A last post for 2024?

 More Christmas pictures

Among the Christmas decorations around town are a number of creche scenes. The first three below are at churches and the last two at residences.

Although the next three pictures may not look like Christmas pictures, they are. They show the parking lots at the College Mall, Strack & Van Til, and Walmart as they were on Christmas Day. Not even the Chinese restaurant was open in the College Mall. 

The picture below is from near McDonalds. It was closed. While I was taking this picture, a car drove into the drive-thru and tried to order. The driver left unsatisfied.

The only businesses that seemed to be open in the south part of Rensselaer were the gas stations.

The weather this week has been bleak, with heavy clouds. However, in winter heavy cloud cover usually means warmer weather, and we did get warmer than usual temperatures this past week.

City Council meeting

The Rensselaer City Council met for its final 2024 meeting on Monday. It passed the annual ordinance writing off non-collectable utility accounts. An account becomes non-collectible when it is six years old or older or the customer has either died or declared bankruptcy. The electric tracker for the next quarter will reflect a reduction of $4.64 per 1000 kilowatt hours. 

The Council then approved several encumbrances. An encumbrance takes funds from the 2024 budget to use in 2025. The Council appointed Kevin Smith and Jeff Webb to the Redevelopment Commission and Mike Lyon to the BZA. The Council appointed Mayor Phillips to another term on the KIRPC Board.

The water, sewer, sanitation, electric, and gas utilities each gave a budget number to the Council. I think this was their anticipated expenses for 2025 and I am not sure what it means because there are a lot of extraneous forces that will affect spending, but the Clerk/Treasurer wanted numbers to plug into her budget.

Consideration of vacating part of Prairie Street was tabled because a key party was not able to attend this meeting. The Council approved a motion to have the Mayor sign a contract with HWC Engineering to develop a housing action plan and a park master plan. 

On December 3 IDEM told the City that it had approved a $62,861 sanitation grant to the City. It will be used to install 15 trash and 20 recycling receptacles in the downtown area. The City would like more recycling as a way to reduce tipping fees at the landfill.

The Mayor announced that Matthew Gunter had been appointed safety director. He then recognized two long-time employees who are retiring at the start of the year, Carol and Jerry Lockridge. (There will be a retirement celebration on Jan 3 in City Hall from 1:00 to 3:00.)

The Street Department won the decorating contest in which the various departments were competing. The Fire Department is starting a Fire School in February. A video by Commonwealth Engineering of the water tower was recommended.

A new Park Office is being constructed in the old power plant and may be finished by the first of the year. A disc golf tournament is planned for February.

Below shows some of the Park equipment moved into the old power plant.

The new Park office will be further north in the building than I expected.

The building is not yet ready to have visitors.

 Finally

The remodeling of the front of Short Cuts by Kim seems to be nearing completion.

Below is a picture from November 11.

And one from October 11.

An earlier picture was shown in a post at the beginning of October.

I suspect this will be the last post of 2024. I do not see any meetings on my schedule until January 6.