This Reminder came in today, refreshingly explicitly mentioning agriculture. Note the different location, this time at the Health Dept. office after the Planning Commission meeting.
The next workshop for the 2016 Greater Lowndes Comprehensive Plan Update will be:
Monday, March 21, 2016
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.Lowndes County South Health District Administrative Office
325 W. Savannah Avenue
Valdosta, GeorgiaAt this workshop we will Continue reading
On Valdosta’s website, 9 March 2016, CVDA Hosts Public Forum for Proposed Downtown Parking Deck, Mar. 15
The City of Valdosta and Central Valdosta Development Authority will host a public forum on Tuesday, March 15 to discuss a proposed new parking deck for Downtown Valdosta. The forum will take place at 5 p.m. in the City Hall Annex Multi-Purpose Room, located at 300 N. Lee Street.
The parking deck is being suggested as one option to create additional parking opportunities in Downtown Valdosta. At the forum, conceptual plans for the parking deck will be presented. Key staff members will be present at the meeting, and the public will have the opportunity to ask questions, provide feedback and voice concerns related to the proposed project.
For more information, contact the Main Street office at 229-259-3577.
Noelani Mathews, WCTV, 14 March 2016, Local Shops React to Parking Deck in Downtown Valdosta, Continue reading
Come to the Farm Bureau in two weeks to hear
Tax Assessor staff present their updates and provide your input
for changes to the
rural land revaluation, this time taking into account rivers, aquifer recharge zones, and uniformity.
Maybe the Tax Assessors actually don’t want more flooding in Valdosta;
both the City of Valdosta and GA-EDP have already shown interest in attending
about that point.
At an appeal on my property valuation, the Board of Equalization stopped short of actually ordering the Tax Assessors to redo last year’s rural land revaluation, because staff volunteered Continue reading
See also the previous post for
LAKE videos of the preceding Planning Commission Work Session and Regular Session.
County Manager Joe Pritchard brought up in
his Report yesterday morning
the annexation request that is part of the
Valdosta proposed rezoning for a development on Bemiss Road;
see the
packet materials for that item obtained by LAKE through open records request.
They heard the long-awaited animal tethering ordinance,
and will vote on it this evening, as part of an
Animal Welfare Ordinance.
See agenda posting
for the three board appointments, the two Copeland Road items
related to water, sewer, pavement, and Lowndes Middle School students,
the two Tax Assessor items,
others, and, last but not least,
the four alcohol items.
See also the previous post for
LAKE videos of the preceding Planning Commission Work Session and Regular Session including
the CAC item on Skipper Bridge Road, with a link to the
board packet materials for that item
that LAKE obtained by open records request.
Below are Continue reading
The long-awaited animal tethering ordinance will be heard Monday morning
and voted on Tuesday evening, as part of an
Animal Welfare Ordinance.
They’re going to reappoint Joyce Evans and Frank Morman to the
Landbank Authority.
They last
reappointed those two 27 March 2012,
so apparently they serve four-year terms.
Despite the public not knowing there was an opening on the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities Board, they’ve already picked who they’re going to appoint: Chris Yarbrough. What he sent in his application, we don’t know, but his LinkedIn profile says he’s a “Community Supervision Officer III Mental Health Specialist, Georgia Department of Community Supervision, May 1996 – Present (19 years 11 months) Valdosta, Ga.”
Per LAKE open record request, here are the packet items for the Children’s Activity Center (CAC) rezoning on Skipper Bridge Road, REZ-2016-06, as sent to the Continue reading
As promised, there is
an updated Work Book online, dated February 29, 2016.
As Ariel Godwin also promised, the SGRC website says:
The next workshop will be Monday, March 7, 2016, 5:00-7:00 p.m. at the SGRC office, 327 W. Savannah Ave., Valdosta, GA.
It will be interesting to see if this version of the Work Book for the 2016 Greater Lowndes County Comprehensive Plan Update contains any changes about the issues Greg Odom raised last month (22 February 2016) about road paving, trees, and reducing expense to the county. And LAKE will be at the meeting with the video camera.
-jsq
Gretchen
thanked them for putting most of the response to her open records request
on CDs, shortly after they had said at their recent planning session that
they wanted to promote interaction with the community.
Still nothing from the county attorney about the Sabal Trail documents, and it’s been well over three days.
I
invited them on behalf of WWALS to a workshop and a movie;
there’s more below.
See also the contested rezoning
5.d. REZ-2016-05 Union Rd Subdivision, E-A to R-A, ~114 acres
for more water issues.
Three citizens spoke explicitly about the pipeline, Jim Parker, Michael Noll, and Dr. Mario Bartoletti, as also noted in Jason Stewart, VDT, 11 February 2016, Sabal protests continue. As I noted in another post,
I go to a lot of county commission meetings in Georgia and Florida. Nowhere but Lowndes County do I see Continue reading
They vote tonight at 5:30 PM.
At yesterday’s Work Session, there were two unscheduled reports.
Mark Stalvey of the county Housing Authority
said they’re working together with Habitat for Humanity
to form a nonprofit for collecting funds for rehabilitating
housing, and they’re asking for $5,000 each from Valdosta and Lowndes County
to get the nonprofit up and running, in return for which each would get
to appoint some board members; the rest would be elected by the nonprofit board.
Last, Tina Folsom with Lowndes Associated Ministries to People (LAMP) said their executive director left, so they don’t need their space in the Leila Ellis building. They’d like to be let out of their lease and have the funds applied to another county building they’re also renting space in.
See previous post for context and the agenda. Below are links to each LAKE video of the Work Session, followed by a video playlist. Continue reading
Monday morning 8:30 AM, the Lowndes County Commission
will hear about
(they vote Tuesday evening)
four well and septic rezoning cases,
one of them
from R-10 to E-A,
and another
of 114 acres from E-A to R-A.
The usual wine, beer, and liquor licenses,
a
County Purchasing Card and Credit Card Ordinance,
a
2016 Public Defender Contract Renewal
and
Proposal from Lovell Engineering for Stafford Wright Road Paving Project.
I remember residents of that road asking years ago for it to be paved;
instead the county paved Quarterman Road.
Here’s
the agenda.
See also the LAKE videos of the Planning Commission Work Session and Regular Session.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
Continue reading
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2016, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2016, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
The secretive Project Max container company
better not be like when the Industrial Authority bragged about a prospect that would bring in 300 clean jobs and it turned out to be
a private prison,
which fortunately (after much public opposition) never happened.
At last Tuesday’s Lowndes County Commissioner Regular Session, nearby landowner Mike Paine said he is afraid of many things, because it’s a rush job
and nobody has told him anything concrete.
The Industrial Authority, now called the Development Authority, says we should
trust them.
It would help if they wouldn’t say things like no emissions but steam,
when burning natural gas produces CO2,
and if they would admit that methane often leaks, and then it’s a far worse
greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
5.a. REZ-2016-01 Project Max, Rocky Ford Rd, E-A to M-2 123 acres
Video. About the public hearing for rezoning from Estate Agricultural (E-A) to heavy-duty manufacturing (M-2) for the hush-hush Project Max, the big-fish container manufacturing plant proposed for Rocky Ford Road, next to the protected watershed of Mud Swamp and near Valdosta Airport, see Continue reading