Brick Streets Project starts

Ceremonial Groundbreaking

The Brick Streets Project had its ceremonial groundbreaking on Tuesday morning. People involved in the project posed with a shovelful of dirt from plastic buckets.

Before the posed picture, there were short addresses by Mayor Phillips, Emily Albaugh the Community Development Planner for KIRPC, Brandon Schreeg from Kimley Horn, remarks read from State Representative Kendell Culp who is attending the legislative session in Indianapolis, and Stace Pickering from Rensselaer Main Street. KIRPC writes grant applications and administers grants for Rensselaer and Kimley Horn designed the project. Below you can see Ms Albaugh addressing the crowd with Jeff Phillips behind her and former Mayor Wood, former Councilman George Cover, and Stace Pickering in front of the shovels.

There was a decent sized crowd attending.

Here are two sketches of what the completed project will look like.

As part of the project, utilities will be replaced beneath the streets. Also sidewalks will be widened. Here is a sketch showing wider sidewalks and changed parking.

The grant that is funding the project is from the U.S. Economic Development Administration. A requirement is that a percentage of old bricks (I think it is at least 50%) be reused. 

Rensselaer Plan Commission meeting

The Rensselaer Advisory Planning Commission met Thursday afternoon with two items of new business. The first was several zoning changes in the Sunnyside Addition (which is on the northeast side of Rensselaer). They are shown on the map below. Part of one block was changed from I-1 (light industrial) to R1 (residential) because that part of the block consists of residences. The block on which The State Highway Department formerly had buildings and part of another block were changed from R1 to I-1. The reason for the change was again to make the zoning consistent with the way the land is being used. The former State Highway lot has chemical pollution and can not be used for residences. There is currently a warehouse on the lot and another is planned.

The second item was a change of zoning for what used to be a gas station on the Corner of McKinley and Cherry (a bit north of St. Augustine School). The reason the owner wanted the change was that he wants to sell the property and it will be easier to sell with Business zoning. The lot is small and nothing bigger than the existing building can be placed on the lot. Both of the rezones were approved and now need City Council approval to be final.


The next meeting will be on March 21 at 5:30. On the agenda will be a proposal to rezone the Pizza King lot. The business has a variance to have a business in an area zoned residential, but changing the zoning to match what is actually there eliminates the need for the variance.


Rensselaer BZA

The Rensselaer Board of Zoning Appeals meeting was scheduled for an hour after the Plan Commission meeting, and because the Plan Commission meeting lasted half an hour, there was some waiting for it to start. It had only one item on the agenda, a variance for height for a proposed outbuilding and house that will be built on Bunkum Road immediately to the east of the Iroquois Valley Church. (This lot is outside the City limits but in its exclusion zone, so it needs to meet City regulations, not County regulations.) The lot is a wooded lot and the buildings will be set back from the road so will be screened by trees. The current limit on height is 18 feet for outbuildings and 25 for houses. The petitioners want a garage 23 feet tall so it will be able to hold an RV. They were unsure if the house they will build will exceed 25 feet but it may; the plans are not finalized. The variance was granted with the condition that the garage not exceed 25 feet and the house not exceed 30 feet.


Someone asked about the status of the old R&M property. Plans for remodeling or rebuilding are being developed by Hamstra and will need State approval before work begins.

There was discussion of whether the current height limits are realistic, especially for houses in the exclusion zone on lots zoned suburban residential (which must be at least an acre in size.) The Board passed a recommendation to the Plan Commission to review the current height limits.

The next meeting will be on March 21 at 5:30. On the agenda will be a proposal for a conditional use variance for the Good Samaritan Food Pantry, which is moving from its current location on Van Rensselaer and Harrison to the building behind Pizza King.


County Council

The Jasper County Council met on Tuesday evening and because the agenda did not look very interesting, I decided to attend via Zoom. Unfortunately, the audio quality was poor because some of the mics either were not turned on or the speakers were not speaking into them. If the person writing the minutes uses the recording to determine what was said, she will have a challenge.

The Council approved four sets of additional appropriations: for probation secretary and extradition, for road repair (allowing the highway department to spend up to $1 million on chip and seal and road materials), a donation of $75,000 to the Rensselaer Fire Department fire tower (discussed at the last meeting), and about $30,000 to complete repairs at Community Corrections. They then approved a batch of transfers, an amendment to the salary ordinance that dealt mostly with part-time employees, and finally the salary ordinance itself.

There was a discussion of public defenders that I had a hard time following because of poor audio. The County Courts are having a hard time attracting public defenders and may in the future create a public defender department. Compensation is an issue. The budget has funds for seven defenders but there are only six, so the action the Council took was to split the 7th contract among the six active defenders.

The last action of the Council was to fill their slot on the Justice Reinvestment Advisory Council (JRAC). It is a nine member board with the members determined by various offices. The council appoints one member, and last year it was Eric Kidwell, who said that he had a hard time making the meetings because of work conflicts. Nevertheless, he was reappointed with the hopes that the meetings will be Zoomed so he can attend remotely.

Notes

We have had a mild winter this year except for a week in mid January when the temperatures never got above freezing and we had some extremely cold temperatures. At the end of last week we got a reminder that winter is still with us with a couple of inches of snow on Friday and temperatures mostly in the teens on Saturday. You can see the snow on the ground in the picture below of the new fencing around the natural gas regulator station next to McDonalds. The new gas regulators went on-line at the beginning of October.

I missed the meeting at the Fairgrounds that discussed what should be in a new solar ordinance because I attended the Rensselaer BZA and Plan Commission meetings that were held at the same time as the solar meeting. I have not heard anything about what went on at the solar meeting.

I learned a bit more about the phosphorus building pictured in the last post. It does not take phosphorus out of the sewage. Rather it stores chemicals that are added to the sewage and that bind to the phosphorus in the water, helping neutralize it. The State has mandated that Rensselaer (and other communities) add phosphorus control to their sewage plants.

In the previous post I mentioned that the Tourism Commission gave money to Remington Main Street for a mural to be painted this summer. Below is the wall that it will cover. There is a lot of wall and it will be noticed. (The light was all wrong for this picture, but it was the best I could do.)

The Top Link building has a new tenant, 181 Properties. 

The building that previously had Walter's Electric is being remodeled. Some of it will be the future home of Biscuit and a Bath, a dog grooming business north of the railroad on Cullen Street. There are plans to open an ice cream shop in another part.

Jasper County Economic Development has announced that Zyan Miller will be leaving the organization. 

The latest newsletter from Saint Joseph's College is here.

I have not seen any announcements about Lenten Luncheons this year, but a comment on Facebook gave this lineup:

Feb 28th Nazarene Church
Mar 6th Saint Augustine
Mar 13th Trinity United Methodist Church
Mar20th First Christian Church
Mar 27th Brushwood Global Church

Start time seems to be 11:45 with a charge of $6.00.