It's Valdosta Farm Days this morning, 9AM to 1PM, at the historic Lowndes County Courthouse. Local food, community, and economy. Y'all come!
-jsq
It's Valdosta Farm Days this morning, 9AM to 1PM, at the historic Lowndes County Courthouse. Local food, community, and economy. Y'all come!
-jsq
Jimmy Hiers said at the Lowndes County Commission hearing on rezoning case REZ-2012-09 Copeland that the Planning Commission had their meeting two days before it was posted, thus making it difficult for people to appear to speak.
County Zoning Administrator Carmella Braswell noted at ZBOA that staff had met statutory requirements even though GLPC had moved its meeting ahead a week. She didn't mention that if those requirements are the same as for the County Commission they only require staff to send letters to immediately adjacent property owners, which would explain why those were the only neighbors who showed up at the Planning Commission. Plus GLPC doesn't publish its agenda in advance, Its chair Bill Slaughter has recently started sending agendas to LAKE for publication, at Gretchen Quarterman's request. Here's the agenda for that GLPC 21 May 2012 meeting. I suppose if the entire county starts reading this blog, problem solved. Or GLPC could publish its agendas on its website, or the county's website, or one or more of the cities' websites.
-jsq
How can a man with health care financial troubles make a living with a shop he’s had for decades when some of the neighbors complain about a rezoning that is now required? A controversial case that raised issues ranging from wetlands to public safety to Moody Air Force Base jets flying out of Valdosta Airport made its way through two appointed boards to a Solomonic rezoning decision by the elected Lowndes County Commission. Nobody wanted to deny a man a living, but many people wanted to limit potential commercial uses of the subject property. The Commissioners attempted to take all that into account, yet failed to incorporate two major considerations raised by neighbors, mentioning one of them only to disparage it. Even that isn’t the end of it, since it may head back to the Zoning Board of Appeals for a buffer variance. Here are videos of REZ-2012-09 Copeland at the Lowndes County Commission.
It had been to the Planning Commission for a recommendation on rezoning, it had been to the Zoning Board of Appeals for a buffer variance, Monday morning it had been to the County Commission Work Session at which we learned a bit more, and Tuesday evening it went to the Lowndes County Commission Regular Session for a vote on rezoning.
At the 8:30 AM Monday Work Session, County Planner Jason Davenport had several updates since Commissioners had received their packets the previous week.
Davenport summarized that he thought there were three camps:
He said one possibility would be for he and the county attorney to meet with the opposition attorney to try to work out some conditions.
The agenda item was
6. Public Hearings – REZ-2012-09 Copeland, 3258 & 3264 Loch Laurel Rd, R-A & R-1 to C-C, well & septic, ~5 acres
Here’s a list of every citizen speaking for, at any of GLPC, ZBOA, or County Commission: John A. Copeland (the applicant), Kevin Copeland (applicant’s son), Nancy Hobby, Charles Miles, Fuller Sorrell, Alan Davis, Robert Roffe, and Norman Bush, plus a petition for.
Here’s a list of every citizen speaking against, at any of GLPC, ZBOA, or County Commission: Bill Nijem (attorney for several neighbors), Jimmy Hiers, Gail Hiers, Greta Vargas, and Patty Haynes.
At a recent Lowndes County Commission meeting, I said:
I was interested to learn two weeks ago that my neighbor Timothy Nessmith was interested in getting DSL on Hambrick Road.
He said you can get it as close to him as Quarterman Road. I can attest to that because I have 3 megabit per second DSL, due to being just close enough to Bellsouth’s DSL box on Cat Creek Road, but most of Quarterman Road can’t get DSL due to distance. There are some other land-line possibilties, involving cables in the ground or wires on poles.
Then there are wireless possibilities, including EVDO, available from Verizon,
with 750 kilobit per second (0.75 Mbps) wide area access from cell phone towers.
Verizon’s towers could also be used for WIFI antennas, for up to 8 Mbps Internet access, over a wide scale.
Then there’s metropolitan-area Internet. Chattanooga has the fastest such network, with 1 Gbps (1,000 Mbps). But hundreds of communities around the country have such networks, including (continued after the video)…
Internet speed and access —John S. Quarterman
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 8 May 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
…Lafayette, Louisiana, Bowling Green, Kentucky, Lagrange, Georgia, and Thomasville, Georgia. They use it for public safety, education (Wiregrass Tech, VSU), and
It attracts new industry. If you want knowledge-based industry, they’re going to be expecting Internet access not just at work, but at home, whereever they live.
Other uses include Continue reading
Valdosta-Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBOA)
had one Lowndes County case at its 5 June 2012 meeting,
VAR-2012-07,
already posted separately.
ZBOA, unlike GLPC, does actually make binding decisions,
but chose not to do so at this meeting for this case.
First they considered two City of Valdosta cases, APP-2012-06 (Bill Nijem spoke for the applicants) and APP-2012-07, both about signs, one at Academy Sports, and the other at Gander Mountain, both of which had been tabled at their previous meeting. ZBOA approved both with conditions.
Here’s a video playlist. Audience left to right, with name, appointed by, and date term expires:
Video Playlist
Regular Session, Valdosta-Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBOA),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 5 June 2011.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
A controversial case made its way from the Planning Commission for a
rezoning recommendation to the Zoning Board of Appeals for a buffer variance
decision,
all before it reached the Lowndes County Commission for a decision
on the rezoning.
Valdosta-Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBOA) had one Lowndes County case at its 5 June 2012 meeting, a buffer variance request, VAR-2012-07. Related aspects of this same property had already been heard by the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC) on 21 May 2012 as the controversial rezoning case REZ-2012-09 Copeland. ZBOA member Nancy Hobby recused herself from VAR-2012-07. ZBOA discussed it at great length and eventually decided to table it. ZBOA, unlike GLPC, does actually make binding decisions, but chose not to do so at this meeting for this case.
This difficult and complicated rezoning case went to all three of the Planning Commission, the Zoning Board of Appeals, and the Lowndes County Commission. First, here are videos of REZ-2012-09 Copeland at the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC), 21 May 2012.
This is case REZ-2012-09 Copeland, 3258 & 3264 Loch Laurel Rd, R-A & R-1 to C-C, well & septic, ~5 acres.
The request is to rezone about 5 acres of the subject property to from Residentidal Agriculture (R-A) and R-1 to Crossroads Commercial Zoning (CC). He noted that Mr. Copeland was not proposing a new use of the property, but:
It’s just he’s had a history of not operating with current zoning.
Davenport said part of that was the fault of the county for not keeping up with what was going on, and part of it was to the credit of the applicant for operating in such a way he hadn’t disturbed his neighbors. And the case itself was very difficult.
It was so challenging it split the staff.
The staff meet as the Technical Review Committee (TRC) about cases before they get to the GLPC. New material before the GLPC, he said, included a new survey.
This survey has changed from what the original packet indicated, and the differences of opinion among the staff was prior to this change?
Davenport said when staff voted they had no survey, but he didn’t think the survey changed their opinions, since what they thought applicant was proposing was pretty much what the survey indicated.
Jason Davenport’s answer was he believed the survey indicated 60 feet width.
Want jobs, low taxes, and less flooding? Help maintain our watersheds with good local planning.
What’s a watershed? Kaid Benfield wrote for Atlantic Cities today, The Cost of Sprawl on Clean Water:
Watersheds are topographic areas where all the rain that falls eventually ends up in a namesake steam, river, lake, or estuary.
These are our local watersheds. Purple is the Little River Watershed, blue is the Withlacoochee Watershed, and Valdosta is where the Little River flows south into the Withlacoochee. Green is the Alapaha watershed, and Tifton is where all three meet. Every drop of rain or used well water or wastewater overflow or pesticide runoff or soapy shower water or clearcut mud that runs downhill into one of these rivers is in their (and our) watersheds.
Becoming greener doesn’t just mean a municipality’s adding a pleasant new park here and there, or planting more trees, although both components may be useful parts of a larger effort. How a town is designed and developed is related to how well it functions, how well it functions is related to how sustainable it really is, and how sustainable it is, is directly related to how it affects its local waters and those who use those same waters downstream.
Compact, mixed-use, well-designed in-town growth can take some of the pressure off of its opposite on the outskirts — or beyond the outskirts — of towns and cities. We know that sprawling growth is generally pretty bad for maintaining environmental quality in a region (air pollution from cars that become necessary in such circumstances, displacement of open land, water pollution from new roads and shopping centers that are begot by such growth patterns).
We also know, as UGA Prof. Dorfman told us several years ago,
Local governments must ensure balanced growth, as
sprawling residential growth is a certain ticket to fiscal ruin*
* Or at least big tax increases.
Kaid Benfield explains how town planning is related to watersheds:
Continue reading Haley Hyatt took this video at yesterday's Remerton City Council Regular Session. -jsq
The 1899 Strickland Cotton Mill is the reason the little town of Remerton, GA exists. The mill village is unique, being an incorporated town within the city limits of Valdosta, GA. The current owners asked to be granted a permit to immediately demolish the historic mill. But many people came forth and made impassioned pleas that the landmark not be torn down. The Remerton City Council voted to table the request to demolish until its Sept. 4, 2012 work session, in hopes of getting more information before making the final decision.
Here's the video:
Remerton Mill discussion
Regular Session, Remerton City Council (RCC),
Remerton, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 June 2012.
Video by John S. Quarterman Haley Hyatt for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
I wish more citizens would do that: go to meetings, take videos, and post them! Send them here and we'll blog some of them.
-jsq
Here are videos for the 11 June 2012 Lowndes County Commission Work Session. Including a speed zone ordinance they plan to pass this evening; we the public have no idea what's in it. Here's the agenda.
One item has already been blogged separately: Waste disposal has been decided: when?
Here's a video playlist:
Appointments to 3 boards, a rezoning, and more: Video Playlist
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 June 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
-jsq