New PA, mining, solar, and walls

On Monday Jacob Taulman was sworn in as Prosecuting Attorney. His stay in office will be brief, only a couple weeks. In late November Christine Haskell Bogen resigned. The governor declared the office vacant and the Jasper County Republican Committee met to name a replacement to fill the remainder of her term. It was no surprise that they chose Mr Taulman, who won the election in November. He will serve the remainder of Mrs. Bogen's term and in about a week will be sworn in for the full term that he won in the election.

My camera had dust on the lens and it does not do well when there is bright light in the background. Judge Potter swore him in on Monday morning.

During his term the prosecutor's office will move from its present quarters in the former REMC building to new space in the former PNC building.

On Monday evening both the Jasper County Board of Zoning Appeal and Plan Commission met. The BZA had only one case, a variance for sand mining. The petitioner, who is from the Wheatfield area, wants to expand a pond from less than an acre to four or five acres. That action is an allowed action under the code and does not need BZA approval. However, he would like to get rid of the sand that is removed, selling it to offset the cost of the pond. Selling sand is considered mining under the code, and that does require approval. He wants the pond to be 9 feet deep, which will require about 90,000 cubic yards of material to be moved. The Board discussed this issue for half an hour before finally approving it. One member of the audience stated that there were other people in the area who were mining sand with no permits and he thought it unfair that the BZA subjected the petitioner to the long, drawn-out hearing.

The only issue that the Plan Commission had was a proposed solar farm ordinance. The Commissioners had requested this ordinance because there are companies looking at Jasper County as a site to put solar farms. Mary Scheurich, Director of Planning and Development, had assembled the ordinance using ideas from ordinances from other counties. The members of the commission were reluctant to do anything with it. They referred back to their experiences with the Wind Farm Ordinance. In late 2016 they had approved changes to the ordinance based on input from wind farm companies. Then concerned citizens attacked that action by proposing a very different set of changes, and that led to hearings that had so many people attending that the meetings were moved to the Fairgrounds. Several members said that they needed to do more research.

There were representatives from two companies that are interested in building solar parks in Jasper County. I did not get the name of one of the companies, but they are at a very early stage and have no firm plans. The other was Orion Renewables, which develops both wind farms and solar parks. If I have the right company, they were the developers of the first Benton County wind farm and are currently working on a large solar farm in Spencer County, Indiana. They want to do a project in Kankakee Township and it sounded as if it was quite a large project. They said that even though once a solar  park is installed, it uses virtually no local labor, there are economic benefits to the community in addition to the tax revenues. Many companies want to be located near renewable energy sources, so having solar in the County would make the County more attractive for certain kinds of businesses.

The Plan Commission voted to set up a technical committee to research the subject. The next two meetings will be on the fourth Mondays of the month because of holidays on the third Mondays (MLK and Presidents' Day). I am confident that this ordinance will not generate the widespread public opposition that the revised Wind Farm ordinance did.

When I checked the Autumn Trace site on Monday morning, there were a lot of workers but nothing was happening. A day later a whole lot of walls are up.

Who knew that Strack and Van Til would be my one-stop Christmas shopping center. I am sure my grandkids will be very excited to get the presents I bought for them ;-)

Some quick notes

There were two announcements from SJC this past week.  First, there was an announcement of a new fund raising initiative, which is currently on its home page. Second, it announced changes in the leadership team, with Fr Barry Fischer leaving to become campus chaplain at Marian University. See the announcement here.

The Sheriff's office announced that highway US 231 is now open north of Rensselaer. There is no longer a need to detour around the bridge over the Iroquois.

NITCO is giving access to some of the premium channels through December. The channels differ from week to week.

The former office of PNC Bank is now the property of Jasper County. The sale was finalized on December 7. PNC told its local employees that when it closed a branch, it kept about 80% of the deposits. Talking to a few people at other banks, I find it hard to believe that they will keep anything near that from the closed Jasper County branches. Who wants to go to Merrillville when you need help?

On Friday trucks were unloading lumber at the Autumn Trace construction site. Maybe some walls will be up next week.

There were hundreds of geese just to the west of Conagra on Friday. I took a few pictures, but none turned out well. So the picture for this post will be of the new outlet pipe that the quarry recently installed for pumping. It was being used on Friday.

City council 12/10/2018 and more trees

Rensselaer City Council met Monday evening. It approved a gas tracker that was a fraction of a cent increase per hundred cubic feet, transferred some funds, and approved the supply bids from Ceres Solutions for fuel and Wonderland Tire for tires.

There are a couple of unnamed companies that would like to attach lines to the City's utility poles. Steve Miller, Electric Manager of Operations and Engineering, presented a proposed pole attachment agreement that the City would use for these companies and for companies now using City poles when their current agreements come up for renewal. The contract that he presented incorporated items that other cities have in their pole attachment contracts. The Council approved the contract and authorized the Mayor to sign it.

Kevin Cochran, Weston Cemetery Superintendent, asked for approval to remodel the cemetery building. The remodeling would move the office from the back of the building to the front. His request was approved. Mr Haun said he was working on an ordinance to change pay for firemen. Currently they are working with a 2007 pay ordinance that gives them $7.50 per run they attend. He wanted it raised to $10.00. The Council approved the change but the ordinance needs a few technical details worked out before it can be presented to the Council.

The Mayor announced that he had heard from U.S. Department of Agriculture that Rensselaer would receive a grant of $1,749,000 and a loan for about $3,400,000 at 2.375% interest to replace the lift station next to Weston Cemetery and extend sewer lines to 3 unserved areas. This is part of a long term sewage control plan that the City must undertake. More details about this part of the plan and the grant are here. The grant proposal was discussed in a Council meeting in July.

In short notes, IDOT has not responded to the City Attorney's letter regarding the abandoned substation on Maple Street. The new well on Sparling is not in operation, nor is the Rensselaer 2 Solar Farm, though the latter was supposed to be commissioned on Tuesday. There was a question about the power outage/brownout late Sunday evening. The problem was not with the City but with the supplier, which is NIPSCO. The supply was reduced to one phase (and I do not really know what that means). The power was back to normal when the City switched the whole city to the Banet substation from the Eger substation. The power problems also affected some REMC users.

Below are a few more trees from the Christmas Tree Walk in Potawatomie Park.

More animals have been added to the Animal Shelter tree.

The Library also has decorated trees on display. These three are from the Jasper/Newton Foundation, Tops, and CDC Resources. People can vote for their favorite tree by making a donation to the Food Pantry.

Other trees in the Library are from Bethany Church, 4-H, First Presbyterian Church, and Tri Kappa.

The Library also has Christmas displays in its entryway. One section is of Santa figures given to the Library from the John and Sharon Schulenberg estate and the other is of nutcrackers from the collection of a young girl

The water level in the river has been dropping as the ice along the bank and on some trees shows.

Finally, this week there has been construction activity at the Autumn Trace site. On Monday concrete trucks were delivering more concrete and on Tuesday there was digging going on. I keep waiting for walls to go up.

Wednesday update: There were three more power interruptions today, though only one at my house. The problem is with NIPSCO. Also, the new solar park is now on-line and producing electricity.

Christmas tree walk

The tree lighting for the Christmas tree walk is scheduled for Saturday at 5:30 in Potawatomie Park. There are 14 or 15 trees up as of Friday morning and there may be one or two more ready before the lighting.

The Alzheimer's Association has a tree and a bike. The bike is is there for the Ride to End ALZ event.

 This one is only identified with a HOPE sign. (Update: It is Sexual Assault Awaraeness.)

 Valley Oaks Health is the new name of Wabash Valley Alliance. Their office is on Drexel Drive.

 The light was not right to get a good picture of the dog in the doghouse beneath the tree of the Jasper Count Animal Shelter.

 I assume BAE is Bombers for Academic Excellence.

 I thought this might be a John Deere display until the Brown Garden & Floral Shoppe sign was added.

 A tree from Ci Insurance.

 A corny display that is not labeled. Perhaps IBEC? (Update: Yes, IBEC.)

 Hope Community Church has a lighted cross.

 The white tree is from the Police Department and the one with the fire truck is from Fire Department. The Police Department tree is my favorite and I suspect will be the favorite of most little boys. I hope they can keep their hands off the ornaments.

 There was no identification for this tree but it may be the favorite of the birds. It has strings of cheerios and other food bits as ornaments. (Update: It is RCMS Science Buddies.)

 I also could not identify who put up this tree. (Update: RCMS National Junior Honor Society.)

The Rensselaer Library also has a variety of trees from various organizations. Maybe I will show them in a future post.

On Friday morning the Tourism Commission met for its monthly meeting.  JCEDO with the aid of South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority had applied to host an economic development conference next September and their bid or proposal was accepted from the ten submissions. It will be held at Fair Oaks.

Most of the meeting discussed the application forms for getting Jasper County Tourism Commission funding. They would like to tighten up the requirements for festival funding. The application says that the event that gets funding is supposed to report back to the Commission but apparently few do. (I was there to give a final report on the Weston Cemetery Walk. The Tourism Commission would like to see growth or an upward trend in the festivals it funds.

They are also developing a capital improvements application. The thought of the members is that if there can be improvements that make the County more attractive to visitors, those improvements should receive help. However, they do not want to be funding maintenance. The grant that they gave to the Parks for People campaign is a major reason that they are trying to iron out the rules for this kind of funding.

A representative of the South Shore was at the meeting and mentioned that they were looking for someone to contribute to their blog about tourism and entertainment activities in Jasper and Newton Counties. If you are doing outdoor activities or other things that might be of interest from a tourism perspective and you would like to write about them, contact South Shore. Their blog is Along the South Shore and they have pieces on Jasper and Newton Counties (especially Newton because of Kankakee Sands.) Who knows what doors something like this could open. (I am not interested because I am too old to do fun things.)  It should be easy to do at least one post a month about Jasper County events and activities.

Leaving the meeting, I noticed that the Country Bumpkin shop has moved in with Thee Dragonfly. Both had the same owner and consolidating space is sensible. Thee Dragonfly now occupies the entire space that was once Long's Gift and From the Needle's Point. It has a variety of vendors selling there. Some were once at Greene's Antique Mall.

Animal shelter, wind farms, and more

Late last week Saint Joseph's College announced that it had reached a settlement in the Sodexo lawsuit. 

On Saturday the annual Christmas parade was canceled because of the forecast of thunderstorms at the time of the parade. The actual thunder came later and there was only some light rain during the scheduled parade time. The parade was canceled, not postponed, because it requires a permit from the state highway department to close US 231.

On Monday the Commissioners met for the first of two December meetings. (There is always a second December meeting to take care of items that need to be resolved before the end of the year. This year's second meeting will be on December 26.) The first item of interest was the opening of bids for a new Wheatfield Township fire station. This was the second round of bidding. The first round produced bids that the Township thought exceeded its budget for the station. There were three bids, with the base bids ranging from $1,479,500 to $1,585,800. However, there were eight alternatives, some adding features and others deleting features, so the final bid price could be different from the base bid. The bids were turned over to the Township.

Next the Friends of the Animal Shelter gave a long presentation in which they said that their plans to add on to the current shelter had changed and they now wanted to build a new shelter. They wanted and received approval to move forward so they could hire a consultant to tell them how big a new building should be. There was some concern that building to the south of the current shelter might run into problems with the foundation of the old County Home (Poor Farm). The Commissioners warned them that they should expect no funding from the County and that the County did not want a new facility that would increase expenses. The representatives of the Friends of the Animal Shelter expressed confidence that they could raise the funding needed to build.

The representative from Financial Arts, who is coordinating the County's switch of health insurance, discussed some changes and details in the new health insurance that needed Commissioner approval. A person who wants to expand a pond was next. He has not yet gone before Planning or the BZA but wanted to know what he needed if he had the material excavated hauled over County Roads. He was told to come back when and if he actually hauls material.

The Sheriff and a representative from Franciscan Health gave a presentation on employee mental health. Nationally first responders have more depression and mental health issues than the rest of the population because in their jobs  they witness traumatic situations. The Sheriff said that he would be working with Franciscan but wondered if there were any other County employees who might also benefit from the arrangements he was making. Mr Culp said that he would have the item on a meeting of Department heads next week. The Commissioners approved a contract with Lake and Porter Counties to house juvenile defendants. This is an annual contract and in 2018 Jasper County exceeded the number of days in this year's contract.

The Health Department asked for and was granted permission to hire a part-time food inspector. The Commissioners approved with little discussion the CAFO and floodplain ordinances that had come to them from the Plan Commission.

The last item on the agenda was a third ordinance from the Plan Commission, a wind farm ordinance. Because of widespread public interest in this item, the meeting moved upstairs to one of the court rooms which have much more seating than the Commissioners room. (Pictures from the Rensselaer Republican here.)

Mr Culp announced that there would be no vote on this item at this meeting and that the session would end at 11:45, which was more than an hour later. First Vince Urbano, a member of the Plan Commission, went over the various changes that the Plan Commission had made and answered questions from the Commissioners. Then members of the public had a chance to voice their concerns and opinions. It was all very orderly.

In the afternoon the Drainage Board met. It revised the boundaries of the watershed of the Amsler ditch. When it was being reconstructed, a tile was discovered draining into it from land that was not considered to be in the watershed. The change will reduce the amount that people who had been in the watershed will pay but may be an unpleasant surprise to those who discover that they are in the watershed.

The Board reviewed plans for the KV High School athletic improvements. These plans have been scaled back from what was originally desired because of the prospect of lost property tax revenue in a few years. It also looked at the drainage plans for the Casey's General Store in Wheatfield. The building has already been built and it did not get Drainage Board approval earlier because the builders did not realize that they needed it.

Here is a final picture, the current state of the Autumn Trace Apartments. I think the weather has slowed progress.

Speaking of slowed progress, the weather has also delayed the opening of US 231 north of Rensselaer. Work on the bridge over the Iroquois is not yet finished.