The whole Work Session took eleven minutes, of which three were about the county guaranteeing refinancing Hospital Authority debt. They vote tonight at 5:30 PM; Gretchen will be there with the LAKE video camera. Update 2019-07-23:< Obtained in response to an open records request from LAKE, board packet is on the LAKE website.

Second longest yesterday morning at a minute and a half was the SPLOST VIII Agreement, for which it seems the list is already finished, finalized at a “public” meeting between the county and the five cities, which was not announced to the public.

Most of the bids for the Grassy Pond Sewer Connection were not in the board packet, we discovered due to a question by a Commissioner. The Abandonment of Portion of Reed Road is the bit to the Withlacoochee River, which they county says was “unopened”, which is a strange way to describe the old dirt road that used to cross the river on a bridge.

Below are links to each LAKE video of each agenda item, with a few notes, followed by a LAKE video playlist. See also the previous post with the agenda and more notes.

• 1. Call to order 4. Minutes for Approval

  Video.

• 5 a. FY 2020 Juvenile Justice Incentive Grant

  Video.

• 5 b. ACCG IRMA Property and Liability Program Renewal

  Video.

• 5 c. Grassy Pond Sewer Connection

  Video. Commissioner Demarcus Marshall wanted to know if the other four bids were in the packet. They were not. Kevin Beals promised to bring them to the Tuesday Regular Session.

• 5 d. Hospital Authority Refunding Revenue Certificates

  Video. The alleged County Attorney’s brother, Jim Elliott, presented. Commissioners had no questions.

  They never seem to have mentioned this time, but back on 10 October 2011 they said it was $100 million in bonds.

  Representatives from SGMC gave a two part presentation about expansion of SGMC facilities, to include 96 new private rooms in the Dasher Heart Center, the 5 story parking deck, now under construction and due to be completed in early 2012, and Life Safety and Generator Equipment updates.

  Additionally, they spoke briefly on the acquisition of Smith Northview Hospital on September 1, 2011. Smith Northview operates as a campus of SGMC and all Smith Northview employees are now SGMC employees.

  The second part of the presentation was about the financial portions of each of the 4 projects. The total cost of all four projects is $143,000,000 and the financed portion of that is expected to be $115,000,000. $3,000,000 is set aside in SPLOST for the parking deck and 25,000,000 is SGMC internally available funds. (Because SGMC is a public, not-for-profit, hospital, any funds that are above the cost of providing services must be re-invested into the hospital and the services it provides.)

  Commissioners in 2011 had a lot more questions than this time; there’s more in that report from back then. Those bonds went on sale the week of 26 October 2011.

• 5 e. SPLOST VIII Agreement

  Video. Apparently it is too late to get anything onto the list as “the list” as been completed.

  Would be nice if the governments actually took input from the citizens about what we would like to tax ourselves for rather than just telling us. SPLOST has failed before when things were on the list that people didn’t want.
  —gretchen

• 5 f. Abandonment of Portion of Reed Road

  Video. Finalization of Quit Claim Deeds for Reed Road to the Withlacoochee River, per Commission decision of 8 January 2019 after the previous morning’s Work Session. The agenda sheet link for that item for back then now leads nowhere. The current agenda refers to “unopened” right of way, which is a misnomer for “unpaved”, since the dirt road used to go over a bridge over the Withlacoochee River before it either washed out, as County Engineer Mike Fletcher said this January, or burned, which is what I thought I remembered.

• 6. Reports (none) 8. Adjournment

  Video. The County Manager was not present. A whopping 11 minute meeting.

Here’s a LAKE video playlist:

Videos: SPLOST VIII, Grassy Pond Sewer, and Hospital Authority funding
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2019-07-23.

-jsq

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