Christmas decorations

Christmas parade and decorations

On Saturday evening Rensselaer had its Christmas parade. Near the front were the fire trucks and snow plows.

The County Highway Department had this snowman.

After the trucks there was a long gap. I do not know what happened, but eMbers Venue was hosting a wedding reception so I watched the happy couple pose for pictures. As the parade resumed, my camera battery ran out. (It is an old phone and the battery indicator jumps from 70% to 1%.) Fortunately I had gotten to the parade early to take pictures of the entrants lining up while there was still daylight. I think this one was for Cub Scouts.

The adults on the float had better seats.

The high school had its marching band. There was also another band that was much smaller and I do not know what group it represented.

The City Electric Utility had a truck with lots of lights.

At the end of the parade was Santa.

When the parade was over people were encouraged to go to Potawatomie Park for Frosty Fest. I went but did not stay long. It was dark so I could not really see what was happening. The Christmas trees looked lovely with their lights.

Below are more pictures of decorated windows downtown. Some of them are quite funny.

On the door of Gutwein Risner Insurance is a note that they have moved the office to what was the Dumas Law office next to Halleck Park.

Below are two lawn decorations that I thought were quite funny.

Commissioners meeting

The December Commissioners meeting had a different look. Jeff DeYoung replaced Kendell Culp who had been a commissioner for 18 years. There will be another change in January when Richard Maxwell, who has served longer than any other Jasper County commissioner, will retire and be replaced by Rein Bontreger. However, Mr Culp was at the meeting and presided over it though he had no vote.

There were three buried cable requests and all were approved. Bids were opened for a new ambulance building and there was only one bid, from Titan. It bid $1,440,530 for the 3-bay configuration and $1,364,210 for the two bay configuration. The bid was taken under advisement and will be awarded at the year-end December 27th meeting. 

The three employees of the Extension Office have part of their salaries paid by Purdue and part by the County. Each year the Commissioners must approve the contract, and they did so at this meeting. The Surveyor's Office and Purdue Extension submitted estimates for cleaning and painting and they were approved. The Commissioners heard options for making the doors of the Prosecutor's Office ADA compliant and approved one of them. The agenda listed a bid opening for cash rent of County farmland but that opening was canceled because there was additional land that the Airport had purchased that was not included.

There were two items on the agenda about a drainage issue with Brightstone, a proposed development for vacation rentals. The person with the complaint removed himself from the agenda. The Commissioners approved the Sheriff's hiring of a third SRO officer for the Kankakee Valley Schools. They also approved replacing three employees: a dispatcher who has completed her nursing degree and will be working as a nurse and two jailers. One is going to the highway department and the other was a new employee who decided that the job was not for him. 

There was a brief update from EMS. It seems that the State will issue temporary license plates for the vehicles, so they can start being used. Things are ready to go pending certification. Bureaucracy is the hold up.

The most interesting and unexpected part of the meeting began. British Petroleum wants to sequester carbon dioxide and thinks that Jasper County may have the ideal geology for that. 4000 feet below us is a rock formation of Mt Simon sandstone that is porous and will hold liquid. On top of that is a layer of Eau Claire shale that caps the sandstone. The shale is impermeable so whatever is put into the sandstone should stay there unless the shale is broken and shattered. What BP wanted permission to do was to image the rocks underground acoustically. They would use trucks that in some way vibrate to send sound ways downward and then capture the echo with sensors. Their plan is to go over 103 miles of roads, 90 of which are County roads. They can do about four miles each day. All of this is prompted by fears of global warming caused by increased CO2 levels which models, that have not predicted well, say will lead to climate warming. The testing would be a preliminary step and it would take years to fully analyze the results.

The Commissioners were dubious. They wanted to know what the County would get from this project if it were completed. The response was that landowners would be paid. I believe Commissioners do not like the idea that Jasper County should serve as a dumping ground for activity in other parts of the state. The Commissioners declined to act, saying that they needed more information, and told BP to work with Jasper County Economic Development.

There was an update on the sick bank for County employees, a program I do not understand. A bid for snow removal in nine subdivisions was approved again. (It had been approved at the joint Commissioner/Council meeting.) The reason for outsourcing this is that the Highway Department is short manpower (CDL drivers). Animal Control was given approval to replace a part-time employee. The sale of the annex (former REMC building) closed on Friday and the County must remove all of its property by Wednesday. Commissioner Maxwell wanted all County vehicles except some Sheriff vehicles to have a County Emblem. This was passed. March 25 was suggested as a date for a County auction of surplus equipment.

After the meeting I asked who was in the running to fill the Council slot that Jeff DeYoung had held. I was told that ten people had entered their names. I also heard how the balloting went to replace Kendell Culp. There were five candidates. After the first ballot, the bottom two were dropped. For the second ballot, each of the remaining three received 8 votes. On the third ballot the tie was broken and the bottom vote getter was dropped. The fourth ballot resulted in another tie, with each getting 12 votes. On the fifth ballot someone switched, and Jeff DeYoung emerged the winner.

During the meeting I watched through a window workers start building a garage/storage building for the Health Department. At the beginning of the meeting they were digging holes for support beams, then they inserted the beams, and by the meeting's end they were tying the beams together. Below is a picture of the progress they made by the end of the Drainage Board meeting.

Drainage board

When I arrived at the Drainage Board meeting, bids were being opened for some project. The lower bid was accepted. The next four items on the agenda were for bores under County drainage ditches or tiles and all were quickly approved. Most of the meeting was taken up with a discussion of the Dunns Bridge solar park and there was background information that I did not have so I found the discussion confusing and hard to follow. The main issue was how much of various costs NextEra will pay. There were some verbal agreements but they were not put into writing. So what NextEra thought they were agreeing to pay and what the County thought NextEra was agreeing to pay seem not to be the same thing. The Board approved having its lawyer prepare a memorandum of understanding, submit it to the Board, and if approved by them, send it to NextEra's lawyer.