Mostly May meetings

Have you noticed that tulip trees are blooming?

The flowers are large, but usually high in the tree where they blend in.

Northern lights

On Friday night and Saturday morning many people in our area saw the Northern Lights. The display was caused by strong solar storms that ejected ionized particles in Earth's direction. They are caught in the Earth's magnetic field and funneled into the upper atmosphere, especially near the poles. 

Some of the people commented that the pictures that they took with their phones showed a lot more than what they could see with their eyes. Human eyes have two types of photoreceptors, rods and cones. Cones see color and are concentrated in one small area of the back of the eye. They turn off when in low light conditions and rods take over. Rods see only black and white and are not abundant where the cones are concentrated. That is why if you are looking for a faint object in the sky, you will see it better if you focus a little to the side of the object.  If you did not see the color in the Northern Lights that the pictures captured, it is because your cones were inactive. Modern smartphones have much greater sensitivity to low light than human eyes.

I did not see the aurora but did see a number of pictures on Facebook, including some from family living in Kentucky. Here is a link to pictures taken from Fountain Park Chautauqua 

By the way, if the solar storms get too strong, they can cause a lot of damage here on Earth to electrical systems. We do not need another Carrington Event, but sooner or later Earth will experience one.

Board of Public Works meeting

The BPW meeting on Monday afternoon was short, lasting only ten minutes. It approved invoices for water utility improvements from Commonwealth Engineering for $9,087 and from Maguire Iron for $359,575. This  project is now 76% complete. They also approved an applicant for the Fire Department. The fire tower construction has been pushed back ten to twelve weeks and the Fall training class has been canceled.

City Council meeting

After the usual preliminaries, the City Council considered an extension for a sewer hook-up along SR 114. The applicant has had trouble getting her contractor to install the hook-up because of the extensive rain this Spring. She was granted a 60 day extension. There are several other people in that area that are supposed to be hooking up to the City sewer and they apparently have not done so yet.

Rein Bontreger requested closing a block of Front Street on Thursday evenings from May 23 to September 26 for his weekly Cylinders-and-Snacks car show. This will be the fifth year for the event. His request was granted. He said that next year he may move the event to the new bricks of Harrison Street. The old power lines on that section of Harrison Street were removed on Saturday as the Electric Department switched power from the overhead lines to newly installed underground lines. The power to the Court House had to be turned off during the transfer.

The Council acknowledged an apprenticeship graduation from the Alliance of Indiana Rural Water. The Alliance helps pay the costs of completing the program and I believe there is another City employee in the program. Licensed operators for utility operations are in short supply nationally as well as locally and the program is trying to improve the situation.

The Council then turned to renewing several tax abatements. ConAgra had two, one personal property and the other real estate, as did National Gypsum. IMPA had two, one for each solar park. Indiana Facemasks had two, both for personal property, and Geyer American Melt Blown had one. There was another Geyer company that had had an abatement, but it has closed and the employees folded into the other Geyer businesses. Indiana Facemasks no longer produces as many face masks, but it has added other products. Finally, Genova had a real-estate abatement reapproved.

The Council approved a payment claim for the Brick Street Redevelopment for $208K. I asked before the meeting why these claims came to the Council rather than the Board of Public Works and was told because the source of funding was different from those that go to the BPW. The gas tracker for May will reflect a 33¢ decrease per hundred cubic feet. The Council moved the next Council meeting to Tuesday, May 28 because the 27th is Memorial Day.  (There will be a Memorial Day Ceremony on May 27 at Weston Cemetery at 11:00.)

Four people have submitted applications for the open School Board Position. There will be no BZA or Plan Commission meetings this month. For clean-up week, five cars were towed. Ten loads of metal were collected as well as 55.4 tons of yard waste, 11 gaylord boxes of electronics, 98 tires, 37.1 tons of brush, and 218.4 tons of trash.

Below is a picture taken last week as the City's electric utility was installing a transformer on the corner of the Courthouse square.

Tourism Commission

The Tourism Commission met Tuesday morning and approved three funding or sponsorship requests. They approved $5000 to both the Touch of Dutch Festival and the Little Cousin Jasper Festival and $1700 to the DAR for Wreaths Across America. 

The members were told to expect lower tax receipts for May and June. Higher interest rates have depressed construction and thus the demand for housing for construction workers. There was mention that a lot of people who schedule job interviews do not show; apparently the ease of scheduling with some of the Internet sites is a cause.

Airport Authority meeting

I missed the past two Airport Authority meetings but did remember the May meeting. I was thinking of attending in person but the weather looked iffy so I attended via Zoom.

There is interest in a couple properties that the Airport owns along SR 114. Time will tell if anything develops. The Board approved a lease of a hangar. Fuel sales in April were surprisingly good. There was a discussion of maintenance issues with the rental plane and the Board approved an amendment to the rental contract. The Board approved sending the Airport's bobcat to the County auction; it has not been used recently. Helicopter rides are scheduled this summer but biplane rides are uncertain. One of the people renting hangar space would like to build a private hangar and there was a discussion about that. The Airport has an area west of Excel Air designated for private-hangar development but that land is currently in a hay lease. The Board is interested in pursuing this but needs more information. There was a discussion of the airport class offered to high school students and the Board approved an estimate for removing a line of trees. 

The Airport has a redesigned website and you can find minutes of past meetings there.

Solar Ordinance amendments

One of the items on the May 20 Plan Commission meeting will be amendments to the County solar ordinance. I obtained a copy of the changes from the Planning office to see what was proposed because I suspect there will be many interested citizens at the meeting.

The changes add utility scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) to the ordinance that are capable of releasing more than one megawatt of electricity for an hour. Setbacks for solar farms are proposed to be 300 feet from non-participating land owners unless the non-participating owner owns land on more than one side, and then they are increased. The setbacks for a BESS are 900 feet. A Solar energy facility must be larger than 10 acres but a BESS cannot be larger than ten acres. Fencing is required for both types of facilities. "Any CESS must be buffered by planting, farming, production agriculture and maintained in good husbandry." A BESS must have a three-foot berm. Exterior lighting is limited to the amount needed for security. There are provisions for fire control, wetlands and erosion control, and several paragraphs about insurance.

Another picture

There has been movement forward at Filson Park.

I am curious to see how they will hook up the water.