Tag Archives: Georgia

Groundbreaking, Naylor Community Center @ LCC Naylor 2017-08-16

Approved by the voters on the SPLOST VII ballot, plans discussed in a town hall meeting April 14, 2016, bids approved May 9, 2017, and below are the LAKE videos Gretchen took of the Naylor Community Center Ground Breaking, August 16, 2017. Of the two Commissioners in whose district is this project, Joyce Evans was there, but Demarcus Marshall was not, because they held it at 10AM when they know he cannot attend due to his day job. Continue reading

Videos: Bids for emergency road repair! Appointments: Library Board, Development Authority, millage @ LCC 2017-08-21

Bids for an emergency repair! This could be a first, instead of their usual sole source approve-it-right now method. See the County Manager’s Report, in which County Engineer Mike Fletcher describes bids incoming from both Scruggs and Reames for temporary repair to Rocky Ford Road.

Below are links to each LAKE video of yesterday morning’s Work Session with a few notes, followed by a LAKE video playlist. See also the agenda with notes about appointments and millage. And see also the 5 PM today Millage Rate Meeting.

Continue reading

Lowndes County Millage Rate Meeting @ LCC Millage 2017-08-22

This is all she wrote on Lowndes County’s web pages: no agenda, no draft documents. Lowndes County Millage Rate Meeting

Date: August 22, 2017

Time: 5:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Location: Board of Commissioners Administration Building

Address: 327 N. Ashley Street
2nd Floor
Valdosta, GA 31601

What is the millage?
Still from WWALS video of Millage Public Hearing @ LCC Millage 2016-08-23

Rummaging around in the agenda sheet for 6.a. Adoption of Millage on the 5:30 PM Regular Session agenda, we find: Continue reading

Appointments: Library Board, Development Authority, millage, cameras @ LCC 2017-08-21

Maybe the county would have enough applicants their Work Session, Monday morning at 8:30 AM, if they advertised for applicants for open board seats, such as on the Development Authority of Lowndes County, And if they posted the application sheets for the applicants they did get, such as for the Lowndes County Library Board, we’d have some idea of who they are. They could even say whether the millage is going up or down.

According to the agenda sheet for the appointment to the Lowndes County Library Board,

There is a vacant seat on the Lowndes County Library Board. The Board of Trustees of the South Georgia Regional Library System respectfully requests the appointment of Mr. Gene Toffolo to fill the vacant seat.

They don’t say who applicant Gene Toffolo is. According to the South Georgia Regional Library he’s a 2016 Friends of the Library Board member:


Front Left to Right: Kay Scott, Janet Toffolo, Mary Helen Watson (President), Merrilee Casady, Sarah Smart (Vice President), Robert DeVan (Treasurer)
Back Left to Right: Gene Toffolo, Patricia Marks, Riley Howard, Karl Osmus, John Swiderski (Secretary)

The county’s agenda and agenda sheet for the Lowndes County Library Board don’t say whose seat expired or maybe somebody resigned. The county’s web page for this board is no more helpful, listing these members and expirations, none of which expires in 2017: Continue reading

Solar panels at Valdosta Airport 2017-08-16

Prominently visible as you approach the terminal from Valdosta to catch a flight:

Solar panels behind passenger terminal sign
Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange 2017-08-17

VRA’s web page curiously includes no mention I can find of these solar panels, which I would think would be great advertising for the airport. Continue reading

No coal ash on a dozen years of DSSWA agendas (but Brooks County Landfill)

In agendas for the governmental group which supposedly has oversight of the landfill in Lowndes County, Georgia, there is no mention at all of coal or coal ash. Thanks to Julia Shewchuck of SGRC, those agendas for the Deep South Solid Waste Authority (DSSWA) are on the LAKE website.

[April 18, 2007 Agenda] Back in 2006 the proposed Brooks County Landfill is on the the proposed April 19, 2006 agenda, and the June 21, 2006 agenda said there was a public hearing June 29, 2006. An update was on the October 18, 2016 agenda.

2007 starts with one meeting with no mention of the landfill, but the April 18, 2007 meeting has “5. Discussion of Onyx/Langdale Proposed Land Swap”. I don’t see any further mention of the Brooks County landfill after that, and apparently it never happened.

Curiously, these mentions of the Brooks County Landfill on the DSSWA agenda are all months after these VDT stories: Continue reading

Videos: West Mims Fire, Water Trails, Transportation, Construction Board, 3 tax lighting districts, mosquitoes, no-bid contract @ LCC 2017-08-08

“There’s nobody that can tackle something like that alone,” said Emergency Management Director Ashley Tye in a West Mims Fire Special Presentation with firefighters from all over Lowndes County and its cities, including a resolution from the Charlton County Commission.

Citizen Gretchen Quarterman spoke about WWALS and trash and cameras at the Naylor Boat Ramp site, and about Boy Scouts at the GA 133 Boat Ramp. Citizen Jim Parker poked them about public transportation and renewable energy.

They’re settling on “Wiregrass Georgia Technical College Road to Success”, but when did Commissioners decide on that between the previous morning’s open meeting and this one? But wait: Continue reading

Landfill Solar on Wetherington Lane, Lowndes County, Georgia

These 1.0 megawatts (MW) of solar panels across from the old closed Evergreen Landfill will soon feed the new Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) a short distance up the same Wetherington Road. To get the electricity there, a power line will either have to be bored underground or put on poles overhead; that’s as yet undecided.

Solar panels with reference dogs
Photo: John S. Quarterman for LAKE, 25 July 2017

Another solar field, started a couple of weeks ago, will be on land right to the WWTP, for another 275 KW.

This is according to Continue reading

Big Bets keep getting worse for Southern Company

OSHA certified a “continuing pattern of retaliatory treatment” at Kemper “clean” Coal after an employee alerted Southern Company of alleged fraud: SO fired him, refused to hire him back and now he’s suing. Plant “new nukes” Vogtle also had impossible projections from the start and is even later and more overbudget, while anybody from GA-PSC to Georgia EMCs to the Florida PSC or even PowerSouth in Alabama could bring it down. Somebody put Plant Vogtle out of its misery so we can get on with solar power in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and everywhere else.

Plant Vogtle reactors 3 and 4
Two new cooling towers and construction cranes mark the work sites for nuclear reactors 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle in east Georgia. The project is currently $3.6 billion over budget and almost four years behind the original schedule. JOHNNY EDWARDS / JREDWARDS@AJC.COM, in Plant Vogtle: Georgia’s nuclear ‘renaissance’ now a financial quagmire by Russell Grantham and Johnny Edwards, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 19 May 2017.

Kemper “clean” Coal

Doyle LLP, PRNewswire, 8 August 2017, Whistleblower in Kemper Project Sues Southern Company and CEO: OSHA ruled former company engineer faced “continuing pattern of retaliatory treatment” Continue reading