A few meetings

 Remodeling of the former County Annex on the corner of Cullen and Kellner has begun. The sign is advertising for a retail occupant. I heard from a reliable source that there would be some coworking space in the remodeled building.

On Tuesday morning the sidewalks on the Cullen Street side of the building were torn out.

On Tuesday afternoon new sidewalks were being poured.

Rensselaer Redevelopment Commission

The Rensselaer Redevelopment Commission met on Thursday (3-16) afternoon and I was surprised to see a large audience of about 20 people. The main topic on the agenda was a request from Appleseed Childhood Education for funds to support the newly opened Appletree Center and the people attending were there to support the request.

The Appletree Center opened on March 6. It has the capacity for 75 but is not yet at that capacity as they are opening in stages. They had a waiting list of about 125. They will be open Monday through Friday all year.

The Center employs 15 people. The cost per student is about $14000 annually but few families are able to afford that amount. Tuition is on a sliding scale, depending on family income. There are some voucher programs that some families can use and the Center accepts those. However, the fact that this could not be a self-sustaining operation was realized from the beginning and finding outside support was part of the original plan. 

Appleseed had several letters of support in the packet prepared for the Commission and several people in the audience spoke in favor of the funding. The emphasis was on workers who without available childcare could not stay in the workforce, and some examples were cited. The Commission approved $130,000 for this year.

In other business, planning for a façade grant continues and may be ready for Commission action next month. The R&M building was mentioned, but no further plans have been made. The Commission approved paying three invoices.

JCBZA

The Jasper County Board of Zoning Appeals met Monday evening with only one item on the agenda, a request for a variance for lot width. The property owner said that there were two houses on the lot, one behind the other and the back house had been used by his father, who recently died. He would like to split off the back house preserving the tillable acres and to do that he needed to reduce the width of the entryway. The request was granted. The meeting lasted about ten minutes.

PTABOA

I noticed the agenda of a meeting of the Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals as I arrived at the BZA meeting and decided to see what they were up to. They met Tuesday morning, and after swearing in members and deciding to keep the same officers, they approved their last minutes from October. Their first request was from NICHES Land Trust, which owns several nature preserves in Jasper County. They are a non-profit organization and requested that they be exempted from the property tax. The  other request was from Graceway Bible Baptist Church, which had purchased an adjoining lot to their already exempted property and wanted it exempted as well. Both requests were approved and the meeting ended about ten minutes after it started.


Municipal Primary Election


The primary election for Rensselaer City officials is scheduled for May 2. If you vote on election day, the polls are at the Remington Library and the Jasper County Fairgrounds. However, you can avoid the trip to the Fairgrounds by voting early at the Courthouse. The days you can vote are Tuesdays and Thursdays starting April 4, from 9:00-noon and 1:00-6:00. You will have to go through security and then up to the second floor.

County Council

The Jasper County Council met on Tuesday evening. After the usual preliminaries, Zyan Miller from the Jasper County Economic Development Organization requested an additional appropriation for the capital projects funding. These monies are from the innkeeper tax. The Tourism Board has already granted more for capital projects than was in the budget. The grants are for murals in Wheatfield, a mural south of DeMotte, and for a horse barn at the Fairgrounds. Nothing was passed at this meeting because the item must first be advertised, so it will be back on the agenda in April. There was some discussion of planters at the Courthouse and the horse barn. (JCEDO has announced its new new director, Sarah DeYoung. See more here.)


The Council then approved four additional appropriations that were needed for various reasons. About this time the computer running the Zoom session started updating and shut down the Zoom, which was restarted when the computer finished updating and restarted. (I am always a little tempted to attend via Zoom, but have seen way too many problems with it to trust it.) The Council again amended the Salary Ordinance, this time to make it read correctly. At the previous meeting they had amended it with the additions to salaries, not the full salaries.


The Council passed a motion to concur with a mandate from the judges to add money to the extradition fund. This fund is in the Court budget, but is actually administered by the prosecutor, who is the one to decide extradition. Apparently there have been a lot of extraditions this year and the fund has gone into the red.


There was then a discussion about what was needed to keep the County prosperous. The population of the County dropped a bit in the 2020 census, and the drop was especially large among the young. There was concern about the quality of education and how to have attractive opportunities for those entering the workforce.


The KV Post had a reporter at the meeting, which was nice to see. I hope his report gets shared with the Republican. There is a County surplus auction on Saturday at 9:00 at the County Highway Garage on SR 114.

I have more to write but will put it in a separate post.