We had a white (and very cold) Christmas

The Christmas Blizzard

On Friday we got a blizzard with bitterly cold temperatures and howling wind. Fortunately we did not get a lot of snow or else we would still be digging out. 

The cold left an interesting pattern on one of my storm windows.

The Iroquois River froze except in a few places where there is very rapid current. Below are pictures from the bowstring bridge, one looking downstream and the other upstream.

I could not find any large snow drifts but thought the way that even tiny flower stems resulted in little drifts was evidence of how strong the wind had been. 

I did not hear of a lot of damage caused by the blizzard, but Walmart was closed for most of Monday because of a burst pipe that I assume was caused by the cold.

Most of the snow should be melted by the start of 2023.

Commissioners meeting 

Each December the Commissioners have a final meeting at the end of December to take care of any County business that must be done before the new year. This year the meeting had a rather long agenda.

The Commissioners meetings will have a different lineup in 2023 than they had for most of 2022. After his election as State Representative in November, Kendell Culp resigned as Commissioner and was replaced by Jeff DeYoung. Richard Maxwell did not seek reelection and will be replaced in January by Rein Rontreger. At the start of their end-of -the-year meeting on Tuesday, both Culp and Maxwell were honored for their service with a plaque.

The first item on the agenda was a proposed annexation by the City of Rensselaer of what I call the Sparling Annex, the building that houses the County Health Department, CASA, and the County meeting room. SJC has approached the City asking for annexation (undoubtedly to cut utility bills, which are their largest expense) and the City would like to also annex the County property to prevent islands of land within the City. The two Commissioners at the meeting (one missed because of illness) were favorable but their attorney wanted some time to see if the rules for annexation gave the Commissioners any responsibilities that would apply to the annexation of SJC. The item will be back on the agenda for January.

A lady offering free microchipping of animals at the animal shelter said that the Animal Control Board had told her go to the Commissioners. The Commissioners told her to go back to the Animal Control Board because it was a matter for that Board. The Commissioners approved a rezone from A1 to A2 in Jordan Township that had been recommended by the Plan Commission. (The Plan Commission had been asked to rezone an 11 acre parcel but wanted to only rezone 4 acres because the other seven were in the floodplain of Carpenter Creek. So they approved it conditionally, requiring some jiggling of lot lines and that is why it did not get on the agenda earlier in the month.) The Commissioners decided to accept the bid from Titan Construction for the three-bay option for a new ambulance garage. The bid does not include some site work needed because there are buried remains of the old County Home where the new building will be built.

A deputy in the Circuit Court Office is leaving and the Commissioners approved replacing her. Trane Systems, responding to County concerns about Courthouse systems controls for heating and cooling, inspected the Courthouse and had an estimate for fixing the problems. The County Attorney had questions about the scope of the project, wondering if it would qualify as a public works project, in which case the work would have to be bid. He decided that it did not and the Commissioners approved $150,000 to Trane to do the work.

The Commissioners approved replacing two dispatchers at the Sheriff's Office. There was a brief discussion of alarm systems for the Health Department and the Commissioners wondered if the work could be combined with similar work at the Prosecutor's office.

 
Three bids for cash renting five parcels owned by the County and the Airport were opened and the high bid was accepted. That bid was for $342 for some of the plots and $322 for the others. The Commissioners approved EMS contracts for 2023, with $400,000 going to Keener Township EMS, $350,000 to Wheatfield Township EMS, and $470,000 to Jasper County EMS. Jasper County EMS, which will serve the County from CR 400N to the southern border of Jasper County, will go live on January 1. Phoenix will no longer be in the ambulance business.

The Commissioners signed a gaming permit that will allow bingo at the Fairgrounds. They accepted a bid from Kevin Moore to install electrical wiring in the new Health Department garage. It was noted that the Highway Department pulled many vehicles from snow drifts during the blizzard.

City Council meeting

It is not often that the The Rensselaer City Council meets on the same day as the County Commissioners, but it happened on Tuesday. In the public comment section of the meeting, the Mayor was asked about the removal of equipment from the power plant. The money received from the sale of equipment goes into a depreciation account and will be used for improvements to the electrical system. The demolition of the motors is being done for no cost to the City. The firm gets the metal from the engines. The pits and basement are being filled with sand. There was a diesel leak from a pipe and it was cleaned up by a contractor to the satisfaction of IDEM.

The electric tracker for the first quarter is $13.31 per gigawatt hour of usage. The average utility bill shows 700 kilowatts of usage, so that would be a $9.31 increase in the average bill. The County passed a series of encumbrances. This is an accounting measure that I do not understand, but is needed at the end of the year.  

The Mayor announced appointments to the Board of Public Works, the Park Board, and the Redevelopment Commission. I think all were re-appointments. The Council made appointments to the Northern Indiana Solid Waste District, Rensselaer Recycling, and the Redevelopment Commission.

The Council had approved a contract via a telephone poll to purchase a lot of land for the construction of a water tower near the I-65/SR-114 interchange. At the meeting they ratified the poll. The purchase price is $45,000.