Here’s a video playlist of the 20 November 2012 South Georgia Regional Library Board meeting. And here’s George Rhynes’ editorial on what he saw, heard, and was asked at that meeting. He’d prefer SPLOST being spent first on sidewalks than on moving the library where people would have to go farther to get to it. Also, like many of us, he’s tired of a few people controlling the purse-strings without input from the rest of us. He gave an example:

Mr. Patrick here at the library said before when I talked about renovating the building; he had more information, he talked about the slab the library is built on; he talked about the roof; he talked about the leaks in it. Well, I don’t know about that. Often I may speak about something I don’t know about. Once I become informed about it, maybe I can change my decision.

But right now I don’t have enough information to make me vote for SPLOST unless somebody put some guarantees up that the people who are the most deserving and that most need that money in their community on the low-economic side of this town, who have been crying out for years, for decades, really, to get something done, you know, it’s just that simple.

George also wondered why the VDT, whose managing editor Kay Harris also chairs the library board meetings, published nothing about the three citizens who spoke at the Valdosta City Council meeting the other night. And what about the elections irregularities in Brooks County that brought the Georgia Secretary of State to Quitman? Why was nothing published about that in the VDT?

Somebody got to tell the truth!

Amen, Brother Rhynes!

Here’s a playlist of the library board meeting, followed by that editorial:

Monthly Meeting, South Georgia Library Board (SGLB)
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 20 November 2012.
Videos by George Boston Rhynes for bostongbr on YouTube (K.V.C.I.).

Since September’s meeting, I’ve discovered that library staff submit written reports to the board before the meeting, so this time I’m not going to attempt to summarize what library staff. I look forward to the Board posting those reports, agendas, and minutes ongoing on their website so everyone can see them. Or if they don’t want to do it, send them to LAKE, and we’ll put them in the same place on the LAKE website as the past ones we collected as responses to an open records request. While we appreciate library staff’s very thorough response to that request (referred to by Patrick Spurlock in this recent meeting), it really shouldn’t be necessary for the public to have to file requests to get information that is already readily available internally. And given that each of those reports is probably in PDF before it’s printed, sending the PDF would be even easier than having LAKE scan paper documents.

See other post for an interesting discussion of SPLOST.

Another board member (Ray Devery?) wanted to know whether the Southside Library Boosters had donated anything to the library. No, nobody knew. The board member indicated that group had already lost its 501(c)(3) status. (That loss is documented in a letter from Patrick Spurlock to the Board 11 July 2012.) Staff said they would talk to “our county attorney” about what to do next. I’m guessing that means Tom Gooding.

Thanks to George for videoing the November Library Board meeting!

-jsq

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