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Agendas with board packet items: Lowndes County Board of Education

The Lowndes County Board of Education (LCBOE) often includes along with its agendas detailed information from its board packets. The Lowndes County Commission could do the same.

Here’s their November FY2012 Finance Report in their 12 December 2012 agenda. Sometimes they even include details of items for their executive sessions, as in Personnel recommendations attached to that same agenda.

The Valdosta Board of Education (VBOE) does the same thing. Here’s a football ticket proposal and a Coke contract from VBOE’s 27 February 2012 agenda; also health insurance cost information. That particular agenda has several more financial documents attached.

Both LCBOE and VBOE use eboardsolutions.com. Other companies sell other products that facilitate posting board agendas and minutes.

Travis County, Texas, which includes packet items with its agendas, appears to have constructed its own website. Travis County adds videos after the meetings. I bet they’d tell other local governments how they do it.

So there’s part of a spectrum of solutions to posting board packet items online with agendas: use a turnkey cloud solution, or roll your own.

The Lowndes County Commission could pick a solution, and inform the public about what they are doing by putting agenda packets online with their agendas.

-jsq

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wendy’s and Reed-Elsevier flee ALEC: 8 and counting

Companies with customers care about “the broad range of criticism being leveled at ALEC”. Two more just left, making it eight and counting.

Reuters reported an hour ago: Reed Elsevier, Wendy’s drop conservative group,

Reed Elsevier is the latest company to drop out of a conservative national advocacy group in the United States that has been a lightning rod for gun laws.

The Anglo-Dutch professional information service provider said on Thursday it resigned its board seat and dropped its membership of the American Legislative Council (ALEC).

…

Hamburger chain Wendy’s Co said late on Wednesday that it decided in late 2011 not to renew its ALEC membership for 2012.

That’s Pepsi and Coca-Cola, followed by Kraft and Intuit, plus the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, McDonald’s, and now Wendy’s and Reed-Elsevier. Eight and counting. Pretty close to one a work day.

Why?

“We made the decision after considering the broad range of criticism being leveled at ALEC,” said a Reed Elsevier spokesman.

The council has faced a push-back in recent weeks because of its involvement in voting laws and in “stand your ground” gun laws such as one under scrutiny in the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida.

Let’s not forget private prisons, such as the one CCA wanted to build in Lowndes County. Even though that one is “shelved” due to lack of customers, others are still sucking up tax dollars that could go to education.

I’m still rooting for next to leave ALEC to be UPS, based in Atlanta.

-jsq

Videos @ LCC 2012 04 10

Your county commission might have a problem with transparency when no item in a voting session takes more than a few seconds longer than the invocation and pledge. Or perhaps a public hearing in which the public is not invited to speak.

Another five minute meeting, like the previous morning’s four (Chairman’s count) or five (VDT’s count) minute work session. They did not spend even one minute on any item of the agenda.

We did get to learn that the cryptic

7.a. Seminole Circle Property

is owned by the county which wants to sell it off. Commissioner Richard Raines even read from Georgia Code the reason why the county could do that without putting it up for bids. If you did have any objection, or maybe you wanted to buy it, you’re too late, because a few seconds after we learned what it was, they sold it off. That was the longest item, at 1 minute and 20 seconds.

They didn’t mention that the subject property is apparently a splinter of a much larger 538.31 acre parcel, 0172 119, which is presumably the “land application site” they referred to. According to the 8 December 2009 minutes they use it as a hay field. After land application of what? Continue reading →

Nathan Deal coming to Valdosta on May Day

The “right to work” governor of Georgia is visiting Valdosta and Lowndes County on May Day, which is a worker’s holiday many other places.

According to the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce, 2012 State Legislative Luncheon 05/01/12 – 05/01/12,

The Chamber’s annual state legislative luncheon will feature Governor Nathan Deal, who will share highlights from the 2012 Legislative Session. Hosting the Gov. along with the Chamber is Sen. Tim Golden and Reps. Ellis Black, Amy Carter, and Jason Shaw.

Registration is $25 for Chamber members and $40 for all others. Chamber members can purchase a corporate table for ten for $250. Attendees must register by noon on April 20.

Location: James H. Rainwater Conference Center

In many countries May Day is a holiday celebrating workers’ rights. Georgia is a “right to work” state (translation: workers can be fired at any time for any reason), and the Chamber promotes that:

Continue reading →

McDonald’s maybe left ALEC last year or last month

McDonald’s doesn’t seem to know when exactly it left ALEC, if it ever did. They do know how to build a fast food store in a local neighborhood that doesn’t want it, though.

Ryan Grim wrote for HuffPost yesterday, and then updated, McDonald’s Says It Left ALEC In March 2012 [UPDATE],

Under pressure from a progressive campaign to abandon the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), McDonald’s is insisting that it left the controversial conservative organization in March.

Yes, but which March?

Continue reading →

Videos of Lowndes County and the mayors @ LOST 2012 04 09

Here are videos of the Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) talks yesterday morning between Lowndes County and the local cities (Valdosta, Hahira, Remerton, Dasher, and Lake Park. Not really negotiations, these were more an exchange of views. The county’s position is the same as Chairman Ashley Paulk told me after the county’s four minute work session earlier that morning: the county could claim 72% of LOST based on cost of services delivered to the whole county, but the county’s offer is to stick with the 58% share from 2002. The cities all would like a bigger share.

The venue was the county’s meeting room next to Commission Chambers. There was no sound feed available in there, so sound is variable.

First County Manager Joe Pritchard explained the state-mandated procedures and Lowndes County’s position, both of which were spelled out in a three page paper. Basically, the county wants to stick to the percentages negotiated in 2002, although by the county’s reckoning it could ask for a much higher percentage.

None of the cities had a written position paper. Valdosta Mayor John Gayle noted Valdosta had grown more than the county as a whole. County Chairman Ashley Paulk responded that the city couldn’t grow without the county growing. The Mayor said nontheless most growth was in Valdosta. The Chairman asked whether that was growth in households? The Mayor said he didn’t know the answer to that right now. The Chairman remarked that according to his reading of the census, it was mostly not in households.

Hahira Mayor Wayne Bullard Continue reading →

Ben Hill Coal Plant Cancelled

Ben Hill Coal Plant was cancelled today by Power4Georgians (P4G). Losing Cobb EMC funding plus new air pollution regulations finally had a good effect.

According to SACE PR today, Proposed Ben Hill Coal Plant Cancelled in Georgia: Power4Georgians in Tenuous Position on Plant Washington After Legal Agreement

Clean air advocates and environmental groups won a victory today when Power4Georgians (P4G), the only company trying to develop expensive new coal plants in Georgia, agreed to comply with critical new safeguards against mercury pollution. The company also agreed to cancel the proposed Ben Hill coal-fired power plant and invest $5 million in energy efficiency and renewable projects. The Sierra Club, the Fall Line Alliance for a Clean Environment (FACE), Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), and the Ogeechee Riverkeeper, represented by GreenLaw and the Southern Environmental Law Center, successfully challenged the permit for Plant Washington issued by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, and the settlement agreement is pending approval by each group. If built, Power4Georgians’ Plant Washington will have to meet the much more protective emission standards for mercury and other air toxins.

The longterm implications are even better:

Continue reading →

Lowndes County position on LOST negotiations @ LCC 2012 04 09

Lowndes County Clerk Paige Dukes handed out this document, Lowndes County’s Report for Initial LOST Negotiations: April 9, 2012, at that first LOST meeting yesterday. When I spoke to her later, I mentioned that I thought it was the very model of how to write such a document: clear, complete, pithy, and easily understandable. She did not have a readily-accessible electronic copy, so I’ve posted these scanned images on the LAKE website.

The document includes a summary of the negotiation procedure (60 days to negotiate, after which it goes to mediation, then Superior Court “baseball arbitration”), plus how and how much LOST can reduce property taxes.

The rest of the document is the county’s position, which includes that the county provides services such as sheriff, courts, public health, and animal control that benefit the entire county, and the county could claim 72% of LOST. However, the county is only asking for the same 58% as negotiated in 2002.

A few things I did not know include that the dedicated millage for Parks and Rec (VLPRA 1.5mil) and the Industrial Authority (VLCIA 1 mil) come out of county property taxes, not out of any city property taxes. Also VLCIA’s millage started since 2002, before which VLCIA was funded out of hotel-motel taxes, including Valdosta hotel-motel taxes.

I also remarked to Paige Dukes that I wished the cities had prepared similar position statements. She said they may be depending on LOST negotiating documents by the Georgia Municipal Association (GMA), and that there were similar documents by the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia (ACCG), both which you can find linked in on the LAKE website.

The ACCG guidelines include this interesting passage:

Continue reading →

No Gates for ALEC: who’s next to jump off the crony capitalism ship?

Apparently the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave more money to ALEC than Pepsi, Coke, Kraft, and Intuit combined, but no more. Who’s next?

Jessica Pieklo wrote yesterday for care2, Bill And Melinda Gates Dump ALEC,

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation became the latest high profile backer of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council to withdraw financial support after pressure from groups opposed to ALEC’s support of “stand your ground” laws and Voter ID.

And private prisons, such as the one CCA wanted to build in Lowndes County, and “anti-immigrant” bills that creat many new crimes to fill those private prisons. And charter schools, such as the referendum for charter school tax credits on the ballot in Georgia in November. Some of our local “white fathers” pushed school consolidation a few months ago and charter schools are yet another attack on public education, backed by ALEC.

Roll Call reports that a foundation spokesperson said it does not plan to make any future grants to the organization. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributed more than $375,000 to ALEC in the past two years.

Meanwhile, according to ALEC Watch:

ALEC’s more than three hundred corporate sponsors pay annual membership dues ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 to advance their agendas, plus additional fees of $1,500 to $5,000 a year to participate in ALEC’s various task forces, where, according to an ALEC publication, “legislators welcome their private-sector counterparts to the table as equals.”

That’s the very model of a bad public-private partnership and crony capitalism. (More detail by ALEC Exposed.)

So what excuse does the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have? Jessica Pieklo’s article says:

Continue reading →

Four minute work session @ LCC 2012 04 09

As I walked in the door, a couple minutes late due to construction on the hospital parking lot, Commissioner Crawford Powell said,

John, you’re late!

They were milling about and looked like they were about to start. But no, they had started early and Chairman Paulk told me the meeting had lasted four minutes because there hadn’t been much to say. So there are no videos of this morning’s Lowndes County Commission Work Session.

I remarked that it had seemed like a fairly complicated agenda, but he didn’t think so.

I asked him about this mysterious item:

7.b. Request from LCSO — GOHS Grant #2013-TEN-0077-00 & #2013-GA-0040-00

He said it is about some equipment to automate Sheriff’s deputies checking license plates against databases. I told him I had assumed they had already been doing that. He said they could do it by hand, but they’d get really tired trying to do as many as this device could do.

Presumably it’s similar to the Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) described by Doug Nurse in the AJC 20 March 2009, New police license plate scanner eyes criminals.

Alpharetta Police Officer John Allen said that a few weeks after the system became went online last August, he was driving home after a shift when the system alerted him that he had passed a stolen car. He wheeled around, and after a chase, arrested the thief.

“I never even saw the tag myself,” Allen said. “I would have just kept going. It catches things I would be unable to see.”

While I don’t know that I’m in favor of ALPR, it’s common enough elsewhere that I was actually surprised the famously drug-interdicting LCSO wasn’t already using it.

To the Chairman’s credit, as soon as I asked about the LOST meeting with the mayors, he said it was at 9:30 in the room next door, and the public was invited. I took videos of that LOST meeting, and they will appear soon.

-jsq