Category Archives: Planning

Here, it’s your hot potato —VLCIA to Andrea Schruijer

VLCIA has its first regular meeting with its new executive director today, 5:30 PM, in the Industrial Authority Conference Room, 2110 N. Patterson Street. They’ve lobbed the biomass hot potato to her.

David Rodock wrote in the VDT 14 July 2011, Industrial Authority welcomes new director,

When it comes to the proposed biomass facility and maintaining a healthy relationship with the Georgia Department of Economic Development, which assisted the Industrial Authority in attracting the project, Schruijer believes staff and board members will be able to work through the situation.

“With economic development, it can be difficult to juggle a lot of different items,” said Schruijer. “It’s a balancing act to make sure you have all the parties involved and educated on the situation. The Department of Economic Development was there to help us recruit the project and they did just what they were supposed to do. In fact, they went above and beyond their duties by brushing over this project with a fine tooth comb. We worked with them and they worked with us. It seemed like a good project, and I think we’ll be able to work through this, maintain a good relationship with them as long as we keep the avenues for communication open.”

That sounds like Industrial-speak for they’re going to “move on to” things that do work. However she chooses to phrase it, it’s about time.

Regarding transparency: Continue reading →

Now they change their minds, so we’ve got a right to change our minds —Calvin Marshall @ LCC 12 July 2011

Somebody finally called a developer’s bluff! Answering Commissioners’ questions about his opposition to rezoning for Nottinghill on Cat Creek Road, Calvin Marshall did what I’ve never seen anyone do before in opposing a subdivision: he upped the ante.

Commissioner Richard Raines said he would require Nottinghill lots to have:

“Not perhaps, but a fence around the edge of the property. … Need to make sure that bicycles and fourwheelers, that children are not playing in a field that is used to grow crops.”
Seems fair, except that he seemed to be talking about each individual eventual property owner having to put up a fence, and I can tell you by experience that that won’t happen without the neighboring landowner personally insisting to each lot owner. Unless the Commission insists that county code enforcement actually enforce such a condition, which would be a good thing for a change.

Then Commissioner Raines asked Calvin Marshall:

“Is it still your position that 12-15,000 square foot lots are OK?”
Calvin Marshall answered: Continue reading →

Three things to actually improve education —John S. Quarterman

People ask me why I oppose CUEE. It’s because I’d rather actually improve education instead.

It seems to me the burden of proof is on the people proposing to make massive changes in the local education system. And CUEE has not provided any evidence for their position. Sam Allen of Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS) pithily sums up CUEE:

“It’s not about the children. It’s about somebody’s ego.”
I don’t think the children should have to suffer for somebody’s ego.

CUEE’s unification push isn’t about education. It’s about a “unified platform” to attract industry. That alone is enough reason to oppose “unification”. It’s not about education!

As former Industrial Authority Chair Jerome Tucker has been heard to remark on numerous occassions, “nobody ever asked me how many school systems we had!” The only example in Georgia CUEE points to for this is the Kia plant that came to Troup County, Georgia. It’s funny how none of the locals seem to have mentioned any such connection in the numerous articles published about the Kia plant. Instead, the mayor of the town with the Kia plant complains that his town doesn’t have a high school. That’s right: he’s complaining that the school system is too consolidated! The only actual education between Kia and education in Troup County is with West Georgia Tech, the local technical college.

CUEE has finally cobbled together an education committee, but it won’t even report back before the proposed ballot referendum vote. CUEE has no plan to improve education.

If CUEE actually did want to help the disadvantaged in the Valdosta City schools, Continue reading →

Dancing Around the Issue —Dr. Noll

Received this morning on Biomass plant land offer. -jsq
It is unbelievable that despite all the concerns in our community about biomass, the Industrial authority is still considering to sell the land to a company like Wiregrass Power LLC. This is the same company the Industrial Authority once stated it had no faith in anymore. This is the same company that just missed another deadline as stipulated by their contract. And this is the same company that apparently does not have the best interest of our community in mind.
Continue reading →

The Bleu Owl: LAKE meeting at the Bleu Pub Tuesday PM

We didn’t have a LAKE meeting last week due to the holiday, so we’re meeting this Tuesday, 12 July, after the Lowndes County Commission Meeting, so about 6:30 PM.

The Blue Pub is at 116 W Hill Ave in Valdosta, with the usual entrance being from the parking lot off of Toombs Street. Sign up in the facebook event or come as you are.

If you follow this blog, you know there are many local issues, most having to do with transparency. And that’s the big issue: lots of small groups going at individual issues, and not getting very far. Let’s talk about that.

-jsq

Who wants to live in a prison colony?

Judy Green, a prison policy analyst says:
“The very first contract for the first private prison in America went to CCA, from INS.”
Hear her in this video Private Prisons-Commerce in Souls by Grassroots Leadership that explains the private prison trade of public safety for private profit:

A local leader once called private prisons “good clean industry”. Does locking up people for private profit sound like “good clean industry” to you? Remember, not only is the U.S. the worst in the world for locking people up (more prisoners per capita and total than any other country in the world), but Georgia is the worst in the country, with 1 in 13 adults in the prison system. And private prisons don’t save money and they don’t improve local employment. As someone says in the video, who wants to live in a prison colony?

We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend that tax money on rehabilitation and education.

-jsq

PS: Owed to Jeana Brown.

Lowndes County has transparency issues —John S. Quarterman @ LCC 28 June 2011

No unfinished drafts will be published while Ashley Paulk is chairman, or so he told us.

I asked him how he recommended citizens provide input to the budget process? He said at every meeting.

So I said I wondered why the county attorney seemed to be overbudget. No response.

Then I got to my main point, which was that the county seems to have a number of transparency issues, such as the missing ordinances he’d just heard about, or Vince Schneider’s Foxborough McDonald’s issues, or the animal shelter issues, or the T-SPLOST list that the Commission approved on the basis of a one page list of one-liner with no details that turns out to include things like $10 million to widen New Bethel Road to Lanier County.

I said I would like to compare the county’s submissions for T-SPLOST funding to the county’s Thoroughfare Plan and the Comprehensive Plan; if I could find those plans online. The Chairman said my five minutes were up. I said “Alrighty” and moseyed back to my seat. As you can see for yourself, it was actually 4 and a half minutes.

-jsq

Here’s the video: Continue reading →

CUEE brags about 9,000 petition signatures

It’s interesting what paying people to collect petition signatures can accomplish. The CUEE press release of yesterday is on their web pages. Here’s an excerpt:
9,000 and Counting!
Petition Drive Hits Key Milestone In Effort to Give
Valdosta Residents Opportunity to Vote on Unification
Plan to Attend Saturday Event at McKey Park to Join the Movement, Sign Petition
(Valdosta, GA) The petition drive campaign giving Valdosta residents the chance to vote on school unificationreached a key milestone Friday when it topped its goal of 9,000 signatures.

The 9,000 signatures was the target set by the Community Unification for Educational Excellence (CUEE),which launched the petition drive May 12 after three years of planning. The minimum number of validsignatures needed to place the issue on the November ballot is 25 percent of registered voters in Valdosta, or7,375. The target figure of 9,000 represents a 22 percent increase over the minimum required and nearly 31 percent of all registered voters.

It’s too bad they haven’t dedicated all this organizing to something that might actually help education around here, such as prison reform or preventing bright flight by squelching sprawl.

-jsq

Sumter County may go solar: where’s Lowndes County?

Sumter County gets it about solar power, independence and jobs. Where’s Lowndes County?

So how big is this National Solar project that Sumter County may get? Steve Leone wrote for Renewable Energy World, Seven Communities Waiting for the Sun in Southeastern U.S.:

The project will be a network of 20 solar farms, each of which will span 200 acres and generate 20 MW. It would be much larger than the 80 MW solar power plant in Ontario, Canada, currently the world’s largest.
The finalists are:
The communities selected by National Solar Power as finalists to become the location of the development are Gadsden, Hardee, Osceola and Suwannee counties in Florida, Sumter and Tatnall counties in Georgia and Guilford County in North Carolina.
And Lowndes County isn’t even in the running. Why not? Continue reading →

VLMPO meets 12 July 2011 —Corey Hull

Corey Hull of VLMPO sent this 27 June 2011. The TIA item is about T-SPLOST, and there is opportunity for citizen participation. -jsq
Good Afternoon,

The Valdosta-Lowndes Metropolitan Planning Organization Policy Committee will be holding its next regular meeting on July 12, 2011 at 1:30 p.m. at the SGRC office (address below). Please find attached the agenda.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at chull@sgrc.us or at 229-333-5277.

Corey Hull, AICP
MPO Coordinator
Valdosta-Lowndes MPO
327 W. Savannah Ave.
Valdosta, GA 31601
Visit our Facebook Site!
229.333.5277
229.300.0922 (c)
229.333.5312 (f)
chull@sgrc.us
www.sgrc.us/transportation

That agenda is appended. -jsq Continue reading →