Tag Archives: Georgia Tech

Model Solar Ordinance Public Workshop, Tifton, GA 2018-03-12

A few years ago, a doctor in Valdosta applied for a variance for solar panels over his parking lot. The Zoning Board of Approvals (ZBOA) tabled it, because Valdosta’s Land Development Regulations (LDR) did not permit that. I think he then made the panels connected to his building, which put them a different and already-permitted category.

What if Valdosta and other local governments updated their codes to enable parking lot and other solar power?

When:

4-6PM Monday, March 12, 2018

Where: National Environmentally Sound Production Agriculture Library (NESPAL)
2356 Rainwater Road, Tifton, GA 31793

Event: eventbrite

What: “The Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University, and University of Georgia have come together to develop a model solar zoning ordinance to provide county and city officials and other decision-makers in Georgia access to best practices and a common baseline from which to work. We will produce a comprehensive document that addresses multiple scales and types of solar energy systems that counties and cities can adopt and adapt to their needs.”

Georgia 2017-01, Maps

More about the event: Continue reading →

Videos: Development Authority’s BRAT @ VLCIA 2015-06-16

They meet again tonight with a bylaw amendment scheduled, which is probably for extending officer terms to two years as Roy Copeland proposed. (He first suggested that at least several years ago when he was re-elected Chairman.) And their nominating committee nominated the same officers again.

Lots of dials showing targets and where they are in reaching them, which is good, because I keep getting questions about what they’re doing with all that tax money and are they doing enough to justify it.

One citizen asked about the airport and another (OK, me) handed out Alapaha River Water Trail brochures and once again suggested solar panels at the airport to turn that otherwise-unusable space into profit.

Here’s the agenda and below are LAKE videos, followed by a playlist. Continue reading →

Development Authority’s BRAT @ VLCIA 2015-06-16

Late o tonight’s agenda but big on their minds, and described and pictured by Stuart Taylor, VDT, 31 May 2015, as consisting of:

  • Georgia Department of Economic Development — Michelle Shaw
  • Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce — Myrna Ballard
  • University of Georgia’s Small Business Development Center — Lynn Bennett
  • Valdosta-Lowndes County Development Authority — Stan Crance
  • Georgia Department of Labor, Valdosta Career Center — Jamon Williams
  • Wiregrass Georgia Technical College — Bill Tillman
  • Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute — Art Ford
  • Georgia Power Company — Scott Purvis

Valdosta-Lowndes Development Authority’s Business Retention Action Team, or BRAT, brings together a number of local and state organizations to offer services, information, solutions and contacts that a company might need.

“We’ve always had an existing industry program,” said Meghan Duke,VLDA marketing and community relations. “These organizations have always worked together, but now we’re formalizing it.”

Here’s the agenda:

Valdosta-Lowndes Development Authority
Tuesday, June 16, 2015 5:30 p.m. Continue reading →

Supplier diversity outreach –David ? @ SO 2012-05-23

What about supplier diversity outreach efforts at Southern Company (SO), asked David (didn’t get his last name; sorry). SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning responded that those efforts were critically important, and part of how they got paid. CEO Fanning added:

When you think about building a nuclear plant, you’re procuring great big huge scale equipment. The minority suppliers really don’t lend themselves to say a gigantic steam turbine or a reactor vessel. But where we can use diverse suppliers in our supply chain efforts, we absolutely do undertake to make sure that they have an opportunity to compete for the business, and we can coach them along to make sure that they are ultimately successful.

Perhaps this monoculture of suppliers for huge equipment is yet another flaw in building mainframes in a networked-tablet world. They could get a lot more diversity by deploying solar power plants throughout sunny south Georgia, especially if they included financing housetop and business roof solar.

Earlier CEO Fanning had gone on at some length about diversity on SO’s all-white board, saying that SO didn’t measure diversity by such metrics as race or ethnicity or gender. Some people wonder if they measure it by different majors at Auburn or Georgia Tech. Not to be ungenerous, I do applaud SO for their diversity outreach efforts.

Here’s the video:

Supplier diversity outreach –David ?
Shareholder Meeting, Southern Company (SO),
Callaway Gardens, Pine Mountain, Georgia, 23 May 2012.
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

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Retrofitting suburbia —Ellen Dunham-Jones

There are many jobs in this. The Five Points redevelopment is an example of what she’s talking about. It’s a lot better than building more sprawl: safer, less expensive, more jobs, less energy cost, more energy independence, better health, and more community.

Georgia Tech Professor Ellen Dunham-Jones spole January 2010 at TEDxAtlanta, Retrofitting suburbia

In the last 50 years, we’ve been building the suburbs with a lot of unintended consequences. And I’m going to talk about some of those consequences and just present a whole bunch of really interesting projects that I think give us tremendous reasons to be really optimistic that the big design and development project of the next 50 years is going to be retrofitting suburbia. So whether it’s redeveloping dying malls or re-inhabiting dead big-box stores or reconstructing wetlands out of parking lots, I think the fact is, the growing number of empty and under-performing, especially, retail sites throughout suburbia gives us actually a tremendous opportunity to take our least-sustainable landscapes right now and convert them into more sustainable places. And in the process, what that allows us to do is to redirect a lot more of our growth back into existing communities that could use a boost, and have the infrastructure in place, instead of continuing to tear down trees and to tear up the green space out at the edges.
Here’s the video: Continue reading →

Do we need more of the same unsafe roads?

Many T-SPLOST projects submitted by Lowndes County would make traffic safety worse.

More from Professor Ellen Dunham-Jones of Georgia Tech:

Even Buford Highway, she says, could be transformed with medians, trees and buildings set closer to the road. Changes that are known to slow traffic. But outside of the ivory tower, change does not come easily. Or quickly.

Last year Georgia spent more than two billion dollars on transportation, but only a tiny fraction, less than 1 percent, went specifically to pedestrian safety.

And what Lowndes County has sent in for T-SPLOST funding includes: Do we need more of the same unsafe roads?

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Why should traffic safety not be a pertinent fact?

We’ve seen that traffic safety is a big problem in Atlanta and elsewhere, and Virginia is leading the way in traffic redesigns to fix such problems. Meanwhile, Lowndes County doesn’t consider it even pertinent:
Traffic on Old Pine will be regulated by the amount of people who use the highway; traffic on Bemiss since you and I moved out there forty years ago.
…
I’m not going to argue Bemiss Highway, it’s not a pertinent fact.

That’s right, traffic and traffic safety are considered not pertinent to building subdivisions, according to the Chairman of the Lowndes County Commission, and the actions of the Commissioners and staff. The developer gets to consider only their one property and the neighbors get to deal with all the effects on all the related roads. Privatization of profits and socialization of problems such as traffic accidents. Does that seem right to you?

If not, it’s going to go on until more people argue and debate. In fact, many of Lowndes County’s T-SPLOST tax request would make the problem worse. See next post.

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Suburbia dangerous for pedestrians

Maybe people are starting to notice that far more people die in traffic accidents in the U.S.A. than in foreign wars. The projects submitted by Lowndes County for TSPLOST funding would make this problem even worse, except the bus system, which wouldn’t require road widening.

John Larson and others, PBS, 22 July 2010, Profiles from the Recession: [VIDEO] Dangerous Crossing: A new suburbia as economy changes:

In recent years a little noticed shift has been transforming suburbia: the home of the middle class has become the home of the working poor. As a result, roadways that were built for the car are now used by a growing population that can’t afford to drive. The consequences can be deadly.

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

According to a recent report, by two national transportation groups, about 43 thousand pedestrians were killed in the U.S. in the last decade; “the equivalent of a jumbo jet going down roughly every month.”

Of course, the problem didn’t start with an increase in pedestrians. Continue reading →

Videos of pro and con biomass speakers at VBOE

Karen Noll took these videos at the 29 September 2010 meeting of the Valdosta Board of Education (VBOE). Much more about that meeting here.

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Dr. Gretchen Bielmyer speaking against the biomass plant.
Dr. Brad Bergstrom speaking against the biomass plant.
Brad Lofton and Allan Ricketts speaking for the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) and the biomass plant.

Biomass Rezoning Minutes, County Commission, 9 June 2009

In the message from Prof. Manning, he says
I did address the county commission on this topic over a year ago – in a public forum at a scheduled meeting.
He provided no date nor link, but since this is the only Commission meeting minutes for which I can find his name, I’m guessing this is the one he meant. I’ve quoted here the relevant item, and I’ve added paragraph breaks to it to make finding individual speakers’ names easier. See also the VDT writeup. I would like to ask people, especially academics, who want to cite sources to actually cite them, not allude to them by some vague description.

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LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
MINUTES
Regular Session
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
COMMISSIONERS PRESENT
Chairman Ashley Paulk
Vice Chairperson Joyce E. Evans
Commissioner Richard C. Lee
Commissioner G. Robert Carter
Chairman Paulk called the meeting to order at 5:30 p.m.

[…]

REZ-2009-05 Wiregrass Power, LLC, 2637 Old Statenville Hwy, 0164 025. 22.1 ac., E-A to I-S,

County Planner, Jason Davenport, presented the item, stating that both the Planning Commission and TRC recommended approval with conditions.

Chairman Paulk asked those in attendance to be patient with the Commission as the item was considered, since it was an issue that many in attendance may want to speak.

Dr. Michael Noll, 2305 Glynndale Drive, spoke against the request and presented the Commission with a list of questions prepared by himself, Dr. Brad Bergstrom and Mr. Seth Gunning.

Mr. Fred Deloach III, 1411 New Statenville Highway, addressed the Commission requesting that tires and coal be added to the list of prohibited fuel items.

Continue reading →