Getting ready for the parade

Rensselaer's annual Christmas Parade is only a few days off (Saturday at 4:30) and I thought it might be interesting to see how one of the entries was getting ready.

CDC Resources will have an float this year, perhaps for the first time ever or at least for the first time in a number of years. When I stopped by the CDC Resources building at the far east end of Angelica Street, two people were working putting on some finishing touches. Or maybe they had a bit more to do before they were ready to apply finishing touches.

The reindeer that are on the front edge of the float looked impressive.

CDC Resources will also have a float in Monticello's Christmas Parade, but it will not be this float. The Monticello Parade takes place at the same time that the Rensselaer's Parade will be rolling through town. So CDC Resources is preparing two floats. I hope that there will be pictures of both on their Facebook page--it will be interesting so see how each location decorated a float.

The theme of the float is Santa's Workshop. It ties in with the CDC Resources Workshop where the consumers of CDC Resources do a variety of jobs for local companies.

In fact the workshop was busy with another job from the bird food people. There were several pallets of boxes in the back of the workshop.

Each of the boxes had packages of bird feed in it. The label and shrink wrap  was to be removed from the packages.

Then the unwrapped packages were placed back in the boxes.

I asked both consumers and staff why they were doing this and no one knew. My guess is that they will go back to the packing line and have a new label put one, but that is just a guess. (I asked how they kept track of how much work each person was doing and was told that they marked how many each did when they picked up the finished boxes.)

The CDC Resources workshop gets a number of  jobs that are one time only. The message of their Christmas parade float is that just as Santa's Workshop can do a lot of tasks, so can the workshops at CDC Resources.

I look forward to seeing what their finished float looks like.

The reason for having the parade after the sun sets is so Christmas lights can be displayed. Unfortunately, it makes taking good pictures difficult. After the parade, the Little Cousin Jasper Committee is sponsoring a Chili supper at the First Presbyterian Church. (Here, here and here are some pictures from the last three Christmas parades.)

Construction update Nov 30, 2015

  On Sunday I visited the I-65/SR114 intersection to see what progress was being made on the two construction projects there. If you drive west on SR114 you will notice piles of blue pipe along the road. The installation of this pipe, which will bring city water to the east side of the I-65 intersection, has been completed only to a bit east of McDonalds. I suspect that once out of the commercial area and east of the Interstate Motel, progress will be much faster. It will connect to the existing water main that reaches to the County Fairgrounds.

 It does not seem like its been six weeks since I checked progress on the Comfort Suites, but time flies. I was surprised to see a crew laying bricks on Sunday. Perhaps they need to use whatever decent weather they can get.

 Here is the view from the other side.

 On the west side of the intersection, the Grandma's building continues to decay. I heard several weeks ago that the gas tanks had been removed.

With city water and sewer on the east side of the intersection and not on the west, it may be hard to find anyone willing to remove this eyesore and build on this lot.

NICHES 20th Anniversary Exhibit

 The current exhibit at the Carnegie Center is the NICHES 20th Anniversary Exhibit. NICHES is a non-profit organization that owns and manages a number of nature preserves in Northern Indiana; the name is an acronym for Northern Indiana Citizens Helping Ecosystems Survive. The exhibit has been traveling through area counties. The Carnegie Center is its last stop and members of the local art community have supplemented the exhibit with various art works that they have done.

I was especially interested in their poster showing what is and has been happening near the Fisher Oak Savanna on the southern edge of Jasper County. The Gish Wildlife Preserve is a recent gift. The Expansion has not officially happened yet--the closing will be in December. I thought they might have landlocked a property but was told that the two houses there have an access route between the red and yellow lines. There is a small notch on the east side of the Fisher Oak Savanna, and that is the property with an old house, visited here. It has been remodeled since that visit.

The poster has information on how the site would be restored.

Most of the items in the exhibit from NICHES are photographs. Below a family is wading in another property NICHES has in Jasper County, the ten-acre Shepard Swamp near Baileys Corner.

I tried to take pictures that would minimize reflection, but I could not avoid all of it. You can see pictures reflected from the opposite wall in this photograph of sandhill cranes.

Below are a few items from locals artists. The first is a watercolor of the view of Fisher Oak Savanna from its parking lot.

I find this fiber art fascinating.

The picture below is painted with acrylics and is titled "Fisher Oaks."

The entrance to the Carnegies Center has a Christmassy feel to it.  (I had to check to see if Christmassy is really a word. It apparently is.)

The NICHES exhibit will be on display until December 31.

Cover covers for Wood

There was a surprise at Monday night's City Council meeting. Mayor Wood was absent and in his place George Cover presided. He is President of the City Council. He announced that he was keeping his vote. (The mayor does not vote unless, perhaps, there is a tie.) With one member of the council absent, it was a smallish group in front.

The Council approved adding an item to the agenda that had been omitted, a report from its financial advisor on the wet water treatment plant that will be build on Lincoln Street. The first order of business was public comments and the head of the Park Board, Michael Manis, invited the public to a public forum at 7:00 on Monday, December 7 at the library to discuss plans for the parks.

After a transfer of funds, the financial advisor, John Julien, addressed the council. The bids for the wet water treatment plant, mandated by the State of Indiana, had come in higher by $1.9 million than the engineering estimates. As a result, additional financing had to be arranged. Searches for more grant money had come up empty, but the Rural Development agency of the Department of Agriculture had agreed to refinance the existing $5 million plus debt of the city with a new loan at 2%. The existing debt carries interest rates of 3.25% to 5.25%. That offer is equivalent to a grant of about a third of the $1.9 million. The state financing people that the City must work with had agreed, but the deal must be made by the end of this year to guarantee the 2% rate. To do this, the bond ordinance passed in a previous meeting had to be revised and it had to be done at this meeting because there was a 20 day comment period after notice was published in the newspaper. With a series of votes, that was done. The good news is that additional water and sewer rate hikes beyond those already approved will probably not be necessary.

In other business, the City accepted supply bids from Ceres Solutions for unleaded gasoline and diesel fuel and from CTS Tire for tire services. The Council approved the purchase of a police squad car from Thomas Dodge for $24944 less trade in. It should be available in the second week of December.

There were no administrative comments and few superintendents' reports. The Park Department and the Cemetery Department were picking up new trucks on Tuesday. The Fire Chief announced that a bid for new 30 air bottles and the breathing apparatus that goes with them had come back at $170,000. The old equipment will be out of date at the end of 2016 and into 2017. Half the cost will be picked up the the Marion Township Trustee. Nothing has to be done immediately.

As I was going to the meeting, I noticed that the Christmas street decorations had been put up earlier that day.

At 7:00 the county Board of Zoning Appeals met to discuss and approve a request for a variance for frontage. The petitioner wanted to build a house away from the road and needed  only a small frontage on the county road for his lane.

After the BZA adjourned, the Jasper County Plan Commission met to discuss a draft of a revised Unified Development Ordinance (UDO). The draft had been prepared by a consultant who had worked on the original document and the revision had incorporated concerns of local officials. Since I did not have a copy of the document they were discussing, it was difficult to follow most of the discussion. A member of the BZA who was not on the Plan Commission was sitting near me and I could see on his copy of the document a lot of red type, which indicated changes. Concerns were raised about septic tanks, drainage, and frontage requirements. The opinion of the consultant seemed to be that when in doubt, err on the side of a more restrictive regulation rather than a less restrictive regulation. The BZA exists to grant variances and exceptions on a case-by-case basis, so if the regulation is too strict in a particular situation, it can be bypassed. I am not sure all members of the Planning Commission agreed and certainly the one member of the public who spoke did not.

Nothing was passed. There will be a public meeting in the future for public input, though unless the document is made available, I do not see how the public can know enough to comment.

A problem with solar power

Sunday was a bright, clear day with lots of sun. Despite the abundant sunshine, it was not a good day for solar power generation at our local solar park. (The sign was not there the last time I visited.)

The storm that passed through on Saturday left the solar panels covered in snow.

The panels should be snow free in a day or two--the forecast is for warmer weather this week.

The low on Sunday morning at the downtown weather station was 7 degrees. That is about twenty degrees colder than it has been so far this fall. Ninety or 95% of the city streets are dry, but watch out for the five to ten percent that have ice.

The new fire station still is not enclosed. There will be some cold work to do in the next month or two.

Have you encountered the adult coloring book craze? I checked on Amazon on Saturday night and nine of the top twenty selling books were adult coloring books. They are supposed to relieve stress.