Category Archives: Lowndes County Commission

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

Videos: SPLOST VII Resolution, child proclamation, and appointment @ LCC 2013-09-10



They voted to put the

SPLOST VII Resolution
on the ballot in November,

“to reimpose the tax”
, with not even a hint of those

town halls that never happened
.
They reappointed

Mac McCall to ZBOA
.
The Proclamation
was for a boy who called 911 to help an old neighbor
who was trapped under a refrigerator
(nope, not for

South Georgia Pride
).
And we learned that nobody has to fear arrest or threat
and everybody can speak their mind

in the Commission chambers; nevermind recent history to the contrary.

Here’s

the agenda
, with links to the videos and a few notes.
See also

videos of the previous morning’s Work Session
.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

PROPOSED AGENDA

WORK SESSION, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2013, 8:30 a.m.

REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2013, 5:30 p.m.

327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor

Continue reading