Planting a tree and a sneak preview, but mostly a sneak preview

On Friday the Rensselaer Urban Forestry Council (RUFC) dedicated a tulip tree at the new fire station in celebration of Arbor Day. The tree is behind the station on the bank of the retention pond that you can see in the corner of the picture below.

The RUFC has planted about 350 trees in Rensselaer and this year will focus on Angelica Street.

After the brief ceremony the fire chief invited those at the ceremony to tour the almost completed fire station. We entered from the back and one of the first things we saw was the pair of lamps shown below.

 The back of the building has a large kitchen area.

 We then went through a room with tables that will serve as a training room.

 A hallway runs north-south on the eastern part of the building. To the left is the kitchen and the doors on the right will lead to the fire trucks. You can see one of the public restrooms on the left. There are two and both are unisex. One person at a time will use them. Down the hall to the south are offices and stairs to the second floor. To the north and not shown in the picture is more hallway that leads to another stairs and locker rooms.

 Below is one of three offices in the building. The current building has one office shared by five people. From this office one can see the highway in front of the building.

 The southeast corner of the building will have a small museum that will house the two antique fire trucks that the department has.

 Then it was time to go upstairs. There is no elevator. I asked if that would not cause a problem with the ADA legislation. It will not because the upstairs will be a secure location that is not open to the public. One of the highlights was the fire pole. It is the original fire pole from Rensselaer's first fire station. It has been in storage for about forty years but is now back in operation. Although it can be used, I think it is mostly decoration.

 The second floor has a large room that will be used as a conference room. If the day comes when Rensselaer will have full-time fire fighters, this room can be converted into sleeping quarters.

 Below is a picture of the truck bay area from the fitness center on the second floor. There are six doors on each side and the area can hold twelve vehicles. The fitness equipment for the fitness center is being donated by Saint Joseph's College.

 There are several utility rooms on the second floor. This one had the heating equipment.

 There are two heating systems. One pipes hot water through the concrete floor and that is how the truck bay area is heated. Shown below is part of that system.

 Below is the view of the bay area from the west end. The other picture of this area was taken through one of the windows in the wall. The picture above is a close up of part of the reddish strip at the far end. It will be covered by panels.

There is a basement under the office portion of the building but we did not see it. It will only be used for storage.

You can see all of this and much more when the fire station has its open house on June 25. Mark you calendars; the building is quite impressive and you will not want to miss the public opening.

Art exhibits

SJC has a short-lived student art exhibit in the Core Building that will end on May 2. It features student work from the past semester (or year).

 There were a number of distorted portraits similar to this one.

 They were a student assignment in which the student could see themselves in mirror but could not see their hands as they drew. The exercise is suppose to improve hand-eye coordination. After the ink drawing was completed the students colored the result.

Another exercise was to draw skulls, the structure behind the face. Artists have studied anatomy since the Renaissance.

A longer-lasting exhibit is the Prairie Arts Council 13th annual photography exhibit that will run through June 10. It seems strange to take pictures of pictures, so I didn't.

This exhibit is judged with categories Black and White, Color, and Digitally Altered.

Meeting Candidates II

Recently the students in one of Paul Norwine's classes at Kankakee Valley High School invited the four candidates running for the County Council to be interviewed about about themselves and what issues they consider important. Three of the four responded. I have embedded the three videos that the students produced. You can also find them on youtube here.

City Council meeting 4-25-2016

I arrived a few minutes late to the City Council meeting on Monday night, but did catch the last of the Citizens' Comments section in which a 40-year employee of Walgreens was being honored by the store.

There were a number of ordinances on the agenda. A drug fund was set up to collect money confiscated from drug arrests. Then a series of ordinances wrote off bad utility debt from bills prior to 2011: water, $4435.60; sewage, $7139. 79; electric, $16,150.79; gas, 14,407.15; and sanitation, $1.760.49. (Some of those numbers may be off because I did not write them down correctly or because I cannot read my own handwriting.) Even though the debt has been written off, if anyone who owes any of this money applies for city utilities, they will not be granted city utilities until their unpaid bills are paid.

A consultant with a company called First Group made a presentation offering help in preparing a road assessment. A road assessment is a necessary item if the City wants to apply for a new program of state grants that is designed to encourage more preventative maintenance on local roads and streets. This is the same program that was discussed at last weeks County Council. The state will match local spending dollar-for-dollar if the local unit gets a grant. One Council member asked why a long term plan for road assessment was needed for a program that may only give grants for a couple years. The answer was that the State wants cities to recognize where they are now and what their future costs will be. The Council approved signing the contract for $22,400.

The Council approved closing part of the street in front of City Hall on May 20 for a surplus auction. The law says that the only way that the City can dispose of surplus property is by auction. (Here is a link to the City auction of 2012 that has a link to the auction of 2010.)

There was a short discussion of the School Board opening. Applications must be made before noon on May 9.

A company for California, Black Dot Capital, has inquired about buying the agreements that the City has with Verizon and Sprint to use the water towers as cell towers. These agreements are worth more money than the City realized and it can either sell them or it can renegotiate them when they come due in a few years. At this point the City wants more information.

In other items and announcements, the Police Department will be tagging abandoned vehicles as we approach clean up week. The grand opening for the new fire station will be Jun 25, 11:00-2:00. The target date for the opening of the pool is Memorial Day. Practical Tree Service removed 29 trees and has ground most of the stumps. The Council approved a road closing for Augusta Street on May 21 for a graduation party. National Gypsum may break ground for their expansion in May. The Comfort Suites is nearing completion. Saturday is town-wide garage sale day.

If you drive in the country you will notice farmers are busy in the fields. In addition to the town-wide yard sale this weekend, the Farmers Market begins its season. Steffen's Jewelry celebrates its 60th anniversary and Big Dog Sales and Rentals has its annual open house.

As for a picture, today heavy equipment was removing the stumps along Lincoln Street.

The end of a long meeting

The last part of the County Council meeting on Tuesday evening was devoted to a discussion of the Local Option Income Tax. Senator Hershman had accepted an invitation to attend the meeting. Today’s Rensselaer Republican recounts much of what went on. I will not try to do a similar report, but rather mention some of the things that struck me.

Several members of the Council have argued that the County should be allowed to choose to whom to give the property tax relief that the LOIT provides. That idea was pretty effectively demolished by Hershman. The law and legal precedents will not allow it.

When we pay our local income tax, the money goes to the state department of revenue. There people sort out how much should go to the various government entities. If you are a resident of Rensselaer, some of what you pay will go to the County, some will go to the City, some will go to the Library, etc. Trying to decide how much each entity gets takes time. As a result, the money that that comes back to the county this year is based on how much was collected two years ago. 

Steve Jordan mentioned that the county is in the lowest five counties in terms of real estate taxes. I am not sure how he gets that number. Today’s Republican has the property tax rates for the county and there is great variation by township and towns because the tax rate depends not only on the county rates but also on the rates of the township or town, school district, library, airport authority, etc. Someone also mentioned that the County is in the top 20 for County expenditures per capita. 

There was a lot of discussion on fairness and tax burden but almost none on how the tax affects behavior. For example, the reduction in the property tax should raise land prices. The after-tax return on owning land rose when the property tax rate decreased, and perhaps this is one of the reasons that our land prices have risen quite dramatically. The same effect should be true for homes, but it is offset by the higher income taxes. It is much easier to be an absentee landlord for farm land than for housing. 

One of the arguments for lowering the LOIT and thereby raising property taxes is that it will shift some of the burden to non-residents. Citizens are always happy to shift the burden to nonresidents. It was suggested at the meeting that even though non-resident property owners get a tax break from the LOIT, we should not be concerned because they employ people who do pay the taxes. However, many people who work in Jasper County do not live here. The vast majority of people who work at Advance Auto, for example, live in other counties. In general, the southern part of the county imports workers and the northern part exports them.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing I noticed was the ability of some to maximize or minimize numbers by how they stated them. If you want a number to seem big, you present it as a total, as in a reduction in the LOIT will raise the burden on property by over $800,000. If you want the number to seem small, you present in per capita terms, as in the proposed reduction in the LOIT will lower the average person’s tax by less than $30. Or, lowering the tax rate by .1% will increase property taxes by 3%. (That is true because the reducing an income tax of 2.9% by .1% is a 3% reduction.)

I was impressed by the political skill of Senator Hershman. I can see why he has risen to positions of leadership in the state senate.

In the comments, Andrew Andree said that he had switched from in favor of lowering the LOIT to being on the fence. If he votes to keep the LOIT as it is, that would probably produce a tie which the president of the Council, Rein Bontreger would break and he has indicated that he would vote to keep the rate as it is. Bret Risner, a candidate for the County Council, was in the audience and it was clear from his reaction to various statements that if he gets on the Council, he will oppose any lowering of the LOIT.

In other news, there is a new business in town, though it likely will mostly serve people from other places. Miss Hall, who recently left employment at the Jasper County Economic Development Organization to become and event planner at Purdue and then moved to the Development Office at Saint Joseph’s College, has struck out on her own with an event planning company.

On Tuesday I also attended a bit of the presentation about cemeteries at the Historical Society Museum. I learned that the reason flowers surround the casket is that before embalming when most wakes were held in private houses, the flowers helped mask the odors of decay. Embalming became common during the Civil War when wives and mothers wanted the remains of dead soldiers to be buried back home rather than on the battlefield.

The tree cutters seem to be finished with tree cutting along Lincoln. On Wednesday they were hauling away the big logs, which I assume will be cut up as lumber. 

The Building Trades House looks almost complete.