A short post to start May

 Medical signs

In the previous post I had pictures of a sign for the Clinic of Family Medicine being installed downtown. According to its website, The Clinic of Family Medicine has three medical providers: Dr Robert Darnaby, Family Nurse Practitioner Sharon Johnson, and Nurse Practitioner Debra Drescher. They have not moved yet as the renovation of their downtown office is not finished.

What used to be the Clinic of Family Medicine is now three offices of Franciscan Health: Working Well, Express Care, and HealtheAccess. 

These services have moved from the building to the west, which is now vacant.

It has a sign in one of the windows saying the space is available.

The property tax record from the County says this building has 3142 square feet and the former Clinic of Family Medicine has 5312 square feet.

The Liberty Clinic of Dr. Randy Lehman is now operating out of the Hospital. Dr Lehman posted a video on Facebook that explains what he is doing and why.

The Clinic of Family Medicine is now operating from the building to the south and east of the building Franciscan is using.

It is open four days a week and on the fifth day the building is used by Lafayette Pain Care.

Odds and Ends

The Food Pantry has a sign in front of their building along the highway.

Over the weekend the Chamber of Commerce sponsored Daffodil Days, which featured a scavenger hunt to get people to visit the participating businesses. I picked up the goodie bag but decided I did not want to enter the drawing for the big prizes. (I am too old to want more stuff.) The goodie bag had some pens, some popcorn, a fan that folded up in a funny way, and a coupon for a free cookie at McDonalds. I used the coupon and was surprised that there were no customers inside. I asked the lady who waited on me how much business is through the drive-up and she said over 80%. There always seems to be cars in the drive up.

On Friday the City's Gas Utility hosted an 811-Awareness event with a free lunch.

You can find better pictures here.

I sat by some City officials and some County candidates joined them a bit later. One of the County candidates noted that the issues that concern people in the northern part of the County are completely different from those that concern people in the southern part of the County.

We had a frost on the morning of April 25. Hopefully that will be the last frost of the season. I saw someone on Facebook asking when the peach trees would bloom. Mine bloomed two or three weeks ago and had very few flowers. Apparently the cold snap in January has largely destroyed this year's crop in our area.

We have had a very wet spring and you can see it in the rise and fall of the Iroquois. The graph below is from the gauging station at Laird's Landing.

I do not see much activity in the fields. They are too wet to work. The oak trees are leafing out, which may mean it is time to plant some of the more sensitive plants in the garden.

Work on the Brick Street Project continues. Last week there was a pile of stuff found under the streets. 

The workers keep digging and filling holes.

More large concrete structures are being put in. I believe this is part of a sewer line.

Almost all of the sidewalks on both sides of the brick-streets part of Harrison Street have been removed.

This Saturday we will have the opening of the Farmers Market and the Town-Wide Garage Sale. On Friday is the Fire Department's fish and chicken dinner. Tickets are $14 for adults, which may seem a bit expensive, but it is all you can eat (and some people can eat a lot.)

Next Tuesday is primary election day. If you have not voted early, you can vote at any of the ten voting centers in the County. The two that are most convenient for Rensselaer are at the armory and the Fairgrounds. This week's Rensselaer Republican is devoted to previewing all the contested races.

Warmer weather

 Spring

We had the first hot days of the year over the weekend, with temperatures into the 80s. The longer days, the trees getting leaves, and the many flowers tell us that spring really is here.

The trees below are on the SJC campus.

Some beautiful tulips, but not mine.

I was surprised last week to see that the geese already have goslings.

On Friday I attended the first of the wellness walks, which are being held on Fridays from 10:40 until noon from April 12 to May 17 at Brookside Park. They replace the old Walk-with-a-Doc Walks and are sponsored by the Extension office. As the very small group of walkers assembled, we watched the City and the Urban Forest Ministry unload trees that will be planted in Rensselaer this spring.

Spring is a good time to flush hydrants. 

It is also a good time to patch streets where utility work has been done. 

(I noticed that there is a new dumpster by the old R&M Store.)

There are frogs croaking in Weston Pond. I saw a turtle on the road on Sunday and helped it over the curb. And not necessarily a sign of spring, but something I had never seen before during 50 years of living in Rensselaer: I saw a motorboat speeding downstream on the Iroquois River. I did not have time to snap a picture.

Not a lot of planting has begun because the fields are still too wet from the recent rains.

AppleTree is one

Appletree celebrated is first birthday on Saturday with an open house.

There were tiny cupcakes available for those who came. Kids could get their faces decorataed or get balloon sculptures.

Below is a bubble machine and if you look carefully you might see some of the bubbles on the right side of the pictures. Some of the kids had fun chasing them.

Inside the building was a cake that was served at the celebration at 1:00, which I did not attend.

Everyone who was there when I stopped by seemed to having a good time.

Brick Streets

Work continues with installing utility lines and pipes beneath where the brick streets were. New water lines crossed the sidewalk last week, so access to the businesses on Van Rensselaer has been difficult. 

There are still lots of pipes and materials left to install.

Continued Commissioners meeting

On Monday morning the Commissioners met in a continuation of their April 1 meeting. I decided to attend via Zoom, which I immediately regretted because the audio did not work at the start of the meeting. About five minutes in the people attending live realized there was a problem and discovered that a wire was not connected properly. Fortunately Mr Bontreger gave a summary of what had happened while there was no audio.

Mr Phillips, presumably acting as head of the Jasper County Republicans, had thanked Mr Walstra and Mrs. Jordan for their years of service to the County. Neither are seeking reelection. The Commissioners had approved contracts for 100 day of housing juvenile offenders in other county jails. Community Corrections will provide people to mow grass at the new EMS building.

With the audio problem fixed, the Commissioners continued with what was probably the most important item. They had met on Thursday in executive session to interview five firms to serve as construction compliance monitor for the proposed wind-farm project in Carpenter Township if the project becomes a reality. They had decided to use BF&S, a company that has done a lot of work for the County in the past. They also said that they appreciated learning about the other companies and may use them in the future if there are projects that fit their expertise. EDS, the company that is proposing the wind farm, has agreed to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that it will pay for the services of construction monitoring. They will provide an initial  deposit of $200,000, from which the County will make payments, and there is a soft cap of $400.000 in the agreement. This MOU should satisfy the concerns that the Advisory Plan Commission had in their February meeting.

The Commissioners formally approved the agreement with BF&S. They also said that they are close to finishing an agreement with the City of Rensselaer to extend water and sewage lines west of I-65.

Jasper County BZA meeting

The Jasper County Board of Zoning Appeals met Monday evening with one cause on their agenda, a request for a lot-width variance for a property in Walker Township. The owner wants to split a 4.8 acre lot into two 2.4 acre lots that would be long and thin and not have the road frontage that the zoning code requires. However, it is in the area that is full of lots that are of similar size. The hearing took longer than I expected because the petitioners had not provided enough detail on their application. The variance was granted with the condition that the new lot lines preserved required setbacks for the existing buildings. The purpose of the split was to provide a lot for a new house. This is not the final step the owners must take. They will need to have the Plan Commission approve a two-lot subdivision.

The last bit of the meeting had a discussion of how to get applicants to file better organized and complete forms to streamline the meetings.

Joint Council/Commissioners meeting

There are two joint Council/Commissioners meetings scheduled each year, in July and December. However, the Council and Commissioners decided that two issues were important enough to hold an extra one in April,

The first issue concerned public defenders. Judge Potter had made a case to both Commissioners and Council that the current system needed to be changed. At Tuesday's meeting Todd Sammons and a person from Indianapolis who is part of the State Public Defender Commission explained the case for change and what it might look like. In the years since public defenders were introduced, the County has gone from having an abundance of applicants for the positions to a shortage. Public-defender expenses are reimbursed 40% by the State but it is not clear that the County is getting all the reimbursement that it could get. Many counties have already moved to establishing a chief public defender position and that is what Jasper County is now considering. Some of them have full-time positions and others part-time, and it is unclear which would be better for Jasper County. Many of the details of how the change would happen and what the final result would be were discussed and the discussion took about 50 minutes. The next step is for the local public defender board to set up a plan and to figure out a budget. They can base their plan on existing plans from other counties and the State Commission is available to help them.

The second issue was the request from the Coroner to provide him with more space. The County morgue is located next to the Fase Center east of DeMotte and it shares space with the Sheriff's Department. The Coroner had taken some public officials to Fulton County to view their recently-built morgue and he had a handout showing what he would like in a new building. There is an upcoming meeting with Baker Tilly and perhaps at that meeting questions of how a new building might be financed can be answered.

County Council meeting

The County Council meeting started about a half hour late because the joint meeting had lasted so long. Kristen Louck, head of the Health Department, had had a new nurse position approved by the Commissioners and now needed the salary approved by the Council. The Council approved it but it needs to be advertised so they will need to approve it again at the next meeting. She also requested a pay of $40 per hour for the part-time director of EMS services.

The meeting then moved on to a list of additional appropriations. The Sheriff had a request for a jailer and overtime. The overtime budget had been approved for $2,000 rather than the $20,000 intended, so the $18,000 was added back. The Court needed more for translators. That is an expense that is increasing in most counties and a recent decision by the Supreme Court raised the qualifications for translators, so they have become more expensive. The Animal Shelter needed $3,000 for a new tranquilizer gun. $100,000 was needed for a second payment for new voting machines. They were purchased with the payments spread over three years. Some expenses for the Health Department did not get paid in 2023 so there was an additional appropriation to pay them. Community Corrections is installing new security cameras and there was an additional appropriation of $30,000 to pay for them.

The last item on the agenda was a report about the Connection Center. I believe this was purely an informational report and I left shortly after it started because I could see lightning through the windows and I did not want to get caught in a thunderstorm.

Notes

I got my property tax bill last week and went to the Courthouse to pay it. While there I voted. Voting is on the second floor where the buffalo usually is. Hours are 8:00 till noon and 1:00 till 4:00 with extended hours on Mondays and Wednesdays until 8:00. If you wait until election day, the two places in Rensselaer to vote will be the Fairgrounds and the Armory. 

Have a happy Easter

Mostly pictures

The annual Easter Egg Hunt in Brookside Park attracted a lot of kids.

Below are more pictures of recently painted windows. Brookside Florist.

Three windows at Sorrel & Rye Mercantile

Fase Kaluf

McDonalds

The watermain work on Van Rensselaer is finished. Notice how far the fire hydrant is from the existing sidewalk. The plan calls for wider sidewalks.

On Tuesday there were still bricks on Harrison.

Work began on the water main for Harrison on Tuesday.

The concrete piers that will support the fire tower have been poured.

The Carnegie Players will be presenting "An Evening with George Ade" in June and are inviting people to audition for parts.

SR 114 in Newton County will be closing for resurfacing at the end of the month.

I could complain about the weather, but where I went to school in Minnesota just canceled classes for two days because of heavy snow.

Have a happy and holy Easter. 

 PTABOA

The Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals met on Thursday morning. It was the first meeting of 2023 so the three members were sworn in and Jacob Misch was elected president of the Board. There were two requests for tax exemption. The Carnegie Players own a couple of lots on Walnut Street, one with a building used for storage. The second request was from the DeMotte Christian Schools. They had purchased a lot with a church next to the high school that was tax exempt and wanted it to remain tax exempt.

There was a brief discussion of someone who was contesting an appraisal but he could not make the meeting so they will consider it at another meeting. PTABOA meets as needed so there is no scheduled next meeting.

The meeting lasted only about ten minutes.

Rensselaer City Council meeting

The Rensselaer City Council met Monday evening for its second March meeting. During Citizens' Comments a woman asked to have her sewage bill reduced, She said a child had turned on a hose and did not turn it off and she only discovered this when she got her water and sewage bill. Mr Rayburn moved to adjust her bill but there was no second to his motion so her request was not approved.

Next was a public hearing on a preliminary engineering report from Commonwealth Engineering for a wastewater proposal to the State Revolving Fund Loan Program. Last year a similar report had been submitted but it did not score well so no funding was offered. This year's report was amended to expand the scope of work in hopes that it would score better. The  City is required by an unfunded Federal mandate to make changes in its sewage system, and those changes are very expensive. The goal of this report is to see if grants and cheap loans can be obtained. There are two parts to the proposal, to make changes at the sewage plant and to make changes in the collection system. The total cost was estimated at $27,531,000. The Council approved a resolution to submit the report and another resolution to authorize the Mayor to sign it. Submitting the report does not commit the City to do anything.

The electric tracker for the second quarter will reflect a 75¢ reduction per 1000 kilowatt hours of usage. (The average home uses less than that per month.) The Council repealed and replaced the Salary Ordinance; there was a change for people who were on-call. The Council acknowledged receiving the TIF Management Report. (The Redevelopment Commission meeting is next Monday at 5:00.) 

The Little Cousin Jasper Festival asked for permission to use Potawatomie, Iroquois, and perhaps Filson Parks as well as having portions of College Avenue and Front Street closed from Thursday through Sunday for the Festival. The Council approved closing the streets and the City will continue working with the Festival. The Council also approved $500 for a scholarship the Festival offers each year.

The Council approved moving forward with the Water Meter AMI program. (AMI = Advanced Metering Infrastructure.) As I heard the discussion, there are 2443 meters that are ready for the program but 367 services will need to be updated, including 130 that are inside residences or businesses. Many of these probably have lead service lines.

The City received two bids to mulch their brush pile and accepted the lower bid of $7500. The Council approved a public relations request for $1300 for the annual Gas Department's Customer Appreciation (and pipeline awareness) day. It features a lunch at the Gas Department on April 26 from 11:00 until 1:00. This year other City utilities and first responders are invited to participate. The Gas Department will seek a grant to cover the expenses and if granted, the public relations account will be reimbursed. 

The Council approved the Building Department getting quotes for a proposal for a revised zoning ordinance. The repeated power interruptions on Monday afternoon were caused by the feeder lines from NIPSCO. The Council approved replacing the roof for the Electric Department roof, which has serious leakage. It accepted a bid of $56243. It also gave the Electric Department approval to order a new digger truck. The parts for the existing truck are no longer being made. The wait time for a new truck is two to three years and the cost is $317,492.

A lot of pictures

Brick Streets

This week workers are removing the bricks from the last bit of Harrison Street. 

On VanRensselaer it seems the water main is finished and now the workers are installing storm sewers.

The street is lined with concrete sections of storm-sewer pipe.

On Wednesday the first bit of the storm sewer was finished.

There are a lot more supplies near the intersection of VanRensselaer and Harrison. I think the blue pipe is water main but do not know what the black pipes are for.

Art Show

The Fendig Gallery is currently showing the last of their regional art shows, this one of art by middle-school students. An assignment for students from one school was to do a picture of their names done in sign language. 

The ever-popular zantangle art was another assignment.

This happy meal is done in clay.

My favorite picture in the exhibit used a medium that I had not realized was an art medium: coffee.

The exhibit runs until April 4.

Window Art

Downtown businesses are feeling Spring. Again this year spring art is being painted on the windows. Cup of Joy has a busy bee.

Earth Magic

The Rensselaer Library

First Merchants Bank

Sblended Nutrition

Unique Finds

Below the artists are at work.

Notes

Gutwein Seed Services moved into its new location at the end of January. The new sign appeared this week.

The vernal equinox this year was on March 19. The sun is now north of the equator. Do you notice the difference in sun angle? 

Despite some cold nights and a lot of wind, shrubs are sprouting leaves and the magnolias are starting to bloom.

Jasper County Plan Commission meeting

The Jasper County Plan Commission met Monday evening with one cause on their agenda, a rezone from A1 to A3 for Rose Acre Farms. The land is at the intersection of US 231 and SR 16 where they have their hatchery. Rose Acres wants to move to providing cage-free eggs, and to do that, they need even the hatchery to be cage free. They want to tear down two of the buildings and replace them with larger buildings. In the process of obtaining the permits, they discovered that the land was not zoned properly for what they are doing. So this request for a rezone is a correction for actions that should have been taken by the County in the 1980s when that facility was constructed.

There are three buildings presently used for chickens. The plan is to tear down two of them and replace them. The third will be converted to other uses. Presently the facility has State approval for up to 520,000 birds (if I heard the numbers right) and the new facility will be able to house up to 390,000. They sent the request on to the Commissioners with a favorable recommendation. The next meeting will be on April 15.

Rensselaer Advisory Plan Commission meeting

The Rensselaer Plan Commission met on Tuesday evening rather than the usual Thursday so there would be a quorum. The first item on the agenda was a request for advice from attorney Ned Tonner. He has clients who are doing estate planning and want to establish a trust to divide property among three sons after they die. They own land west of the Interstate but it is in Rensselaer's exclusion zone, so the matter falls to Rensselaer, not the County. The question they had was what was the best way to divide the land and one way to divide land is to create a subdivision. Some of the land they planned to sell to a farmer. There was no application at this meeting. The discussion was hard to follow because Mr Tonner kept pointing to various lots from A to F on a map that was facing the Commission. One of the lots would not have road frontage. The Commission told the family to come back with a new survey, combine two lots, create an easement to the lot that has no road frontage, and ask for a split.

The next item was a rezone request from Mayor Phillips for a property just to the west of the Interstate owned by the Molenaars. The City wants to extend water and sewer west of the Interstate but does not want to use State right-of-ways because if the State decides to expand or change the intersection, the City could bear the cost of rerouting these lines. Instead, the City would like to cross a bit north of the intersection and place the lines under the privately owned Molenaar land. That land is farmed, but it is zoned B2. The Molenaars would like it zoned A1. The Commission moved to set a public hearing for the rezone.

The next item was a review of height requirements for new buildings. There was a motion passed that I think was to review the whole zoning code.

There are a number of properties that are not in conformity with current zoning, in part because when a property changes ownership, the new owner is supposed to conform even if the old owner did not have that requirement. The Building Commissioner reviewed a number of situations, asking what the Commission thought. The first was the possibility of an elementary school called Harvest Christian Academy opening on the SJC campus. The Board did not think it would need a variance.

Two towing companies are out of variance with the zoning and the Commission thought they should ask for a variance. There is a new church, Truth Bible, meeting in the Ritz Theater and the Commission thought they should apply for a permit. Someone noted that the old Pub sold recently and a new business there might want a liquor license, which a church could block. The next meeting is scheduled for April 18.

The room was filling up for a BZA meeting that followed the Plan Commission meeting, but I did not stay for it. Instead I left and went to the County Council meeting. I did grab the agenda packet before I left. There were three requests for variances and I learned on Wednesday that all were approved. The Good Samaritan Food Pantry is moving from their current location on the corner of Harrison and VanRensselaer to the building behind Pizza King on College Avenue. They requested a variance of use to operate a charitable institution open to the public in a single-family residential district. (The Food Pantry plans to open in the new location on April 2.)

Shan Shan LLC has been remodeling the old house on 226 E Washington. The two upper floors are rented as apartments but the owner has not been able to find a business to rent the main floor. He now wants to rent the first floor and basements as apartments, but the building is in a B-3 district that does not permit residential units on the first floor.

The final request was from the Rensselaer Fire Department for a variance from developmental standards. They plan to erect a fire-training tower that may exceed the 40-foot height limit. In addition, their previously approved conditional use was for a building that resembled a house or a commercial building. The tower will be constructed from shipping containers.

Zoning locks property into limited uses but sometimes flexibility is needed. Some of the land along highways, for example, is useful for commercial uses, but there is more land than commercial uses need. The rest can be used for housing. However, over time the mix of commercial and housing will change as a town grows or contracts and the types of businesses change. It would be nice if there was a zoning classification that gave developers flexibility without having to always go before a board to get permissions.

County Council meeting

After the usual preliminaries, the County Council heard a presentation from Judge Potter about the problems the public-defender program is having and some suggestions to improve the situation. Jasper County pays public defenders considerably less than some neighboring counties and there is a shortage of lawyers in Northwest Indiana, partially caused by the recent closing of Valpo University's law school. In the past three years five public defenders have decided to work as public defenders in other counties to take advantage of higher pay. Most of the costs of public defenders are reimbursed by the State at 40%, but the Judge thinks that the County has not billed everything that can be billed. There is a public-defender board that is not as active as it is required to be and that has a hard time finding people to serve on it. The Judge would like a public-defender office to manage the program and he gave a binder of documents to the members of the Council with his suggestions. He will give the same documents the the Commissioners. The changes he would like to see made must be made by the Commissioners and financed by the Council.

Most of the rest of the meeting reviewed and approved a variety of additional appropriations. Some, like an additional for Part-Time Annex, were the result of mistakes in the budget. Money should have been encumbered from the 2023 budget for finishing the EMS budget, but was not, so it will be paid from this year's budget. The IT Department wanted to move the telephone/Cell/Internet expenses out of its budget to the Commissioner's budget. It was deleted from the IT Department but not included in the Commissioner's budget, so there was a $200,000 additional appropriation. The Sheriff's Department is down four dispatchers so there is move overtime and training costs, so an additional appropriation of $20,000 was made to cover it. At its last meeting, the Commissioners agreed to give the Jasper County Recovery House and the House of Grace each $30,000 from the Opioid Restricted Fund and the Council approved an appropriation for that purpose.