Over the weekend the Saint Joseph's College Alumni Association held the first SJC homecoming since the College closed. It did not have a football game but it did have alumni, brats, and beer.
The event was held in Brookside Park. As I approached I was impressed that the cars were backed up onto Jackson Street. When I got there I saw that there was an unrelated soccer game on the field and a motor cycle group in another shelter, so without those events there would not have been nearly as many cars.
Reinforcements Design was selling T-shirts.
There was a bouncy house for the kids.
I met a couple of my former students. It seemed that the people were having a good time.
The Alumni association is planning for its next big event, a Little 500 that will be held at the Jasper County Fairgrounds. Alumni will be able to bring a camper and spent the night in the Alumni Village. The association also provided a link the a new SJC on-line archive that Sheila Maxwell has spent many hours preparing. See here.
The other big event for the weekend was Oktoberfest. The ideal weather and the presence of the SJC alumni helped give this year's Fest the largest attendance ever.
As in the past, there were two bands, a German band to open the event and another band for the night crowd.
Cleanup from both events was rapid. By the next morning most of the garbage was gone. The tables were off the street Sunday morning and gone early Monday.
I notice that one of the shelters at Brookside Park was getting a border. This shelter will be the main shelter for the Vietnam Wall exhibit coming in May.
Oktoberfest celebrates the harvest, and when I drove north on Thursday, I noticed a few fields that had been harvested and two or three that had combines working them. I expected the trees to have more color as October begins. There are leaves falling, but they are not turning yellow, gold, and red before they fall.
This is a good week to go into City Hall and pay your utility bill. They utility office is celebrating Public Power Week with cookies and candy.
The lot that once held the Fendig Drug store before the building burned was paved last week. This picture, taken Sunday, is already out of date. The lot has been painted with lines and every parking space has the word "Reserved" on it. It is not a public lot.
I noticed some other paving. The back of the College Mall was recently paved and the front had a seal coat applied. Jasper Junction was getting new asphalt last week.
WIC is in its new offices between the Lafayette Bank and DeMotte Carpet. Workers were making holes in the highways at the SR 114 and US 231 intersection, installing sensors. The point, I guess, is to reduce the time a car has to sit at a light when the road is empty.
Tomorrow the SJC Alumni Association will celebrate Homecoming in Brookside Park. The sale at SJC is taking advantage of returning alumni with a special sale of SJC branded items. For example, there are a lot of football helmets available.
Chairs with both SJC and the McDonalds logo.
There is a pile of old yearbooks.
Many tables full of clothing and much more.
This special sale is in the Field House, not the Recreation Center. In the hallway leading to the sale the bell that was originally in the old Admin building (burned in 1973 but the bell was removed long before that) is on display but not for sale.
Most of the homecoming events will take place at Brookside Park and a tent has been set up to get ready.
In other news, the small parking lot at Weston Cemetery has been paved.
Below is a picture of one of the preformed beams that will support the new Washington Street Bridge.
On Friday morning these beams were being placed on the northern span. The supports that were placed on the southern span are being covered with metal. The middle span is still open.
Have a nice weekend. Enjoy Homecoming and/or Oktoberfest.
Fenwick Farms Brewing Company had its official ribbon cutting on Tuesday afternoon,
These vats may soon be moved next door.
The demolition of the old bridge is finished and now work has started on the rebuilding. The steel I-Beams were put in place on Tuesday, but they may not be part of the final product. The supports seem to be preformed concrete beams.
The current exhibit in the Historical Society Museum is about county schools. There were three of the old township schools that looked very similar. The two others that looked like this were Hanging Grove and South Barkley. This one was the Newland School and you might be able to make out the name on the front if you click on it and view it at full size.
Monday's City Council meeting began with an update on the Parks for People campaign, the upcoming effort to raise funds for improvements in the City parks. Titan will be the architect and perhaps the contractor. In early October a film company will be in town for a couple days to film a video. In the later part of October the campaign will go public and between now and then City officials, City employees, and members of the Park Board will be encouraged to donate to get the campaign off to a solid start.
Much of the rest of the meeting was concerned with details and normal business. The Council adopted the 2018 budget with no discussion. Before the Council approved a policies and procedures document, there was a discussion of breaks and lunch hours and if the wording in the draft was needed because of Department of Labor regulations. A policy regarding advance payment of invoices was repealed and replaced because for some reason the changes in the just adopted policies and procedures conflicted with the existing payment-of-invoices policy.
The Electric Utility was given permission to seek quotes for a truck with a 60 foot aerial boom. (I think this is a bucket truck.) It will replace a 2005 truck now in use. Next year the State Department of Transportation plans to move US 231 a bit to the east at the Mr Calvary Road intersection and as result, the City must move the gas line. To do that it needs to purchase an easement from St. Joseph's College. The price has been negotiated and something is still being checked by lawyers, but the Council gave the Mayor the right to pay the $850 for the easement.
City linemen are back from Gainesville, FL. The Mayor and others have had many calls expressing appreciation for the work they did in helping restore power. The recent hot weather has resulted in a lot of generating hours at the power plant. Construction of the substation west of town continues and by mid October much of the remaining equipment should have arrived.
Coffee with a Cop is scheduled for October 4. The Utility Office will celebrate Public Power Week from October 1 to 7. The Park Board will meet Monday night.
The Project Manager received permission to seek bids for road resurfacing, work that will be aided by the $700+K Community Crossing Grant the City received.
In other happenings, the sale at SJC continues and prices are dropping. When I stopped by last week, the signs said everything was 10% off. I heard that today everything was 25% off. The sale will continue for approximately eight more weeks, and who knows what the discount will be then. (Of course there may be little left worth buying.) This coming weekend there will be a special sale of SJC branded items in the Field House.
SJC announced on Facebook the return of a bell that had been once been in the old Administration Building but which had been removed long before it burned. It had been installed in St. Henry's Church in Medaryville. St. Henry's is closing and will be demolished and the bell came back to SJC. I was only inside the church once, for a funeral, but it seemed like a nice building.
We are getting close to harvest time and a few fields have already been harvested. The trees are still very green, but there are leaves falling. The weather conditions this year may result in unimpressive fall colors.
Asters, one of the very last flowers to bloom in the fall, are now blooming.
There was a pickle ball callout on Monday and there was only a small group that responded. There will be another lesson on Oct 2 at 5:30 at Brookside Park. The Facebook page is here.
Habitat for Humanity has begun construction of another house on East Elm Street, south of the old Schumacher factory. The house on Vine that burned while being remodeled early in 2017 has been demolished.
I noticed that water was being pumped out of Babcock Quarry. Asking about it, I was told that the pumping has been going on for several weeks and is apparently meant to control the water level.
Also at the site, trucks are dumping millings from work on SR 114 east of town and it appears that the company working on the Washington Street Bridge is using the site for storage of some materials.
The September meeting of the County Council drew a sizable crowd and in the middle of the meeting those attending were rewarded for being there.
The first item on the agenda was reading the 2018 budget and approving it. It was several minutes of numbers that were incomprehensible but apparently reading them is required. To see what was read, go to budgetnotices.in.gov and find Jasper County. (You can find lots of other budgets there as well. All are pretty much incomprehensible for the average citizen.)
The Council had some time to kill before they could take up the next item on the agenda. (When there is a time specified for something, it apparently cannot be done earlier.) There was a discussion of the Local Income Tax and a motion was passed to make no changes in it for the next year. Jasper County has the third highest local income tax in the state but other counties are increasing theirs, so if we hold the line, we may end up being in the mainstream in a few years.
Next the Council heard from the government agencies that have budgets that they must approve. (They hear reports at the September meeting but vote on them in the October meeting.) First up was the Rensselaer Central School Corporation, which needs Council approval because the Board is appointed, not elected. The Corporation has a slightly larger budget and expects a small dip in enrollment. The Jasper County Airport reported a budget that was the same size as last years but with money moved around in the accounts. There is a new tenant at the airport, Von’s Aircraft Service, LLC. It will provide an avionics shop that will be complementary to what Excel Air provides. The possibility of this business was presented a year ago at an Airport Authority Board meeting.
Northwest Indiana Solid Waste District relies on tipping fees from the two area landfills, in Newton and White Counties so it needs no county funds. However, because Jasper County has the largest assessed valuation, it is Jasper County that approves its budget. The spokeswoman emphasized that they recycle electronics at no cost and in many places there are fees to dispose of TVs and monitors. Her big announcement was that they would cease taking tires after Saturday's pickup at the County Garage. She gave out pens that were largely made from recycled plastic to those in attendance. (John Price loved these pens so much that when he left the Council, his fellow Councilmen gave him some of them as a parting gift.) The last group was the Iroquois Conservancy, which cleans the river (except that part that goes through Rensselaer). They had an increase in their budget.
The Council made some additional appropriations or transfers for the Circuit Court, Animal Control, and the Sheriff. The new regional manager for Prompt Ambulance introduced himself and talked a bit about their effort to have people fill out and place on the refrigerator a form with some basic medical information so that in case the EMTs arrive and the person is unconscious, the EMTs will know where to begin with treatment.
A Honeywell representative then gave a long presentation about energy usage that was similar to one he gave to the Commissioners in August. The overall price tag is high. He noted that the ducts in the jail are undersized and that is a reason for some of the problems there. Apparently the Commissions will discuss putting some of these proposals out for bid at their October 2 meeting.
Closing the meeting, the Council approved more transfers and passed resolutions dissolving two funds, the riverboat fund and the cumulative jail fund, and transferring the balances to the general fund. These measures had been discussed at the previous meeting and had been recommended by Umbaugh, the County's financial advisor.
To contact Rensselaer Adventures, send e-mail to rensselaeradventures at yahoo.com. (I put the @ in there originally, and of the first eight messages I received, four were the Nigerian scam and three told me I won a lottery I never entered. Maybe this change is already too late.)
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