Tag Archives: Economy

Lake Park R-P, Lowndes County C-G, Valdosta R-M @ GLPC 2014-11-24

Thanks to the City of Valdosta for the agenda for tonight’s Planning Commission meeting. It’s all small cases, but how would you know whether one of them might affect you, since Lowndes County still doesn’t post Planning Commission agendas or minutes or board packets? And is there a second page? If the county did post these agendas regularly on their own website, this sort of omission would be less likely to occur.

Greater Lowndes Planning Commission
Lowndes County City of Valdosta City of Dasher City of Hahira City of Lake Park
REGULAR MONTHLY MEETING

AGENDA
Lowndes County South Health District Administrative Office
325 West Savannah Avenue
Monday, November 24, 2014* 5:30 P.M. * Public Hearing

Continue reading →

Sabal Trail’s eminent domain argument applied to FPL headquarters

The alleged “Project Need” in Sabal Trail’s Friday FERC docket CP15-17 permit application to get eminent domain for its 100-foot-wide gouge for a yard-wide hazardous fracked methane pipeline is: Sabal Trail claims it has contracts to sell the gas. Let’s apply that logic to Sabal Trail co-owner FPL’s headquarters.

This is FPL headquarters at 700 Universe Blvd., Juno Beach, Florida, in the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s map: Continue reading →

Volunteers for Lowndes County Board of Equalization

Update 2014-11-21: Brad Shealy from the District Attorney’s office called back. The reason there was no decision at day before yesterday’s Grand Jury meeting was there were no applicants. He said qualifications include you must be 18, a high school graduate, and a property owner, presumably meaning real estate. Plus you have to go to Tifton or Athens for a 40 hour course. Which he said is better than it used to be when the only location for the course was Athens: Tifton is close enough to drive up and back daily. If you want to serve, please contact the Clerk of Court (see below for her number).

When will new members be appointed to the Board of Equalization, who are the candidates, and how are people to know? Maybe you’d like to volunteer. If so, send your resume to the Clerk of Court (not the County Clerk). Apparently you have about two weeks.

As public comment on facebook by Becky Vaughn Herndon today:

Lowndes County is looking for volunteers to be members of the Board of Equalization (BOE). The purpose of the BOE is to hear property tax disputes between the Lowndes County Board of Assessors (BOA) and property owners. The board must not be biased towards the Lowndes County Assessor’s office or the taxpayer. It hears evidence from both sides and decides, based on the evidence presented, what the value of the contested property should be. The board may:

Find the Continue reading →

Keystone XL pipeline rejected in U.S. Senate

We are all Indians to the fossil fuel cowboys, but this time the Indians won. The U.S. Senate yesterday rejected the Keystone XL pipeline. It won’t end there, but it should, because solar power is cheaper, faster, cleaner, and actually does bring jobs to the U.S.

Picture from US Uncut

Of course, TransCanada has a backup plan for getting its dirty Alberta tar sands oil to overseas market: a pipeline entirely through Canada to New Brunswick. Which means the past several years of TransCanada insistence that Keystone XL was necessary was just so much bs. Which indicates how much we should believe other Keystone XL claims, such as those about jobs the pipeline would supposedly create.

Source: Reuters

Angelo Young, International Business Times, 8 October 2014, No Keystone XL Pipeline? No Problem, Says Canadian Firm Planning To Send Crude East Instead Of South, Continue reading →

Even more U.S. solar jobs than in coal or oil and gas extraction

In a year solar jobs increased more than 20% to 142,000, according to the National Solar Jobs Census 2013.

Let’s remember Politifact Rhode Island rated as true Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s claim that there are already more solar jobs than coal mining jobs. And already last year there were more solar jobs than in production and nonsupervisory oil and gas extraction. That was 119,000 solar jobs according to the National Solar Jobs Census 2012 by the Solar Foundation; thus the 20% increase.

Meanwhile, “production and nonsupervisory employees” in the oil and gas extraction industry increased 4% from 106,400 in September 2013 to 110,600 in September 2014, according to Oil and Gas Extraction: NAICS 211 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Total oil and gas industry employment increased 8% from 197,500 to 213,100 in the same period.

Of course, we really should be using the 2013 (not 2014) oil and gas figures to compare Continue reading →

Best Practices for Economic Development @ VLCIA 2014-11-18

Looks like some of them have been (or are thinking of) going to an Area Development Conference & Forum, about Best Practices for Economic Development. Here’s the agenda.

Valdosta-Lowndes Development Authority
Tuesday, November 18, 2014 5:30 p.m.
Development Authority Conference Room
103 Roosevelt Drive Monthly Meeting Agenda

Continue reading →

Board Packet @ LCC 2014-11-11

Here is the board packet for the 11 November 2014 Regular Session and 10 November 2014 Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

Although the County Clerk once again provided this packet only on paper and only in black and white, we got via CD-ROM color maps for REZ-2014-17 Grand Bay Estates and REZ-2014-18 White from County Planner Jason Davenport in response to a separate Open Records Request. The request to the County Clerk also asked for electronic copy, but once again she chose not to honor that part of the request.

But who can say? Perhaps things will be different after the Open Government Symposium this Friday, 21 November 2014.

Meanwhile, I have already filed an Open Records Request for the board packet for the next County Commission meeting, which is in December.

-jsq

China, U.S., and Russia energy deals: bad news for Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline?

The U.S. and China made a historic deal on climate change this week. Here’s the good (it’s real, it’s huge, and it’s positive economically for both countries), the bad (nuclear is first on the list of those “clean energy” sources), and the ugly. Also this week China made a second huge natural gas deal with Russia: what does that mean to the current U.S. push for LNG exports, including the proposed Sabal Trail pipeline gouge through Georgia?

The Deal

Rebecca Leber, The New Republic, 12 November 2014, The World Has Waited for the U.S. and China to Take Action on Climate Change. They Just Did.

President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced on Wednesday commitments to reduce both countries’ greenhouse gas emissions. The surprise announcement, which came while Obama visits Beijing this week, is the clearest sign yet the two countries are serious on climate change.

After months of negotiations Continue reading →

Videos: Pipeline, agriculture, lighting, appointments, and parks @ LCC 2014-11-11

Update 2014-11-17: board packet.

Three citizens spoke against the unnecessary and hazardous Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline. Several Commissioners even spoke up in Other Business, turning it into de facto Commisioner Comments. But none of them called for a resolution or ordinance against the pipeline.

The subdivision rezoning still got no objections, while the rezoning for agricultural use got massive objections and a compromise solution.

The emergency security monitor replacement is, you guessed it, Continue reading →

Videos: 9 consideration, 6 tax lighting, 4 appointments, 2 rezonings, 1 proclamation @ LCC 2014-10-27 LCC 2014-11-10

They vote tonight on what they discussed yesterday morning in these videos. A subdivision rezoning gets no objections while a rezoning for agricultural use gets massive objections. Also few if any of those objectors have said anything about the Sabal Trail pipeline. Do priorities around here seem odd?

The emergency security monitor replacement is, you guessed it, a no-bid contract with the same company that originally installed them. Which fits with the no-bid Alapaha Water Plant Expansion, back this time for property acquisition after twice failing to get a setback variance at ZBOA.

The state changed the qualifications Continue reading →

On the LAKE front

Citizen dialog for transparent process by the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange