The Commissions wanted the pipeline to stay on the property of the dairies whenever possible rather than be in the County road right-of-way, so the proposal must be revised.

The Commissioners agreed to pay for a study to examine what it would take to extend Remington sewer and water to the 205 interchange on I-65. On Monday they got the results of the study. An eight-inch water main would provide enough water to support commercial businesses and light industry. A sewage line would require two lift stations. The consultant broke the plan into two phases. To reach the Interstate would cost an estimated $5.4 million including all the planning costs. Extending it to the north of the Interstate would add another $3.6 million. Crossing the Interstate is expensive (which is why Rensselaer utilities have not crossed west of I-65). The comment was that there will be no development at the 205 interchange without water and sewage.

I learned a new word on Monday: catio. It is a patio for cats. A pet-food company donated a 12' by 5' catio to the animal shelter and the director asked the Commissioners for permission to use money in the donation fund to provide a concrete pad and sidewalks for the new structure. He also requested permission to purchase a metal container to store animal food. Mice have invaded the current building and are damaging the stored food. His request was approved but it also needs Council approval. Community Correction's request to replace two positions, one currently vacant and another soon to be vacant, was approved. The Commissioners also approved a request from Community Services to replace carpet at the Rensselaer and DeMotte centers. The Commissioners heard an update of what was happening with the Dunn's Bridge solar project. Most of it was via a PowerPoint presentation that I had a hard time viewing from where I was seated. A few hundred people are currently working on Phase I and Phase II will be larger. 

Via Zoom the Commissioners heard a report of the air testing that has been done at the Court House. Most results were good, but there was mold in the basement and in one room on the third floor. The mold problem cannot be solved until the water problem is solved. That will require digging around the Court House and replacing the current drainage tiles. There was concern about cutting sidewalks. Some are very thick because they were designed to handle large construction equipment such as cranes. The project will cost an estimated $175,000 to $250,000 and needs Council approval. The sewer line that the tiles will connect to goes under the Ritz Theater.

In other business, the Sheriff suggested that the County should have an ATV ordinance and the Commissioners asked him and the County Attorney to prepare one. ATVs are used by farmers for spraying and the Dunn's Bridge people want to use them to do maintenance, so they are more than recreational vehicles. The County may be getting an opioid settlement of about a million dollars. What restrictions will be on those funds is not known. The Commissioners approved purchase of software and hardware for siren testing and they also approved a contract to rate roads and bridges, something needed to qualify for CCMG (Community Crossing) grants.

Drainage Board meeting

In the afternoon the Drainage Board met. They approved a contract for ditch spraying and a request to abandon a regulated public drain that was no longer needed. At its March meeting it had asked for more information about the drainage plan for Flatland Pig LLC. They got the updates on Monday and approved the plan. Love's Travel Stop presented a drainage plan for its proposed 65-space RV park and it was approved. The Board wanted changes made in the gas pipeline plan that they had seen in the morning meeting (in the morning use of County right-of-way was the question and in the afternoon the crossing of regulated drains was the question). They had a very long discussion with the contractors of the Dunn's Bridge Solar project and I did not understand parts of it. Eventually they agreed that BF&S Engineering (Butler Fairman & Seufert) would oversee the project for the County and that was acceptable to the contractors. The next meeting will be June 6.

Park Board meeting

The Park Board did not have a quorum for its Monday meeting so no votes could be taken. However, Heather Hall gave an overview of the many programs that will be offered in the parks this summer. Some of the programs that were dropped because of Covid are returning and there are new ones, such as a garden club and a variety of programs in the evenings in June. When the new building next to the soccer field gets electricity and is finished, there will be programs into the fall. 

Odds and Ends

Cullen Street is blocked off beforethe railroad. I expected the closing of the street would have something to do with the railroad but as of Tuesday all that is there is a big hole in the street with a big pipe, perhaps a water main, in it.

Just to the north of the railroad the building on the west side of the street is being renovated. It will soon be a dog grooming store with retail.

We keep getting spam calls from someone with a deep Indian accent who claims to be from Medicare. Today I let him go on a while and he said that Medicare wanted to send me a new card. I said, ok, send it. He said that before it could be sent he had to check the information on my current card. I told him that was unnecessary because if he really was from Medicare he would have that information. He just kept insisting that I needed to get my card. After I hung up I checked to Internet to see if this was a common scam and it is. I suspect the information people give them is used for Medicare fraud. 

More power plant pictures

More power plant pictures 

I expected the large engine that the crane lifted onto the truck on Wednesday would be gone on Thursday, but it was still there, on the trailer with the cab disconnected. While watching some of the action later in the day, a Rensselaer worker said that the company needed to get some permits before moving it.

On Thursday morning a large, round disk was being moved. I think it was a cap for the big generator, the one that a town in Kansas bought for half a million dollars, that they were getting ready to move.  (I was told after this post was published that it is a flywheel.)

A bit later huge blocks of wood were being taken inside the building. 

On Friday the core of the generator was lifted out of the building and onto the street. Not too long after this the casing for the generator was lifted out.

On Saturday the generator core, now on a metal frame, was lifted onto a truck trailer.

By the the afternoon both the generator core and its casing were on trucks that looked ready to leave.

On Saturday afternoon the large motor that drives the generator was being pulled out of the building. The workers had put down round iron pipes to use as rollers to help extract the big machine.

By Sunday the motor was wrapped in a tarp.

Tourism Commission meeting

The Jasper County Tourism Commission met Friday via Zoom. They considered three funding requests. The first was a request for $8000 from the DeMotte Chamber of Commerce for the Touch of Dutch Festival to be held on August 13. The festival was scaled back last year but will be fully back this year, but only for one day. The organizer asked what they Commission thought of continuing in the future with only one day, noting that volunteer burnout was a problem. The Commission thought the change was a good idea because almost all out-of-town visitors come on Saturday. The main draw this year will be comedian Ryan Niemiller who graduated from KV High School in 2000 and whose mother still lives in DeMotte. His fee will be considerably lower than his regular fee. There was a rather long discussion of what the best ways were to promote the festival. The Commission approved $5000 for the festival.

The second request was from MainStreet Rensselaer and was for $3000 to finish replacing Christmas lights. Over the past couple of years Main Street has spent about $35000 replacing old lights and the remainder of the old lights, which are wreaths with three candles) will be replaced this year. The request was approved.

The final request was from RBI (Rensselaer Baseball Incorporated), an organization that is about 25 years old and until last year has not had a home field. With the completion of the Blacker Fields, the Park Department allowed them to call Staddon Field home. Rensselaer RBI joined the Tippecanoe County League and will have six travel teams for the various age groups. They have received a Patronicity Grant of $37,500 that must be matched. They had about $9000 left to raise and requested $3500 from the Commission. The money will be used to improve the field and especially the restrooms. The goal is to make the field compatible with the Blacker Fields so that in the future it might be able to serve as an additional field for the tournaments.  The use of Staddon Field will allow  RBI to host games. The Commission approved the request.

In other tourism news, there is now a rough draft of a farm-trail map. There is planning with nature preserves for sponsoring hikes in those preserves. Planning for this year's Jasper Jaunt has begun.

Odds and ends

Another flower of early spring was blooming by the Rensselaer Library.

There is an excavator by the high rate treatment plant. Elza Street will get a short extension to the south to allow construction of a new lift station for the City sewer system.