The Christmas parade and more

Christmas parade

On Friday evening the City had a Christmas parade. This year the lineup was on Harrison Street. From there the vehicles went northeast to McKinley and then onto Washington Street, ending at Potawatomi Park.  I decided that I would get better pictures if I took them of the lineup because the light was better. The pictures below are not in the order that the vehicles were in for the parade.

D-1 had several of its large tow trucks in the parade.

The County Fair Queen and her court had a float.

Grace Pentacostal Church of God.

Jasper County Highway Department

There were a couple of horses near the rear of the parade.

Mayor Wood and Mrs Wood in a picture that came out unusually well.

Trinity United Methodists had a Nativity scene, but no live animals this year.

WorkOne or the Chamber of Commerce

I do not remember what this group was.

REMC. The people in the inflatable costumes walked and it looked like it was uncomforable walking in the costumes.

Santa made the parade. He was delivered to his house at Potawatomi Park and heard requests from kids.

Another vehicle from Jasper County Highway Department.

The parade had over thirty entrants. There was a lot of lights and the kids were happy with the abundance of candy.

 More windows and trees

I missed the Baked Bean window in previous posts, but maybe it was one of the later paintings.

Not all of the window painting was downtown and I found some of those below only because I was told where they were. This next one is at Brookside Florists on Vine Street.

Knights of Columbus Hall

The Rensselaer Care Center. I never would have found this one by myself.

Arni's

Gallina Insurance. The others on this street were done earlier than this one.

I am confident that I am still missing some of them.

White Castle

The White Castle expansion has begun. A bit of the old Soesbe Building has been demolished. Also, stone has been spread for what I think will be a large parking lot. I believe that a detention pond will go where the Soesbe Building is. I will have to get to the site more frequently if I want to watch the demolition.

Commissioner's meeting

The Commissioners first December meeting was short, lasting just a bit over an hour. There were four buried cable permits, three of which were simple bores under a road. The other seemed not to have been a bore but a changing of above-ground cables necessitated by a State Highway bridge replacement and now these also need to fill out a permit form. All were approved. 

The REMC broadband manager addressed the Commissioners, telling them that REMC wants to start Phase Two of its plans to provide broadband to the County. Phase One, which was building a ring of towers, has been completed. Phase Two will connect homes to fiber optics in the northeast part of the County. (There will be phases three and four to provide fiber optics to the remainder of the County.) This part of the County is the least well served part of the County. The project will be funded by REMC and by State and Federal grants. It will include about 135 miles of cable, with about 108 on existing poles and 27.4 underground. About 1400 homes will be served. All phases will use about 400 miles of cable. There was no approval of this plan at this meeting because the required paperwork has not been finished. The goal of REMC and County officials (Highway and Surveyor) is to have the plan ready for approval at the end-of-the-year meeting on December 28, REMC hopes to complete this phase in 80 working days once it is started.

There was a public hearing at which no one spoke for an ordinance to put stop signs at one intersection and to put speed limits on sections of CR 900W and CR 1000W. The ordinance was approved. The Commissioners also approved an ordinance that increased the cost of highway culvert delivery from $50 to $150. County Treasurer McEwan had a case of repeatedly trying to have a property owner make good on a check with insufficient funds. The Commissioners approved something that will allow the property to go to the tax sale if payment on what is owed is not paid.

The Commissioners approved a proposal of the Sheriff to pay for accumulated vacation pay of an employee. They also approved filling several current or upcoming vacancies. The Commissioners told the Sheriff that they appreciated the good relations that they have with his department; at a recent meeting with other commissioners they heard horror stories about counties that had bad relationships between commissioners and sheriffs. The Sheriff was asked about license-plate readers. The cameras on the I65/SR10 intersection have worked well and have resulted in several arrests. The others in various other places were provided by a different vendor and the Sheriff is opting out of that contract because of poor service. He will seek a different vendor. He mentioned that there is a lot of Covid in the jail. 

The Commissioners had no suggestions to fill a vacancy on the Library Board but did approve Diva Rish for the Tourism Board. A member of the Animal Control Board sent a letter saying that he did not want to be reappointed and they approved a replacement for him. The County currently houses juvenile defenders in Porter County but Porter County has notified the judges that they will not be renewing that agreement. The County will have to find another County for juvenile offenders and the cost will probably be higher. 

In public comments a woman asked what was happening with the tax cliff that was expected as the result of NIPSCO abandoning the Schahfer plant. She was told that the cliff will largely be averted because of the Dunn's Bridge solar farms built and being built in the northeast part of the County. 

Drainage Board

The Drainage Board, meeting a few minutes after the end of the Commissioners meeting, had several items on its agenda. A person living next to the South Bailey Ditch asked for a variance so he could build an attached garage onto his house. The right of way for the ditch is 75 feet and the edge of the garage would be only 42 feet away. In the past the Drainage Board would have rejected this variance, but the fact that the house is at the very start of the ditch was important to the current members. They approved the variance with the conditions that the landowner take care of the maintenance of his part of the ditch and that he sign a hold-harmless agreement saying he will not sue the County if he suffers any damage as the result of being closer than 75 feet to the ditch.

The Board approved a drainage plan for phase B of the Briarwood subdivision. The drainage plan had been approved in 1993 but DeMotte did something that required it to be re-approved for the undeveloped part of the subdivision.

NIPSCO received approval to cross a regulated drain as part of a bridge replacement project of INDOT.

A citizen noted that there were two beaver dams on ditches near her in northern Jasper County. The Surveyor commented that there had been a lot of beaver dams this year, over 35.

Notes

Former Indiana Representative Douglas Gutwein died on December 1. His obituary is here.

Brookside Park has a new bench in honor of Corey Sanders. It is located near the south entrance to the Park.

Days are almost as short as they will be this year. We only lose another ten minutes of daylight before the solstice and all of it will be in the morning. Starting on the 11th sunset times get later.

Not Your Typical Wingz passed their health inspection and is now open for business. 

Addendum

The Commissioners met on November 20th in a continued meeting. I did not attend. The minutes of the meeting are here. The main business was approval of an economic development agreement for the Walker Township Solar Park.