Lowndes County Sheriff Prine
talked about
Administration,
the
Jail,
the
Commissary,
and
Enforcement
at the
first day of Budget Presentations to the Lowndes County
Commission, 10 March 2014.
Like most other county-funded departments, he asked for more personnel.
The long squeeze of the economic downturn needs to be addressed somehow.
These videos show how the Sheriff proposes to address them.
Tag Archives: Economy
Church parking back yet again @ ZBOA 2014-04-01
North Valdosta Church of God
is back for perhaps the fourth time about the parking lot for their new building.
Plus
a house variance in
Lowndes County
and
a gas station variance
in
Valdosta.
Here’s the agenda. The City of Valdosta puts ZBOA agendas and minutes online in real PDFs.
Continue readingTime to call it: Carbon Crash, Solar Dawn
Another observer gets it that green solar power is winning. Letting a fracking deliver company turn us into “stakeholders” in a white elephant methane pipeline would be an even huger waste after the pipeline stopped being used in a decade or so because sun, wind, and water power everything by then, winning like the Internet did.
Paul Gilding wrote on his blog 19 March 2013, Carbon Crash Solar Dawn,
I think it’s time to call it. Renewables and associated storage, transport and digital technologies are so rapidly disrupting whole industries’ business models they are pushing the fossil fuel industry towards inevitable collapse.
Some of you will struggle with that statement. Most people accept the idea that fossil fuels are all powerful — that the industry controls governments and it will take many decades to force them out of our economy. Fortunately, the fossil fuel industry suffers the same delusion.
In fact, probably the main benefit of the US shale gas and oil “revolution” is that it’s keeping the fossil fuel industry and it’s cheer squad distracted while renewables, electric cars and associated technologies build the momentum needed to make their takeover unstoppable — even by the most powerful industry in the world.
Why are the fossil fuel companies still pushing, then? Continue reading
Videos: Mostly Paving and Bridges @ LCC 2014-03-24
Yesterday morning they discussed a
turnkey government website service.
And an
annexation request by the City of Hahira.
And they may actually be serious about coming into the 21st century with
online county services.
Turns out the road resurfacing of four roads is actually mostly from a GDOT LMIG grant, but the other three, shoulder paving on Val Del Road and Boring Pond Road and a bridge replacement on Cat Creek Road are all from SPLOST VII funds. Plus some trucks for Animal Control and tablets for the Fire Department, an alcohol license, and some alphabet-soup agreements, one of which turned out to be for a grant for a victim advocate position in the Solicitor General’s office.
Here’s the agenda.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERSContinue reading
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, MARCH 24, 2014, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
Animals, Alcohol, Alphabet Soup, Paving, Bridges, and Fire @ LCC 2014-03-24
Got to spend those SPLOST dollars widening roads and bridges
to promote development farther out in the country!
Plus some trucks for Animal Control and tablets for the Fire Department,
an alcohol license, and some alphabet-soup agreements.
It may be healthy as food, but I wonder if opaque acronyms
unexplained in the agenda is good for local government.
Here’s the agenda.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERSContinue reading
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, MARCH 24, 2014, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
There are things you can do about the Sabal Trail Pipeline –Mario Bartoletti @ LCC 2014-03-11
Apparently the community believes the Commission thinks
there’s nothing they can do,
but Mario Bartoletti, speaking for himself and for
WACE,
said he thought there were things the Commission could do
about that 36-inch methane pipeline, and he listed some things,
at the
11 March 2014 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission.
Here’s the video:
There are things you can do about the Sabal Trail Pipeline –Mario Bartoletti
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 March 2014.
His list included:
Continue readingUtility-owned rooftop solar: Tom Fanning and Steven Chu agree
Tom Fanning is getting support for his idea of utility-owned
rooftop solar.
Can we see that tiger team report, Tom?
And FPL, how about you get on with this, instead of
trying to gouge an unneeded yard-wide methane pipeline through here?
Sun, wind, and water can power each U.S. state,
so how about FPL in the Sunshine State and Southern Company in the southeast
get out in front and lead?
Jeff McMahon wrote for Forbes yesterday, Steven Chu Solves Utility Companies’ Death Spiral,
Utility companies have been looking for new regulations and higher connection charges to save them from a “death spiral” spurred by a surge in rooftop solar installations. Instead, says former Energy Secretary Steven Chu, they should get into the rooftop solar business.
Continue reading
VLCIA high noon last week @ VLCIA 2014-03-13
An Industrial Authority board member resigned to run for an office
he qualifed for the previous day, at a meeting that had apparently
been rescheduled the day before he qualified.
OK, who’s going to replace him, and when and by whom will that be decided?
Oh, and that rescheduling means there’s no VLCIA meeting today.
The Industrial Authority rescheduled its March meeting for Thursday last week at noon, and at that meeting, according to the VDT, VLCIA board member Norman Bennett said:
“I am announcing that at the end of the day today, I will resign from the Industrial Authority,”
Puzzled by that, I called the Board of Elections to ask if they had told him there was some conflict of interest. They said no, they had read about it in the newspaper like everybody else.
I asked when he qualified to run for District 5. Answer: March 12th, which was the day before he resigned from VLCIA at its rescheduled board meeting.
When was that meeting rescheduled? Their website gives no clue. But their facebook page notice of the new meeting is dated March 11 at 3:15pm.
What do all those dates mean? Probably nothing, since local appointed and elected boards reschedule on whims around here. But it’s a curious series of coincidences:
More interesting is: when and by whom will a new board member be appointed to the Industrial Authority?
Here’s the agenda. Maybe some year we’ll get to see their minutes. It’s been more than two years since Roy Copeland said he’d try to make that happen. He’s no longer Chairman (although he did get reappointed to the board), and another board member has just resigned. You know, that VDT editorial I’m fond of quoting was actually about the Industrial Authority’s minutes:
When officials act like they have something to hide, they often do….
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Thursday, March 13, 2014 12:00 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
Agenda
General Business
- Call to Order
- Invocation
- Welcome Guests
Minutes
- Regular Meeting, February 18, 2014
Financial
- Review Compiled Balance Sheet and Income Statements for February 2014
Public Relations & Marketing Update-Meghan Duke
- Public Relations Opportunities
- International Trade Representatives
- County Commission Presentation
- Marketing Opportunities
- Marketing Materials
- ValdostaLowndesProspector Mobile Site
- South Georgia Classic
Project Report-Allan Ricketts
- Project Maroon
Existing Industry-Allan Ricketts
- Existing Industry Visits
- Existing Industry Expansion Projects
- Project Wire
- Project Treadway
- JHS-14
- Community Business and Industry Partnership
Executive Director’s Report- Andrea Schruijer
- Business Development Opportunities
- Georgia Quail Hunt February 2013
- March Regional Marketing Trip to Consultants
- Recruitment activities
- International Representative Visit South Joint Regional Development Authority
- Staff Planning Session
- Board Planning Session
- Met with Department of Agriculture to discuss regional food processing activity
Attorney Report
Citizens to Be Heard
Adjourn General Meeting Into Executive Session
Adjourn Executive Session into General Meeting
Adjourn General Meeting
Mission of the Valdosta Lowndes County Industrial Authority
“Create an environment to attract new industry and promote the growth of existing industry to drive job creation and capital investment.”
-jsq
100% sun, wind, and water can power each U.S. state and the world –Stanford study
We have all the technology right now that we need to power
the U.S. state by state and the world with solar, wind, and water power.
No burning coal or oil or fracked natural gas and no nukes.
No need for any new destructive and hazardous methane pipelines.
No waiting for batteries.
All we have to do is get on with it.
100% RENEWABLE ENERGY IS FEASIBLE AND AFFORDABLE, ACCORDING TO STANFORD PROPOSAL,
Stanford University researchers led by civil engineer Mark Jacobson have developed detailed plans for each state in the union that to move to 100 percent wind, water and solar power by 2050 using only technology that’s already available. The plan, presented recently at the AAAS conference in Chicago, also forms the basis for The Solutions Project nonprofit.
“The conclusion is that it’s technically and economically feasible,” Jacobson told Singularity Hub.
The plan doesn’t rely, like many others, on dramatic energy efficiency regimes. Nor does it include biofuels or nuclear power, whose green credentials are the source of much debate.
The proposal is straightforward: eliminate combustion as a source of energy, because it’s dirty and inefficient. All vehicles would be powered by electric batteries or by hydrogen, where the hydrogen is produced through electrolysis rather than natural gas. High-temperature industrial processes would also use electricity or hydrogen combustion.
The rest would simply be a question of allowing existing fossil-fuel plants to age out and using renewable sources to power any new plants that come online….
“The greatest barriers to a conversion are neither technical nor economic. They are social and political,” the AAAS paper concludes.
For Georgia, that’s 40% solar PV plants, 35% offshore wind, 13% rooftop PV (6% residential and 7% commercial), 5% concentrating solar plants, 5% onshore wind, and 1% each wind, tide, and conventional hydro power. Plus 210,200 construction jobs and 101,000 operation jobs. And saving $14.3 billion per year Continue reading
Sierra Club Chapters Oppose Sabal Trail Gas Pipeline –read by Danielle Jordan @ FERC 2014-03-04
Danielle Jordan, VSU student and president of Students Against
Violating the Environment, stood up for local landowners and
the environment against Spectra’s Sabal Trail pipeline
at the
Valdosta FERC Scoping Meeting 4 March 2014,
by reading a statement against the pipeline by the
Sierra Club chapters of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia.
Here’s the text she was reading:
TRI-STATE SIERRA CLUB CHAPTERS OPPOSE GAS PIPELINE:
Statement of the Georgia, Florida, and Alabama Sierra Club
Chapters Opposing the Sabal Trail Pipeline.
Here’s the video:
Sierra Club Chapters Oppose Sabal Trail Gas Pipeline –read by Danielle Jordan
Sabal Trail Methane Pipeline,
Scoping Meeting, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC),
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 March 2014.
-jsq