Tag Archives: George Boston Rhynes

Three Citizens, budget, DUI, water, sewer, paving, cyber security, tractor @ LCC 2022-06-28

Forty minutes was a long meeting for the Lowndes County Commission, at its Regular Session two weeks ago, Tuesday, June 28, 2022.

[Three citizens make a long meeting]
Three citizens make a long meeting

Three Citizens Wishing To Be Heard spoke for about 13.5 minutes. 4. Animal Control Officers Recognition took six minutes. So the scheduled items took about twenty minutes, which is usual.

Chairman Bill Slaughter was absent, so the meeting was presided over by Vice-Chair Scottie Orenstein. They approved everything unanimously.

Below are links to each LAKE video of each agenda item, with a few notes by Gretchen Quarterman, followed by a LAKE video playlist. See also Continue reading →

Videos: New Valdosta Mayor, Mayor Pro-Tem, and $2 million budget surplus while record raw sewage was spilling @ VCC 2020-01-09

A month ago at the Valdosta City Council we learned that Valdosta has a $2,410,000 budget surplus.

Valdosta municipal audit and budget surplus
5b) Presentation of the Municipal Audit for Fiscal Year 2019

Maybe they could spend some of that to help fix the well and river testing costs downstream on the Withlacoochee River of Valdosta’s record 7.5 million gallons of raw sewage spill into Sugar Creek, which has taken two months to maybe finally get diluted down the Withlacoochee River, twice entering Florida, with three Florida river advisories, and with Georgia warning signs on the Withlacoochee River downstream of Sugar Creek by Lowndes County and by WWALS (but not by Valdosta).

One City Council member tells me that audit doesn’t mean Valdosta has $2 million cash lying around. But they do have several hundred thousand unspent.

Maybe they could also budget some of that surplus to help fix the stigma, the decades-long reputational damage to all our rivers, caused by Valdosta’s chronic sewage spills. That would involve for example water quality testing or paying for testing downstream on the Withlacoochee River and doing marketing.

Four Citizens spoke at the end of the meeting: Continue reading →

Videos: City of Valdosta Retreat at Lenox River Ranch 2017-03-17-18

Thanks to George Boston Rhynes for tracking the Valdosta City Council to the wilds of Lenox River Ranch where they meet every year in Colquitt County. Here are his videos.

The city did publish an agenda on their website.

Here’s a LAKE video playlist of George’s videos:

Continue reading →

Second mistrial of Lula Smart of the Quitman 10 + 2

How many mistrials does it take before the whole Quitman 10 +2 case gets thrown out of court? Two and counting, as of Friday.

George Boston Rhynes interviewed Brooks County Commissioner James Maxwell outside the courthouse in Quitman on a rainy day:

Mistrial! Another mistrial.

And the prosecutor wants to schedule another trial. George asked the Commissioner how much another trial would cost Brooks County.

It will cost quit a bit of money. We could use that money on a day like today to repair roads. People can’t get in and out and here we are wasting the taxpayers on another mistrial.

No evidence! No evidence! And another mistrial.

Here’s Part 1 of 2: Continue reading →

Mistrial in first Quitman 10 trial

The trial of Lula Smart ended in a mistrial, reports George Boston Rhynes from the Courthouse in Brooks County. So the first of the Quitman 10 is going like the Madison 9 did.

Here’s Part 1 of 3:

George says witnesses today talked about voter intimidation and some said they would not vote again because of this investigation on the Quitman 10+2. He says the GBI agent was asked how they were trained before they were sent to Brooks County, and they had little training in voting investigations, plus they took ballots home from the Board of Elections, including some with no addresses for any of the persons they were investigating.

George also reported WCTV had a camera in the courtroom, after you may recall Continue reading →

Madison 9 down to 2

9 people were arrested just across the Florida line in Madison on charges similar to the Quitman 10, but on trial all charges have been dropped except for 2, as George Rhynes pointed out.

Interviewing one of their lawyers 20 December 2012, George heard that at least her clients refused to accept plea bargains.

The Madison 9 were arrested in November 2011, and the obvious question came, as Trymaine Lee wrote for Huffpo 18 January 2013, Nine Election-Related Arrests In Florida: A Case Of Voter Fraud Or Voter Suppression?

As soon as Judy Ann Crumitie answered the banging on her door one November morning Continue reading →

Quitman 10+2 trial, three years late

Trials for the Quitman 10+2 have finally started. George Boston Rhynes is covering them every day on YouTube.

The only other reporter George has seen there was one from the Valdosta Daily Times. George is waving a copy of the VDT here as he discusses what the case is about: the Quitman 10 registered enough voters that several black people got elected to the school board in Brooks County for the first time ever.


Front Row: Linda Troutman, Lula Smart, April Proctor, Diane Thomas
Back Row: Latashia Head, Sandra Cody, Robert Dennard, Angela Bryant Nancy Dennard, and Kechia Harrison

Front page of the VDT yesterday, Quitman 11 trial gets under way, with no byline and no pictures, Continue reading →

Watkins family on other cases

It’s not so much what you know as what you can prove, says a concerned father, and the mother wants better representation for others whose children like her daughter have gotten caught in a felony with little if any evidence at school.

Know Your Rights say the Watkins parents Mrs. Watkins said after her daughter was tackled at school be a deputy, she found “there are a lot of children in the judicial system that may not have good representation.” She and Mr. Watkins and George Boston Rhynes are starting an organization to at least show concern. George said in one visit to juvenile court he encountered two families with problems with probation and law enforcement knocking down doors and searching without search warrants.

Mr. Watkins wants to help people know their rights. Things we older folk may have done as children now there are laws against, and the children and their families need to know things like the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor, and the importance of writing things down. “Details is all that matters.” Later he noted that Continue reading →

Mrs. Watkins says her 14-year-old daughter was charged with a felony at Pine Grove Middle School despite no evidence

Mrs. Watkins said a sheriff’s deputy used excessive force against her daughter and despite no evidence her daughter was charged with a felony. George Boston Rhynes asked:

If your child would have been been caught with what her child have experienced, wouldn’t you want somebody in Valdosta and Lowndes County and the state of Georgia and the state and the nation to know what had happened to your child?

Mrs. Watkins about her daughter at Pine Grove Middle School According to Mrs. Watkins, between 11AM and noon on 14 May 2013 she Watkins was called by the principal of Pine Grove Middle School saying her daughter had assaulted her. When Mrs. Watkins got there Deputy Robert Adkins told her he was going to charge her daughter with several charges, even though he had no statement from anyone. When she got home, she found a facebook video of two children attacking her daughter, who wasn’t attacking anyone, and the teacher was never struck, which the deputy also confirmed he had not heard happened. Yet Mrs. Watkins said none of the other children were charged and her daughter was charged with a felony. See for yourself what she said, in a lot more detail:

Here’s the video:

Continue reading →

Library Board this afternoon @ SGLB 2013-05-21

1PM-3PM today, according to the VDT calendar. Who’s running it now that Kay Harris isn’t chair? And will whoever it is welcome video cameras?

The South Georgia Regional Library Board of Trustees will be meeting Tuesday, March 19 at 1PM in the Folsom Room of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Public Library to conduct regular business.The meeting is open to the public and all are welcome to attend. For more information call 333.0086.

Yes, that says March, but the calendar entry says May 21, today. And it says “open to the public and all are welcome to attend”. But are all welcome to record? Or do all have to stay inside an 8×4 foot blue rectangle next to a loud air cleaner? Was that just Kay Harris’ policy and will it change now that she has resigned as chair and from the board?

If there’s anything about this meeting on the library’s website, I can’t find it.

-jsq