Lowndes County has been in a Mutual Aid Agreement for 10 years. This is
a renewal of the agreement for 4 years. Having this agreement in place
makes cooperating with neighboring counties and municipalities easier.
6c. Statewide Mutual Aid Agreement @ LCC Work Session 2012-02-27
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 February 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
at its work session Monday morning and will vote at its
regular session Tuesday evening.
This is about emergency response calls, such as for the fire
in Remerton, when Remerton called Lowndes County, which called
Valdosta, which sent fire trucks to Remerton.
Why the indirect time-consuming call while a fire doubles in size every minute?
Remerton didn’t have a mutual aid agreement with Valdosta, but
did with Lowndes County.
This is the same Commission that went on for 11 minutes
in the
21 February 2011 work session
about a Homeland Security grant for an emergency vehicle,
worring that the county might have to pay to maintain it and might
have to share it with other municipalities.
And then rejected it the next day, if I recall correctly.
What will they think of this mutual aid agreement?
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2012, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2012, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
My name is Sharon Flory and I am the Sales Representative for Alert
Works Products, the company who was working with Lowndes County to
distribute roughly 3,500 weather radios to the community. After
working for about 8 months with Ashley Tye we were both ecstatic when
the grant came through only to be shot down by the newly appointed
commissioner. I could not believe
what I read below.
I am very concerned about a community that would purchase an armored
vehicle, that would only protect about 5 people at a time, over
purchasing weather radios that would protect upwards of 10,000 people
when you consider the families that live in each home.
I am a sales rep and my job is to sell radios BUT my job is also my
passion. I live in Ohio and have been affected by storms all of my
life. I have been down right scared to death from storms and feel that
the politics in this town is not moving in the right direction.
I see that you have the same feelings and hope that you can make a
difference. Thank you for caring and keep up the good work. Someone
will listen!!!
What does a Community Corrections Director do?
What is the proposed modification to the alcohol ordinance?
We don’t know, because the county doesn’t post the details of
agenda items, just cryptic shorthand that may mean something
to Commissioners or staff, but that means nothing to the public.
At this morning’s work session and tomorrow evening’s regular session,
the Lowndes County Commission has a brief but eventful agenda,
including a modification to the alcohol ordinance, an alcohol license,
a DHS grant
a GDOT grant for a road project on Davidson Road (presumably related
to the new Moody AFB gate),
two road abandonments,
and this interesting item:
6.h. Request from Superior Court to establish salary of the Community Corrections Director
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2012, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2012, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
We haven’t looked in on the little town of 3,000 odd people of
Quartzsite, Arizona, lately.
Its goings-on continue to seem eerily applicable to our own county
of 100,000 odd people.
by not warning Jennifer Jones before removing her on 28 June 2011;
by holding a Council meeting on 10 July 2011
in which they excluded the public by actually locking the doors of their
meeting room;
by failing to post minutes of the emergency meeting on
its website
as required by Arizona Law (yes, Arizona law,
like Texas law, requires
posting minutes on the web)
and by not including a required statement of the emergency requiring
the meeting;
and by failing to post withing the required three working days
minutes for the 10 July 2011 emergency meeting,
nor for seven of its work sessions, nor for its 14 June 2011 regular session.
This one wasn’t a violation, but may be at least as important:
The purpose of the OML is to require public bodies to meet publicly
and openly so that al persons so desiring may attend and listen to the
deliberations and proceedings.
They’re even quieter about it than the Industrial Authority,
but the Valdosta City and Lowndes County governments are in the
private prison deal just as deep.
Our Valdosta/Lowndes County site quickly became our primary due to its
local and regional workforce, collaboration of local leadership, site
characteristics, proximity to necessary services and infrastructure,
and accessibility to name a few.
So who is this local leadership?
We look forward to working closely with Valdosta/Lowndes leadership as we move forward in the months to come.
Finally, I’d like to take a moment to recognize a few folks that have been essential to the project:
No, not here (although the description might fit):
SPCA of Erie County, New York reported on the animal shelter in
neighboring Niagara County, New York.
Also the parts about “horrific” animal cruelty and
“excruciatingly painful” euthanasia may sound familiar.
In part of her report, Carr writes, “It’s clear that the NCSPCA is
dysfunctional in many ways. Without standard operating procedures,
without careful record keeping and record retrieval, without trust
of one another, without a clear chain or command, with any
strategies to improve, this organization will continue to disappoint
and enrage the community,”
She continues, “there is an overwhelming culture of distrust at the
shelter. Some staff distrust the Executive Director, the Executive
Director distrusts many of the board members, many board members
distrust the Executive Director and some staff and volunteers
distrust some staff and staff distrusts some volunteers. Everyone
seems to distrust someone associated with the SPCA. They gossip,
pass on written complaints about each other to one another, try to
get each other fired, go behind backs of one another to people in
authority and make complaints. The evaluation team has witnessed
this rather childish behavior at all levels of the organization, by
board members, the Executive Director, staff members, and
volunteers.”
Videos of last night’s Lowndes County Commission Regular Session @ LCC 2012 01 24
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 24 January 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
We still don’t know what the county is going to do about
that cost overrun for the Moody AFB gate.
Nobody said at the work session yesterday morning; maybe they’ll say
at the regular session tonight when they vote on a contract with
some sort of revised dollar figures in it.
County Manager Mike Fletcher waved around a copy of the revised
contract with Scruggs Company for the new Moody AFB gate,
but said he had not provided it to the Commissioners.
I wonder if they’ll see it before they vote tonight?
He said it was 226 pages long, but most of that was DOT boilerplate,
and only something like 20 pages was the actual county contract.
Seems like they could read that much by tonight.
So could we, the public, if it was somewhere we could see it.
He also didn’t say what happened to the
$128,497.05 cost overrun.
The Commissioners asked no questions.
Commission had not seen Moody AFB gate contract with Scruggs before Work Session @ LCC 2012 01 23
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 23 January 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
OK, the new camera and video conversion software are sorted out,
so here are videos of this morning’s work session on the same day.
Here’s
agenda.
More about specific items later, but meanwhile feel free to view ahead
and post your comments on what went on.
Videos of this morning’s LCC Work Session, 2012 Jan 23
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 23 January 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.