February pictures and meetings 2023

Construction and demolition

The installation of drainage tiles around the courthouse was finishing up on Tuesday. Below is a picture from Friday. 

A picure from Satuday shows the remains of sidewalks ready to be hauled away.

On Saturday I took this picture of a pile of dirt on the southwest side of the Courthouse. What interested me were all the bricks in the pile. I suspect they were from the Courthouse that was on the site before the current Courthouse was built in the 1890s.

On Monday the last stretch of trench had been dug. Notice that the downspouts of the Courthouse are tied into the pipe. Too much water from the roof was causing the water leakage into the basement of the Courthouse and this project, by taking that water away from the Courthouse, is meant to solve the problem.

On Tuesday all the trenches had been filled and the last pile of dirt was being put into a dump truck 

   

It will take a while for the grass to grow back to what it was before this project.

Across SR 114 from the Fairgrounds the site for the new EMS building is being prepared. You can see Airport buildings and community Corrections in the background.

Last week workers were working along Owen Street installing a new sewer line.

Do you recognize where this is? Until recently there was a house and trees on this lot. It looked completely different in June.

For no special reason, another picture taken Sunday of lift station construction.

The demolishers working at the power plant filled this dumpster with scrap metal and hauled it away. There is now an empty one in its place. 

BPW 2-13-23

The Rensselaer Board of Public Works met on Monday with an unusually long agenda. It approved an update of the pursuit policy for the Police Department. It was a policy that the State introduced to bring uniformity among police departments and will not result in changes in the way the Rensselaer Department conducts pursuits. The Board also approved a promotion in the Police Department.

The Board then approved two task orders for Commonwealth Engineering. The first was for chemical phosphorus removal. This was required by IDEM and will cost $72,000. The second was for wastewater asset management and is a study needed to get funds from the Indiana State Revolving Fund (SRF). It was for $59,800.

The Board then approved the bid recommendations for the water project. (The bids were opened at a special January meeting.) The bid for the water-tower part of the project of $4,341.000 that includes the base bid and several of the alternates was approved, as was the bid of $2,202,865 for the water mains base bid and one of the alternates. The approval was contingent on SRF approval. It was noted that the bids were higher than the estimates, but pretty much everything is coming in on the high side.

The Board approved pay request #9 of $566,723.95 from Thieneman for the lift station construction and also $25,669.90 to Commonwealth for monitoring the construction. Commonwealth also had an invoice of $34,995.12 for the final design of the elevated storage project and for $5,315.24 for bid assistance for that project.

City Council meeting 

The City Council meeting lasted more than an hour, which is unusually long for these meetings. First up was a citizen who was upset with the sewer extension. She maintained that the new sewer hookup would cost her rather than save her money. She will now have to pay a sewer bill and it will cost about $3500 to connect her house to the sewer line. Her septic system was cheaper.

Next up was an ordinance authorizing the City to issue revenue bonds for the waterworks improvement project. The funding will be from the SRF and $2 million will be a forgivable loan (so a grant) and another $5.9 million will have an interest rate of zero percent. Because the closing is scheduled for the 24th, the Council passed the second reading and then passed the third reading of the ordinance. (The first reading had been passed at the previous meeting and this type of ordinance requires three separate votes.)

The process of annexing SJC began at this meeting. There are multiple steps, including a public hearing (scheduled for March 27) and the preparation of a fiscal plan. If all goes as planned, the annexation will be finished in June.

The Council approved an amendment to the salary ordinance affecting the assistant street superintendent. The gas tracker for February will reflect a 5.25¢ increase per hundred cubic feet. There was a presentation of the status of the comprehensive plan that used the same power-point slides as those used at the Plan Commission meeting on the 9th. The presenter noted that the organization of the plan might seem a bit confusing but this organization was used to make it easy for OCRA to review it. 

Two employees were recognized for ten years of service. Two requests for public relations funds, one for flowers for the funeral of an employee's wife, were approved. April 22 will be electronics recycling day, from 8:00 until noon.

Tourism Board meeting

The Tourism Board met on Valentine's Day at the Sparling Annex. Art week will be July 24-28 and the focus for murals will be Wheatfield. The walls that can be painted are more clustered than in DeMotte and that will give the event a more festival feel for the artists.

There was a funding request for a new horse barn at the Fairgrounds. In addition to use for the County Fair, the horse grounds are used for 18 booked events, most of which bring in outsiders to the Fairgrounds. The planned barn will be 62' by 80'. The Board was receptive but wanted to know what other sources of funds will be used because they do not want to approve funding and not have the building completed. It will probably be on the agenda for the March 14 meeting.

A citizen who would like to see one of the miniature trains manufactured in Rensselaer many years ago installed in a park wanted to know if that sort of project could receive Tourism funding. He was told it could. Time will tell if anything develops from this.

Airport Authority Board meeting

The most interesting item from the Airport Authority Board meeting was a discussion with a company called American Crop Care that would like to base its operations at the Jasper County Airport. The company is incorporated in Florida but its main pilot who also seems to be one of the owners lives in Winamac. The company is new and is in the crop dusting business. That business is seasonal and they plan to rent a plane for the crop dusting season and would like to rent a hangar or two for that season. This is new territory for the airport and the Board members had questions about insurance, storage of chemicals, and fuel sales. The company and the airport manager will try to work out a mutually beneficial agreement that can be approved at or before the next meeting.

The Airport has invested their funds in several allowable instruments, all of which are getting about 4% interest. They declared their courtesy car as surplus and will put it in the next County auction. They also discussed a variety of things that needed repairs or replacement and other airport issues that are important to the airport but are not of much public interest.

A few more pictures

Last week I wrote about the Plan Commission and a variance for D-1 Towing. Below is the lot on Walnut Street that they have been using for towed vehicles.

Below you can see the lots that they recently purchased. There were several trucks already on them. In the distance and on the right you can perhaps see the lot shown above.

Backroad Blooms is now open in the former GRG Auto Repair building at 312 South College.  (That is the same address as Rural Bling but Backyard Blooms has the north door.)

For more information, see the website is here and the Facebook page is here.