April showers and a bp open house

The bp event

On Tuesday bp (formerly British Petroleum) hosted an open house at eMbers to discuss their plans for carbon capture and storage (CCS) that involves Jasper County. I had seen a flyer for the meeting that said it started at 5:00, but at the Drainage Board meeting on Monday I learned that there was an earlier meeting at 3:30 for public officials. Commissioner Bontreger told me I should attend, so I did.

Entering eMbers, I was struck by how many people from bp (all wearing identical white shirts) were there. I estimate that there were 20 to 30 of them, and they came not just from northern Indiana but from all over the country. After I talked to a few of them and picked up their literature, the company started a presentation. 

CCS involves capturing carbon dioxide emissions, transporting them to an appropriate place, and injecting them deep into the earth. Jasper County is connected to this project because we (and neighboring counties) have a unique geology that is suitable for storing CO2. (This had been explained at the December Commissioners meeting.) There is a layer of porous rock deep below us. It is too shallow in the far north of Indiana, and it slopes downward toward the south, eventually becoming too deep to use. That layer is overlaid with non-porous layers of rock, so whatever is put into it should stay there. 

Second, there is a dense cluster of businesses that produce CO2 to our north. Chief among them is the bp refinery at Whiting, the largest in the midwest and the largest refinery that bp owns. Third, the State of Indiana has passed legislation that is friendly to this project. The two Commissioners who were attending were not appreciative of this legislation because it limits what local governments can do.

From their discussions with local officials, bp knows that they need to explain how this project can benefit the residents of Jasper County. They suggested that there would be jobs, though almost all of those jobs would be temporary, existing only during the construction phase. They also explained the timeline. They are at the very beginning. They need to do the geologic study and secure permits. The earliest that a shovel will hit the ground is 2030. For 20 years after construction is completed, liquified carbon dioxide will be pumped into the ground. At that point storage will stop and for the next ten years the site will be monitored to make sure there is no leakage or contamination of water above the storage layer. After that bp will withdraw and the State of Indiana will be responsible for whatever is left.

There were questions of what the benefits to the company are from this project. There are tax benefits and subsidies for companies that capture carbon. The bp people suggested that there is a market for "low-carbon fuels", fuels that are identical to other fuels but which are produced with fewer CO2 emissions. (This reminded me of the market for organic foods, foods identical to non-organic foods but produced differently. The economic concept for this is "price discrimination.") There was nebulosity in the longer-term benefits; perhaps bp is anticipating additional government regulations. After the presentation one of the local officials suggested that bp might make money selling carbon credits. I know there is a market for this but do not know how it works. (Selling carbon credits may also be a reason that several local dairies have spent a lot of money on a pipeline to inject methane produced from cow manure into the natural gas trunkline.)

After the presentation I talked to one of pb's geologists. He told me that the porous layer already has water in it and this water is what keeps the CO2 from moving. It will spread out for a few miles, so presumably the landowners near the injection site will need to be paid. He also said that the water would absorb some of the CO2. I joked that it could then be pumped back up as soda water. He said that that would not happen because the water down there is three times as salty as seawater. I also asked about the very long time before construction starts and he said that this is normal in the energy industry.

I expect that this project will go forward if the geology is right despite any local opposition. The State and Federal governments seem to be aligning in favor of CO2 storage and will override whatever local opposition there is. The local officials will, however, try to make sure that the local community does see some benefits from the project.

The big storm on Friday

A line of storms came through Indiana on Friday with high winds and horizontal rain. An EF1 tornado started in Benton County, moved through the Remington area, and then exited the County into White County. It damaged or destroyed several wind turbines. Rensselaer escaped major damage, though some people lost power, at least briefly. The only big tree down that I found was in Brookside Park.

The rainy weather continued on Saturday and it and the wet grounds resulted in the postponement of the annual Easter egg hunt to April 8

On Saturday I checked out the sewer construction on John Deere Road between Owen Street and Mattheson Street. As I was getting ready to take the picture below, I was hit by windblown sleet. It hurt. 

The contractors are have two excavators digging to install the pipes. The one shown above started at Owen Street and is moving west. The one below started at the Mattheson end and is moving east.

April's Commissioners meeting

The County Commissioners met Monday morning with a long agenda of mundane items. A representative from their IT company said that two of the servers were near end of life and needed to be replaced. The new hardware should be good for five to nine years. The item will go to the Council for an appropriation. There were three buried cable requests, all approved. One was from BP for upgrades to its petroleum pipeline that runs through Jasper County.

A request to use the Courthouse gazebo was approved, with the comment from the County attorney that the parade ordinance, which applied here, probably should be updated. Community Corrections was given approval to apply for their annual grant. This year it will include funding for adding a new case manager and an electronic surveillance officer. They also received permission to fill a position vacant since December. The current census is 21 males, four females, and 20 on electronic monitoring.

The Farmers Market received permission to use the Courthouse parking lot this summer. The brick streets will be torn up and replaced. The Commissioners accepted a quote for repairing and finishing the floors of the Courthouse. They approved $15,000 to start the project and will approve more if they like the results. They also approved closing part of CR 400 E when the shooting range at the Jasper-Pulaski Reserve is open. The road is in the ricochet zone and closing the road seemed to be the best way to allow renovation of the range that meets requirements.

The Sheriff noted that the storm on Friday had hit the Remington area hard. He received permission to replace two openings at the jail. One officer quit without giving notice and the other is moving on to become a court bailiff. He would like to buy an X-ray machine to screen for drugs, which are being smuggled into the jail. He was asked about the license-plate readers that had been authorized last year. He said that the two installed at the i-65/SR 10 intersection have been operating for some time and he is happy with the results. The mobile units only recently arrived and they are in the process of training on them.

The Commissioners approved a number of contracts and conference requests. In previous meetings they had delayed approving a pest-control contract, and at this meeting decided to change vendors. Their health insurance agent recommended several changes to policies, most because of the lapsing of the pandemic emergency, and they approved them. They also approved three improvements to Highway Department buildings. The Auditor announced that a check from NextEra that they had been waiting for had arrived. The Commissioners approved $14,842 to replace the batteries of the sirens. The meeting was continued until April 17 at 8:00, if needed.

Drainage Board

The Jasper County Drainage Board met Monday afternoon. It opened two bids for spraying and accepted the lower bid of $163,337.71. The other bid was higher and wanted two years to complete the task. It is an annual task. It then accepted the surveyor's report on four ditches that are in the area of the Dunns Bridge solar projects (Hinshaw, Rasmussen #90, Sands #2603, and R.E. Davis #111) and set a date of June 29 for public hearings. All will be at the Fairgrounds because a large crowd is expected. They will begin at 9:00 for the Hinshaw, then proceed at 15 minute increments until 9:45 for the R.E. Davis.

Rensselaer Park Board meeting

The Rensselaer Park Board had a short meeting Monday evening. They have invested $7000 in idle funds in T-bills to get a better return. The tournaments at Blacker Fields are scheduled to begin in first weekend in May. The Parks 4 People meetings are finishing up. There was a discussion about the need for a new park headquarters; the current one in Iroquois Park floods when the river gets really high. I asked why there was digging in Foundation park next to the restrooms and learned that it will be the site of batting cages.

Window art

Here are more pictures of window art in downtown Rensselaer.

Miscellany

New windows were installed on Monday at the old REMC/County Annex on Cullen and Kellner.

Grass is turning green and a crop of campaign signs is sprouting in some of them.

The Briar Patch on Rutsen Street is closing but will be replaced with a similar store, the Sorrel & Rye Mercantile. 

The scaffolding is down at Sacred Heart Church in Remington

The end of March

 City Council meeting

The Rensselaer City Council met for its final March meeting on Monday evening. In Citizen's comments Stan Haines, who serves on the Rensselaer BZA and Plan Commissions, rose to praise Kevin Cochran, who is leaving the position of Building Inspector. He will be replaced by Josh Davis.

The first item on the agenda was a public hearing for the super voluntary annexation of Saint Joseph's College. Chris Janak from Bose McKenney & Evens began by explaining that no vote on the annexation could be taken at this meeting. At least 14 days must elapse between the public hearing and the vote. However, the Council could adopt the fiscal plan, which must be adopted before the vote on the annexation. Two citizens spoke next. They asked about the benefits and costs of the annexation and one of them noted that SJC has not been a good partner to the community. The cost will be a loss of $3700 in utility revenue (I do not know if that is a month or for the year). The City will assume control of Schuster Road on the south edge of the campus (the City has been maintaining it) and will also get responsibility for Daugherty Road (the road that leads to the sewage plant) and Sparling Road, both of which currently are maintained by the County. All the roads and utility infrastructure in the interior of the campus will remain the responsibility of the College. The benefits lie in the future. When development takes place (the assumption is that because SJC will never again be a four year college, the land will eventually be used for another purpose) the City will have  more control over what happens. This annexation will be easy because it is sought; a future annexation of a developer's project might be impossible. There were questions about whether the City might get stuck with the cost of removing decayed buildings and the response was that the annexation will not change that. Because the College is within the City's exclusion zone, it could be responsible just as it was for the removal of Grandma's restaurant west of I-65. There was a discussion about the need for housing. Most people who work in the City commute in and a lot of residents commute out. During the discussion, the Mayor mentioned that White Castle was considering expanding its plant and so was another company that was not ready yet to go public.

The amount of land in this annexation is 268 acres. In addition to the SJC land, it includes the County land where the Health Department is and a strip of private land along Daugherty Road that connects the main SJC parcel with the lot that has the old farm buildings.

The Council then adopted a resolution that allows the Redevelopment Commission to use TIF money for art works before it adopted the annexation fiscal plan that sets out the fiscal impact of the annexation. At the last meeting the Council opened two bids for work on roads funded by a Community Crossings grant. At this meeting it accepted a bid from Town and Country. The amount was less than the base bid read at the meeting, so I assume that some of the planned project was dropped.  The Council approved $3100 for the Gas Department's open house on April 28 from 11:00 to 1:00. In the past the Gas Department has obtained a grant that reimburses the cost of this event and is applying for that grant again this year.

The Council approved submitting a PER (Preliminary Engineering Report to the State Revolving Fund to see if financing might be available for improvements at the wastewater treatment plant, improvements that the City must eventually make. The Council approved a transfer of funds within the Gas Departments budget. A committee was formed to review fines and to see if they can be better enforced. There was a question of whether the City had an appointment to the School Board this year. Several people were confident that it did not. Several departments—electric, cemetery, gas, and parks—were given permission to hire summer help. A bid of $7300 was accepted to remove eight trees at Brookside Park along SR 114. April 27 is electronics recycling day. May 1-5 is clean-up week. 

Changes

The window of Fenwicks Distillery now has a sign

Remodeling of the of Forsythe mansion is underway. There are tenants for the upper floors.

More of the sidewalk that was ripped out last week was poured on Wednesday. This is the stretch in front of Printco.

There will be a new insurance office opening in front of Rules Auto.

27 trees were delivered to Rensselaer's Urban Forestry Council last week.

Some daffodils are blooming.

Window art

Windows downtown are being decorated with themes of Spring.

Some history updates

On March 21 I published a post about The Rensselaer Gazette, an early newspaper in Rensselaer. The editor was Daniel F. Davies. He was elected as sheriff in 1862 and died in office. (A Standard History of Jasper and Newton Counties, p 56.) Unfortunately one cannot read about that in the newspapers. There are no newspaper issues that survive from 1861 until 1868. Some of them were apparently lost in a Courthouse fire of 1864 (1864 is the date given in A Standard History; the book about the Jasper County Courthouse published for its centennial says the fire started on Jan 18, 1865.)

Benjamin Henkle had a store in Rensselaer. Below is an ad for the store that ran in several issues of the Rensselaer Banner in 1854.

He must have been a very versatile fellow because he also built the first brick courthouse:

Our friend Benj Henkle Esqr., we see has commenced work in earnest upon the new Court House Building, quite a number of hands, are now engaged on the work and from present appearances, we should judge that the foundation and first story of the edifice will be erected this fall.

(Jasper Banner, Volume 1, Number 35,Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1854 p 2) A Standard History mentions him as the builder of the Courthouse, but spells his name Hinkle. 

Lots of pictures 3-23-23

EMS

On Tuesday I visited the construction site for the new EMS building. (It will be across SR 114 from the entrance to the Fairgrounds, in front of the Animal Shelter.) The concrete footings are in place.

While I was there a cement truck was delivering some concrete.

AppleTree

On Wednesday I received a tour of the new Appletree Childhood Education Center. The front door is locked and you need to press the screen on the post in front of the door to be buzzed in. You enter to the lobby, with some offices to the right.

The wall has the big Appletree logo.

From the lobby you can walk down the south corridor that has a kitchen and two bathrooms along it. The meals for the students come from the hospital. The two bathrooms are not mens and womens but child and adult.

Further along the corridor is a playroom.

At the far end is the nursery with eight cribs for infants.

A lot of the layout of the building is determined by State regulations. If a facility wants to be a licensed child-care center, they must be followed. That is why the capacity of this center is 75. However, in designing Appletree, Right Steps, which runs the day-to-day operations, had lots of input so it is the nicest of the centers that Right Steps staffs.

A four-seater stroller!

Most of the classrooms are on the north corridor. The room with the smallest toddlers was dark because it was nap time so we did not disturb them. The room for older toddlers had awake kids and we said hi. 

Like many schools, there is a policy that the children not be photographed, so the next place I took pictures was in an empty classroom for mixed ages. 

I could not resist a picture of the little potty in this room.

It is a beautiful facility. There were about 35 kids enrolled this week and another twenty are expected to join them next week. There is high demand for the seats for the youngest children because there are really no alternatives available in Rensselaer.

You can find more pictures and information here.


Art Show

The 34th Annual Regional Middle School Art show is now on exhibit at the Fendig Gallery. It will run until April 16. Gallery hours are Tuesdays noon to 4:00, Thursdays 3:00 to 6:00, and Saturdays noon to 2:00. The award program will be on April 16 1:30 at the First Presbyterian Church.

In middle school you begin to see potential in some of the artists.

The medium used here was scratchboard.

Other things

Local author Shannon Anderson was featured in a video produced by Lakeshore PBS. View it here.

There has not been a lot of work on the extension of the sewer line. Some work was done on the small lot that the City owns and the asphalt on the road next to it has been replaced with crushed stone. This is at the north end of Mattheson Street. 

Hopefully the very cold weather last weekend was winter's last gasp. The cold and strong wind seemed to depress the turnout at the Fair Boards dinner on Saturday.

Wednesday night and Thursday gave us more rain that we do not really need. At least it was not snow.

Another sign of spring: my rhubarb is starting to grow. 

I am ready for warmer weather.

A few meetings

 Remodeling of the former County Annex on the corner of Cullen and Kellner has begun. The sign is advertising for a retail occupant. I heard from a reliable source that there would be some coworking space in the remodeled building.

On Tuesday morning the sidewalks on the Cullen Street side of the building were torn out.

On Tuesday afternoon new sidewalks were being poured.

Rensselaer Redevelopment Commission

The Rensselaer Redevelopment Commission met on Thursday (3-16) afternoon and I was surprised to see a large audience of about 20 people. The main topic on the agenda was a request from Appleseed Childhood Education for funds to support the newly opened Appletree Center and the people attending were there to support the request.

The Appletree Center opened on March 6. It has the capacity for 75 but is not yet at that capacity as they are opening in stages. They had a waiting list of about 125. They will be open Monday through Friday all year.

The Center employs 15 people. The cost per student is about $14000 annually but few families are able to afford that amount. Tuition is on a sliding scale, depending on family income. There are some voucher programs that some families can use and the Center accepts those. However, the fact that this could not be a self-sustaining operation was realized from the beginning and finding outside support was part of the original plan. 

Appleseed had several letters of support in the packet prepared for the Commission and several people in the audience spoke in favor of the funding. The emphasis was on workers who without available childcare could not stay in the workforce, and some examples were cited. The Commission approved $130,000 for this year.

In other business, planning for a façade grant continues and may be ready for Commission action next month. The R&M building was mentioned, but no further plans have been made. The Commission approved paying three invoices.

JCBZA

The Jasper County Board of Zoning Appeals met Monday evening with only one item on the agenda, a request for a variance for lot width. The property owner said that there were two houses on the lot, one behind the other and the back house had been used by his father, who recently died. He would like to split off the back house preserving the tillable acres and to do that he needed to reduce the width of the entryway. The request was granted. The meeting lasted about ten minutes.

PTABOA

I noticed the agenda of a meeting of the Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals as I arrived at the BZA meeting and decided to see what they were up to. They met Tuesday morning, and after swearing in members and deciding to keep the same officers, they approved their last minutes from October. Their first request was from NICHES Land Trust, which owns several nature preserves in Jasper County. They are a non-profit organization and requested that they be exempted from the property tax. The  other request was from Graceway Bible Baptist Church, which had purchased an adjoining lot to their already exempted property and wanted it exempted as well. Both requests were approved and the meeting ended about ten minutes after it started.


Municipal Primary Election


The primary election for Rensselaer City officials is scheduled for May 2. If you vote on election day, the polls are at the Remington Library and the Jasper County Fairgrounds. However, you can avoid the trip to the Fairgrounds by voting early at the Courthouse. The days you can vote are Tuesdays and Thursdays starting April 4, from 9:00-noon and 1:00-6:00. You will have to go through security and then up to the second floor.

County Council

The Jasper County Council met on Tuesday evening. After the usual preliminaries, Zyan Miller from the Jasper County Economic Development Organization requested an additional appropriation for the capital projects funding. These monies are from the innkeeper tax. The Tourism Board has already granted more for capital projects than was in the budget. The grants are for murals in Wheatfield, a mural south of DeMotte, and for a horse barn at the Fairgrounds. Nothing was passed at this meeting because the item must first be advertised, so it will be back on the agenda in April. There was some discussion of planters at the Courthouse and the horse barn. (JCEDO has announced its new new director, Sarah DeYoung. See more here.)


The Council then approved four additional appropriations that were needed for various reasons. About this time the computer running the Zoom session started updating and shut down the Zoom, which was restarted when the computer finished updating and restarted. (I am always a little tempted to attend via Zoom, but have seen way too many problems with it to trust it.) The Council again amended the Salary Ordinance, this time to make it read correctly. At the previous meeting they had amended it with the additions to salaries, not the full salaries.


The Council passed a motion to concur with a mandate from the judges to add money to the extradition fund. This fund is in the Court budget, but is actually administered by the prosecutor, who is the one to decide extradition. Apparently there have been a lot of extraditions this year and the fund has gone into the red.


There was then a discussion about what was needed to keep the County prosperous. The population of the County dropped a bit in the 2020 census, and the drop was especially large among the young. There was concern about the quality of education and how to have attractive opportunities for those entering the workforce.


The KV Post had a reporter at the meeting, which was nice to see. I hope his report gets shared with the Republican. There is a County surplus auction on Saturday at 9:00 at the County Highway Garage on SR 114.

I have more to write but will put it in a separate post.

The Rensselaer Gazette

A few weeks ago I mentioned that old Rensselaer newspapers on microfilm at the Rensselaer Library had been digitized and were now available on the Hoosier State Chronicles. At that time not all of the issues had made it to the Internet, but now they  have. The oldest issues are from the Jasper Banner in 1853 and the second oldest are from The Rensselaer Gazette in 1858. The Gazette began publishing in 1857 but the first year of the paper seems not to have survived. The preserved issues end in 1860.

The editor of the Gazette was D. F. Davies. I searched for him on findagrave.com and found two of his very young children buried in Weston Cemetery, but he, who died in 1865, is buried in Granville, Ohio.

The history of early newspapers in Rensselaer can be found in A Standard History of Jasper and Newton Counties (1916). Below are a couple of excerpts.

The very old newspapers were all weeklies and they contain very little local news. The Gazette (and others) had some state, national, and foreign news, but also short stories, poetry, and agricultural advice. I suspect Rensselaer and Jasper County in the 1850s were small enough so the local news was widely shared orally, so it may not have been as interesting to the locals as news from the wider world. Most of what can be considered local news was in the form of ads. (The population of Rensselaer was 241 in 1850 and in 1860 535.)

On the front page (each issue of the paper had four pages) there was a column on the left side that was called "Business Cards" Some of them were from Lafayette, Indianapolis, and New Bradford. (Recognize New Bradford? It was the community that adopted the name Monon when it was incorporated.) Below are some of the Rensselaer cards.

Hopkins died young. I think Spitler was George W Spitler, an interesting character who was featured on the first Weston Cemetery Walk. Everyone from Rensselaer should recognize the name Milroy.

The McCoy bank was already in business in 1858. The Thomas McCoy involved in the bankrupcy of this bank in 1904 was the grandson of the McCoy listed here.

Page three and four were mostly a mix of legal notices with local, area, state, and national ads.

John M Austin died in 1877. His son was a prominent lawyer in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Isaac Stackhouse left Rensselaer for greener fields in Lafayette and then near Indianapolis. His daughter, Eleanor, was a prominent author featured  in the 2021 Weston Cemetery Walk.

Ambrotype and melainotype were early photography technologies.

I am not sure which Thompson is mentioned here. 

The Gazette rarely published obituaries, but made an exception for Benjamin Henkle. He served in the State Legislature from Lafayette; I wonder what prompted him to leave and move to the little village of Rensselaer.

I was intrigued by the typeface in the masthead.

 I searched for a digitized version but could not find one, so I decided, based on a very limited sample of characters, to create what the typeface may have looked like. (Typography is a hobby of mine, the subject of a different blog.) I have replaced the picture at the top of the blog with a new version showing this typeface.