T-SPLOST is a ten-year one-cent sales tax,
organized in twelve regional taxing districts,
through committees composed of county chairs and city mayors,
plus an executive committee with some of them plus 3 people from the
legislature, which funnels transportation funding requests to GDOT,
which picks, and then sends to a referendum in 2012.
Got all that?
No?
Well, Corey explains it much better than I do.
The Georgia legislature passed what was then known as House bill 277
called
Transportation Investment Act of 2010….
It created or proposed a one percent sales tax for transportation purposes
throughout the state of Georgia.
It creates
twelve special transportation taxing districts
that are based on the boundaries of the regional commissions.
And that is where the connection with the regional commission stops.
They are not the same body….
The reporter who conducted the interview with Industrial Authority Project
Manager Allen Ricketts has been subsequently repeatedly contacted by
Ricketts for what he deems “false reporting.” According to Ricketts,
the timeline was never official and was only something the Industrial
Authority threw together to appease the Times when given an official Open
Records Request. Ricketts is apparently unaware that legally he cannot
produce a document that does not exist to comply with said request. If
he knowingly did so, as he now claims, that is a clear violation of the
Open Records Act.
Presumably that would be the “Project Critical Path time-line is attached”
that wasn’t actually attached to
documents returned for an open records request of 17 February 2011.
Hm, since VLCIA did supply such a document to the VDT,
presumably it is now a VLCIA document subject to open records request,
even though it was not what VLCIA told VDT it was.
Come hear Chairman Ashley Paulk and MPO Director Cory Hull give
us information about T-SPLOST. The special local option tax for
Transportation.
Ashley Paulk is Chairman of the Lowndes County Commission.
Corey Hull is Coordinator for the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Metropolitan Planning Organization (VLMPO).
After he gave his
goodbye speech,
I
wished him happiness in Myrtle Beach
and thought maybe he’d make a graceful exit.
Nope, he’s still cranking the Edison phonograph on the same old
scratched wax cylinder.
Here he is last week responding to James Wright
and dozens of other people in the same thread
to which I later posted
It’s an opportunity.
In Lofton’s case, he’s still fixated on the losing proposition of biomass fuels.
-jsq
Thanks so much for sharing this and for your continued strong support of our
client’s green renewable energy project. In addition to assisting the
country in reducing our consumption of middle eastern fuel and improving the
environment, this project will provide a much needed economic impact for
landowners of every race, and the Industrial Authority will assist in the
efforts underway to assist local farmers. Google “benefits of biomass
electricity,”
Protestors wearing respirator masks held signs reading “Biomass? No!”
in front of the Valdosta City Hall building on Thursday. Members of
the Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy, the VSU student organization
Students Against Violating the Environment, and other concerned Valdosta
citizens showed up to protest the construction of the Wiregrass Power:
Biomass Electric Generating Plant.
“We already have solar power resources in place that we could be using
and I feel like money should be directed towards that,” Ivey Roubique,
vice-president of the Student Geological Society, said. “It wouldn’t
be good for the community and even though I’m in college here it
still matters.”
The Spectator article quotes from two speakers for whom LAKE
happens to have video, linked below.
Continue reading →
Nuclear power is a gamble we don’t need to take. Studies show that the
UK can meet its energy needs and tackle climate change without resorting
to nuclear power or burning fossil fuels – all that is lacking is the
political will.
And the U.K. is way north of Georgia.
Georgia gets a lot more sunlight and has plenty of wind off the coast.
All that is lacking here, too, is the political will.
If Atlanta won’t lead, why not Valdosta and Lowndes County?
Erin Hurley provided the very model of how to give a speech:
I’m the president of
Students Against Violating the Environment at VSU.
I’m here representing
200+ members of SAVE, that consists of students, faculty, community members.
We are deeply concerned with environmental issues and
we are networking together to make this city a more humane and
sustainable community
for future generations.
As a student, I feel I have the right to be able to breathe clean air
at the college I attend.
With this biomass plant possibly being built here,
the future for generations to come are in jeopardy, and we want to protect our fellow and future students’ health.
Please take into consideration the future health of this university
and its community,
and don’t sell grey water to the proposed biomass plant.
Erin Hurley, President of
SAVE, Students Against Violating the Environment, speaking at
Regular meeting of the Valdosta City Council, 24 March 2011,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
She said who she was, who she represented, how many, what they were for, what they wanted, quickly enough that attention didn’t waver, slowly and loudly enough to be heard, and briefly enough to transcribe, with pathos, logic, and politic. Even the mayor looked up at “As a student….”
Such publicly owned networks can offer services that incumbents don’t,
such as the 1Gbps fiber network in Chattanooga, Tennessee, run by the
government-owned electric power board. And they sometimes have more
incentive to reach every resident, even in surrounding rural areas,
in ways that might not make sense for a profit-focused company.
According to this map of
Community Broadband Networks
by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance,
quite a few small cities in south Georgia have municipal cable networks:
It’s an opportunity for those of us who are not currently
searching for our next meal to help those who need jobs,
and thereby to help ourselves, so they don’t turn to crime.
Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession
greener than ever, if we choose wisely.
Switchgrass seemed like a good idea five or ten years ago,
but there is still no market for it.
Not just strictly organic by Georgia’s ridiculously
restrictive standards for that, but also less pesticides
for healthier foods, pioneered as nearby as Tifton.
That’s two markets: one for farmers, stores, and farmers’ markets
in growing and distributing healthy food, and one for local
banks in financing farmers converting from their overlarge
pesticide spraying machinery to plows and cultivators.
Similarly, biomass may have seemed like a good idea years ago,
but with Adage backing out of both of its Florida biomass plants
just across the state line, having never built any such plant ever,
the biomass boom never happened.
Meanwhile, our own Wesley Langdale has demonstrated to the state
that
In a long-running email discussion that started with a post
by Valdosta City Council member James R. Wright about switchgrass
for biomass, Councilmember Wright wrote two messages on Saturday,
26 March 2011, each asking questions of Dr. Michael Noll.
The first one contained this paragraph:
Economic development is a high priority on the mind of many people. If
you read the local paper you will see page after page of foreclosures,
failing businesses, and unemployment at a all time high. Please explain
to me how we can address these problems through energy needs?
The Georgia legislature passed what was then known as House bill 277 called Transportation Investment Act of 2010…. It created or proposed a one percent sales tax for transportation purposes throughout the state of Georgia. It creates twelve special transportation taxing districts that are based on the boundaries of the regional commissions. And that is where the connection with the regional commission stops. They are not the same body….
![](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emperor_Norton_proclamation_re._assumption_of_prerogatives_WFHM_SF.JPG")
It’s an opportunity for those of us who are not currently
searching for our next meal to help those who need jobs,
and thereby to help ourselves, so they don’t turn to crime.
Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession
greener than ever, if we choose wisely.
