Culvert replacement

SR 114 east of I-65 (I started writing west of Rensselaer and then realized that all of SR 114 between US 231 and I-65 is within the city limits of Rensselaer) is closed as I write this for the replacement of a culvert. I expected the culvert in question would be the one by the airport because the road there is very rough, but it is further west, past the county highway garage.

I asked the lady at the barricade on Airport Road where she was sending trucks. She said that she was telling them to turn around, go back to US 231, and then north to SR 14. The cars were detoured to Bunkum Road.

Three meetings

August’s Commissioners meeting was remarkably short--it only lasted an hour. There was not much on the agenda or off the agenda.

The director of economic development for Pulaski County asked if their bike-trail system could use some Jasper County roads. Pulaski County has an OCRA grant to develop the system and the county is trying to link all the communities. There are two places along the their western edge where the Jasper County roads are in better shape (paved rather than gravel) than the Pulaski County roads. The Commissioners agreed to his request. 

The representative from the Sheriff’s department was late because of a serious accident that morning and the coroner jumped in to say that the northern annex was having problems with rot in walls. He was allowed to seek estimates of how the problems could be fixed. He mentioned that his office had had 46 cases this year so far. 

A sheriff’s deputy reported that the communication tower is still not operating and that communication had been bad for the morning accident. Most of his discussion was about jail transport. A female transport officer who was pregnant had taken a dispatch job and so he wanted the department to have permission to fill the vacancy and also to retain a part-time officer who was working transport and court-house security. The request was granted.

The proposals for matching grants for road repairs have been submitted. Jasper the Bison traveled to Indianapolis on Sunday and is now standing in the little lawn by the glass barn (I have no idea where that is) with 49 friends. After a few routine items the meeting was adjourned. 

The Drainage Board met in the afternoon. There was a long discussion about a request to lower a drainage tile on the Jasper Newton border and eventually the Board decided that the matter needed to be handled by the joint Newton-Jasper Drainage Board. Next was discussion of a plan to install fiber optic cable to the Whispering Pines subdivision. It came before the Board because there are drainage tiles in the subdivision. There is disagreement between the surveyor and the company that is supposed to be fixing the Gangloff tile that was damaged when a fiber optic cable was installed along SR 114. There were a few other items discussed, including mention that there will be a meeting of the joint Benton-Jasper Drainage Board on Aug 22 at 9:00 am.

In the evening the Rensselaer Park Board and Park Corporation met. Most of the meeting was about soccer. About half way through, a representative of the soccer program arrived. In the next week the future of the program will probably be decided. If SJC wants to continue sponsoring it, it will need to provide the fields. If the program uses the park fields, the Park Board wants it to agree to become a park program in 2017. We will see what happens. 

The Staddon Field property still has not transferred. Work is scheduled to begin this week on the gazebo roof in Hal Gray Park.

A new piece of equipment has arrived on the construction site on Lincoln Street.

High school sports teams are beginning practices. My grandchildren in the Indianapolis area are already back to school. Below is the running group for middle school kids that has been exercising for several weeks. There were a lot of them.

There is a for-sale sign in front of the bowling alley building. I cannot find it on the Internet.

Rock the Arts and more

Jasper the painted buffalo made an appearance at Rock the Arts on Saturday.

 A line of booths were selling various forms of art.

 The stage was impressively large. There were eight different musical arts on the schedule.

 The same stage from the other side.

 There were many pictures of the event on Facebook, most posted on Saturday.

For several days there has been a speed monitor on College. It is sensitive enough to register bikes and in the process of taking the picture above, I had to test it.

 If you came to Rock the Arts via the bowstring bridge, you might have seen the new sign on Renew Salon.

 The restoration of the facade of the old Oddfellows building seems to be complete. The people visiting the bakery are happy about that.

 Last week two dump trucks were hauling dirt from the construction site on Lincoln Street. I asked one of the drivers where they were taking it and he said they were dumping it at the sewage plant west of SJC. He also said it was one of the nastiest cargoes he has hauled. It is muck.

 The construction has brought a lot of truck traffic to the area and the trucks were repeatedly taking out the utility lines over Abagail. I think the low lines are TV Cable and telephone. Finally one of the utilities, I think Century Link, got permission from the city to raise the lines a bit. They also requested that the trucks not use Abagail. I think the folks along Elza are now getting the traffic.

 Several years ago I got a Compass Plant to grow in my yard. This year it has finally flowered. It is one of a dozen or so plants that has yellow daisy flowers. You can see false sunflowers and coneflowers in the background, other yellow daisies.

 There is a less pretty sight (and site) in my garden. The soil is saturated from all the July rains and the wet soil has rotted the roots of cabbages and carrots. They were looking so good at the beginning of the month.

The corn, squash, and sweet potatoes do not seem to mind the wet soil.

Time is flying by--it is already August and the summer will soon be over.

Ribbon cuttings and more

On Wednesday Wagner Lumber and Supply had a ribbon cutting. The business was Woods Lumber and Seeds until late May when it was sold. It is located immediately north of the railroad tracks on McKinley Street.

 Dollar Tree had its ribbon cutting on Tuesday but I had another commitment so could not attend. The Rensselaer Republican posted a picture on Facebook.

One of the people at the Wagner Lumber ribbon cutting works at Fair Oaks Farms and she had some brochures about the new Winfield Crop Adventure. I said that they had not had the big opening ceremony for that one that they have had for some of the other new attractions. She told me that in fact they had had a big ceremony, but it was not geared for the local audience. The Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, had attended as had other people important in agriculture. The event was by invitation only. Searching the Internet, I found a several places that reported on it, including here and here.

Speaking of crops, there is now a wide assortment of veggies at the Farmers Market.

 Tuesday night was Kids Night at the Farmers Market. In the distance below you can see Franciscan Alliance, which was checking bike helmets and giving some away. IBEC had a booth next to them and was giving kids balloons, many of which soon departed for the stratosphere. On the left is the table of ConAgra, which gave away pudding and popcorn. I asked if they produced the pudding locally and was told that the local plant only processes popcorn.

 The recent rains have saturated some soils. In my plot at the community garden the carrots are rotting because of the saturated soil and the cabbages look like they may be dying as well. More rain is in the forecast and we do not need it.

 The recent rains have delayed work on the high water treatment plant. The pits were flooded and apparently they were pumped out by trucks such as the one above.

Early this week highway crews lined or painted US 231. I assume that means the work is finished. Big Dog announced that it will no longer be renting tools, party supply, and equipment to the general public.

Work on Halas Hall seems to be almost finished. I think this is the final look. Gallagher Hall still has a lot of work remaining.

Below is a follow-up picture of the fire at Rich's Cycle Solutions. This truck was in the building when the building burned. There is a dumpster on site and much of the debris has been placed in it.

I noticed this tree at the Fair Grounds last week. I am not sure exactly what it is, but it is some sort of chestnut.

There are efforts to bring back the chestnut. One approach has been to cross the American Chestnut with European or Asian chestnut to get the genes necessary to defeat the fungus and then continue crossbreeding to try to get the maximum amount of American Chestnut DNA. The other approach is the GMO approach, to take a gene from another species that will give the tree protection from the fungus.

Planning Commission meeting, July 25, 2016

The meeting of the Jasper County Planning Commission was unusually long and contentious on Monday evening. The first item on the agenda, a zoning change to allow a couple to put a second house on a rural property, passed with little discussion. Not so the second item, a request to rezone a property a few hundred yards north the intersection of SR 14 and US 231 from commercial business to agricultural. The owner had bought the property in June and intended to raise hogs on it, though it is a small, narrow lot, only 9.9 acres. The lot has a building on the west end near the highway that was for many years, and no one knew how many, used as a hog market or transfer. Since the lot had been used for hogs for many years and because it was adjacent to farm lots, the owner assumed that he could raise hogs there. He wanted to have about 180 gilts and ten boars on the property, and when the gilts had a litter, they would stay in the existing building until the piglets were weaned and sent to other farms.

However, after he purchased the property he discovered that it was zoned commercial-business. Apparently it had been zoned business in 1971 or 1972 and that designation allowed for agricultural uses.  When the zoning ordinances changed and that business zoning classification was eliminated, it was made commercial business and apparently that classification does not allow agriculture or maybe just animals.

There were a couple of people in the audience who opposed the change because they did not want hogs on the property. One member of the Commission suggested that the property should be zoned commercial because it is near the intersection of two highways and there are two or three businesses nearby. Eventually the Commission decided to delay a decision for a month to talk to their lawyer and get more info. They noted that if the land is zoned agricultural, the maximum number of pigs the owner can have on the land is 99 because there is an ordinance that say that non-confined pigs cannot exceed ten to an acre. Along with the delay in considering the matter, they gave him permission to keep pigs on the property until they decide the issue.

The third item was a proposal to change zoning of property in Wheatfield Township from residential to agricultural. The land in question was a sand ridge that had been zoned residential because someone planned a subdivision on the property and that subdivision never happened. After zoning was changed to agricultural, the owner intended to apply for a special exception from the Board of Zoning Appeals to mine the sand, that is, he proposed leveling the sand ridge and selling the sand. After the sand ridge was removed, he would farm the land. He had come to the Commission because he had moved some sand to help a neighbor and had been given a cease and desist order.

This proposed zoning change attracted a lot of opposition, with most if it centered on the archeology of the area. Much of Jasper and Newton Counties was once marsh land that teemed with wildlife. The American Indians of the area hunted the wildlife and made their settlements on the high points, the sand ridges. This is well known to those who hunt Indian artifacts. The party requesting the change had approval from the Army Corp of Engineers which protects wetlands but did not have an archeological survey which protects sites of archeological interest. A member of the audience who at one time owned the property told the Commission that the ridge was full of arrowheads and other artifacts. The Commission decided to delay decision until the September meeting, giving the petitioner time to find or do an archeological survey. (You can see the property on the Jasper County GIS site by searching for Prairie Creek Ag Lands.)

The last item on the agenda was an amendment to the flood plain codes of Jasper County, but after almost two hours of meeting, the members decided to table the discussion for a future meeting. After the Commission adjourned, the Board of Zoning Appeal met. The only item on the agenda was a special exception for sand mining, but since the zoning had not changed, they could not act on the matter, so they moved the item to the September meeting. 

And now for something completely different. You might remember from biology that a lichen is the symbiosis of a fungus and an alga. That understanding of lichen, which has been around for 150 years, is incorrect. Read about what a lichen really is here.

I need a picture, so here is a happy one. Gas prices in town are again below $2.00 a gallon.