It’s a good thing the county held these first-ever (as far as I know)
comprehensive budget sessions.
Here are videos of the first day.
Most of the departments are asking for more money,
due to increased population and increased demand for services
during a period of economic downturn.
Something needs to be done, and these sessions are one step in
getting to doing something.
Here’s the agenda.
Lowndes County Sheriff Prine
talked about
Administration,
the
Jail,
the
Commissary,
and
Enforcement
at the
first day of Budget Presentations to the Lowndes County
Commission, 10 March 2014.
Like most other county-funded departments, he asked for more personnel.
The long squeeze of the economic downturn needs to be addressed somehow.
These videos show how the Sheriff proposes to address them.
The twin
Hahira cases are to
rezone
and then
annex
a lot on the east edge of town.
No city of Valdosta cases this time,
but three each for
Lowndes County
and
Lake Park.
One of the Lake Park cases is
a Zoning Ordinance change.
Here’s the agenda, which arrived as a PDF of an image, which I have OCRed into HTML.
Continue readingGreater Lowndes Planning Commission
Lowndes County City of Valdosta City of Dasher City of Hahira City of Lake Park
REGULAR MONTHLY MEETING
AGENDA
Lowndes County South Health District Administrative Office
325 West Savannah AvenueMonday, March 31, 2014* 5:30 P.M. * Public Hearing
A question asked about big oil and Mobile is just as relevant to every local and state government along the proposed Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline, and Transco and Florida Southeast Connection, too. A couple of local elected officials and several candidates did make public statements Saturday (stay tuned), so maybe we’re starting to get some answers to this question in Lowndes County, Georgia. Some other locations have already been getting answers.
Brad Nolen wrote for New American Journal 28 March 2014, How Big Oil Controls Local Governments: Whom Do You Serve? Thoughts on Local Government and Dirty Industries,
Now, it should go without saying that the purpose of councils, commissions and public office in general is to represent the varied interests of the citizens, and hopefully through consensus- seeking achieve some semblance of collective wisdom; and then, if we’re really lucky to apply said wisdom in charting our course toward a Mobile our great grandchildren will be proud to inherit.
Yet, when it came to finding a voice to protect our drinking water from Big Oil, we heard nothing substantive from our local leaders, even though we marched on their doorsteps in boots that are still wet with BP oil.
And now, Continue reading
Maybe we should stop inviting toxic industries to Lowndes County.
We’ve been doing that with coal ash, PCBs, superfund wastewater,
used diapers in recycling, and suing local businesses while not terminating
an exclusive franchise with a company that is involved in all of that.
Not to mention Sterling Chemical.
Here in Lowndes County we have
TVA coal ash and Florida coal ash
in our landfill,
and the landfill operator spreads the coal ash on roads on the site,
which is just uphill from the Withlacoochee River.
GA EPD
fined that landfill operator $27,500 in January 2013
for accepting PCBs into that same Pecan Row Landfill.
The same landfill that accepted
196,500 gallons of wastewater from the
Seven Out Superfund site in Waycross, GA.
A landfill that is in an aquifer recharge zone. Continue reading
The southern District 3 for Lowndes County Commission is down to
only two candidates, one Democrat and one Republican, so there will
be no primary races and Tom Hochschild (D) and Mark Wisenbaker (R)
will face each other in the general election in November.
Retiring candidate Don Thieme (D) throws his support behind Hochschild.
District 3 is mostly the south half of the county,
but it also wraps around Valdosta to incorporate Remerton and VSU.
See
detail map
or
PDF of district 1,2,3
as found on
lowndescounty.com.
And Crawford Powell has withdrawn from the race for House District 174, so that leaves only two candidates there, too: Jessie Smith (D) and John L. Corbett (R), with no primary races, to face each other in November.
Continue reading
Yesterday morning they discussed a
turnkey government website service.
And an
annexation request by the City of Hahira.
And they may actually be serious about coming into the 21st century with
online county services.
Turns out the road resurfacing of four roads is actually mostly from a GDOT LMIG grant, but the other three, shoulder paving on Val Del Road and Boring Pond Road and a bridge replacement on Cat Creek Road are all from SPLOST VII funds. Plus some trucks for Animal Control and tablets for the Fire Department, an alcohol license, and some alphabet-soup agreements, one of which turned out to be for a grant for a victim advocate position in the Solicitor General’s office.
Here’s the agenda.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERSContinue reading
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, MARCH 24, 2014, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
Got to spend those SPLOST dollars widening roads and bridges
to promote development farther out in the country!
Plus some trucks for Animal Control and tablets for the Fire Department,
an alcohol license, and some alphabet-soup agreements.
It may be healthy as food, but I wonder if opaque acronyms
unexplained in the agenda is good for local government.
Here’s the agenda.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERSContinue reading
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, MARCH 24, 2014, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
Two
speakers about
the Sabal Trail pipeline,
one about
water issues under Moody Family Housing,
One
request to do something about speeding
(good luck),
a
recognition (firefighters),
a
proclamation (purple hearts),
and
an
award (budget),
one rezoning
withdrawn,
three
others
approved,
two contracts (bus system renewal
and
software master contract),
some but not all
streets accepted in Nelson Hill,
and no mention of the
Lake Park annexation request that took up at least five minutes the
previous morning.
For why John Page is no longer on the Commission, see the previous post with the agenda. Here’s the agenda again with links to the videos and a few notes. See also videos from the previous morning’s Work Session. And see also Lowndes County becomes third purple heart county in the state, by Matthew Woody, VDT, 12 March 2014.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERSContinue reading
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, MARCH 10, 2014, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
A directly affected landowner wanted to know what happened
with the talks
among several local county attorneys about the
proposed Sabal Trail pipeline, and was there any way citizens
could provide input,
at the
11 March 2014 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission.
Here’s the video:
Can we get pipeline update and citizen input? –Carolyn Singletary
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 March 2014.
Also she wondered if she could hear Continue reading
