Category Archives: Community

WCTV on biomass site VLCIA v. Sterling Planet

Greg Gullberg WCTV does what VDT dares not: Greg Gullberg mentioned last year’s biomass protests in the first sentence of this story about the Industrial Authority threatening to sue Sterling Planet to get clear title to the former proposed biomass plant site.

Greg Gullberg reported for WCTV yesterday, Dispute Over Land For Proposed Biomass Plant,

Gullberg and Ricketts

The vocal protests in Valdosta are long gone, but the controversy over the proposed Biomass plant lingers. This time not for concerns of health safety, but over the land.

The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority plans to sue Wiregrass Power LLC to end its contract.

Protesters at City Hall Ban the Burn Go 100% Solar
Ban the Burn Go 100% Solar.

The proposed Biomass Plant was supposed to be a low-cost source of efficient energy. Supporters say it would have created hundreds of jobs. But opponents say the health risks include cancer, lung disease and respiratory disease.

750,000 gallons of water each day Biomass site plan
750,000 gallons of water each day

Tell me, Col. Ricketts, doesn’t it feel better to be visibly on the side of the people, instead of having to defend a bad business deal?

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Changes to Lowndes County’s Unified Land Development Code (ULDC) @ GLPC 2012-08-27

Did you know last night’s Planning Commission meeting included a public hearing about changes to the county’s Unified Land Development Code (ULDC) related to land disturbances and water quality? You wouldn’t have found out about that in the agenda, because it wasn’t posted anywhere you’d be likely to see it. (Where does GLPC post the one physical copy of the agenda required by law, anyway?) Supposedly it was advertised in the Valdosta Daily Times, but a search of Public Notices in Statewide Database of Public Notices from Georgia’s Legal Organ Newspapers for 1 June 2012 through 27 August 2012 finds nothing.

Here’s what the agenda item for the 27 August 2012 GLPC meeting (that we only know about because Gretchen went to that GLPC meeting and asked County Planner Jason Davenport) says:

From a procedural standpoint the amendment has been advertised in the Valdosta Daily Times to fulfill legal requirements. Beyond legal requirements staff has plans to post this agenda item and draft ULDC on the Lowndes County Website at http://www.lowndescounty.com/content.asp?pid=23&id=224. Regarding staff review of the amendments, the TRC recommended for their approval at their 08/16 regular meeting.

If you’d happened to look several levels deep on the Lowndes County website you would have found that undated announcement:

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Distributing information to citizens —George Boston Rhynes

Received yesterday on Valdosta LMIG resurfacing and transparency. -jsq

Thanks you so much for keeping us informed and it is still a disgrace that our elected officials cannot publish their meetings to all citizens. When will our Mayor; Council and County Commissioners start informing all the citizens and not just a select few of conservatives?

When will it all end? The time has come for change to take place in Valdosta for the good of all citizens and visitors. We need and should demand television, radio, internet and other means of distributing information to citizens.

How sad in 2012?

George included a video of his thoughts on elections hereabouts and elsewhere: Words from our YOUTHS….and where are you? Indeed George Rhynes is out there reporting the truth as he sees it, this time along with two VSU students.

-jsq

Transit-Oriented Development or Communities not Cul-de-Sacs

It’s not just VLCIA’s Community Assessment that argues for a public transportation system in Valdosta-Lowndes County. Getting people to work without requiring cars is an even bigger problem in larger metropolitan areas, but many of the issues are the same here.

Nancy Andrews and Audrey Choi wrote for Huffpo 20 Aug 2012, How Transit-Oriented Development Can Help Get America To Work,

To truly get America back to work, we have to focus on more than jobs, jobs, jobs. It is about integrating jobs, transportation, housing and community services in ways that work equally well for lower- and upper-income families.

Vibrant communities where residents can walk to shops, restaurants, grocery stores and community services; and where public transportation provides convenient connections between home and work can be built. Planning community development with public transportation as a central consideration — transit-oriented development or TOD — can spur economic growth, sometimes dramatically. But that approach has not been systematically applied to communities of all income levels.

For these reasons, it is important for government, public transit agencies, nonprofits, foundations and the private sector to come together so that thriving communities for families of all economic levels can be created.

It’s a safety issue, too. Far more Americans die in traffic accidents than in foreign wars, and widening roads farther out just makes the problem worse. Currently, Lowndes County says that’s not pertinent.

Maybe we should change that. What if we built communities, not cul-de-sacs?

-jsq

VLCIA meets tonight, about what, we can’t tell @ VLCIA 2012-08-21

According to its website:

The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority’s Regular Monthly Meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, August 21, 2012, 5:30 PM at the Industrial Authority Conference Room, 2110 N. Patterson Street.

Last meeting, VLCIA Executive Director Andrea Schruijer told me the results of the focus groups would be presented this month. Maybe she meant at this meeting. On the VLCIA facebook page, there’s this paragraph from 14 August 2012:

We are excited to present our final Target Business Analysis to the community at the end of August. We took at 360 degree approach to targeting economic development activity concentrating on employment, workforce skill, investment, and innovation to identify clusters of economic activity and developing targeted strategies for economic development.

It links to this (unembeddable) video of Andrea Schruijer talking about cluster analysis. It’s good they’re branching out to new ways of doing PR. It would be even better if they also published agendas and minutes with content.

Here’s the (content-free) agenda for today’s meeting:

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, August 21, 2012 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
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There are no private schools in Finland: the opposite of Atlanta-imposed charter schools

Privatizing isn’t the answer, rote tests are irrelevant, and competition doesn’t help win. Those are a few of the lessons Finland learned that made its schools world leaders in education. So why would we consider letting Atlanta force privatized charter schools on us?

Anu Partanen wrote for the Atlantic 29 December 2011, What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success

“Oh,” he mentioned at one point, “and there are no private schools in Finland.”

Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education’s Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland, said that offhand while talking at a private school in New York. Nobody seemed to pay much attention. Maybe we should.

He also noted Finland has no standardized tests until the equivalent of high school graduation, and they don’t have any particular system for accountability for teachers or administrators.

“Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted.”

So why do teachers and administrators in Finland so successfully take that responsibility?

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Hahira Third Thursday tonight

It's Hahira Third Thursday tonight from 5PM to 8PM: farmers market, food, hot dogs, hamburgers, music!

Third Thursday comes again on the 20th of September.

The following Saturday, the 22nd of September, it's Motor on Main from 2-6:30 PM and Fall Dance 6:30 to 10:30 PM.

For more information, please contact:

Stacey Dershimer
Special Event Coordinator
City of Hahira
102 S. Church Street
Hahira, GA 31632
229.794.2567 office
229-560-0627 cell
downtown@hahira.ga.us
Hahira Happenings on facebook

-jsq

“It’s almost like they are out to take advantage of the rubes,” —an economist

Do big box stores count as development? Are they worth millions in tax incentives and bond investments? Maybe we can find something better for local industry and jobs.

Rumors have been flying for years about a Bass Pro store coming to Valdosta, like this one on a Georgia Outdoor News forum:

01-22-2008, 09:05 PM, bear-229
ive heard the land has been bought. very close to the new toyota lot but it has not made it to the “new locations” on the web site

That’s on James Road, in that huge proposed development that Lowndes County approved around that time.

Scott Reeder wrote for The Atlantic 13 August 2012, Why Have So Many Cities and Towns Given Away So Much Money to Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s?,

Both Bass Pro Shops and its archrival, Cabela’s, sell hunting and fishing gear in cathedral-like stores featuring taxidermied wildlife, gigantic fresh-water aquarium exhibits and elaborate outdoor reproductions within the stores. The stores are billed as job generators by both companies when they are fishing for development dollars. But the firms’ economic benefits are minimal and costs to taxpayers are great.

An exhaustive investigation conducted by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity found that the two competing firms together have received or are promised more than $2.2 billion from American taxpayers over the past 15 years.

Where does all that money come from? Bonds, usually. Which is yet another reason why last legislature’s HB 475 to give unelected bodies bond issuing privatizing power would be a bad idea.

What does all that money go for?

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There is something you can do

Anybody who has tried to do much of anything around here has run into this phrase:

There’s nothing you can do.

I was reminded of that when I read this, from the Economist 12 May 2012, Hope springs a trap,

This hopelessness manifests itself in many ways. One is a sort of pathological conservatism, where people forgo even feasible things with potentially large benefits for fear of losing the little they already possess.

The article expands on that idea:

Development economists have long surmised that some very poor people may remain trapped in poverty because even the largest investments they are able to make, whether eating a few more calories or working a bit harder on their minuscule businesses, are too small to make a big difference. So getting out of poverty seems to require a quantum leap—vastly more food, a modern machine, or an employee to mind the shop. As a result, they often forgo even the small incremental investments of which they are capable: a bit more fertiliser, some more schooling or a small amount of saving.

It may seem that the article is about the poorest of people, but that “pathological conservatism” could as easily apply to the hopelessness many people seem to have about ever getting solar panels on their own roofs, or to attracting enough business to our area to employ our high school and college graduates, or that businesses will ever come to the south side.

Yet the point of the article is that field studies by MIT economist Esther Duflo show Continue reading →

Vermont protests against wind vs. nuclear

Compare 6 arrested of about 25 demonstrators against Green Mountain Power’s wind energy project on Lowell Mountain vs. 130 arrested of a thousand protesting in March against the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.

Also notice what they were protesting. The location on Lowell Mountain, as damaging the mountain top and being unsightly, plus:

“I feel like they [GMP] only went through the public process to a point, and the process is flawed,” said Young, a self-employed logger and farmer from Westfield. “Community members don’t have the resources to have a strong voice. It’s complex, expensive, and lawyers don’t want to do it.”

At Vermont Yankee, the protests were against radioactive leaks, nuclear waste, and this:

Yankee’s initial 40-year license expired Wednesday. The plant is still running, under a 20-year extension from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission—despite a vote by the state senate not to allow the plant to continue operating in Vermont.

A common theme is lack of democratic oversight, although even that seems greater in degree for Vermont Yankee. We are familiar with that issue in Georgia, where there’s an election going on for Public Service Commissioners and legislators.

Another common theme is that it’s complex and expensive, which is indeed an issue for big wind projects. Power companies like them as big as they can build them because that fits their corporate bureaucracy. They can instead be smaller and distributed. Nuclear power plants, on the other hand, are always big, bureaucratic, and expensive.

While I thoroughly sympathize with the Lowell Mountain protesters about the mountain top issues, I don’t see anything about them protesting the risk of a wind spill. Risks of nuclear radioactive contamination are very real, and are among the Vermont Yankee protesters’ main issues. Wind off the coast of Georgia would not have that problem.

-jsq