Garbage news

The highlight of the Rensselaer City Council meeting on Monday evening was a report by John Julien, who works for Baker-Tilly and is the City's financial consultant. He presented findings on several issues facing the City.

His firm did an analysis of the sewage rate. Revenues have declined a bit, partially due to the closing of SJC. Operating costs, mostly in the form of wages and benefits, have risen. He suggested that the city needs a 10% increase in rates to balance between costs and revenues.

However, the City also has an upcoming sewage project that will replace the current lift station east of Weston Cemetery and extend sewage lines. That project proposes rebuilding the lift station next to the high-rate treatment plant on Lincoln Street. He suggested that an addition 10% increase was needed for that project. Hence, the total increase in rates that he recommended was 20%, which he suggested could be implemented in two or three stages, perhaps the first 10% in January of 2021 and the second in January of 2022.

He said that in August he would present a report on the water department. Here revenues have been constant but costs have risen. He anticipates a recommended rate increase of 12% to 15%. This would help prepare for the next water project, which will likely be a water tower near the Interstate to improve water pressure for those customers.

A third area of recommendation was for the trash pick-up program. User fees, both stickers and payments by businesses for their trash services, raise about $500,000 but costs are $700,000. The difference is picked up from the general fund. He suggested that the finances of trash pickup be given their own set of books, which has been the trend in other cities with municipal service. He also recommended that the sticker program be replaced with a standard residential monthly charge of about $17.85 and that this change begin in January of 2021. The majority of people will see an increase. This rate would help the City update its trucks with lifts that would operate with uniform trash containers, which the City would provide to residents. (Not mentioned was whether the new trucks with lifts would allow the reduction in employees.) In response to a question if a lower rate could be charged to households that do not generate much trash, he said that once the totes or containers were provided, some households could be given smaller containers and charged less.

Only one action on these reports was taken at the Monday meeting. The Council passed a motion that the 2021 budget, which will be presented in August, should be prepared with sanitation removed from the general fund. The next two meetings will have the public hearings and ordinances that make these reports policy.

In other business, the Council approved a request from the Eagles to close Harrison Street for a fish fry provided that the Little Cousin Jasper Festival does not get canceled. It approved two transfers of funds. It delayed consideration of an extension of the IMPA contract to next month. It gave the Police Department permission to tell Dodge what it would like in a new squad car but the actual purchase will not be approved until an order is placed. The Awards Committee recommended adding a 40-year service award to the 10, 20, and 30-year awards and that recommendation was accepted. The 10-year award is a plaque, the 20 and engraved clock, the 20 an engraved watch. The 40-year award will be a jacket and a $400 bonus.

A committee was appointed to consider a golf-cart ordinance. The City employee picnic has been canceled and a committee was appointed to consider to plan some alternative celebration. The recycling department has ordered new glass crushers to replace one that has failed and another that is failing.

In other news, a new trail in Brookside Park has been paved. It runs from the parking lot around the south side of Roth Field, then north through the tennis courts to connect to the new Blacker Fields.

At the fair

I rode out to the Fairgrounds on Tuesday to see what was happening and to compare this year to previous years. There was activity in two areas, the horse arena and the show arena.

The field that should have carnival rides was empty and the exhibit halls were closed. However, there were quite a few campers in the campgrounds, though the area by the horse arena was only lightly populated. The old fair office was gone, with only its foundation remaining.

There were two food vendors serving those who were showing livestock.

Tuesday was goat day in the show arena.

I notice that paving of SR 114 still is not completed. There is a strip down the center of the road that needs to be finished. My guess is that reflectors need to be installed.

The farmers market is in full swing with many buyers and many sellers. I finally got a few small tomatoes from my garden, but others have done much better.

I have not seen any mulberries this year. Did the late freeze get them?

Fountain Stone Theaters has announced it is temporarily closing because there are no new films being released and there is no demand for movies right now. The Rensselaer Chamber of Commerce is closing its office and disposing of its furnishings. I do not know what the story is there. CTS Express in downtown Rensselaer has had a sign on its door for a couple of months that its downtown facility is closed and directs people to the location at the Interstate. I just noticed it.

SJC has released its July newsletter.

I managed to find Comet NEOWISE with binoculars last week. It was a faint, blurry star and I could not see a tail. Viewing from Rensselaer is difficult because of all the stray light. My daughter who lives at 5000 feet in the desert in the middle of nowhere has been taking pictures of the comet and what I saw was nothing like what she captures in her photographs.

Last week I heard the crop dusters and this week I am not hearing them, so I suspect that they have come and gone. Update: Early Wednesday there was a crop duster buzzing a field on the northwest outskirts of Rensselaer.

A long post after a road trip

Last week I was out of town taking a road trip through five states and hundreds of miles of corn and soybeans and as a result I missed the City Council meeting on July 13. However, the minutes of the meeting are online. Here are highlights.

The council approved closing two streets for the Little Cousin Jasper Festival. It agreed to extend a contract with IMPA that currently expires in 2042. There was no mention of what the new expiration date would be.

The gas tracker for July as a 7½¢ increase. The mayor declared September 4 as the Mayor's Holiday, which will be a day off for City employees. There were no police issues on Cruise Night.

Work on State Road 114 seems to be finished and work on US 231 has started. On Monday workers were sealing the highway north of John Deere road. A couple of sweepers cleaned the road, a tank truck applied a layer of tar, and then another machine with the truck attached sprinkled stone on the fresh tar.

On Tuesday evening there was a Rensselaer BZA meeting that I missed and I cannot find the minutes online. I believe one agenda item was the fireman training facility behind Dollar General and I assumed that it was approved. A second item was a conditional use application to construct and operate an auto repair business in an R1 district on Grace Street. The decision on this was continued to a meeting on Wednesday, July 22. The BZA met in executive session to discuss exactly what the legal requirements were and then in an open meeting with 12 members of the public present. To approve the application the Board had to agree to five findings of facts, but all five members voting rejected the first finding, so the application was denied. The meeting lasted less than ten minutes. The members apologized to the applicants, but said that the law gave them no leeway.

On Monday night the County BZA met with one item on the agenda, a special exception for a home business of repairing autos along US 231 in Walker Township. The business has been operating for about five years and the owner wanted to comply with the legal requirements. A neighbor was in the Zoom meeting to object. He did not like the business next to him. After discussion the special exception was approved for two years. After that the owner will have to come back for a reapproval and show that he is in compliance with all regulations. The exception was approved on a four-to-one vote. The next meeting will be August 17 if there is an agenda.

After the BZA meeting the plan commission met with three items on the agenda. The first was approval of a two lot subdivision in Barkley Township. Two months ago the land been rezoned to A2. Lot 1 will have 4 acres and lot two will have 9 acres. The request was approved. The second item was a three-lot subdivision in Walker Township. The owner would like to subdivide it so he can give a lot to his daughter so she can build a house. The final item was an amendment to the Unified Development Ordinance that clarifies the date needed to get agenda items published in the newspaper.

On Tuesday evening there was a joint Counsel/Commissioners meeting. It was a hybrid meeting with some people physically meeting at the old youth center on Sparling Avenue, and others attending via zoom. I decided to attend via zoom, and that was a mistake. The audio quality was very poor when a speaker was not close to the mic. For a while two mics were on and the echo was so bad that it was hard to hear anything.

The first item discussed was EMS funding. The question is how much should the Township EMS services get. At the August 3 commissioners meeting the commissioners will open the bids for EMS services and will review those bids in an executive session to try to decide funding. It was noted that when the jail is paid off in 2022, funds can be juggled to give more for EMS services.

There was a discussion of the hiring and personnel freeze that is not working out as anticipated. There have been more people retiring than expected and in some cases multiple people from the same offices have retired or resigned. Some of this discussion was unintelligible because of the echo effect.

Brienne Hooker of the Jasper-Newton Foundation addressed the meeting to explain what the Foundation was doing but the audio was very poor and I did not catch much of what she said. One of the last items discussed was a request by Sheriff Williamson for some kind of benefit or hazard pay for working during the shutdown. While many County workers worked from home, the members of the sheriffs department continued working as usual. A suggestion from Kendall Cobb was that instead of paying more, the employees could be given an extra 40 hours of comp time. There are 44 full-time officers and personnel that would be affected.

After the meeting those present toured the building but that was not broadcast.

The Council meeting that followed had several additional appropriations on its agenda and several transfers. But first Judge Potter, who has lost one of his court reporters and we'll have another retiring at the end of the year, addressed the Council. The remaining reporter is training her replacement but the judge does not believe that the replacement will be able to train a second reporter when the new year starts. So his request is to hire the second replacement early to get her trained so when the new year starts his court will have two trained reporters. The item could not be approved at this meeting because it was not advertised soon enough. It will be on the agenda of the next meeting.

There were additional appropriations for CASA, the Clerk's office, and the Sheriff that were approved. An additional appropriation for Animal Control was tabled until the next meeting. At the end of the meeting a citizen from the Kankakee Valley School District who was attending via Zoom said that he would like a mandate for school masks. He will probably get his wish as the Governor on Wednesday issued a directive making masks mandatory for grades 3 and up when school resumes.

I was surprised and disappointed to learn that the 2020 County Fair has been canceled. Because the fair was canceled, the person who was going to sell biplane rides also decided to cancel.

I have a preliminary virtual tour of Rensselaer's murals here. It expands the recent post summarizing RENARTWLK 2020 to include RENARWLK 2019 and some other things as well.

Dodd's Rebellion Part 2

Yesterday's post had part one of this topic. Today we get two more accounts, each very different. What actually happened? Who knows, but that is true of many things in the past.

The account below is from The Daily Evansville Journal, Sept 12, 1863

A final account comes from a family history of the Sparling family. It is unsigned, but must have been written either by Frances or Samuel Sparling. My guess is that it was done by Samuel. The Jasper County Library has it in its digital archives.

This constant drain upon the boys of the families who were supporting the Union cause, created a serious situation in the county. I have already noted the large number of families who came from the Carolinas, Virginia and Kentucky. This created a large and powerful block of Southern sympathizers. The accepted leader of this group was George Spitler. He followed the old Virginia traditions of large land holdings and bought a large body of land, now owned by St. Joseph College. The old Spitler home was located near the site of the College Gymnasium. Grandfather's home was located about one quarter of a mile from the Spitler home. The "barn stormers" were threatening, if not active. The feeling ran so high that it became necessary to maintain a home guard. Grandfather often told me of finding notes, warning him of dire results that would follow, in case he did or did not do certain things. 

This feeling finally came to a climax in the threatened uprising known as Dodd's rebellion. In order to understand the feeling generated by the Civil War we must recall that the settlers from the south naturally carried with them the social, political, and economic ideas of their old homes. In many instances these families were large landowners. This was nothing more than the plantation idea of the south. We need only to recall the holdings of the Spitler, McKeever, Halstead, Harris, and Thompson families, who came directly from Virginia, or after a short sojourn in Kentucky and Ohio. Political opinion had much to do with the cleavage of ideas. The Republican Party had come into existence on the slavery issue. To illustrate this political feeling I cite the predicament of Uncle Abraham. As a boy he promised his uncle Bingham that he would always vote the democratic ticket. So [he] became a southern sympathizer, much to the worry of my grandmother. 

Dodd's Rebellion occurred during the second Lincoln campaign for reelection. Arms and munitions had been quietly brought into the county and distributed among the proper persons. As a boy I was often on the Spitler place, after it had been acquired by the Catholic Church, and converted into an orphanage. It was not uncommon to find bayonets that had been concealed. I shall give an account to this episode only in so far as it pertains to my family. During this political campaign the Democrats brought to Rensselaer a speaker by the name of Dodd. From all accounts his address was especially bitter. He referred to the boys at the front as "Lincoln's Dogs." As a result a committee, headed by Mr. Bedford, arrested him, and placed him in jail. This was on Friday and the next day Spitler in a speech in Newton County asserted that if Dodd was not released within twenty-four hours the "Iroquois River would run red with blood." In the meantime the friends of the South began collecting on Given's Hill, about one mile north of town. They came armed with every conceivable weapon. Grandmother told me that about 600 assembled, but this seems too large, but if correct, it indicated a sizable block of Southern sympathizers in the county 

The home guard was scattered over the county and on Sunday morning the anvils began firing, as a call for the guard to assemble at Rensselaer. On that Sunday morning seven muskets were left in grandfather's home while the boys were attending Sunday school at the Big Slough School. It was not long before martial law was declared for Rensselaer, and guards posted. The guard members were assigned to the homes of the town. And here came in an amusing family incident. I have already noted that Uncle Abraham was a friend of the South, or locally known as "Copperhead", so Grandmother taught him a patriotic lesson in reverse. She made him shoulder his deer musket and go to the defensive Rensselaer. 

The final climax to this threatened tragedy came in a dramatic fact that the home of Spitler was struck by lightning and Spitler was killed. This occurred on Sunday evening when everything was set for carnage. Grandmother had a strain of the occult in her nature, and she often remarked that the sudden death of Spitler was an active Providence because it saved a loss of many lives. With a leader gone that tense situation soon became normal. It seems strange that this incident, so far from the battlefields of war, should've found it's grim setting in Jasper County. Of course the reasons are obvious. Indiana was in fact a peninsula of the South. The Indiana legislator was so Southern in it sympathies that it refused to vote funds for the Indiana troops at the front. The governor had to go to New York City and borrow the funds on his own promise to pay. In order to complete the history of Jasper County this incident should be followed in greater detail.

According to his tombstone, George Spitler died on August 17, 1863. It is not clear from the articles the exact date of the Dodd speech, but it seems it was later than August 17.

Update: Another and completely different take on this event is here. (Search the document for Dodd.)

Dodd's Rebellion Part 1

I mentioned a few weeks ago the name of H. H. Dodd and his contribution to Rensselaer history. There are no accounts of this in Rensselaer newspapers because the copies of those newspapers no longer exist. (I think a fire set to cover up some wrong doing was involved.) However, a couple of contemporary accounts in other newspapers survive. In those days papers did not pretend to be non-partisan. They took a side and proclaimed it. The first account is from the Plymouth Weekly Democrat published on Thursday, September 24, 1863. It is the same article that was published in The Indiana State Sentinel in Indianapolis on September 21, 1863. (Both were found on the Hoosier State Chronicles website.)

Blogger does not handle very long pictures correctly. I had to split this up to make it display in a readable form and even then it is not the way I wanted it. The original can be seen here.

As far as I know, there never was a person named Wesley Spitler in Jasper County.

Next time, the Republican view and a view of the disturbance many years later.