I’m shocked, shocked, to discover there’s illegal dumping going on in Lowndes County! County staff assured us all two yeas ago that wouldn’t be a problem, while telling us all we had no choice about waste disposal. Yet today at the county’s retreat they showed this map of illegal dumping locations throughout the county.
(If the county published Continue reading
They’ve been working with Dr. Acree on land aquisition, and with GA-DNR
on flow levels and ramp placement, as well as anticipation of survey and
final designs, they said during the SPLOST agenda item,
reports Gretchen from the
Lowndes County Commission retreat.
No word of when they anticipate completing the boat ramp,
and it sounds like they haven’t actually purchased the land yet.
-jsq
Your elected Commissioners and top county staff
listening to Finance Director Stephanie Black’s report,
around 9:30 AM on
the all-day retreat agenda.
The seemingly most boring subject, but the key to all the others.
Gretchen is there videoing, but apparently nobody else other
than the VDT reporter. Continue reading
Everything from Animals to ZBOA
agenda
for the annual Lowndes County Commission retreat, now billed
as 2015 Annual Planning Meeting.
Unlike
the Valdosta City Council,
this retreat is in Lowndes County,
at the same location as the recent Lake Park Chamber of Commerce
annual dinner.
Gretchen will be there with the LAKE camera.
You can go, too: it’s an open meeting.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
2015 Annual Planning Meeting
Quail Branch Lodge
7601 Zeigler Road, Lake Park, GeorgiaThursday, February 5- Continue reading
Want to continue to see this and other blogs, local newspapers, YouTube, and all the other Internet sources of information that are not owned by the six companies that own 90% of U.S. media?
Then you want the FCC to continue net neutrality,
and you have until Tuesday to send written comments.
EFF has provided this handy form: Dear FCC. Please go there and comment. You’ll thank yourself later.
-jsq
PS: This is what I wrote. Continue reading
The second day of the Commission retreat is finished. Reporting from location, Gretchen noted:
Chairman Bill Slaughter has a five year goal of making broadband available. Some possibility of creating a fibre ring. He says he’s working with the City of Valdosta.
Well, a year ago in February he said broadband was “one of the number one issues”, but in October he said “we have broadband”, so it’s anyone’s guess what his opinion will be in a few months.
Commissioner Crawford Powell wants to outsource more county services.
That’s working so well, after all; see the next note.
Received just now by email from Julia Shewchuk.
Due to potentially unsafe travelling conditions through tomorrow morning and several people letting us know they would not be attending, we are cancelling the Digital Economy workshop in Valdosta tomorrow. Please feel free to come to the February 6th workshop and we will add an hour before or after to discuss ISP specific issues and review the business survey.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Julia
See previous post for details about the other workshop dates.
-jsq
Update 3:30 PM 29 January 2014: Thursday 30 January 2014 session cancelled due to weather; come to the 6 February 2014 meeting instead.
Received by email and there’s a facebook event. -jsq
Good Morning and Happy New Year!
We would like to invite you to one or more workshops to help us develop a Digital Economy Plan for our Region.
The Southern Georgia Regional Commission, in partnership with the Georgia Technology Authority, is coordinating and developing a Digital Economy Plan for the 18 counties in the South Georgia Region to identify the unique characteristics of the digital economy in our region, its strengths, weaknesses, its needs and its opportunities.
The focus and intent of the plan is to Continue reading
And for about $57 a month.
Emily Chung wrote for CBC News 18 July 2013, Small Alberta town gets massive 1,000 Mbps broadband boost: Rural community of Olds builds its own fibre network and starts its own ISP
Ultrafast internet speeds that most Canadian city dwellers can only dream of will soon be available to all 8,500 residents in a rural Alberta community for as little as $57 a month, thanks to a project by the town’s non-profit economic development foundation.
“We’ll be the first ‘gig town’ in Canada,” said Nathan Kusiek, director of marketing for O-Net, the community-owned internet service provider that runs the fibre optic network being built by the non-profit Olds Institute for Community and Regional Development in Olds, Alta., about 90 kilometres north of Calgary.
There’s more in the article.
-jsq
Stacey Higginbotham wrote for GigaOm 16 January 2014, Two charts that show how crappy U.S. broadband is,
Despite the deployments of a few gigabit networks by Google and the spread of faster cable technology, U.S. broadband is falling behind. It’s expensive both as a monthly bill and on a per-megabit basis when compared to the rest of the world. For example, at $89 per month on average, U.S. residents pay more for broadband than residents in 57 other countries including Canada, Bulgaria, Colombia and the U.K. That’s right, the U.S. ranks 58 out of 90 countries.
The research, from research firm Point Topic concludes that the higher broadband prices are “caused by lower investment in infrastructure as well as lower take-up which prevents them from benefiting from economies of scale.” To get the above data the firm compared the prices paid for residential broadband and includes standalone and bundled services offered over DSL, fiber and cable broadband in the fourth quarter of 2013.
Per-country comparisons like this are hard to act on, but even at the country level we know Continue reading