I want to share some good news from our recent Mayor Council public
hearing —
The 2013 Southern Hospitality Workcamp was a huge success. This
program, now in its’ 8th year brought 212 young
“campers” from around the country into our community.
They made badly needed repairs to 18 owner occupied homes. This
brings the total number of homes repaired to 275. Lowes RDC once
again stepped up and provided all the materials for which we are
truly grateful.
The value of the labor and materials now is in excess of $1.5M. I
also want to say thank you to the Valdosta City School system for
once again opening up Valdosta Middle to house the campers during
their stay.
The joy I witnessed in these home owners faces was especially
touching. The hard work of Continue reading →
Almost eight million gallons of raw sewage flooded here at the plant
and made it’s way directly into the Withlacoochee River. Which is
about a half mile away. Which makes the city’s plans to relocate
this plant all the more relevant.
Valdosta Mayor Gayle was standing next to the video ghetto
after the county’s rather rudimentary SPLOST VII presentation
Monday morning, so I asked him why I hadn’t seen anything about Internet
access either Valdosta’s or Lowndes County’s SPLOST lists?
He said that was because it was being handled by the Community Assessment Group (CAG).
What’s that?
Mayor Gayle said CAG is a group of representatives from the county
and all the local cities, the two school districts (Valdosta and Lowndes County),
VSU, Wiregrass Tech, the Industrial Authority, the Chamber, and he may have
said others.
It’s an attempt at better local cooperation, specifically about issues
that cross all the various local governmental and non-governmental groups.
So far they’ve had two meetings, Continue reading →
First public update since
May:
Valdosta has had several recent meetings with other governmental groups
and has agreed to co-fund a flooding study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The City of Valdosta hosted a Regional Flood Preparedness meeting
with the Georgia Silver Jackets on June 25—a continuation of
discussions that began earlier in the year focused on regional
interests and on maximizing area resources.
Representatives from the cities of Moultrie, Sylvester, Tifton and
Valdosta and from the counties of Lowndes and Turner attended the
meeting to discuss current and future flood monitoring and
forecasting issues throughout the Little River and Withlacoochee
River watersheds. These two watersheds are part of the overall
Suwannee Basin that is approximately 10,000 square miles in Georgia
and Florida.
It’s too bad nobody came to Valdosta’s two public budget hearings,
because the city prepared
183 slides with details for each
department, including goals and accomplishments.
On
the LAKE website is that presentation sent on request by City Clerk Teresa Bolden,
and
converted to HTML by LAKE.
Plus the actual budget.
No open records requests were required.
Oh, and Valdosta runs garbage collection on a balanced budget
without any exclusive franchises.
The Valdosta City Council approved the fiscal year 2014 budget for
the City of Valdosta at the June 20 City Council meeting, after
having the opportunity to hear the proposed budget at the hearings
on June 11 and 12. City staff presented the council with a balanced
budget, as required by the City Charter, possibly one of the most
challenging and difficult budgets prepared in years.
City leaders decreased the overall city budget from $86.2 million to
$77.3 million, a result of Continue reading →
A call to arms, I wanted to share with you a e-mail I received from
Nolan Cox. I find his message offensive and seem as if he has a real
issue with low income residents. It would mean a lot if you can make
it to the Council meeting (5:30 p.m.) as I plan to address this
during Council Comments and hope that we can get input from the
community regarding this statement below. Your presence will help
us get the point across that our community mean something.
I have also included my response to Mr. Cox
Nolan Cox- Tea Party/Republican Party President
“As I listened to your discussion at the City Council work
session about the “need” to give away $800,000 of
taxpayer’s money through the Federal Home Loan Bank Program grant,
I was thinking that only about half of Americans pay federal income
taxes, and 43% of every federal dollar spent is borrowed, with the
interest on the nation’s $17 trillion debt soon to be larger than
the nation’s defense budget. Defense spending is a legitimate
constitutional function of the federal government, but repairing
houses, like most welfare giveaway programs, is not a legitimate Continue reading →
Valdosta’s proposed SPLOST list will be presented Tuesday
at the city’s Work Session 5:30PM Tuesday 9 July 2013:
be there, or be blindsided by what’s on that list.
Scan by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 July 2013.
You know that if you read to the middle of the
ad in today’s VDT about the Work Session and Regular Session.
That’s in the paper paper;
ads in the paper don’t get put online.
There’s no agenda online for the Work Session.
The agenda for the Regular Session says nothing about SPLOST.
There’s nothing on the city’s calendar about SPLOST.
There’s no PR about this on the city’s website.
There’s nothing about it in any of the city’s TV videos that I can find.
Don’t be surprised if nobody shows up….
Portland, Oregon, is also internationally renowned for its
commitment to sustainable development. The Portland metropolis has
an expansive public transit system and an urban growth boundary to
control development at the urban periphery. The city boasts a
green investment fund
to provide grants for residential and commercial building projects.
Now the city is striving, like Copenhagen, to reap the economic
rewards of sustainable development through business formation, firm
expansion, job growth and private investment. In February, Portland
released its first regional export plan to double exports over five
years by building on the region’s distinctive economic and physical
attributes. A critical pillar of this strategy involves increasing
the export orientation of firms in the burgeoning clean technology
sector to serve growing markets in Asia, Latin America and
elsewhere.
“Hopefully” there will be four town hall meetings before
the final SPLOST lists are settled, said
Lowndes County Commissioner Joyce Evans (District 1)
at last night’s
Lowndes County Democratic Party Annual 4th of July Barbecue.
We’re beginning to put things together for the SPLOST.
Hopefully we’ll be able to do several….
I know the mayor has stated that they were going to do
two town hall meetings and the county’s going to do
a couple of town hall meetings and then we’re going to come together
with the information that we’ve received from the community
and go and put together an overall SPLOST
for the city and the county.
So please, take time, think about it, and be involved.
We shall see.
At least it’s a small change in the old boy backroom behavior so popular among elected officials around here
that the famously reclusive commissioner said this in front of a video camera.
Four SPLOST town hall meetings –Joyce Evans
July 4th BBQ, Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP),
Gretchen Quarterman (Chair), Dennis Marks (Vice-Chair / Elections),
Amanda Hall (Vice-Chair / Membership), Richard Saeger (Vice-Chair / Qualifying), Jerrell Anderson (Secretary), James J. Parker (Treasurer),
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2 July 2013.
All,
They made badly needed repairs to 18 owner occupied homes. This brings the total number of homes repaired to 275. Lowes RDC once again stepped up and provided all the materials for which we are truly grateful.
