We love the Valdosta Daily Times (VDT), WCTV, and WALB, but if they published anything about that, we missed it. They have space constraints, and we don’t. Local governments do a lot of good things (and other things) that don’t get reported in the traditional press. This is where LAKE comes in.
LAKE, the Lowndes County Knowledge Exchange, started when a few people from around Lowndes County, Georgia noticed that they were almost the only ones who showed up regularly at County Commission meetings. Other people would come for some single item that affected them, such as a rezoning case for land next to them, or a road paving or widening, or a water billing change. Then they’d get up and walk out before the meeting was finished, and never be seen again. So every new group came in cold, with no background on their case and no context on other, similar, cases. We discovered the situation was about the same for the Valdosta City Council, for the two school boards, for the Planning Commission, for the city governments of Dasher, Hahira, Lake Park, and Remerton, not to mention all the various boards and authorities (Industrial, Parks, Airport, etc.).
So we thought we’d try to get more people to come and see what was going on. And we’d try to supply some of the missing background and context. A lot of that is on the LAKE web pages. And we’ll keep doing that.
But we also find ourselves telling friends and neighbors stories from meetings, and stories that connect meetings. Some of these stories are already written up in the meeting reports, but some of them are not. So we’re adding this blog.
And it’s the web, so we’ll also be doing pictures and videos. About county government meetings, and about other goings-on about town.
We’ve prototyped some of this in the blog Canopy Roads of South Georgia. Here are videos of the ribbon cutting for Quarterman Road, which was one of the projects that provoked the formation of LAKE:
The VDT published quite a nice story about that event, with a few quotes from participants. But that blog published videos of all the remarks by everyone who spoke, as well as more text, pictures, and video of that event, as well as many previous blog posts on background and context. Canopy Roads will continue as before with its own idiosyncratic subjects, and this new blog On the LAKE Front will pick up many new stories.
Also, newspapers and TV news attempt to stick to “just the facts”. We will present the facts as nearly as we can discover them, but we will also not hesitate to add opinion. From you, as well as us: that’s what blog comments are for. And if you’ve got a story you think we should publish, send it to us and we’ll look at it and we may publish it.
Welcome to The LAKE Front!
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