Summer begins

Memorial Day

Memorial Day weekend has come and gone. Many people consider Memorial Day as the beginning of summer. 

There was a decent crowd for the Memorial Day ceremony in Weston Cemetery.

In the 1946 edition of Chaos, the Rensselaer High School yearbook, there are pictures of the nine RHS alums who died in World War II. That seems a lot for a small city like Rensselaer.

Rensselaer Revelopment Commission meeting

The Rensselaer Redevelopment Commission met on May 25 in City Hall. The members heard via Zoom from a person from KIRPC who explained a community development block grant that could be used to purchase and remove a blighted building. The grants can be as large as $500,000 and have a 10% match requirement. There are two grant cycles per year and the next one would be in October. The property that is cleared cannot be developed for five years, which some members thought a strange provision. The property that the Commission is interested in is the R&M property. Apparently the party that was interested in purchasing it is no longer interested. In the discussion members voiced a number of concerns, including total cost, the possibility of asbestos increasing removal costs, and what environmental problems might be encountered on the site. No action was taken and the Mayor will try to get more information.

At a previous meeting the Commission passed a declaratory resolution that would allow TIF funds to be used for art. At this meeting it passed the confirmatory resolution that is the last step to complete the resolution. 

The State Legislature has passed changes to TIF regulations and now TIFs can be used for residential developments such as subdivisions. There are no projects in the works for Rensselaer that could use this, so no action was taken at this meeting.

Other things

Fountain Stone Theaters has announced its summer of free movies for children. They will show on Thursdays at 10:30.

Here is a video of the rest area/Welcome center that is nearing completion on I-65.

The LaRue Pool is scheduled to open on June 5. There is water in it, so maybe it will not be bone-chilling cold when it opens.

The hobbies and collectibles store, P&P, on North McKinley is closing at the end of June and maybe earlier. It is sad to see a business close, but they are looking for another location, possibly in DeMotte. The business in the back of the building, a cabinet maker, wants to expand into the entire space.

I think the moving of dirt at the new lift station is almost finished. The hill along Lincoln Street has been expanded to the south. 

I found an interesting site that looks at how income is moving in and out of counties. This is income, not population, so a few rich people moving offset many poor people moving. Jasper County on net gains from movement from Lake, Porter, and Newton counties in Indiana and Cook and Will counties in Illinois. We lose income to Tippecanoe, Marion, White, Pulaski, and LaPorte counties in Indiana.

We need rain. The grass has stopped growing.