June already

Community notes

Bazz's Roller Rink celebrated its 70th anniversary on June 1. It opened in 1953!

Rensselaer still needs rain. There were several hours of thunder last Wednesday afternoon as showers popped up all around us, but Rensselaer remained an island of dryness.

I was wrong about the pool not being bone-chilling cold on opening day. After the picture in the last post, leaks were discovered so the pool had to be drained, repaired, and refilled. 

The artists for mural week have been announced on the Discover Jasper County Facebook page. I hope I have got the right links for them:  artisterast, camer1sf, emilyding, hollysims, travmsk, vizalabacon, zachcurtis

Cameron and Emily Ding are returnees. Ms Ding did the angry birds mural on the Town Mall that was destroyed in the fire. You can still see it as the heading for this blog.

The Carnegie Players will be presenting a play later this month, on June 16 22, 23, 24. The location is listed as 116 Washington Street, which is the former site of Country Bumpkin. More info here.

The Other Place is the new name for the former REMC building and it seems ready to welcome tenants. There will be a ribbon cutting on June 14 at 1:00. Also, the Chamber of Commerce has a Business-After-Hours event on June 8 from 4-7 to launch their new office.

There were some vegetables for sale at Saturday's Farmers Market: tomatoes grown in a hoop house in another county and asparagus that was sold out by the time I arrived. I was impressed by a couple of tables of wood carvings. The vendor told me the telephone was carved from an old barn log from a butternut tree. I told him I rarely saw butternut trees around Rensselaer. They are related to black walnuts but have nuts that are even harder to crack. They were more common in Minnesota. He said there were so few of them because they were cut down to build barns.

Last week the workers at the lift-station construction site were spreading hay to protect the seeding that they had done. Now we need rain to get the grass to grow.

The new dugouts at Columbia Park have roofs.

Strawberries are now for sale in the Pizza King parking lot on College Avenue.

College Avenue is closed from the bridge to Washington Street and will remain closed though June. A rebuild to the road is underway, with the first step replacing or placing underground pipes.

Harrison Street next to the Courthouse is also closed.

IBEC is now part of Harvestone.

Commissioners meeting

The Commissioners met Monday for their June meeting. It was not Zoomed so some of the people who normally attend via Zoom were there in person and for a while it was standing room only.

There were three buried cable permits, from Precision Utilities doing work for CenturyLink and from NITCO, which is working on providing broadband for the DeMotte area, and a set of 9 for Dunns Bridge II. All were approved. The Sheriff suggested that the County discontinue a policy of catastrophic insurance that another insurance provider said was duplicating existing insurance and which other counties do not have. The Commissioners decided to discontinue it. He received permission to fill several vacancies, including two deputies, a correctional officer, and two part-time dispatchers.  

The Commissioners approved replacing light poles at Community Corrections. One has fallen over and the others are rusted and in danger of falling over. The Northern Jasper County Ambulance Service asked if they could receive some of the money in the budget for Prompt Ambulance, which is no longer serving the County. The Commissioners and Auditor will look into whether any of that is available.

Two bids were received for road resurfacing funded by the CCMG funding. One was for $1,486,236 and the low bid from Town and Country for $1,412.240.25. The bids were reviewed and later in the meeting the low bid was accepted. However, it will need State approval before the contract is let.

The Commissioners approved a bid of $14K to repair the flagpole structure at the Sparling Annex. They also approved a bid of $96205 to enlarge the parking lot at the Sparling Annex. When there is a big crowd at meetings, there is not enough parking. The current design of the lot leaves a lot of wasted space. A bid of $32 to spray foam on the basement of the Courthouse for waterproofing was accepted.

The Commissioners had a public hearing about closing the road adjacent to the Jasper-Pulaski shooting range during the hours when the range is open. The road lies in the range's ricochet zone and it cannot be approved with the road in use. The range was built 60 years ago and it is being modernized. The Commissioners moved to have their attorney get an agreement ready for the July meeting.

The Commissioners approved the acceptance by Emergency Management of a donation of $14,842.40 for 76 batteries for emergency sirens. There was discussion of the possibility of an ordinance to regulate residential firing ranges and  junk in yards. Nothing was done at this meeting. Apparently there are a fair number of people who have built their own firing ranges, sometimes in places with nearby neighbors.  

The City of Rensselaer planning director wants the Fairgrounds to combine parcels before he grants a building permit for a new horse barn. The County Attorney will get the parcels combined.

A spokeswoman for KIRPC said she is working on a regional grant for the eight counties KIRPC serves that will have the goal of reducing highway deaths. It will have an 80-20 split, with the amount that Jasper County would have to pay not exceeding $23,750. Jasper County has had 30 highway deaths since 2017. The Commissioners agreed to back the proposal.

The Health Department can get an additional several hundred thousand dollars each year from the State but the dollars come with strings: the Department will need to expand some services. The Commissioners approved the Department's joining the new program. The Commissioners approved spending about $40,000 for alarms and doors to improve security at the Health Department and the Prosecutor's office.

A citizen who lives in Lakeside Community, a development for those 55 years and up, had concerns about building inspections. The housing in her community has manufactured homes and she thought the County should be doing inspections to make sure that new homes were correctly installed.  

A company that plans to build a solar farm in Walker Township wants to connect their proposed farm to the grid with a two-mile transmission line. They presented three possible routes to the Commissioners. This project was given a special exception for the farm in August of 2021. No action was taken at this meeting. The company would like to begin construction before the end of the year.

Community Corrections needs to rebuild its kitchen and is getting quotes. While the kitchen is under construction, it will get meals from the jail and the Commissioners told them to begin getting those meals as soon as possible. The Commissioners approved quotes for the Recorder's Office for new carpeting. The Commissioners appoint a member of the Rensselaer Plan Commission who must live in the exclusion zone. They appointed Sean Cawby, who lives in Sherwood Forest. The Commissioners gave oral approval of a road-use agreement with BP for a seismic study. The study will be done on about 190 miles of County Road and will take 45-50 days. The crew will have 30-40 people. BP is currently doing a seismic study in Benton County, then will move to White County, and expects to be in Jasper County around harvest time. The meeting was continued to June 20 at 8:30, if needed.

Drainage Board

The July Drainage Board followed the Commissioners meeting with a ten minute break. The Board approved the abandonment of a tile that no longer works well, but a public hearing will be needed before that approval becomes final. It approved a lengthy list of borings under County ditches and tiles for the Dunns Bridge project II. All crossings will be between 8 and 12 feet below the ditch or tile. It approved an agreement with BF&S for a new program that updates an old program and will provide better data management for the Surveyor's Office. It heard concerns from a farmer who has land adjacent to a subdivision. The subdivision had detention ponds that border his land and are overgrown. He said that they are overflowing and flooding his land and would like them cleaned, but the subdivision residents like the ponds overgrown. The Surveyor and the chair of the Board will take a look at the situation later this month. The meeting ended at noon.

Rensselaer Park Board

The Rensselaer Park Board meeting on Monday evening began with the Board approving the use of Potawatomie Park for the St. Augustine Fall Frolic on September 16 in the evening. The event has previously been held in the Church parking lot and the field on Susan Street. This year the organizers want to expand the event with food trucks, games, and a band and use a more community-oriented venue. There were some concerns about whether the electrical service in the Park was sufficient for the food trucks. The event was approved, adding one more event to a very busy weekend: St Joe homecoming, Rock the Arts at Carpenter Creek, Jasper Jaunt bike ride, Sandhill Crane Festival, Weston Cemetery Walk, and the Francesville Fall Festival. 

The LaRue pool is open but there is no water in the wading pool yet. (It was full on Tuesday.) It has a leak in the pipes under the concrete. 190 kids have signed up for the Park Department's baseball program. There have been many shelter rentals. The playgrounds need more mulch, something that costs several thousand dollars and occurs every three to five years. The Board approved purchasing the mulch. New playground equipment is scheduled for Foundation Park. A sand volleyball court is planned next to the basketball court in Brookside Park. Fridays in July will be dollar days at the pool, and the Board approved adding June 19th to the list of dollar days. Less than 1% of the pledges to the Parks for People campaign were unpaid. 

Much of the meeting was a discussion with a member of the public about how the community can keep the parks from deteriorating. There will be no July meeting; the next board meeting will be in August.