Christmas monster

‘Tis the season for a behemoth rising out of the deep, bringing Yuletide tongues of flame!

If you haven’t been downtown lately, we highly recommend the light displays set up on the Howard County Courthouse lawn.

There are a couple of Christmas-related items, such as toy soldiers and candles, but people don’t quite know what to make of the Loch Ness Monster display, the animated “guy fishing” display, and the woodpecker, complete with woodpecker sounds.

“I’m a traditional guy. I want candy canes and toy soldiers,” Howard Superior Court 4 Judge George Hopkins, whose office looks out over the monster, said Thursday. “I don’t begin to understand what all this is about. To quote Ebeneezer Scrooge, ‘Bah Humbug!’”

The marvelously odd display comes courtesy of an anonymous donor, who handmade the decorations. The day before Thanksgiving, county commissioners Dave Trine and Bill Thompson organized the effort to install the lights.

This is the first time in several years the county has had a display of light stands on the courthouse lawn. The county once owned a number of seasonal decorations, but they were all given to the Kokomo Parks Department a few years back.

Former county maintenance superintendent Art Fross said he needed space in a county pole barn, and said he didn’t think the old decorations even worked.

Those decorations, which include a Santa with sleigh, elves, reindeer and a carousel, are all now working and on display at Highland Park.

Asked his opinion of the sea serpent and the other decorations, Kokomo Mayor Greg Goodnight seemed at a loss for words.

“Yeah ... I dunno ... I’ll probably just do a ‘no comment,’” Goodnight said.

Trine said the donor of the displays has contributed to We Care Park in the past, and is a retired Delphi engineer who simply enjoys making the displays. Trine said the man’s yard features a fire-breathing dragon display.

Trine also said he thinks adults might not appreciate the displays as much as kids do.

“First of all, it’s supposed to be the Loch Ness Monster, according to the guy who made it,” Trine said when asked his opinion of the “sea serpent.”

“And if you ask a second- or third-grader what’s neater — a 14-foot dinosaur or a snowman — nine out of 10 are gonna tell you the dinosaur’s cooler.”

Poor relief bailout?

Liberty Township Trustee Linda Grove is used to being asked for money — not asking for it herself.

Nonetheless Grove is expected to ask the Howard County Commissioners for several thousand dollars at Monday’s meeting — money she said is needed to keep her poor relief budget from going into the red.

Grove has pretty much spent what she’s taken in since taking office seven years ago. This year, she said, poor relief requests were up 40 percent in her township, which includes Greentown.

The problem for Grove is that she apparently took too long to announce her problem. She filed separate requests for additional funds with both the county and the state, but both requests were filed too late. Grove said she might need an extra $15,000 this year, and another $39,000 next year.

She also asked for a 63 percent increase in her 2010 budget, but the Howard County Council attached a non-binding negative recommendation to the request. If the state agrees with the council, Grove will have to start looking for ways to cut her budget.

No Continental forest

Our pet project, or perhaps more properly termed our crazy dream, has been to plant avenues of beautiful hardwood trees across the vast Continental Steel Main Plant site.

With crushed limestone walk paths between the trees, the site would be an ideal urban green space, sort of a Kokomo Central Park, or so we thought.

The U.S. EPA, however, rained on our parade. Large trees, they said, would have deep root systems, deep enough to penetrate the 18-inch soil cap now covering the site’s polluted soils. If high winds knocked the trees over, they said, the polluted soils would then be exposed, posing a health risk.

Bah humbug indeed!