Church Renovations II

At the end of June I had a post about renovations to the floor and pews at St Augustine Church. I expected to have an update in mid July. At the beginning of July the pews were being installed.

A few weeks later they all seemed to be in place, but the kneelers still needed to be installed. Then a problem arose because the people who had installed the pews had gouged the tiles and that needed to be tended to. It was not until this past week that the basement was abandoned and services returned upstairs. 

Start of budget hearings

The Jasper County Council met on Tuesday night to begin their budget hearings and discussion. Before that part of the agenda, they approved additional appropriations for tracking devices for inmates of Community Corrections and for the court’s law book budget. They had a public hearing for the growth factor (at which no members of the public said anything) and approved attaching it to the property tax. (I would explain what that means if I understood it.)

They had some time before the scheduled public hearing on the budget, scheduled for 7:30, and there was a discussion of the possibility of a county park, which some citizen has been asking various council members about. No one on the council was willing to investigate the matter but if citizens are willing to do the homework, they are welcome to do so.

The budget hearings themselves are almost impossible to follow if you are in the audience. The Council members have a thick binder full of numbers and the discussion is almost always in reference to what is in the binders. There were three budgets discussed at the meeting, those of the Highway Department, the various parts of the Commissioner budgets (which include a big variety of things), and JCEDO and Tourism. During the discussion of the highway budget, it was noted that about 350 different communities and counties submitted grants for matching road funds. This was the first year of the program and local officials did not expect nearly that many proposals. Only one county in the state had no proposals originating from it. Both Jasper County and the City of Rensselaer submitted proposals and they should know in a week or two if their proposals will be funded.

During the presentation of the Commissioners, someone mentioned that the eastern part of the county had received more rain than Rensselaer this week. Rensselaer got about three inches and some places in the eastern part of the county were four and five inches. The Commissioners were frustrated by the climate control work being done by Havel in both the Court House and jail. They may slow down the project to make sure that there will be savings from it. There was a long discussion of the budget for the Fair. The current fair office may be replaced because the building is old and in need of work. During fair week 230 families reside in the campgrounds. As mentioned in a post on the Commissioners July meeting the county would like to purchase land on the west side of the fairgrounds that it is currently leasing, and a resolution of interest was passed to allow the county to proceed with negotiations to purchase the land.
The short discussion of the tourism budget mentioned that assistance with South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority is being phased out as the local office has learned to do many of the things that South Shore was previously doing. The meeting was recessed and will continue with more budget discussions this week.

Voting for the bicentennial bison has yielded a very close contest between Martin County and Jasper County. As I write this, both are over 10,000 votes and Martin county is ahead by two votes. No other county is close to 1000. (If you have not voted, you can do so here. Jasper County is on the second page.) Today (Wednesday) is the last day to vote.

I do not have a picture for today’s post and I need one for the link I make on Facebook. Here is the flow in the Iroquois River for the past 45 days. Today we will probably set a daily record. The flow for the day will average more than 500 cubic feet per second and the previous high flow was 465 cfs set in 1958.

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.