Tag Archives: Forestry

Videos: Moody Family Housing doesn’t want to replace trees it cut down on Val-Del @ ZBOA 2015-08-04

They meet again today 2:30 PM.

Last month, ZBOA voted 5 to 1 to let Moody Family Housing have a reduction of 25% (half of the 50% they wanted) so as to include a requirement of native trees. Gretchen Quarterman made the motion, Paul Alvarado seconded, and Satrina Plyler (filling the unexpired term of Scott Orenstein) voted against.

See for more background.

Here’s a video playlist:


Videos: Moody Family Housing doesn’t want to replace trees it cut down on Val-Del
Regular Session, Valdosta-Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBOA),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 August 2015.

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Land is not just money: appeal tax valuations today

Appeal today if you think there’s more to land (or business) and woods and fields and streams than money, unlike the Tax Assessors, whose revaluation would drive development into agricultural areas of the county where it doesn’t belong, while avoiding populated areas such as the south side of Valdosta. We can expect pipeline companies and utilities from other states to think nothing of pillaging our lands for their profit. We shouldn’t expect that of our neighbors whom we elected Tax Asssessors. If you have affection for your land, your county, your neighborhood, today’s the deadline to appeal your valuation. And there will be an election later.

As Wendell Berry said,

Whatever has happened in what economists call “the economy,” it is generally true that the land economy has been discounted or ignored.

Are the Tax Assessors boomers? Are you a sticker? Wendell Berry explains: Continue reading →

Monday August 10th deadline to appeal tax valuations –VLCoC

Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce members just got a message from Bruce Allred, Government Affairs Council Chairman, saying:

MONDAY IS DEADLINE TO APPEAL PROPERTY TAX ASSESSMENTS!

You can look up your property on the Tax Assessors’ website: www.qpublic.net/ga/lowndes.

See also the LAKE Videos: Rural revaluation meeting at Farm Bureau 2015-08-04.

That Chamber message includes this useful information: Continue reading →

Videos: Rural revaluation meeting at Farm Bureau 2015-08-04

See for yourself the Tax Assessor response to local landowners, in these LAKE videos of last night’s meeting at Farm Bureau. Do you think there’s a problem? If so, what do you think we should do to fix it?

The attendees appointed Gretchen to take notes. Here are her notes, followed by the videos.

Accessibility is not about access, it’s about geographic location…. That was done by one of our appraisers on staff. —Chief Appraiser Silas Hrobar

Rural and commercial land owners got surprises in the mail in July when they received the updated assessments of their properties. Lowndes County Assessors engaged a contractor last year to help with the reassessments of approximately 10,000 properties. Rural properties were categorized as small (under 20 acres) and large (over 20 acres) but complaints were the same, inconsistent and confusing application of criteria.

On Tuesday evening, Farm Bureau hosted Continue reading →

Moody Family Housing doesn’t want to replace trees it cut down on Val-Del @ ZBOA 2015-08-04

2:30 PM today, should developers not have to follow code and put back trees on the unnecessary and environmentally hazardous Moody Family Housing on Val-Del Road? You wouldn’t know who this was by a pretty name like Azalea Commons, or an acronym like ACC Group III Housing, and only the board packet mentions Balfour Beatty, but it’s the same Moody Family Housing in an aquifer recharge zone that already had a sinkhole as admitted by a K Street lawyer to the Lowndes County Commission and told to them and to the Air Force by VSU professors that the Air Force proceeded to ignore in its environmental assessment and the Lowndes County Commission rezoned anyway. Staff recommend 20% “relief” from planting trees. How about the county get some relief from unnecessary sprawl?

They did provide a table of the trees they want to cut down.

Here’s the agenda, which is not on the City of Valdosta website, appearing here courtesy of Continue reading →

Rural revaluation meeting at Farm Bureau 2015-08-04

Are Bill Gates and subdivisions really more important than agriculture or rivers or public transportation? Come to Farm Bureau tomorrow evening and find out what’s going on with the rural land revaluation. facebook event.

When: 7PM, Tuesday, 4 August 2015

Where: 3296 Greystone Way, Valdosta, GA, (229) 242-7876

By: Farm Bureau board member Buddy Coleman called this meeting.

What: Compare the Comprehensive Plan to this revaluation here (PDF).

Sprawl: sprawling residential growth is a certain ticket to fiscal ruin (Or at least big tax increases). PDF of the report by UGA Prof. Jeffrey H. Dorfman Lowndes County paid for in 2007, The Local Government Fiscal Impacts of Land Use in Lowndes County.

Who: At least some of the Lowndes County Tax Assessors Continue reading →

Rural tax revaluation: Bill Gates and subdivisions more important than agriculture and public transportation?

Does this rural land revaluation map resemble the Comprehensive Plan Future Development map? Tax Assessors: Rural Land Accessibility Codes Why not? And why were rivers and public transportation not considered either by the Lowndes County Tax Assessors while tracts with road frontage were considered the “highest market area” and land purchases by Bill Gates were considered “benchmark sales” instrumental in pricing large tracts?

This rural land revaluation is yet another vehicle to drive development straight north into the agricultural areas of the county, not even stopping at the Withlacoochee River.

That way lies sprawl, which as Dr. Jeffrey H. Dorfman of UGA has said, “is a certain ticket to fiscal ruin* * Or at least big tax increases.”

The City of Valdosta better watch out! Much of this Continue reading →

Fixing climate change is profitable

Batteries are just one of many reasons, including electric vehicles, smart grid, solar and wind power (including pass HB 57 and you can profit by getting financing for your own solar panels), plus massive savings on health care and electricity bills; batteries are one of many reasons that fixing climate change will save us all money, clean up our air and water, expand our forests, preserve property rights, and make some people rich:

In fact, a recent report suggests that revenue from the distributed energy storage market — meaning battery packs and other storage devices located directly at homes and businesses (many of which now generate electricity through solar) — could exceed $16.5 billion by 2024. Another report predicts $68 billion in revenue in the same time frame from the grid-scale storage market. This includes large-scale battery packs, hydro-storage systems that use cheap abundant electricity to pump water uphill to drive turbines later on, or even solar thermal systems that store energy as heat in molten salt.

And it’s all happening fast, so fast your jaw will drop if you’re not paying attention. So let’s stop talking about the costs of fixing climate change. It’s not just no-cost and free, not just in the future but right now; we’re all actually going to be better off through fixing climate change: healthier and more prosperous.

Sami Grover wrote Continue reading →

Video: Baytree Nichols House, Alfred Willis Lecture @ VSU 2014-10-01

First all-electric house in Valdosta, new materials, unusual arrangement of space for indoor-outdoor living on the same level outside as in, with light throughout because mostly only one room wide, in a western atomic ranch house adapted for Valdosta. Will what Dr. Willis had to say about “a replete instance of the diffusion of Californian” be enough to preserve the masterpiece of Lloyd Greer Sr. (1885-1952) from development?

Announced as Continue reading →

Nichols House frat no longer; maybe historic preservation @ VCC 2014-09-11

LAKE has video, but meanwhile, so you can prepare for the Oct. 1st talk about that historic Nichols House, here’s some background.

Chip Harp wrote for Valdosta Today 17 September 2014,

In last week’s Valdosta City Council meeting, Council voted 5-2 in favor of re-zoning nearly 4 acres of land in the Alden Park Community, near the campus. Some neighbors in the community stand firmly against the development, which would include a 180-bed student housing complex, and say it takes away from their neighborhood, based on a report from WCTV’s Winnie Wright.

Winnie Wright reported for WCTV 16 September 2014, The Historic Standing Of One Home Could Determine Future Of Surrounding Community, Continue reading →