Tag Archives: Government

GA bill for solar financing

What electric utilities fear most: bipartisan support for distributed rooftop solar financing. You can call your legislator and support HB 874, the Solar Power Free-Market Financing and Property Rights Act of 2014.

Dave Williams wrote for the Atlanta Business Chronicle 28 January 2014, Ga. Republican unveils solar bill,

Georgia property owners would be able to contract directly with solar energy installers to finance the installation of solar panels under legislation introduced in the General Assembly Tuesday.

The bill would let property owners lease solar panels instead of having to buy them with cash up front, said Georgia Rep. Mike Dudgeon, R-Johns Creek, the bill’s sponsor.

“We want to make it clear Continue reading →

The trash problem could be worse: north of Naples

They call it the Triangle of Death because of the cancer clusters. No, not Waycross: near Naples, Italy,

Jim Yardleyjan wrote for NYTimes 29 January 2014, A Mafia Legacy Taints the Earth in Southern Italy,

“The environment here is poisoned,” said Dr. Alfredo Mazza, a cardiologist who documented an alarming rise in local cancer cases in a 2004 study published in the British medical journal The Lancet. “It’s impossible to clean it all up. The area is too vast.”

He added, “We’re living on top of a bomb.”

Maybe it’s not that bad Continue reading →

Weather report by Ashley Tye, Emergency Management Director @ LCC 2014-01-28

Lowndes County’s Emergency Management Director reported yesterday on projected icy roads today.

Here’s the video:


Weather report by Ashley Tye, Emergency Management Director
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 28 January 2014.

All the local schools are closed, public and private, K-12 and college, so the best thing to to is to stay home.

Commissioner John Page said a constituent had just asked him if Lowndes County owned any snow plows. Answer: no, but the county can get access to them if needed.

County Clerk Paige Dukes enumerated ways she had tried to get the word out, including this information on the county’s front web page, which will probably disappear without trace in a day or so, so I’ve copied it below. Continue reading →

Digital Economy Workshop Cancelled Tomorrow

Received just now by email from Julia Shewchuk.

Due to potentially unsafe travelling conditions through tomorrow morning and several people letting us know they would not be attending, we are cancelling the Digital Economy workshop in Valdosta tomorrow. Please feel free to come to the February 6th workshop and we will add an hour before or after to discuss ISP specific issues and review the business survey.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Julia

See previous post for details about the other workshop dates.

-jsq

Dollar General and a historical overlay @ GLPC 2014-01-27

Yet another Dollar General, two small rezonings in Lowndes County, a business office in Valdosta, and a proposed Historical Overlay District.

Here’s the agenda, supplied by an informant. It came as PDF of an image, so I OCRed it to get this text. But why should any citizen have to do that? Oh, right, “the expense”.

Greater Lowndes Planning Commission

Lowndes County City of Valdosta City of Dasher City of Hahira City of Lake Park

REGULAR MONTHLY MEETING

AGENDA

Lowndes County South Health District Administrative Office
325 West Savannah Avenue

Monday, January 27, 2014* 5:30 P.M. * Public Hearing

Continue reading →

Digital Economy Plan Workshop

Update 3:30 PM 29 January 2014: Thursday 30 January 2014 session cancelled due to weather; come to the 6 February 2014 meeting instead.

Received by email and there’s a facebook event. -jsq

Good Morning and Happy New Year!

We would like to invite you to one or more workshops to help us develop a Digital Economy Plan for our Region.

The Southern Georgia Regional Commission, in partnership with the Georgia Technology Authority, is coordinating and developing a Digital Economy Plan for the 18 counties in the South Georgia Region to identify the unique characteristics of the digital economy in our region, its strengths, weaknesses, its needs and its opportunities.

The focus and intent of the plan is to Continue reading →

the expense of agendas @ GLPC 2014-01-27

The Greater Lowndes Planning Commission meets tonight at 5:30PM, but there’s no agenda posted anywhere online. At the same meeting at which he asserted “we have broadband”, and “transparency is not a problem” County Chairman Bill Slaughter said the county doesn’t publish agendas or minutes for the Planning Commission because of “the expense”.

“the expense”
v.
“When officials act like
they have something to hide,
they often do”

I suppose I don’t know much about this Internet stuff, so maybe somebody can explain it to me: what’s the big expense in publishing the GLPC agendas and minutes the same way the county publishes its own agendas and minutes? Yet if you search for the Planning Commission on the county’s website, all you find is its name in a list of Boards, Agencies & Commissions; tonight’s meeting is not even listed in the county’s online calendar.

For that matter, what would be the big expense in posting the entire agenda packets, like for example Continue reading →

Two appointments, a Presidio, a library, and a highway @ LCC 2014-01-27

What’s a “Presidio Change Order”? (Not like those change orders in DeKalb County, let’s hope.) A GEFA loan application for what? What’s going on with the Moody AFB Library?

Apparently Nottinghill is going to have a community water system, since it’s on the agenda for a trust deed, but you wouldn’t know that unless you’d followed other trust deeds, such as the one for Raisin’ Cane approved in December.

At least we know they’ve been itching to turn Cat Creek Road into a highway at least since they put widening it on their T-SPLOST list in 2012, and on this agenda is replacing the old bridge on Cat Creek Road.

The agenda actually says the final item is only in the Work Session. Maybe this will avoid the kind of confusion that happened with the Sabal Trail pipeline presentation in November and December.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

PROPOSED AGENDA

WORK SESSION, MONDAY, JANUARY 27, 2014, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

USDA REAP grants for 2014

Applications are being accepted now for grants from the USDA Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). According to Bryan Zulko, the amount of funds available is still being worked out, and an announcement is expected in February. Meanwhile, the number of applications is low this year. To me that means that if you want to apply, you’ve got a better chance than usual of getting in.

Section 9007 of the 2008 Farm Bill established a grant, loan, and loan guarantee program to assist eligible farmers, ranchers, and rural small businesses in purchasing renewable energy systems and for making energy efficiency improvements.

Eligible projects include Continue reading →

Videos: 2 agreements, education, jail, alcohol, and a health care presentation @ LCC 2014-01-13

They vote tonight at 5:30PM. Probably there won’t be a repeat of yesterday morning’s presentation by District Health Director Dr. Grow. The county wants an architect for a new roof and shower in one jail pod; it’s considering two interagency agreements, one for Valdosta Inspections for Lake Park and the other for the county extension, plus setting election qualifying fees and a Special Assessment Rate for 2014. There’s a beer license and acceptance of infrastructure for part of Grove Pointe Subdivision.

Here’s the agenda with links to the videos:

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 2014, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
Continue reading →