Young in the summer

On Tuesday I got a chance to preview the Fendig Children's Summer Theater production of Mary Poppins. Several of the cast members were guests at the Rotary Luncheon held at Embers and they performed three of the musical numbers that will be in the play, complete with the choreography. From the preview, it looks like the play will be delightful and entertaining. If you have not bought your tickets yet, you really should because I have heard that the auditorium will be filled to capacity on at least one night. Below Mary Poppins sings about how she is practically perfect in ever way to the two children.
 The director of the play is Pat Collins, who was one of the founders of the organization forty years ago. I remember the first production I saw was The Hobbit, their third production in 1978. The first year one of my children was in a production was 1984, Annie. The production of Annie was far more polished than that of The Hobbit--the early years saw a lot of change in terms of making everything look much more professional.

The choreographer for this year's play will miss the production. He is off to Orlando, Florida to join a group on a cruise ship for a three-week gig providing entertainment.

After leaving Embers I stopped by the rain garden in Potawatomie Park. It looked mostly dead, but I could see that the swamp milkweed and the blue flag had survived. Some of the other plants may yet recover.

 This morning (Wednesday) the city was removing sandbags. The RCHS football team was providing most of the muscle power. They loaded the sandbags into the loader, which then dumped them into a dump truck.

 Below a different group of football players were removing sandbags from the electrical unit by the water treatment plant next to Iroquois Park.

 As I wandered around a bit further I found some young people, these busy playing in dirt in the hall of the Core Building of SJC. I asked what they were doing and was told it was a State Police summer camp and they were learning how to sift dirt for evidence.

In past years there was an e-mail to employees at SJC telling what groups were on campus. This year I have not seen any such communication so I only occasionally stumble on what is going on at SJC.

A couple more meetings

The Drainage Board met Monday afternoon and though it had a lot on its agenda, none of it was as interesting as the things not on the agenda.

One farmer wanted a tile from a culvert to a ditch, but because it was on his land, the Board said it was not something they could do. He said that he has had water issues ever since he bought the land three years ago and this year suffered a major loss of crop. He was told that he could get informal agreement among his neighbors to put in the tile or he could start a petition to bring the matter to the Drainage Board.

The City of Rensselaer received and OK to cross the Yeoman Ditch and the King Lawler Tile when they put in the watermain to I-65. They will drill the line five feet below each of these drainage conduits. Preliminary drainage plans for the Remington Water Treatment Plant had been discussed at the last Drainage Board meeting and they were approved at the July meeting.

The attorney for the Drainage Board had been asked to review bids that had been received for work on the Price Tile and he recommended going with the low bid, which the Board approved. The Board set their September meeting (the day after Labor Day) for the public hearings for the Gowland Tile #179 and the Louis B Nagel Ditch. Someone wanted to clean his part of the Fred Tyler Ditch and wanted to know if the County would help. The answer was, "No," but it may be willing to do the entire ditch if the landowners want that.

Three farmers expressed concern about the growing number of farm ponds that are created by damming water and impounding it with embankments. These ponds with water levels above ground level downstream are not lowered between rains as a detention pond is. As a result, when there is rain, they push water downstream with pressure and cause problems for farmers who receive the water. After discussion, the Board agreed to look at the issue in a future meeting after researching what the relevant state laws and county ordinances might be.

Finally, the issue of who should sign contracts came up. Should the county surveyor or the Drainage Board be signing contracts? After discussion, the Board voted to have the Surveyor sign contracts of less than $5000 but others should be signed by the Board.

In the evening the Park Board met, barely having a quorum. It approved purchasing mulch for the playground in Iroquois Park, needed because the flood washed much of what had been there downriver. They also approved purchasing a new slide for Brookside Park to replace a slide that has needed constant repair.

The most interesting bit at this meeting was a report from a committee that decided that it was not a good idea to replace the soccer field in Brookside Park with two small ballfields. The fields would be too short for older ages, they would only be used about two months of the year while the soccer field and the basketball courts are used almost year round, and they would require too much of the park to be devoted to parking lot. The cost of the asphalt alone was estimated at $200,000. Instead, the committee thought that the Park Board and Park Corporation should be pursuing option with the Staddon Field site. That will require cooperation from the Rensselaer Central School Board, but there were suggestions that such cooperation might be forthcoming. They asked the only member of the public attending the meeting what he thought of this new plan and he told them that he had never liked the planned changes to Brookside Park.

The park headquarters building, shown below during the flood, had ten inches of water when the river crested.

 Below is what Iroquois Park looked like last night. After the 1.6 inches of rain Rensselaer got this morning, it may be wetter. The river is rising again and is two and a half feet higher now than it was before the rain, but hopefully it will stay in its banks.

Commissioners meeting, July 2015

There were a lot of items on the agenda of the July Commissioners Meeting, but none stood out as really important. The prosecutor wanted to replace a part-time investigator who has resigned and she also wanted to hire a deputy prosecutor who would focus solely on child support issues. The deputy prosecutor would be funded from something called the Prosecutors' Incentive Fund, which can only be used for a few things, one of which is child support issues. The Commissioners approved both.

The Animal Control Board wanted to offer the position of head of animal control to their present full-time employee. She would be a probationary for six months. They also wanted to hire a full time position to fill the vacancy they have. The question came up of what would happen if after six months the new director had not performed to expectations. After a bit of discussion, it was decided that the problems could be avoided if the new hire was part time rather than full time, and the Commissioners approved that arrangement.

A representative from KIRPC reported that a grant that covered eight counties including Jasper had been approved, It has $300,000 for cleaning up hazardous waste and $200,000 to clean up petroleum problems. It would be used for land that is undeveloped or underdevelopment because of threat of contamination. The Commissioners moved to sign the memorandum of understanding. The representative also reported that KIRPC had begun traffic counts on some county roads, a project funded by INDOT.

Someone who seemed to be from the surveyor's office reported that mortgage companies are requiring some people to split lots and that sometimes those splits are resulting in lots with houses that have no access. It is not a problem if the person owns all the land, but it may cause problems down the road. It was not clear why the mortgage or title companies were requiring these splits. The Commissioners decided more research was needed before any action was taken.

The IT director for the county reported that new state law allows people involved in law enforcement to have their names and addresses removed from the GIS websites that counties make public. Right now the provider of Jasper County's GIS services does not allow this to be done without taking out information that could remain.

The County had sought bids for a generator that the highway department has and no bids were received. The generator will probably be put into the county auction July 18 and may also be listed on eBay.

EMCOR, which has contracts for heating and cooling projects with the county, was on the agenda but never showed.

The Commissioners approved the renewal of the county's insurance policy. The value of the county property being insured is $44 million. It includes 124 vehicles. There was one big claim settled late last year. There have been 52 auto claims in the last three years.

The Sheriff reported that the new 911 system has been installed and is up and running. The transition was smooth. One of the servers for the old system was starting to fail--it was seven years old. In another five or six years the system will have to be upgraded again because five or six years is the expected life of the equipment.

A deputy is retiring on July 15. His position will be filled internally, but then there will be an opening for a new hire of a merit deputy. The Commissioners approved allowing the Sheriff to make the hire.

The air handling/heating/cooling system at the jail will have controls adjusted this week. The local person in charge said that often there are problems dealing with the offsite IT guys monitoring the system. They tend to believe what they see on their screens rather than what someone on site is telling them what is happening. There have been recent problems with excess humidity because some of the coolers were not functioning.

There followed discussion of various issues that will probably come back in a more finished form in future meetings.

At the end of the meeting one of the council members who was attending the meeting told me that the new Royal Oak restaurant had opened that morning and that he had eaten breakfast there before coming to the meeting. He said that the interior was completely different from what it had been when the restaurant was Ricos.

I heard the crop dusters taking off from the airport for the past few days. They seem to be very busy.

Ribbon cutting at E-Zea Auto Center

I noticed the new business E-Zea Auto Center at Washington and Weston in early May but was unsure what it did. Today the Chamber of Commerce had a ribbon cutting to welcome the business and I found out.

The business provides car washing and detailing, which is a thorough cleaning of the inside of a car. They offer four options. E-Zea Wash takes approximately thirty minutes and includes vacuuming the interior. Express Wash and Wax takes about an hour and includes hand waxing and also shining the interior. Complete Wash & Wax includes detailing the interior. Finally the E-Zea Works takes about three hours and includes an interior shampoo and vinyl cleaned and dressed. The more you want, the more it costs, but the first option is only $20 for cars. If you want to know more, stop in or call the number shown in the picture above.

What was once the office of a gas station is now a comfortable waiting room, which will work for a short E-Zea Wash, but you might want to have something else to do for the longer procedures.

 I asked the owner, Ron Zea (pronounced Zee) how he got into this business. He said that he began washing and detailing cars when he was in high school. After high school he went to work for others, including a car dealer in DeMotte. He has spent over thirty years washing and detailing cars and wanted to open his own business. Noticing that the former gas station on the corner of Washington and Weston was vacant and for rent, he inquired. He opened for business in May. He said both May and June were slow months. I suspect that in May no one knew he was there. He thought the weather in June hurt business.

In talking to the people who came to the ribbon cutting, I learned that many businesses had passed through this location since it stopped being a gas station. It was at one time the office of a lawyer (who is no longer in town). Hopefully E-Zea Auto Center will last a lot longer than some of his predecessors.

Then it was time for the ribbon cutting. It was the first and last ribbon cutting covered by the intern for the Rensselaer Republican, Javonte Anderson. His eight week internship is finishing and now he will return to Bloomington and wait for the start of his senior year. People wished him luck in his final year and in finding a job after graduation. He was at the paper during an interesting time--the changing of editors.

At the airport (updated)

The Jasper County Airport Authority held its monthly meeting on Wednesday night. On the way there I took a couple pictures of water in the fields. Below we are looking to the fairgrounds and the water is highlighted by the low sun. I suspect that there is a lot of water in fields like this that is hard to see from the road. The corn is yellow and discolored, not the bright green that corn should be.

 This was in the same area but looking toward town. Where the water has been too long the corn is dead. Outside the dead zone there is a ring of yellow, stunted corn, and beyond that corn that looks healthy.

When I got to the airport, I saw the new snow plow that the airport purchased from the Purdue airport. It is big.

 I also took a picture of the current fuel farm, something that the Airport Authority wants to replace.

 The meeting was relatively short. The NGC engineer was not present, but he had two recommendations. The first was to give the president of the Authority the right to sign an acceptance of the FAA grant that they have submitted if the grant is approved. The FAA often gives notification of grant approval but then wants acceptance in twenty four or forty eight hours, and it can be hard to get a quorum of the committee together on such short notice. The other recommendation was to give the president the authority to sign the contracts for the fuel tanks and related things after the grant is accepted. Both recommendations were approved.

The airport manager had a number of items to report. He recommended they wait a bit before deciding the best way to proceed with some hangar repairs, and also that they wait before they decide how to proceed with a silent alarm.  The members approved a motion that has to go to the County Council moving funds from one line to another so that they can pay their share of the cost of the new fuel farm. There were other miscellaneous items.

The budget committee had mostly finished preparing next year's budget but members of that committee had disagreed on whether there should be a line item for hangar development in the cumulative building fund. After some discussion, the members approved the line item with one negative vote.

The Airport will host the annual fly in on July 11. The pork chop dinner costs $6 but everything else is free. If the weather cooperates, there should be many planes to view, and if the weather is not so good, there will be only a few planes to view.

And now for the river report. The river has sunk below eleven feet at Laird's Landing, which is a foot below flood stage. The river will not set a flow record for July 2 because the 1993 level was 1070 cubic feet per second and the river had a morning reading of 989 and was falling,. It should be below ten feet before the end of the day. However, it did set the record for July 1. The old record was 1050 cfs in 1993 and late in the evening the reading for this year was 1100. It had been 1240 in the morning. Below is a chart showing the entire June 2015 flood, starting May 31 and ending today. The river was above flood stage (12 feet) for about three weeks.

On the weather report last night on WFLI there was a map of June precipitation.  It showed a band mostly south of Rensselaer that received 15 inches. I think the weatherman also said there were areas that got 20 inches.

All the roads in the cemetery are now passable, though some have a lot of dirt and mud on them where the water sat for days.

Update: An article that went out via the AP noted that the state climatologist said that June was the wettest June on record for all of Indiana and the fourth wettest month since records have been kept. It singled out Rensselaer because a rainfall monitoring station here recorded 18.06 inches during the month.