Our high schools and college graduates mostly have to go somewhere else, because jobs here are few and many of them don’t pay enough for a decent living. Should we not care enough about our families and our community to come up with strategies that grow existing businesses and attract new ones that will employ local people?
We need discussions and strategies that involve the whole community, going beyond just the usual planning professionals, to include all groups and individuals with information or opinions, whether they got here generations ago or last week: for fairness and for freedom.
The Industrial Authority focus group meeting I attended Wednesday was refreshing, because their consultants asked the opinions of people some of whom previously had to picket outside. The previous day, VLCIA Chairman Roy Copeland said this strategic planning process was a long time coming. I agree, and while nobody can say what will come of it at this point, I hope it does produce a real Economic Development Strategy.
Lowndes County Emergency Management Agency Director Ashley Tye correctly predicted no tornadoes and quite a bit of rain for when Tropical Storm Debbie made landfall. He also mentioned our chronic drought, and Commissioner Richard Raines was surprised about that.
Raines asked:
What kind of conditions would it take for us, because you and I talked a couple of weeks ago, and I was I was surprised when you said that. I guess there’s a difference between drought and extreme drought. What kind of rain conditions would we need to get out of that, I guess in terms of inches, for the water table….
Tye answered:
For them to officially declare us out of the drought, the latest numbers I’ve seen were about 15 inches over the next 30 days, or over the next 3 months, it would have to be like 25 to 30 inches. So we still need a lot of rain. But every little bit is going to help. With the rain we’ve got recently we’re better off than we were, but we’re still technically classifed as in extreme drought.
TS Debbie and south Georgia extreme drought —Ashley Tye Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC), Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 25 June 2012.
He said you can get it as close to him as Quarterman Road.
I can attest to that because I have 3 megabit per second DSL,
due to being just close enough to Bellsouth’s DSL box on Cat Creek Road,
but most of Quarterman Road can’t get DSL due to distance.
There are some other land-line possibilties, involving cables in the ground
or wires on poles.
Then there are wireless possibilities, including EVDO, available from Verizon,
with 750 kilobit per second (0.75 Mbps) wide area access from cell phone towers.
Verizon’s towers could also be used for WIFI antennas,
for up to 8 Mbps Internet access, over a wide scale.
Internet speed and access —John S. Quarterman
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 8 May 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
…Lafayette, Louisiana,
Bowling Green, Kentucky,
Lagrange, Georgia,
and
Thomasville, Georgia.
They use it for
public safety,
education (Wiregrass Tech, VSU),
and
It attracts new industry.
If you want knowledge-based industry,
they’re going to be expecting Internet access not just at work,
but at home, whereever they live.
Watersheds are topographic areas where all the rain that falls eventually ends up in a namesake steam, river, lake, or estuary.
These are our local watersheds. Purple is the Little River Watershed, blue is the Withlacoochee Watershed, and Valdosta is where the Little River flows south into the Withlacoochee. Green is the Alapaha watershed, and Tifton is where all three meet. Every drop of rain or used well water or wastewater overflow or pesticide runoff or soapy shower water or clearcut mud that runs downhill into one of these rivers is in their (and our) watersheds.
Becoming greener doesn’t just mean a municipality’s adding a pleasant new park here and there, or planting more trees, although both components may be useful parts of a larger effort. How a town is designed and developed is related to how well it functions, how well it functions is related to how sustainable it really is, and how sustainable it is, is directly related to how it affects its local waters and those who use those same waters downstream.
Compact, mixed-use, well-designed in-town growth can take some of the pressure off of its opposite on the outskirts — or beyond the outskirts — of towns and cities. We know that sprawling growth is generally pretty bad for maintaining environmental quality in a region (air pollution from cars that become necessary in such circumstances, displacement of open land, water pollution from new roads and shopping centers that are begot by such growth patterns).
Other notable parts of this meeting were when
staff
said conservation status was a small detail and
and
Commissioners
proceeded to get rid of it in a rezoning.
Videos
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission, (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 March 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
The tornado was an F2 in Lowndes County and an F3 in Lanier.
It went west to east, wrote the NWS in Tallahassee.
The
pictures we posted that day
were apparently where it first touched down, and even then
it ripped limbs off of trees and broke some off and threw them.
The most significant damage of the severe weather event in south
Georgia and north Florida was caused by a tornado that moved from
just northwest of Moody Air Force Base to near Lakeland, Georgia.
The damage was assessed by a survey team from the National Weather
Service in Tallahassee. Most of the damage was consistent with an
EF1 or EF2 tornado on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. However, the most
severe damage — near Boyette Road and Highway 122 — was consistent
with an EF3 rating on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. Maximum wind speeds
were estimated to be around 140 mph at that location.
As you can see by
NOAA’s map,
the tornado was an EF0, EF1, and EF2 while it was in Lowndes County,
(as Ashley Tye told the Lowndes County Commission
this morning),
rising to an EF3 in Lanier County, peaking at 140 mph winds.
No injuries or loss of life from the March 3rdtornado, but no disaster declaration
and thus no government financial assistance,
said
Ashley Tye
in a long report to the Lowndes County Commission this morning.
Such reports are not normally repeated at the Tuesday evening
regular sessions, so if you weren’t there, here is the only
place you will see it.
Ashley Tye remarked:
The good news is that there were no reported injuries or no loss of life.
There was a lot of property damage.
He said the National Weather Service
determined it was an F2 tornado,
and once it got to Walker’s Crossing it had winds of about 100 miles an hour.
He said 34 homes were affected, of which 19 were destroyed,
meaning uninhabitable.
He’s checking types of assistance that might be available.
Unfortunately, financial assistance is unavailable;
it requires a federal declaration.
And while the level of damage is obviously devastating to us
in Lowndes County,
it didn’t reach the level that would meet the threshold
that would cause the governor to request a federal declaration.
He said there had been a tremendous outpouring of volunteer support.
And insurance might pay off, although some people may not have enough
insurance.
He added that the county’s code red emergency system worked well,
and probably had something to do with there being no loss of life.
I know I got at least six county code red messages that day before
my message box filled up (I was in a building with no signal).
Commissioner Richard Raines asked if FEMA had to have a declaration for
GEMA to respond.
Ashley Tye answered:
Continue reading →
There was a twister in Lowndes County today.
The only property damage we saw was to this house on Cat Creek Road,
which now has a pine tree draped across it.
The house roof appears undamaged.
There are no reports of anyone being hurt.
Everyone is accounted for.
Then the tornado came through the woods to Quarterman Road:
Continue reading →
My name is Sharon Flory and I am the Sales Representative for Alert
Works Products, the company who was working with Lowndes County to
distribute roughly 3,500 weather radios to the community. After
working for about 8 months with Ashley Tye we were both ecstatic when
the grant came through only to be shot down by the newly appointed
commissioner. I could not believe
what I read below.
I am very concerned about a community that would purchase an armored
vehicle, that would only protect about 5 people at a time, over
purchasing weather radios that would protect upwards of 10,000 people
when you consider the families that live in each home.
I am a sales rep and my job is to sell radios BUT my job is also my
passion. I live in Ohio and have been affected by storms all of my
life. I have been down right scared to death from storms and feel that
the politics in this town is not moving in the right direction.
I see that you have the same feelings and hope that you can make a
difference. Thank you for caring and keep up the good work. Someone
will listen!!!
Hazard Mitigation Public Hearing (10/17/2011)
PUBLIC HEARING ON
HAZARD MITIGATION
MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2011
6:00 P.M.
ADMINISTRATION BUILDING
327 N. ASHLEY STREET
COMMISSION CHAMBERS – 2ND FLOOR
For more information please contact EMA Director, Ashley Tye, at 671-2790.
else, because jobs here are few and many of them don’t pay enough for a decent living. Should we not care enough about our families and our community to come up with strategies that grow existing businesses and attract new ones that will employ local people?
going beyond just the usual planning professionals, to include all groups and individuals with information or opinions, whether they got here generations ago or last week: for fairness and for freedom.
How do we go beyond opposing things and move on to sustainable strategies that build clean industry?
of whom previously had to picket outside. The previous day, VLCIA Chairman Roy Copeland said this strategic planning process was a long time coming. I agree, and while nobody can say what will come of it at this point, I hope it does produce a real Economic Development Strategy.
