More August meetings

 Continued Commissions meeting

The Commissioners ended their August 7th meeting by continuing it until the 14th. The reason for continuing the meeting was to have a public hearing on an ordinance for the Health Department. The public hearing could not be held on the 7th because it had not been advertised enough days in advance.

The State of Indiana is trying to standardized rules for septic systems and has issued what it wants those standards to be. It voided all County ordinances that were more restrictive than those standards and told the counties to pass new ordinances that will be reviewed by a State technical review board in October, starting with those that are submitted earliest. At this meeting the Commissioners passed a new ordinance that remains more restrictive than the State standards in three ways. The County wants 100 feet of separation between a water well and the discharge field of the septic system, the County wants all installers to be licensed by Jasper County and the State wants installers to be licensed in at least one county, and the County prohibits homeowner installation unless the homeowner is licensed while the State allows homeowner installation. The Commissioners passed the ordinance.

Rensselaer Board of Public Works meeting

The Rensselaer BPW met on Monday afternoon and approved a series of pay requests:

McGuire Iron for $593.735 for work on a new water tower;

Grimmer Construction for $157,806 for service line replacement on Weston Street;

Commonwealth Engineering for $32,388 for easement work and inspecting water tower and line replacement work;

Thieneman Construction for #36,449.84 for odds and ends while finishing up work on the lift station;

Commonwealth for $3,399.99 for supervising the work of Thieneman.

The Board also approved change order #7 for $782 thousand for Thieneman to work on phosphorus removal at the WasteWater Treatment Plant. IDEM and the Federal Government are mandating the City remove phosphorus, and Commonwealth was approved for $116,800 for their work on this project.

The concrete base for the water tower has been finished but nothing is rising above ground yet.

City Council meeting

In the citizens' comments at the beginning of the meeting, Main Street Rensselaer asked and received approval for use of Van Rensselaer Street in front of City Hall for its Oktoberfest event in September. The Street will not be torn up by then.

The Council held a public hearing (at which no one spoke) and then approved continuing tax abatements for Conagra, Filtration Parts, Indiana Facemasks and American Melt Blown Filtration, Gold Bond Building Products (National Gypsum), and Genova.

The gas tracker for August will reflect a 2¢ increase per hundred cubic feet.

Two bids were opened for the brick street project. One had a base bid of $2,530,554,65 with two additions of $101,114 and 51,958.20. I believe this bid was from Milestone. The other bid was from Grimmer Construction and had a base bid of $2,246,572 with the two additions of $98,684 and $66,164. The bids were taken under advisement and the winner will probably be declared at the next Council meeting.

The Council agreed to a 3% increase in employee salaries for next year's budget, and the same increase for elected officials. The Council approved using $189,300 of ARP funds to help finance the construction of a building at the wastewater treatment plant to remove phosphorus. The total cost is estimated at $1,669,700 and several other sources of funds will be used to pay for the building. This is mandated by both State and Federal governments.

A concern was raised about maintaining City Parks. A splash pad is under consideration and it may replace the baby pool at the LaRue Pool. The Street Department requested and was granted permission to replace a striper (machine paints markings on roads) for $6,408.21. The Department can no longer get parts for its current machine. The Gas Department requested and was given permission to purchase a new pipe trailer for $18,223,42.

The City auction will be held on Friday at the Police Department.

County Council meeting

The County Council began its budget hearings on Tuesday evening. Each department explains the changes they want to make in their budget. The discussion of the Coroner's and the Sheriff's budget took some time, while the discussion of the Auditor's, Council's, and EMA's budgets was quite short. The budget hearing continues all day on Wednesday, starting with the Highway budget.

Before the budget hearings began, the Council held its regular meeting. It approved an additional appropriation of $25,000 for funding the GIS team's request to hire a consultant to evaluate moving to new software. The old software is losing its support. It also approved a salary ordinance for two part-time employees hired with grant funding. The Health Department had at a previous meeting said it could pay for expanding the parking lot but the State Board of Accounts said that it cannot.

Several additional appropriations were approved. One was for medical/psychiatric consultants for one of the courts. This year there have been more than the usual number of trials with defendants that may be impaired. Another was for the other court for special prosecutor expenses.

Notes

On Sunday I visited the Remington town park and saw the mural that Cameron Moberg painted there.

The park has a small sledding hill which kids find fun even in the summer.

And of course, the splash pad is popular.

This park shows what can be done if a a large plot of land is designed as a park rather than have a park that grows gradually. Its one drawback is that it is not easy to get to because it is remote.

Water line replacement has begun on Van Rensselaer Street south of the brick street part of the street. It will be closed until sometime in September.

After a dry start to the summer, we got a lot of rain in August and that has popped up mushrooms. When you see a ring of them, you know that there was once a tree on that site.

The rain has made the grass grow and I am worried that our freedom from mosquitoes may come to an end soon.