Following
the email announcement about the Comprehensive Plan,
I showed up late, expecting no formal presentation and
a typical SGRC tables-and-easels mill-about meeting,
and found the Planning Commission and staff in their usual seats.
Turns out they were there for their
Work Session agenda;
see the
LAKE videos.
As you can see in this video of the first part of the meeting,
there were citizen questions from Valdosta City Council Sandra Tooley and from me.
County Planner Jason Davenport explained that they were going to have more public hearings on the Comprehensive Plan, many of them also shoehorned in before the GPLC Work Sessions. They all agreed to try to end the Work Session at 6:00 so the Comprehensive Plan meeting could start then. They considered 6:30, but decided it was better to start late than to potentially start early and be over before the public showed up. But see below.
Plus eventually there would be agenda items on each local government agenda for adoption.
I asked how people were supposed to know this was a public hearing, since I couldn’t find any notice even in the newspaper? SGRC staffer Ariel Godwin said he had put a public notice in the VDT as required by state law. He also said he had a “stakeholder” list, with about 350 names on it, to which he sent an announcement. County Planner Jason Davenport said he thought I was on that list. I said actually Gretchen was, which was why I knew about it.
Valdosta City Council Sandra Tooley wanted to know what this was about, especially was it just about transportation. Godwin and Davenport explained it included transportation but wasn’t limited to that, and this was an update to the plan first reviewed ten years ago and adopted shortly afterwards.
There’s one meeting scheduled, 6:30 PM Monday 22 February after the GLPC Work Session, at their usual place, 325 West Savannah Avenue, Valdosta. I just confirmed with Ariel Godwin that time and place. He says more have been discussed, but are not yet scheduled.
Here’s the video:
Videos: Video: Comprehensive Plan
Work Session, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC),
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 January 2016.
-jsq
Short Link: