Category Archives: Lowndes County Commission

No Nottinghill + 3 other rezonings, 3 contracts, a bid, and vice chairmanship @ LCC 2013-10-07

Will the County Commission take up Nottinghill even though the Planning Commission tabled it? Is Barrington subdivision now ready to sprawl into the county? Did Commissioners ever get that list of roads for striping? Do we have enough evidence yet for juvenile justice? Or will we continue to concentrate on fining people coming off of I-75? Who was Leila Ellis, anyway? And who will be Vice Chairman (hint: Joyce Evans is now)? All that and a group photo, continuing the tradition of County Commission meetings as content-free photo-ops.

Here’s the agenda.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

New Nottinghill tabled @ GLPC 2013-09-30

The new Nottinghill development on Orr Road (instead of Cat Creek Road) has been tabled at request of the developer and county staff; something about signature collection, Gretchen reports from the GLPC meeting. More later.

GLPC didn’t list any street numbers of parcel numbers, but there’s only one property on Orr Road that’s 14.99 acres, owned by William Henry Wright, backing up to his property on Stafford Wright Road.

-jsq

Orr, Barrington, Whitewater, New Statenville + VLD * 2 + Dasher + Hahira variance @ GLPC 2013-09-30

A county developer has moved roads, plus 3 out of 5 local cities at the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission tonight, plus “Attendance policy for appointed Boards”: are we going to expect them to show up now? A Hahira variance, a Valdosta conditional use permit and a rezoning, a Dasher zoning text amendment, and rezonings on four Lowndes County roads, including New Statenville Highway, Whitewater Road @ Williams Road, Barrington Drive @ Bemiss Road, and Orr Road.

That Orr Road one uses the same name, Nottinghill, as one that on Cat Creek Road that previously got tabled and never came back. GLPC didn’t list any street numbers of parcel numbers, but there’s only one property on Orr Road that’s 14.99 acres, owned by William Henry Wright, backing up to his property on Stafford Wright Road. Have the Nottinghill developers made a deal with him for Orr Road since the neighbors didn’t want them on Cat Creek Road?

Here’s the agenda. Continue reading →

Cash for Trash –Deep South Sanitation

The longer you drag on that lawsuit, Lowndes County Commission, about your bogus exclusive franchise that benefits nobody but ADS investors in New York City, the more good PR local company DSS gets. We could use better than trash government around here.

Advertisement by Deep South Sanitation in the VDT yesterday: Continue reading →

No contract and no bids for County Attorney, yet 20% raise to $300,000

In response to (a second) open records request, County Clerk Paige Dukes stated in writing that Lowndes County does not have a contract with the person referred to in numerous minutes as “County Attorney”, and that no bids have been entertained for legal services for the county. According to the budget documents the Clerk referred to, the county raised the County Attorney’s budget 20% to $300,000 for 2013. Illustrations below (some with links) were added by me. -jsq

From: pdukes@lowndescounty.com
To: b-ahuntley@hotmail.com
CC: asmith@lowndescounty.com; JPritchard@lowndescounty.com; bswaller@bellsouth.net
Subject: Open Records Request
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 13:22:08 +0000

Good Morning Mrs. Huntley,

In response to your open records request Continue reading →

Cancelled: Lowndes County Commission meetings @ LCC 2013-09-24

According to the county’s website:

Lowndes County Commission Meeting Cancelled (9/24/2013)

PUBLIC NOTICE

COMMISSION MEETING CANCELLED

Due to the lack of agenda items requiring immediate action, the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners Work Session on Monday, September 23, and Regular Session on Tuesday, September 24, 2013 have been cancelled.

For questions please call County Clerk, Paige Dukes, at 229-671-2400.

Lowndes County Board of Commissioners
327 N. Ashley St – Commission Chambers, 2nd Floor
Administration Building
Valdosta, GA
5:30 p.m.

VDT starts to catch up about pipeline

Spectra used Dougherty County Commissioner Ewell Lyle’s question in answer the Valdosta Daily Times about that natural gas pipeline from Alabama to Florida. And notice how they’re saying Tallapoosa County, Alabama now, and not mentioning PCB-polluted Anniston, Alabama as the source of the pipeline? The VDT map conveniently clips Alabama completely out of the picture. How about we clip Georgia out of the pipeline and install solar power instead?

Matthew Woody wrote on the front page of the VDT today, Pipeline intersects area: Sabal Trail project runs from Alabama to Florida,

Andrea Grover, Public Affairs Representative from Spectra Energy, said that initially the pipe was going to be a closed system, but Spectra Energy decided to turn the pipe into an “open access pipe,” meaning that any area along the pipe could potentially tap into the system to either receive gas from or supply gas to the pipeline. Describing the pipeline as a highway, Grover said it will have on-ramps and off-ramps. They provide the transportation of the gas, and once the pipe is in service, communities are encouraged to work with Sabal.

Dougherty County Commissioner Ewell Lyle suggested letting locals tap it less than a week ago.

Note that weasel word: “potentially”. I could “potentially” tap into the two (2) pipelines that cross my property, but decades they’ve been there and that’s never happened.

When asked about the benefits of the pipe, Grover stated, Continue reading →

WALB on Spectra about that AL-GA-FL natural gas pipeline

Maps and video about that pipeline public hearing in Dougherty County. Spectra does have per-county maps and has finally doled them out. What did Lee County do to make the pipeline avoid it entirely? And what about Georgians even getting to use that natural gas?

Devin Knight wrote for WALB Sep 16, 2013 6:14 PM EDT Updated: Sep 21, 2013 6:14 PM EDT, Dougherty County residents ask for pipeline to be re-routed,

“Why not go ahead and put a tap in, or whatever you call it so we could utilize that gas instead of just being a transit through our area,” Lyle said.

WALB didn’t record an answer, but stay tuned, Spectra heard him.

Unfortunately, Commissioner Lyle is also now singing Spectra’s tune: Continue reading →

Lee County has its agenda packets online

Lee County has 28,575 people; Lowndes has 111,885 (July 2011). Yet tiny Lee does what mighty Lowndes doesn’t: it puts its agenda packets online. I’d bet it doesn’t even waste county resources putting them into a fancy printed binder. When will Lowndes County move into the 21st century?

-jsq

Japan or south Georgia?

How is our local landfill like Fukushima? No, not radiation: nobody seems to be responsible.

Colin P. A. Jones wrote for The Japan Times 16 September 2013, Fukushima and the right to responsible government,

Rather, the means of holding a member responsible for bad judgments are internalized as part of the rules and discipline governing the hierarchy to which they belong, with mechanisms for outsiders to assert responsibility — to assert rights — being minimized and neutralized whenever possible.

Sure, it’s not exactly the same. Our local governments live in fear they’ll get sued (or so they claim), and even sheriffs and judges occasionally get convicted around here. But it’s quite difficult to get local elected officials to take their responsibility to the people as seriously as “we’ve invested too much in that to stop now” where “we” means the local government or more frequently a developer.

And privatizing the landfills and now trash collection is not that dissimilar to the Japanese government keeping TEPCO afloat so they have an unaccountable scapegoat for Fukushima. Locally, nobody seems to even know, much less care, that the landfill is Continue reading →