High humidity

It seems that every year when the LaRue Pool closes, we get some of the hottest days of the year. On Thursday the weather station downtown reported that the dew point was 80 degrees and it felt like 109 degrees. This morning the dew point was 76 degrees. The temperatures are not unusually high but the dew points are awful.

We have not had a decent rain in August and the river is very low. I noticed a picnic bench in the river under the College Street Bridge. The river will have to get a little lower before people will be able to use it.

 The apartment fire was smoldering most of the day on Thursday. In the afternoon the smoke was intense enough to bring a small fire truck to dowse the embers.

 Friday morning more of the building had collapsed. The Rensselaer Republican reported that it was structurally unsound so the state fire marshall had not completed his investigation.

The Republican also had a story on how the community has responded to help the people affected by the fire. If you are on Facebook, you probably saw some of the efforts to help.

The people doing the Red Cross blood drive on Thursday had a bad day. First they got caught in the delay on I-65 caused by a hazmat fire. Then when they finally arrived at the Knight of Columbus Hall, they could not get their Internet connection to work. They ended up canceling the drive.

 On a brighter note, the gazebo in Hal Gray Park is getting its new roof.

 The roof is being installed on the building for the high water treatment plant and a rebar shell is being put into place in the eastern pit.

 Forms are being erected in the western pit around the concrete base poured earlier this week.

Construction at the National Gypsum plant is still in the dirt-moving stages. I am always impressed at how much dirt has to be moved before construction begins. The first pile at the site now has an impressive growth of weeds.

Jasper the county bison is now in second place in the voting on Facebook. We are being whipped by tiny Martin County. I expected that we would have trouble with some of the big counties, but did not expect a county a third our size would outvote us. Go here to vote: https://a.pgtb.me/nLRbbr (Jasper is on the second page.)

Big fire

The western building of Park View Apartments burned this morning. According to WFLI, the fire started bit after midnight and there was one fatality. There were still fire trucks and police vehicles at the site when these pictures were taken, about 7:30.

 Below is the back of the building. Note the water--there was a lot of standing water around the building and even in Columbia Park.

The Rensselaer Republican posted some impressive pictures on Facebook and probably will have the full story in Friday's edition.

Time to stock up?

The Rensselaer City Council met in a long session--about 100 minutes--on Monday night. The main item on the agenda was a trash study by the City’s financial advisor, John Julien. The City currently is not raising enough money from trash fees to cover the cost of the service. His company estimated that the cost in the next few years would be about $540,000 and that the city would need about $58,000 each year to cover equipment replacement. It gets income from recycling, environmental fees, dumpster fees, and trash stickers, but the income will be short by about $130,000 each year and that $130K must be met from the City’s general fund. His recommendation was to increase the cost of trash stickers from $2.00 to $3.00, the cost of small dumpsters from $12 to $18, and the cost of big dumpsters from $38 to $57. There was a question of whether the dumpster cost was competitive with what commercial haulers charged and he did not know. Several people with some experience in the matter suggested the City’s rates were low but that the City did not provide dumpsters and the commercial haulers did. The Council agreed to write an ordinance based on the recommendations of Mr Julien. It will not take effect for a while and there was concern that people would rush out and stock up on the stickers to beat the price increase (which of course is the rational thing to do. Another way of beating the price increase is to recycle more--it is a free way to get rid of unwanted cardboard, paper, some plastic and glass, and cans.) If you put out a can per week, the present cost of trash pick up is about $100 per year. That cost will soon be $150.

Mr Julien also updated the Council on several other projects. The second tap into the gas pipeline (the City currently taps into the pipeline about six miles south of the City and wants a second tap in the Pleasant Ridge area) and the pipeline into Rensselaer will cost about $2 million. The estimate is that this will increase gas costs to customers about seven or eight cents per hundred cubic feet. Construction could start before the end of this year. A hold-up right now is that the gas trunkline wants prepayment for the tap but by law the city can only pay for services after they are rendered. A work around may be an escrow account.

His company is also doing a study of the electricity rate structure and are about 45 days away from a recommendation. One item that will affect it is a proposed new substation on the corner of Bunkum Road and CR 850W. This was discussed in more detail later in the meeting. Currently the I-65 area has only one feed from the City. The proposed substation would tap into a NIPSCO line and provide a second feed, giving the area more protection from service interruptions. The cost will be in the $1.6 to $2 million range. The Council approved moving forward with this project.

A final item in Mr Julien’s report was remodeling the old fire station for use by the police department. A rough estimate for this project is $1 million and he said that the City would not need to borrow but could cover it with money from LOIT and the Drexel TIF revenues.

In other items, the City approved closing the street in front of City Hall on September 24 for Oktoberfest. It passed an ordinance for Internal Control Standards, something that the State Board of Accounts requires. It will be followed by a written policy detailing how money is to be handled. Current practice has checks on handling money, but they are not written as policy. The gas tracker for August is a 2.5 cent decrease per hundred cubic feet.

The electric utility received permission to update its arc flash study. This is needed for OSHA compliance and specifies what kind of equipment and clothing are required in certain areas. There was discussion of a committee report about which vehicles employees should use when traveling out of town on City business. The end result was a motion to purchase a truck for the electrical utility manager and use the car he is currently using for out-of-town travel.

The City has received an environmental study for the abandoned INDOT property in the northeast section of town and it does not look good. The City will try to get another study through KIRPSE if INDOT will allow access to the site. The Mayor noted that the buildings date back to 1932 and all kinds oils and chemicals may have been dumped there. If the site is not clean, the City will not take it. If it remains in State hands, it will likely just sit there with no clean up.

The Police Chief asked about the leak survey that the gas department will be doing. It will start Monday and he expects to get calls about strange people poking around in people’s yards. The City will be considering submitting a planning grant for improving downtown sidewalks and lights. Finally, it was noted that on Monday the high rate treatment plant had a big concrete pour resulting in a 3.5 foot base in the second pit. Below is a picture of the equipment used.

I would guess that about 60 truckloads of concrete were delivered to the site. It seemed that every five to ten minutes another truck arrived and they were pouring from mid morning to mid afternoon. Here is a picture of the result.

The City Council will meet at 4:00 on August 10 in a special session to discuss 2017 salaries.

In other news, Benton County recently dedicated more wind turbines, these sponsored by Amazon. Here is a link and here is an article about it.

Beauty and The Beast

Last week the Carnegie Players presented Beauty and the Beast, a musical based on a Disney cartoon movie. The Players have been presenting plays since 1994, usually two a year, and this was one of their best productions. The costumes were unusual because the plot involves people who are turning into objects. There were costumes for players as knives, forks, plates, a clock, a chandelier, a tea pot (Mrs Potts was cast as Mrs Potts), a vanity, and a duster.

The sets were attractive and I liked the way that the stage crew shifted them between scenes in the village and the castle. The production had some talented singers not only in the major roles but in the chorus and dance scenes.

The crowd was respectable but not a sell-out as the Fendig Theater productions are, but then the Summer Theater audience has a lot of parents that attend all three shows. A cast member told me that the audiences reacted differently on each night--Friday night was louder and reacted more than the other two nights.

The cast was quite large with eleven named parts and 22 others in choruses and ensembles. Some of the cast came from distance, with one cast member living in Watseka, Illinois. There are a lot of people who enjoy performing and the Carnegie players give them the opportunity to be on stage.

There were a number of small girls in the audience who were Belle fans and they were delighted not only to see the play but also to have their pictures taken with Belle and other members of the cast

Overall, it was a high-quality community theater production that was very entertaining. (Even when it is not quite professional quality, community theater can be more entertaining than professional theater because the audience knows some of the cast.) Checking the Internet, I see that a non-cartoon version of the story will be released in March, 2017.

(The program said that the use of cameras was prohibited so I am not going to share any pictures. There were lots of pictures on Facebook of Fendig's Wizard of Oz but I have not seen any of Beauty and the Beast.)

It's gone

I have not been in the area of the Babcock Quarry recently, so today I decided to see if the old house was still there. It is not. It must have been removed a few days or weeks ago because there is no trace of it left.

 The water level in the pit keeps rising.

 There are piles of stone in the storage area north of the road.

The masonry work on the building at the high water treatment plant construction site has been completed. Late in the week the remaining blocks were loaded onto a trailer pulled by a city truck and hauled away.

 There is something emerging from the eastern pit. I assume it is a form for a concrete pour.

The western pit seems to be bigger and it contains a lot of rebar in a circular pattern. There were problems with the walls caving in and stone and plastic seems to have been the solution.

On Wednesday I attended part of the Airport Authority Board meeting. It started late because several members were going over budget numbers in the office. While the other members were waiting they discussed several things, mentioning that there was less crop dusting this year because corn prices are low. They also said that traffic to the air show in Oshkosh had been brisk and resulted in a lot of fuel sales.

The meeting began with a presentation from a representative from their fuel supplier suggesting that the airport fuel farm become branded with the Phillips name. There are some benefits to that and no apparent downsides, so the board agreed to become a Phillips dealer.

A second presentation was about a preliminary investigation of establishing an avionics shop at the airport. It would be a private business as Excel Air is or might be a partnership with Excel Air. The board was interested but there are many steps to be taken before this becomes a reality.

The T-hangar contract has been signed with Hamstra. The contractor wanted to know what color the trim of the building should be. 

I suspect there was much more business to discuss, but the sun was setting and I needed to leave. (Have you noticed that the days are getting shorter?)

Voting is now open for the bicentennial bison at the Indiana State Fair.  If you are on Facebook, you need to like the Indiana State Fair in order to vote. You can only vote once every 24 hours. Jasper is currently far ahead of the other bison. Go here for more. (Jasper County is on the second page.)

Tonight will be the final showing of the Carnegie Players' Beauty and the Beast.