A ribbon cutting and much, much more

 A ribbon cutting (and a closing)

The All Aligned Chiropractic Clinic had a ribbon cutting on Monday afternoon.

The building is on North Cullen and has been a chiropractic clinic for many years. Now it has a new doctor, Madeline Barber. I asked about animal chiropractic and was told the busy season is fair time. Animals indicate they need help by the way they walk or by hot spots caused by irritation.

I liked the welcome mat.

The owners of Steffen's Jewelry are retiring before Christmas and are selling their inventory. Steffen's is one of Rensselaer's oldest businesses, opening its doors in 1956. If you need jewelry for yourself or a gift, stop by and see what they have.

Park Board meeting

The Park Board met indoors on Monday evening. (During the summer they had been meeting in the Iroquois Park shelter.) They discussed a fence for the HYPER area in Brookside Park and decided to buy materials to fence the front (by the parking lot) and a bit of the sides. The reason for the fence is safety, to keep small children attending events from wandering into the road. They also approved accepting a swing for Foundation Park. It will have three bays, one for adults, one for little kids, and a third for ADA use. 

There are six dates that the youth baseball organization wants to use for tournaments and the Board  accepted those dates. There may be some additional dates that will be added. The tennis courts are finished and now lighting is being installed. Someone mentioned that Dave Day, in whose name the tennis courts were sponsored, was at one time the pool director, and later taught tennis and organized basketball camps at Brookside Park. 

There are 16 groups or businesses that have signed up to put scarecrows in Milroy Park. The money raised from them is used to pay for the Fall Fest, scheduled for October 20. This year Rotary will have its food truck there. 

The Christmas parade is scheduled for December 3 and planning for the day's events is ongoing. An after-school club will begin meeting at Brookside Park this week. Several people noted that disc golf is heavily used and may represent the best investment of dollars from the Parks for People campaign.

(I will have more pictures of scarecrows in a future post or posts.)

Commissioners meeting

The October Commissioners meeting had a lot of items on the agenda but most of them looked routine. There were several buried cable permits and all were approved. One was for the Rensselaer Gas Utility for a gas line on Marion School Road. Part of this project had already received approval and I am unsure if this approval was needed because plans changed or the full route of the line was not approved earlier. A second was a simple bore for Remington Farms in Carpenter Township, and NITCO had two in Wheatfield township to provide broadband to two subdivisions.

The County's health insurance agent suggested a change in how the Medicare Part D Mailing for prescription drugs is mailed, and the Commissioners approved. He also said that he would have new options for employee medical insurance and the Commissioners decided that they would hear them at the continuation of this meeting to be held on October 17 at 7:00 in the morning.

The Commissioners approved a plan to establish an Internet portal for a variety of items now on paper, including pay stubs. The Health Department wants to build an outbuilding for storage and as a garage for its two vehicles. It will be 32 feet by 40 feet. The Council will need to appropriate the funds. The Health Department wants to make a temporary part-time employee a temporary full-time employee and after a discussion of whether it meets current employee law, the request was approved. The position is funded by a grant and will cease when the grant funding runs out.

A citizen who leased land to NextEra's phase I solar project was upset with the construction of the project because the contractors mixed sandy soil with fertile crop soil and he doubts that the mixing can be undone when the lease runs out. He thought there might be something in the decommissioning agreement that should have stopped the mixing but was told that the agreement was only about decommissioning. The Commissioners said that they had learned things from Phase I that they do not want to have repeated in Phase II.

Then the surprise of the meeting came from an item with the simple title of "Economic Development Agreement EDPR". It was a two page resolution between the County and a wind farm developer to extend a White County wind farm into Jasper County. If I heard it right, the project would cost $165 $365 million and would erect 45 wind turbines with a capacity of 200 megawatts in the far south of Jasper County. The proposed project would start in 2025. In the agreement are payments to the County beginning in 2026. Also in the agreement is a provision that if the assessed value of the turbines falls below a minimum, not yet determined but between $102 and $113 million, the company will pay extra (called a pilot payment) to compensate the County. There are complications of how the pilot payments work and I did not understand some of the discussion. Road use and decommissioning agreements are not yet finalized. The company says that they will abide by all the conditions set out in the Jasper County Wind Farm Ordinance, which are summarized here. 

This resolution is only a first step. There are a variety of permits and permissions it will need. I was surprised by this proposed wind farm because the ordinance makes it very difficult to establish a wind farm. I wonder if the developer has signed up landowners and their neighbors because with the required setbacks the developer will need permission from people who do not have the turbines on their land. There should be some interesting public meetings in 2023.

The Commissioners suggested a couple of changes to the golf cart ordinance that is being amended to include ATVs. They decided that the operators must have a driver's license and that the maximum number of passengers will be what the manufacturers say it is. (It will not cover farm vehicles because State law exempts them.) They passed the ordinance with these changes.

Mr Sinclair, the Animal Control officer, said that the transmission is failing in a 2010 vehicle. The Commissioners gave him permission to fix it or replace it with a used vehicle, but not to spend more than $20,000. The Commissioners approved two rezoning requests that had been recommended by the Plan Commission. The County Coroner said that the pathologist that the County uses is scaling back his work and that the cost of whoever is found to replace him may be higher. The Sheriff reported that the Jail's food vendor will be increasing the cost of meals by 27¢ per meal. The County Highway Department has had only one company showing interest in snow removal in subdivisions. Since 2020 the Department has lost ten employees and hired six new ones. The Commissioners approved filling two of those positions. The County's Emergency Director had quotes for security items at the County annex that used to be the PNC bank and the Commissioners approved them. The Commissioners were given specs for a new EMS building that could be built in front of Animal Control. It would have 3 bays, a conference room, and sleeping quarters.

The meeting was continued until October 17 at 7:00 am.

Drainage Board

Almost immediately after the Commissioners meeting, the Drainage Board met. The Surveyor gave the members a report on the Davis Ditch system. 15.86 miles need to be cleaned and a public hearing must be held, which will probably be on January 3. The cost will be about $1 million and the County will need to take out a loan to pay for it. Some of the cost will be borne by NextEra because the watershed includes some of Phase I of the Dunns Bridge project. 

NIPSCO is planning a substation with NextEra. It will be on a 19.6 acre plot and will have a 6.5 acre pad. That pad will have to be raised two feet because the Indiana Department of Natural Resources considers the area a flood plain. The NIPSCO spokesperson was asked why they had moved the site from one that did not need to be raised and the answer was that the original landowner backed out. The only thing approved at this meeting was permission to outlet into the Hinshaw Ditch.

Other things

The speaker at the Walk with A Doc event on Tuesday was Carlos Vasquez who gave an update on what is happening at the hospital. He talked a bit about Appleseed and what he said was not much different from what was said in the Confetti post. He also talked about the $28 million dollar renovation planned for the hospital. Phase 1 will cost about $13 million and install new boilers and chillers. The hospital was constructed in 1963 and there were two additions later. Each of these three sections has its own heating and cooling system. The renovation will give the hospital one system. The second phase will add an extension behind the emergency room and then remodel the emergency room area. This will cost about $9 million. The final phase will be the demolition of the second and third floors and this phase may be delayed. The upper floors do not meet the current required standards for hospitals and it may not be possible to bring them up to code.

A new exhibit is being installed in the Fendig Gallery. I will have some pictures in a future post.

Below is the state of construction of the new lift station over the weekend. On Monday evening at six o'clock concrete was being poured. The construction crew works very long hours.

The leaves have started to turn. The picture below was taken from the Talbert Bridge and shows maples in Weston Cemetery. Ash trees are starting to turn yellow, but good luck finding any. The emerald ash borers killed almost all of them.

The harvest is underway. Below is corn north of Rensselaer on Sunday.