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.