Rensselaer Adventures: Windmills and windows

Monday evening's meetings

The Jasper County Plan Commission and BZA usually meet starting at 7:00. The start was moved up to 6:00 on Monday, probably in anticipation of a long BZA meeting. I decided I should get there a bit early, but when I got there the seating was almost filled and there were some people standing at the back of the room. 

The Plan Commission met first and was a short meeting. The first cause was approval of a 2-lot replat in Keener Township. The lot has a house on it and the owner would like to build a second house on the other part of the lot. Other lots in the area are similar. The request was approved and this one does not need to go to the Commissioners for final approval. The second item was amending the UDO with some changes in language. It had been discussed in the October meeting. It will go to the Commissioners with the recommendation for approval.

There was a short delay until 6:15 when the BZA meeting started. There was only one item on the agenda, a special exception for the location of 33 utility grade wind turbines (UWTs) with 2 alternative sites. The total project of the Carpenter Wind Farm will have 45 UTWs but twelve of them are in the Remington exclusion zone and they had been approved by the Remington government boards. The project will be built by EDP Resources, which was repeatedly referred to as EDPR, and will be owned and managed by them. NIPSCO has agreed to purchase the power generated. All will be constructed on land zoned A1, The presentation by EDP stressed the economic benefits of the project. Over the lifetime of the project there will be $70 million paid to landowners and $32 million in taxes, about half going to the Tri-County School system. In addition the project will make an economic development payment of about $6 million to the County. There will be about 150-200 jobs during construction and some permanent jobs because EDP plans to construct an operations and maintenance office in Carpenter Township.

The presentation had a map showing the land that EDP had contracted for windmills, service items, or setbacks. The box in the lower left shows the area under the jurisdiction of the Town of Remington. The little circles show where windmills will be placed.

The Board members had some questions about tile damage and maintenance. I was surprised that most of the comments from the public were in favor of the project. Three union representatives mentioned how many of their members lived in Jasper County and might end up working on the construction. The head of the Remington Redevelopment Commission said that the City of Remington was in favor of the project. Again, the stress was on the economic benefits from the project. In contrast, a woman living near Remington said she just wanted to live a simple life that did not include windmills. I was very impressed by the EDP presentation. They clearly had done their homework, understood where the opposition to the project was coming from, and tried to disarm those arguments before they could be raised.

The Board then had to vote on several findings of facts. Those given by EDP were long and the Board did not want some of what was in them to be what the Board endorsed. Eventually they got together and edited out some sentences and paragraphs from the EDP copy and approved the edited findings. With the findings of acts approved, the special exception was approved. This was the final regulatory approval needed before construction can begin.

Scott Walstra, chair of the BZA, was elected to the County Council in the November election. He ended the meeting by announcing his resignation from the BZA.

The next meeting will be on December 16 if there is an agenda.

After the meeting I had a couple of questions. I wondered if the $6 million economic development payment was contingent on getting a tax abatement and learned that the abatement had been approved in 2022. I also wondered about the legal notice shown below from page B8 in the November 14, 2024 issue of the Rensselaer Republican. I was told that it will be used to track overhead airplanes and will turn on the red warning lights on the turbines when a plane is overhead. Otherwise the lights will be off.

Joint Commissioners/Council meeting

The second Joint Commissioners/Council meeting of the year took place before the Council meeting on Tuesday evening. The first item on the agenda was a presentation by David Myers, Wheatfield Township Trustee, and Nick DeKryger of a proposed splash pad for northern Jasper County. Wheatfield Township owns a five acre parcel on SR 10 west of the KV High School that it plans to use for a future fire station. A number of DeMotte Rotarians have been planning a splash pad for the area and decided that this location would be an ideal location. It would be able to serve the whole population of the northern townships and it was big enough for both a park and a fire station. 

The proposed splash pad is estimated to cost $2 million. They had prepared a pamphlet that broke the cost into categories, and there are costs for infrastructure because there is none on the lot at present. They argue that the splash pad would improve the quality of life for the area and would be good for the community and the economy. They said that a splash pad is a low-maintenance amenity (at least compared to a pool) and that it would be free as the splash pad in Remington is. Fundraising for the project has just begun and they would like the County to contribute $500,000. If that happens, it will likely be from economic development funds that the Dunns Bridge II project has paid to the County. These funds have no restrictions on how they are used.

There was a brief discussion of the public defenders' office, which is supposed to begin operating at the beginning of the year. Apparently a head of the office has been selected but that information is not yet public. Still undecided is where the office will be located.

The Council has a moratorium on tax abatements for industrial solar and battery storage and Commissioner Bontreger wanted to know what the Council was thinking. The moratorium is being presented by Councilman Misch and he said he largely copied it from Wells County. There were suggestions that the same result could be obtained by tweaking the scorecard that had been developed several years ago to help businesses and the Council determine abatements.

County Council meeting

The County Council had a bunch of additional appropriations that it passed. Most were technical bookkeeping. The County hires firms to supervise construction of a solar farm and a wind farm. The companies building these projects have agreed to cover the costs of this supervision. They pay the County, and for the County to then pay the supervising companies, the money must be appropriated.

The Sheriff had a number of salary changes, most due to people changing positions. They will be put into the salary ordinance in the December meeting and additional appropriations needed will be done in January. He mentioned that his department did not get the COPS grant it had applied for. Other places have more serious crime problems.

The Commissioners had approved a new position for the Health Department to help with the increasing number of Spanish-speaking people the Department sees. The Council approved a salary up to $49k depending on experience.

The agenda had an item "Non-Exempt VS Exempt Status for County Employees. Whatever it was was made moot by a court case in Texas. The Council reappointed a person whose four-year appointment to the Remington Library to another four-year term.

 There were two people nominated to fill Scott Walstra's position on the BZA. Scott Walker won on a 4-2 vote.

The Council then had a discussion of the moratorium mentioned in the joint meeting. The purpose of the moratorium was to send a message that the County does not welcome new solar investment. The attorney for the Council said that it would be better to have this done with a resolution rather than an ordinance, which was what Mr Misch was proposing. The main argument for it was that the Council members who had campaigned this year found widespread opposition from the public to additional solar farms. A motion to have the Council attorney draft a resolution passed with two nay votes.

The Council passed three changes to the 2024 salary ordinance. Jacob Taulman said that his search for a third deputy prosecutor had found a candidate with extensive experience and that he would be hiring her at the top of the amount the Council had allowed for this position. She will be part-time for four months so she can finish up her private cases.

The meeting ended with an inconclusive discussion of where the EMS program should go next.

On the way to these meetings I took the picture below, showing the bare trees at twilight reflected in the River. It looked more impressive than what the picture captures.