Leaving February

The County Council met a week later than usual this month with only two items on the agenda. One was to sign the farm leases that the Commissioners had approved and the other was for a transfer of funds that turned out to be for the grand total of $10.00.

With the item agendas taken care of, the Council spent about twenty minutes in a meandering discussion. There was mention of interest in another solar farm in the northern part of the County, this one near Kniman. It is at a very preliminary planning stage and may depend on whether or not NIPSCO is willing to buy power from it. It is projected to cover about 480 acres and have a capacity of 65 megawatts. Time will tell if anything results from this.

Mr Eastridge from JCEDO is working to have Remington, DeMotte, and eventually Rensselaer adopt a tax abatement ordinance similar to that which the County recently adopted. The idea is that if both County and communities had similar tax abatement policies, it would be easier for businesses to evaluate the desirability of locating here.

The Probation Department will be moving into the former PNC Bank building next week. The Council joked that the building should be named the Andrew Andree Building for all the work that Councilman Andree has put into organizing and supervising the building renovation.

Someone said that the Sheriff would like to add a greenhouse at the jail to grow vegetables with hydroponics. This past year the jail added a garden plot and the Sheriff was happy with how that worked.

County fair planning is mostly complete. I think I understood a comment to say that there was a plan to move the old office building to the track area.

Jasper County does not have enough day care and pre-K education but there are citizens working to alleviate that.

PTABOA met Thursday morning. The meeting began with the swearing in of members and election of officers. There were two items on the agenda. Hope Community recently purchased the building it has been using and applied for a property tax exemption, which was granted. Valley Oaks has changed its name from Wabash Valley and the exemption was continued with the new name. The Board will meet again soon to consider land value reassessment, which is done periodically to reflect market transactions.

(In case you are wondering, PTABOA stands for Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals.)

The Fendig Gallery in the Carnegie Center is now exhibiting the annual high-school art show. It seems a bit smaller than in the past. Below are a few items that caught my attention.

Type-art drawings such as the one below appear each year. I am not sure how they are done but I am impressed by them (because I like typefaces.)

 I was surprised to see Japanese anime.

The show has a short run, only until March 8. The Gallery is open Tuesdays and Thursdays from noon until 4:00 and on Saturdays from noon until 2:00.

Despite the snow on Tuesday night and Wednesday that caused schools to go to e-learning again, there are signs of spring. I heard a flock of red-wing blackbirds a few days ago. Garden seeds are on display in several stores. Walmart is starting to stock the outdoor garden center.

It has been a mild winter with only a very few days in which temperatures got below zero. I can remember only one.

This may be my last time to post about demolition of the Town Mall. The fence is gone and crushed stone has been placed where the old Long's Gift Shop was.

I have heard from several people that the northern part will be planted in grass and that where the crushed stone is will be parking.

Last week WorkOne moved to a new office in what was the laundromat space on Drexel Drive.

Their old office was in the Town Mall. The new office is much bigger and has windows.

Once washing machines or driers lined the walls. Now they are lined by computers for use by people looking for jobs. Everything connected with job search seems to have gone on-line.

There is a small classroom with more computers. It is used for adult education. I remember that after the renovation of Drexel Hall, adult education was located there, but that was a long time ago.

A century ago, in February, 1920, some citizens of Rensselaer were trying to raise money to build a swimming pool. Below is an article I found quite by accident as I was looking for something else. Obviously this effort to get a pool did not succeed because Rensselaer did not get a pool until the mid to late 1940s.

I wonder what the cost of a pool would have been in 1920. The article mentions that Wolcott had a pool. Does it still have a pool?

Meetings, meetings, and meetings

The Rensselaer City Council met on Monday evening with a short agenda. At the beginning of each meeting the Mayor asks if there are any citizen's comments and on Monday Mr. Eastridge of the Jasper County Economic Development Organization (JCEDO) had a request. JCEDO has recently purchased the building at 104 West Washington (next to the Horton Building) and plans to renovate it, putting its offices on the second floor and renting the ground floor. The work will require a building permit that will cost abut $1700. Mr Eastridge requested that the fee be waived. JECED is a non profit organization that tries to recruit businesses to the County. It received financial support from the County and the cities and towns of the County. Rensselaer contributes about $10,000 to its budget. Councilman Watson was concerned about ADA access. There is no plan to install an elevator to reach the second floor because the expense would make the project economically unfeasible. The request was granted, with Mr. Watson voting against.

The Council approved a request from the Water Department to replace a 2005 pickup truck with a 2018 truck that will cost $24,975 with trade in. The truck is used daily by the department. The Mayor appointed a committee of Hollerman and Watson to look at the possibility of increasing the minimum natural gas charge, which is $3.63 for City residents. The Committee will review information that the Gas Superintendent has collected about minimum fees that other gas utilities charge.

The Mayor reported that the first planning meeting for the Colts Fan Fest went well. The Colts would like it on the Court House lawn and the City plans to ask for permission for that use at the Commissioners meeting on March 2. The City grant application to INDOT for downtown revitalization was denied for 2024 but INDOT encouraged the City to reapply. Work on a second application is proceeding. The Council meeting lasted about 30 minutes.

After this meeting I wandered over to the Court House for the County BZA and Plan Commission meetings. I was surprised to see a big crowd. I wondered which of the items on the agendas had attracted them: another variance for a CAFO, a renewal of a use variance for the drug rehabilitation house, a natural gas peaking plant, or the rezoning for a wedding-event venue.

The BZA met first. Its first cause was a frontage variance. The petitioners want to split off a house from farm land and give the house a 37.5 foot access via the current driveway in order to keep the farm acreage as large as possible. It was granted. Next was a variance for lot coverage from Northwind Pork, which had applied for a zoning change and a couple of variances in September.

The zoning ordinance says that CAFO facilities cannot cover more than 15 percent of the acreage of the lot and the plans here will cover about 24%. The current operation uses about 50%. There was one objection from the audience and the variance passed with one opposed.

The final item on the BZA agenda was a use variance renewal for Jasper County Recovery House. The original use variance two years ago had attracted considerable opposition. This year there was none. There have been no complaints received in the two years that the House has been operating and some of those opposed two years ago have become donors. The House has a capacity for eight but comfortably holds five. After a month or six weeks at the Jasper County facility, residents move to the much larger Elkhart facility to complete the course. Those coming from Jasper County have had great success at Elkhart, perhaps because they get intensive individual attention. The Board approved a permanent use variance that is limited to the current operators of the facility. If another organization were to take over the operation, it would need to reapply for the use variance.

The next meeting will be March 16 if there is an agenda, and nothing had been submitted as of Monday.

The large, standing-room-only audience was still in the room as the Planning Commission began its meeting. This was the first meeting of the year, so they needed to elect officers. They opted to continue with the same officers from last year.

The first item on the agenda was the one I thought was the most interesting. A company called Primary Energy wanted a rezone from A1 to I2 for a 30-acre parcel near the current NIPSCO plant to build a natural-gas peaking plant.  (I think this is their website.) They had submitted a proposal to NIPSCO but it is still pending. The purpose of getting a zoning change is to be able to show NIPSCO that if selected, the project has met the necessary regulatory requirements.

A peaking plant produces power only when the grid needs extra electricity. This is what the City of Rensselaer's electric plant does. It is most likely to operate on extremely hot days when everyone is using their air conditioners. The reason for locating the plant near the current NIPSCO plant is that it can be tied into the existing distribution structure. The plant would not become operational until after NIPSCO shuts down its coal generation. The plant would employ only six to eight people. The Plan Commission recommended that the rezone be granted and sent that recommendation on to the Commissioners.

Next up was a one-lot replat from a subdivision that would allow the resident to put install a driveway. The original plat does not allow a driveway directly to the street. The request was approved.

Finally, I discovered why this meeting has the big crowd. It was for the next item, a rezone from A1 to A4 in Wheatfield Township for a wedding-event venue. There were about a dozen people who spoke against it, mostly citing problems of traffic and noise. One woman gave the Commission a petition with two pages of signatures of people who opposed the rezone. The Commission passed an unfavorable recommendation for the zoning change to the Commissioners. The room then emptied.

Next up was a 3-lot subdivision in Union Township. The person who owns the land, about ten acres, wants to split it into three parcels, which could then be sold for building houses. I believe one of the parcels currently has a house. It passed.

The final item was a discussion of some changes to fees and requirements. Nothing was done at this meeting, but I suspect that fees for filing variances and rezone requests will soon be raised. Also possible is a requirement that a site survey be obtained before construction. Often people build and do not get the site survey until they apply for a mortgage and the banks require a site survey. The home owners can then find that they have setbacks problems and to get the mortgage they need to get a variance.

On Saturday morning there was a forum featuring the three state legislators who represent Jasper County in the State Legislature. Jasper County is split for the State Senate, with Brian Buchanan representing the southern third of the County and Ed Charbonneau representing the northern two thirds. Douglas Gutwein, who represents all of Jasper County in the State House of Representatives, was scheduled to attend but missed because of illness. The meeting was held in the classrooms in the basement of the hospital and almost all the chairs were filled.

The State legislature is in session, but this year is their short session, which means they do not consider the budget. The legislature passes a two-year budget, so long sessions that consider the budget alternate with short sessions that do not. Legislation supported by the two senators included raising the smoking and vaping age to 21 and making texting while driving illegal. The legislature would like to address health care cost and availability but finding an effective way to do that, one that does not create more problems than it solves, remains a challenge. They pointed out that 50% of the state budget goes to K-12 education.
Senator Charbonneau said that the comments he received on the Red for Ed day indicated that mental health was a top priority for teachers. Kids are different today.

After their opening comments, the floor was open to the public. Many of the questions were about education—there were many teachers in the audience. There were complaints about testing and a suggestion that the State stop spending so much on testing and spend it on the schools. Someone noted that teacher raises were completely eaten up by higher health insurance costs. The senators were surprised to hear that Rensselaer has an appointed school board—there are only seven or eight in the state, with Valparaiso also having one.
Several people did not like any money going to charter schools, saying they lacked accountability. They were reminded that charter schools are public schools and cannot be selective in who they serve. (My past reincarnation as an economist whispered to me that charter schools would not attract students if there was no dissatisfaction with conventional public schools.) There were questions about medical marijuana and a concern for the continuing population loss of rural counties.

And on a completely different topic, dirt replacement at the town mall site in nearing completion. What seems to be a final layer of new dirt is being added and it smells of manure. I am ashamed to admit that I cannot tell if the smells is of cow manure or pig manure. As a resident of Jasper County, I should be able to distinguish the two.

Odds and ends, February 2020

The company that owns Indiana Beach north of Monticello announced early this week that it is closing the amusement park after it could not find a buyer for the property. Right now this appears that the impact on Monticello will be like that of the closing of SJC had on Rensselaer.

Speaking of SJC, the acting head of the College gave an interview on the local radio station that you can hear here. I hope they are able to find other colleges that are willing to offer classes on the campus, but I do not see why those other colleges would be interested in helping SJC regain accreditation.

Demolition of the Town Mall site is finished and now dump trucks are bringing in dirt to level the site.

Dugouts are being constructed at the new ball fields in Brookside Park.

A couple businesses dislocated by the Town Mall fire seem to have relocated to the small office building behind Ayda's. Nail Bumpers and the Sune Salon are both there and I believe they both were in the Town Mall. Also there is Wilson Events by Design, which rents for weddings and parties, and The Hair Station, which I think has been there for some time. The Marion Township Trustee used to have his office in this building but is now at the Fire Station.

The HoneyComb Salon, another business that was burned out, has moved to the back of the building by the bowstring arch bridge. Also at the back of this building is a new business, Trammel Mental Health, LLC. It offers individual, couple & family therapy. Serenity Health and Wellness was scheduled to have a ribbon cutting on a space across from the Marathon gas station by the railroad tracks but it was postponed and I have not seen a reschedule.

On Tuesday evening the Jasper County Soil & Water Conservation District held its 74th annual meeting at eMbers venue. The featured speaker was Scott Pelath, executive director of the Kankakee River Basin Commission. The Commission was established a year or two or three ago by the State Legislature and replaced another group that dealt with the Kankakee. Pelath is from LaPorte and served 20 years in the State Legislature. His topic was "The Future of the Kankakee River." Kankakee River floods, such as that of 2018, cause serious damage. When the pioneers arrived in this area, the River was a meandering stream with a huge wetland area associated with it. In the early 20th Century it was dredged and straightened. This created thousands of acres of fertile farm land, but it left a river that flows much faster and that keeps eroding its banks. The goal of the Commission seems to be to alleviate the harm caused by the decisions of a century ago without abandoning the benefits. One thing they want to do is find places to store water during floods. The water must go somewhere, and if it goes to land designed to be flooded, it will not be as deep in farm fields. The Commission has purchased some land along the River in Newton County for that purpose and I expect they will be purchasing more.

On Thursday evening there was a meeting of the Jasper County Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area. It is a group that is trying to get organized. As the name suggests, its goal is to control invasive plants such as honeysuckle and garlic mustard.  One announcement at the meeting was that the Jasper County Soil and Water Conservation District is having a native plant sale this spring. Details and an order form are here.

I learned at the meeting that the Nature Conservancy has a number of land holdings in northeastern Jasper County. Most are adjacent to the Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area, but several are north of the NIPSCO Shahfer power plant. One of them, the Prairie Border Nature Preserve near Jasper Pulaski, has a walking trail open to the public.

Less than a month to the equinox. Days are lengthening by more than two minutes each day.

RENARTWLK Phase 2

Given the weather, a decent number of people attended the RENARTWLK meet and greet on Thursday evening. After people mingled for a while, Ryan Musch gave a presentation outlining what the plans are for this summer's mural week. He began by recognizing the late Bob Lewis (d 2014) for his vision of public art that planted the seeds for the mural walk. Plans for murals had been drawn up several years ago but it was Main Street Rensselaer's decision to put murals on the wall by the river that was the spark the led to the 2019 murals in the alley.

This year the goal is to have five outside artists do ten works, one major and one smaller work each. The goal is to saturate the two alleys that already have murals. Bigger cities may have more murals, but none have the concentration of murals in a small space that Rensselaer may soon have. Mural week this year will be from June 28 to July 4 and there will be more structure to the week. There is a goal of having some kind of small event on each of the days or evenings of mural week that will allow locals to be involved in some way.

The budget for mural week is $30,000. About half has been raised. Last year 88 people donated and the hope is that at least as many will this year. If you want to know more, go to the Rensselaer Art Walk website and subscribe to their e-mails. (There will be a dance party in April as a fund-raising event. Details here.)

Wednesday night was bitterly cold and the sky was exceptionally clear. I took advantage of the clear sky to check out Orion, one of the most recognizable constellations in the winter sky. The star Betelgeuse has been in the news because it has faded considerably in the past couple of months. Astronomers are not sure what that means but some are hoping that it might go supernova. Betelgeuse seemed to be a bit brighter than its neighbor Bellatrix, but normally it is much brighter.

Wednesday's Rensselaer Republican had an article about Indiana farmers getting into the hemp business to produce CBD oil. While scrolling through microfilm this week, by chance I happened on a another article (and picture) about hemp in Jasper County. They were in the September 27, 1943 issue of the Rensselaer Republican. The caption on the picture said that the building was being built by the Defense Plant Corporation and would be operated by an agency of the Commodity Credit Corporation.  Hemp was being grown to make rope because the pre-war sources of rope fiber had been cut off by the Japanese. The article said the best hemp was 7 to 8 feet tall and 3 inches in diameter. There was a tract near Remington of 4,000 acres devoted to growing hemp.

There was no mention of where the building was being built, but I assume it was near Remington. Does anyone recognize the building? Is it still standing, and if so, what is it being used for today? The war-time hemp production left a legacy of ditch weed in Jasper County that resulted in sustained efforts to eradicate it.

Finally, the Indiana Colts have announced that Rensselaer won the vote for a Colts Fan Fest.

Update: A comment from the Facebook link to this post:
Lanny Sigo: The Hemp plant was directly south of Remington, later to become Vermont Marble Plant, Remington Forge, and now OMNI Forge. Come to the traffic light at 231 & 24, go south out of town, it is on the east side of the road. My Dad, Art Sigo, talked about the Hemp Plant in his book, Born at the Right Time. (1994)

Trucks

The Rensselaer City Council quickly moved through the first items on its agenda on Monday evening. It approved the canceling of outstanding warrants, which is a bookkeeping measure that I do not understand. It approved an ordinance that raises Weston Cemetery fees that the Council had accepted at the last meeting and passed a gas tracker decrease of about a ½ cent per hundred cubic feet. It also passed three requests for public relations funds, two for flowers for funerals of relatives of City employees and one to sponsor a scholarship given by the Little Cousin Jasper organization.

The Fire Department's aerial truck is back in service but the pump is not working properly. The Fire Chief would like to sell this truck and buy a new one. Aerial trucks are built to order and it takes about a year from ordering to delivery. The cost is estimated in the $1.2 to $1.4 million range. There are several options to pay for it. The Council voted to give him permission to follow through in developing the specs for the truck, getting ready for a bid, and looking into financing options. One of the reasons for the interest in purchasing new is that the manufacturer of the current truck is no longer in business, which makes repairs difficult.

Later in the meeting there was a short discussion of the need to purchase or repair another truck, the 20-year old vac truck that the City uses for water-line and sewer repairs. It cost $233,000 new and may need $65,000 in repairs. The Council gave the Project Coordinator authority to explore options on repairing or replacing.

There were a number of announcements. There are still openings for Census workers and at least two people stressed that it is important for the City that everyone be counted. The house on Clark Street next to Brookside Park has been demolished. The City has been installing new storm drains at Cullen and Rutsen. The City noticed that water was unaccounted for in the water system so hired a company to find leaks in the water mains. Five leaks were fixed, including two that were large. It takes about five days to check the 30 miles of water mains that the City has.

The Council approved paying a bill for road salt that had been misplaced and had not been submitted previously and also approved getting bids for tree removal for this year. There are about 60 trees, mostly dead or dying ash trees, that are in City right-of-ways and need to be removed.

The meeting lasted a little less than 40 minutes.

Johns Brothers has removed almost all the the remains of the Town Mall. The metal has been taken to the scrap yard and the concrete will be ground up and used as fill in the future. The rest is being taken to the Newton County landfill. There is still quite a bit of concrete flooring that needs to be broken up and hauled away.

The Jasper County Economic Development Organization announced on Wednesday that it had purchased the building at 104 W. Washington. The organization had been looking for a new location but the Town Mall fire forced a quick decision. It plans to rehabilitate the building to allow a retail business, so it seems that they plan to have the offices on the second floor. Until recently this business was Dreamers Solution, a music store, visited here.

Here is another photo of Town Mall demolition. I may not  be able to take these pictures much longer.

Snow had just begun falling when I took these two pictures on Wednesday afternoon. There is a lot more on the ground as I write this.
Update: Another e-learning day for Rensselaer schools.