A new scam

On Monday I received the following in an e-mail:

Hi, Do you have an Amazon account? Thanks

It was from Lee and seemed to come from the husband of a woman who serves on a board with me. It thought it was a strange question, but I replied:

A basic account, not one of the enhanced ones. Why?

The reply back was:

Alright, am trying to get an Amazon E-gift card for my niece it’s her birthday but I don’t know what’s wrong with my amazon account it’s not going through and have called Amazon but it has not been resolved yet, can you please help me purchase an Amazon E-gift card over there from your amazon account? Let me know if you can handle this for me so i can send you my niece email address. Am only looking to spend $200 on it, I will reimburse you back as soon as possible.  You can do this from your non-prime account also.

Thank you once again

It did not sound right so I e-mailed the woman I knew and asked if it was legit.  She replied that it definitely was not legit. She said that her husband had been hacked and had lost all his emails and addresses. Since then they have been getting other scam e-mails that involve Amazon.

I thought it was clever in that it taps into people's willingness to help others. But if you think about it a bit, it does not make much sense.

Other than that, not much is happening because everything is shut down. I did apply for an absentee ballot for the upcoming primary by phoning the clerk's office. I got an application in the mail which I filled out and took to the drop box inside the first set of doors at the Court House. They have a new and improved box, not the one I pictured a week or so ago.

YNG is making face masks with their 3-D printers. The Rensselaer Republican had a nice article about them in its Saturday edition.

I noticed some little flowers in a yard this week.

It is Siberian Squill. It is not native and in some places has become invasive.

The grass is greening up and the maples are blooming but it is not warm enough yet to put away the winter coats or the snow shovel.

The Town Mall lot: what used to be there (Updated)

The half block that was engulfed in fire last year is now mostly empty, the exception being the Langley Insurance building. Some of the past history of that half block can be seen in the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.

(Update: When I first published this, I misidentified the color code. The key to the color code is here. Blue is concrete or concrete block. Green indicates a special fire hazard.)

The first map for Rensselaer was published in 1886. What is now Kellner Street was then Cornelia Street. Yellow is a wooden structure, green blue is cement or cement block, and red is brick. There were two dwellings on the half block, and they remain throughout the series, as does the blacksmith shop. On the right there is a small carpenter shop and and even smaller print shop. There is no evidence of the alley.

 A few years later in 1893 a substantial brick building has been built housing agricultural implements. There is another small carpenter shop in the middle of the half block. There may be an alley; there are no longer buildings sited in what is now an alley.

 Six years later in 1899 the brick building is a billiards and bowling alley. The two green carpenter shops are gone, though one of the buildings may still stand but may be less of a fire risk with a new use. A business selling coal and wood is now occupying the middle of the block.

 Five years later in 1904 the billiards and bowling alley is gone and the brick building is being used for storage. The coal and wood business has greatly expanded and is also selling feed.

 There is not a lot of change in the 1909 map other than the brick building is now a furniture store. The coal yard may be called Mains and Hamilton. One oddity, there is a building labeled "dove cage" along Cornelia.

 The next map is twelve years later and it shows big changes. The coal yard is gone, replaced with a cement block building with a brick facing selling farm implements. Next to it are an auto supply and an auto repair shop. The brick building is now furniture and undertaking. I wonder if this is Wright's business.

There is a later version of the Sanborn map that the Rensselaer Library has but it is not now accessible.

All the wooden structures and the blacksmith shop were later demolished. The old Sears building that became the Town Mall was not a single building but a collection of buildings joined together. I suspect that most of the red and blue above were part of the Town Mall.

The source for these maps is here.

For reference, below is the picture of the lot from google maps. (It has not yet updated to a date after the fire.)

The "angry birds" mural was painted on the alley end of the building that was built between 1909 and 1921. I have put a picture of it as the header of this blog in my attempt to keep the memory of it alive. The original brick building had a basement, which was clear after it burned. Much of the rest of the structure had a concrete floor that took a while to break up and truck away.

One of the businesses that was displaced as a result of the fire has a new location. Amerimac is at 619 N. McKinley, across Vine from the Marathon station.

I noticed that the Marathon station had gas at $189.9.

 A CSX crew was stationed at the Cullen Street rail crossing. Looking at the markings on the ground, I guessed that they were going to replace the crossing lights with gates. I asked a worker to check and he confirmed that that is what they were going to do.

 Finally, many years I post pictures of crocuses because to me they are a first sign of spring. My crocuses have been blooming for about a week.
In a few months I will be posting a picture of asters, the first sign of on-coming winter.

Since almost everything has been canceled, expect a few more history posts in the upcoming weeks.

Unusual and somber

The City Council meeting on 3-23-2020 was unusual and somber. There was no invocation or pledge or citizen comments. The meeting immediately advanced to the agenda by approving minutes. Later the Mayor made no comments nor were there comments from the Council members or from the superintendents. Only four of the superintendents were present; six others had been excused by the Mayor. There was only one other member of the public attending.

The Council approved two ordinances. The first standardized late-payment penalties across utilities. A customer has 17 days to pay before the penalty kicks in and it will be 10% of the first $3 and 3% of the rest of the bill for each utility bill. The penalties will not apply if there is a declaration of emergency as we presently have.

The second ordinance passed was an amendment to the salary ordinance. It allows non-essential personnel to be paid for working at home during emergencies. Employees can either be doing work or they can be on call at home, able to come in within two hours. The ordinance will have to be renewed every ten days. There were a lot of questions and the discussion of this ordinance took more time than any other item.

An electric rate tracker of a $1.15 decrease per 1000 kilowatt hours was approved.

The City had sought quotes from five companies for removing 68 trees in right-of-ways. Almost all are dead ash trees. Only one company responded, with a quote of $58,700. There followed a discussion about finances. The shut down currently in effect will reduce people's incomes so the state and local taxes they pay will be reduced. Some time in the future the City will be getting smaller draws of money from those taxes, and spending will have to be reduced. After a brief discussion, the Council approved having the project coordinator talk to the tree cutting company to see if one half of the trees could be cut now and the other half when it was clear that funds would be available.

It was mentioned that the State is cutting grants. The City had been planning to submit an OCRA grant for downtown revitalization but that is on hold. The Community Crossings grant program may be cut back and the City will not submit this round because of the need to provide matching funds. And plans to purchase an aerial truck for the Fire Department are also on hold. The Fire Department was given permission to join a cooperative called HGAC Buy. The Lafayette fire department is a member and said that it had saved them money on aerial trucks. When the time comes that the purchase of new fire department equipment is possible, this group may help.

Two FMAL (family leave?) requests were approved.

The City is losing money from generating electricity at the power plant. It must sell that power to IMPA, which resells it and the payments made by IMPA to Rensselaer are not enough to make the plant profitable. Rensselaer currently is the only municipality in IMPA that generates power. The City sought advice from their financial advisor Baker-Tilly and, as a result of their report, the Council voted to stop generation as of May 30, 2020. The full implications of that decision were not spelled out.

The meeting adjourned at about 6:40. The next meeting will be done electronically.

We got enough snow on Sunday to cover the grass but fortunately it melted on the streets. By evening on Monday almost all had melted.

Sparling Avenue

I found the obituary of Joseph Sparling in the 1908 Republican. I have long wondered why Sparling Avenue was named as it is. I wondered if Sparling had been an important figure. He was one of the first of European descent born in the County. As the map from 1909 shows, he lived along the road that bears his name and I suspect that is why it bears the name.

That land eventually became part of the SJC property. Searching through the Saint Joseph's College Chronology by Charles Robbins, C.PP.S., I learned that the Eiglesbach property was purchased by the College in 1917. I could not find any mention of a purchase of the Sparling property. However, in 1932 the College purchased the Frank Kanne farm, and that was the land that in 1909 was owned by the the sons of Joseph Sparling. Father Robbins noted, "On the farm were a barn and a frame house across the road from where Bennettt Hall now stands. The farm with the buildings was bought from $15,000. The house became in the year 1953 a student residence known as the "White House". Later it housed an experimental psychology laboratory, but was standing idle at the time it burned to the ground in 1980."

I recall its use as a psychology lab. A professor who stayed only a few years conducted research using pigeons. The building stood south of where the Jasper County Youth Center now stands. Below is a picture that I found in the 1981 College yearbook.

The son of Joseph, Samuel, is mentioned in this post.

Access denied

The County Council meeting on Tuesday night may be the last County meeting that the public will be able to attend for some time. The Commissioners meeting in April will be closed to public attendance but will be streamed on-line and the public may be able to submit questions. That announcement and others were the highlights as the meeting served as a way for the County to announce what it is doing as a result of the Chinese Corona Virus outbreak.

Over 8000 people have seen the video of the first part of the meeting, which was streamed on Facebook. (One could say it went viral.) During the meeting there were as many as 650 watching live. So I will save a summary of that part of the meeting to the end of this post and talk about what happened after the feed was shut down and most of the people attending the meeting left.

The Council approved an additional appropriation of $10,000 for Community Services. The Sheriff gave the Council copies of the jail report and then told them that he had found the funds needed to purchase the Spillman dispatch software so he would not need any additional appropriations from the Council. He is still taking funds for maintenance of the software and that cost will increase as more departments join in using it. There are lengthy training periods ahead and June 2021 is the target date to begin using it.

The County Clerk wants as many people as possible to vote by absentee ballot in the upcoming primary election. To get an absentee ballot, call the Clerk's office at (219) 866-4926.

The assistant Coroner said that the Coroner's office was getting daily updates from the CDC. Traditional funerals are probably not going to be happening for a while, which may be painful for friends and relatives of the deceased.

The County is working with the newspaper and the radio station to keep the public informed with what is happening.

The meeting opened with statements by several people. Commissioner Culp stated that we are in uncharted waters and we do not know what the next steps will be. He introduced Dr. Nelson, the County Health Officer. She advised people to stay at home as much as possible, to wash their hands frequently, to maintain social distance and avoid shaking hands. People should meet on-line but should not trust social media. People with health issues and the elderly (those over 60) are at higher risk. Debra Nagel from the Health Department repeated the advice to stay at home as much as possible. The Health Department has suspended its vaccinations.

Next Karen Wilson, Director of Emergency Management, said that the Corona Virus has been declared a national emergency. Local governments will be able to get reimbursement for funds spent on virus protection but they need to keep records and receipts.

Kendall Culp spoke next and announced that the public no longer would have access to virtually all County buildings and offices. One exception is the lobby of the jail and the other is limited access to the Court rooms. Property Tax installments are due in May and they can be mailed or dropped off at several banks. Employees of the Court House will have to enter through the public entrance and they will have their temperature taken. (It is with a ear probe--all those attending the County Council meeting had their temperatures taken) If the temperature is 100.4 or greater, they will told to leave. In three weeks the situation will be re-evaluated but until then access is closed to the public.

Here again is the video from the start of the meeting.

The County website is at https://www.jaspercountyin.gov/.

At the entrance to the Court House on Tuesday night;