Tag Archives: Gretchen Quarterman

Biomass protesters @ VCC 7 April 2011

You’ve seen them before and here they are again: biomass protesters, this time outside Valdosta City Hall, 7 April 2011.

Old and young, Continue reading →

T-SPLOST Referendum in 2012 —Corey Hull (Part 6)

OK, so the regional executive committee selects from the T-SPLOST lists submitted by the local jurisdications and boomaranged through GDOT. Then what? Corey Hull of VLMPO says:

Public meetings will be held in August and September before the regional transportation roundtable meets before October 15th; that’s what their deadline is to vote….

The referendum will be in the summer of 2012 … July or August 2012….

Then the tax begins January 2013.

Here’s the video:


Corey Hull of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Metropolitan Planning Organization (VLMPO)
explains T-SPLOST (HB 277) and the Transportation Investment Act of 2010
at the monthly meeting of the Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP),
Gretchen Quarterman (Chair), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Video by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

  • Part 1: T-SPLOST Explained —Corey Hull of VLMPO at LCDP
  • Part 2: T-SPLOST Business plan —Corey Hull of VLMPO at LCDP
  • Part 3: T-SPLOST Project Lists —Corey Hull of VLMPO at LCDP
  • Part 4: T-SPLOST Penalties and LMIG —Corey Hull of VLMPO at LCDP
  • Part 5: T-SPLOST Projects to GDOT —Corey Hull of VLMPO at LCDP
  • Part 6: T-SPLOST Referendum in 2012 —Corey Hull

Next: Ashley Paulk talks about the T-SPLOST executive committee.

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T-SPLOST Projects to GDOT —Corey Hull of VLMPO at LCDP (Part 5)

OK, so local jurisdictions have submitted their T-SPLOST project lists and if their regional roundtable doesn’t have a combined list ready for the voters in time, there are penalties. So what’s the next step?

Corey Hull of VLMPO explains that next they go to GDOT and then back.

On April 13th we have to turn those projects in to the Georgia Department of Transportation.

…

On June 1st or thereabouts, the executive committee that Chairman Paulk is on is gonna receive the unconstrained project list. It won’t be … constrained to the amount of money the economists say we will receive.

…

It is that executive committee’s responsibility to go through and select projects and select the projects off that we can afford for the region.

Here’s the video:


Corey Hull of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Metropolitan Planning Organization (VLMPO)
explains T-SPLOST (HB 277) and the Transportation Investment Act of 2010
at the monthly meeting of the Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP),
Gretchen Quarterman (Chair), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Video by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

Next: Referendum in 2012.

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T-SPLOST Penalties and LMIG —Corey Hull of VLMPO at LCDP (Part 4)

What’s your penalty, 50%, 30%, other? Corey Hull of VLMPO continues explaining T-SPLOST at LCDP.
If the regional transportation roundtable does not agree on a list to present to the voters by October 15th of 2011, then each jurisdiction in this region must match their Local Maintenance and Improvement Grant … at a rate of 50%.
That’s Local Maintenance and Improvement Grant Program (LMIG). So if they get $100,000 from LMIG they’ll have to match that with $50,000. This will affect smaller communities the most, since they use the most LMIG funds proportionally. And the most likely way to raise the funds to match is to raise property taxes.

So what if there is a list on the ballot but the voters vote it down? Continue reading →

Concerned for the community and get up and leave in the middle of the meeting? –Scott Orenstein

Scott Orenstein made a very good point at the end of the 7 March 2011 Valdosta City Council meeting:
…spirit of concern and participation in the community. I’d just like the videographer to pan around and see how many people are still here at the conclusion of the meeting. And then talk about their true concern for the community. Are they really concerned when they get up and leave in the middle of the meeting?
There’s more, but I’m not going to transcribe it all; listen for yourself:


Regular monthly meeting of the Valdosta City Council (VCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 April 2011,
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

The mayor re-opened Citizens to Be Heard at the end of the meeting so Continue reading →

What happens at the end of a Valdosta City Council meeting?

This:

Regular monthly meeting of the Valdosta City Council (VCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 April 2011,
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

Adjournment!

Little joke there.

But adjournment is not the end of interacting with the city government at a city council meeting. For example, Council Deidra White stopped on the steps of City Hall to talk to people. Three people were there. All of us lived in the county outside Valdosta. Not a single person who lives in Valdosta stayed to talk to her.

Among other things, she said she thought she made clear at the end of the last Council meeting that the mayor didn’t speak for her. That was at the end of the meeting, in the “Council Comments” item on the agenda. However, apparently nobody stayed to hear that, either.

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T-SPLOST Project Lists —Corey Hull of VLMPO at LCDP (Part 3)

The 75% pot of T-SPLOST funds is what the project lists recently submitted by Lowndes County and the City of Valdosta are about, according to Corey Hull, continuing his presentation on T-SPLOST at the Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP) meeting.
Those are projects of regional significance that the local jurisdictions want the voters to actually vote on that project.
The other 25% goes to local jurisdictions, like this:
$1,300,000Lowndes County (unincorporated portion)
$600,000Valdosta
$30,000Hahira
$5,000Dasher
$14,000Lake Park
$9,000Remerton

Here’s the video:


Corey Hull of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Metropolitan Planning Organization (VLMPO)
explains T-SPLOST (HB 277) and the Transportation Investment Act of 2010
at the monthly meeting of the Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP),
Gretchen Quarterman (Chair), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Video by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

Next: penalties if the voters don’t approve.

-jsq

T-SPLOST Business plan —Corey Hull of VLMPO at LCDP (Part 2)

Corey Hull continued his presentation on T-SPLOST at the Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP) meeting by talking about the statewide business plan for the state of Georgia. It is not a project list; it’s estimates of how much money is needed and how much money can be raised.
The plan identifies $35 billion to meet the needs in Georgia today. However, $72 billion are needed to meet the transportation needs to sustain Georgia’s economy into the future.
Of course, that’s according to the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT), which notoriously is not interested in trains or other mass transit: if it’s not a road or a road bridge, forget it.

Continuing:

And $1 billion is needed here in Lowndes County. Lowndes County’s transportation plan through the Metropolitan Planning Organization has about a billion dollars in projects.
A billion dollars right here in Lowndes County? Continue reading →

Opportunities from solar power —Jerome Tucker and MAGE SOLAR at LHS, 29 March 2011

Jerome Tucker explained that there are jobs to be developed in south Georgia for solar power, in distribution, installation, and related industry.

First Jerome explained how he heard of MAGE SOLAR, and it’s pronounced Mah gay. He toured their facility and saw that they manufacture the panels in Dublin, Georgia, and this was impressive to him, who still has his kerosene lamp. He was especially impressed with MAGE SOLAR’s academy, which can train everybody from mom and pop operations to mega installers.

And with this industry there’s opportunity for engineers, there’s opportunity for electricians, there’s opportunity for plumbers, truck drivers, across the board.


MAGE SOLAR at Lowndes High School, 29 March 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

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T-SPLOST Explained —Corey Hull of VLMPO at LCDP (Part 1)

T-SPLOST is a ten-year one-cent sales tax, organized in twelve regional taxing districts, through committees composed of county chairs and city mayors, plus an executive committee with some of them plus 3 people from the legislature, which funnels transportation funding requests to GDOT, which picks, and then sends to a referendum in 2012. Got all that? No? Well, Corey explains it much better than I do.

You’ve heard Corey Hull of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Metropolitan Planning Organization (VLMPO) give a brief version of T-SPLOST at VLCIA. Here he talks at greater length at the Lowndes County Democratic Party:

The Georgia legislature passed what was then known as House bill 277 called Transportation Investment Act of 2010…. It created or proposed a one percent sales tax for transportation purposes throughout the state of Georgia. It creates twelve special transportation taxing districts that are based on the boundaries of the regional commissions. And that is where the connection with the regional commission stops. They are not the same body….
So who are these regional commissions? Continue reading →