There was a dropoff in the first week of early voting,
but it picked back up last Friday and this week.
Daily and Total voting in Lowndes County Georgia by 25 October 2012:
Date
Daily
Total
October 15, 2012
1636
1636
October 16, 2012
1225
2861
October 17, 2012
956
3817
October 18, 2012
643
4460
October 19, 2012
1433
5893
October 23, 2012
1449
9173
October 24, 2012
1363
10536
October 25, 2012
1408
11944
Data courtesy of Tiffany Linkswiler, Lowndes County Board of Elections.
SPLOST VII’s $22 million for a new library and parks and rec
goes about 2/3 for the library and 1/3 for parks and rec,
and the latter doesn’t all go to parks and rec at Five Points,
according to a mysterious red-letter note that has sprung up
on the Lowndes County website.
The front page of
lowndescounty.com
has sprouted this undated and unsigned
clarification under the SPLOST VII heading:
Exhibit A
(Please note that the $22 million proposed by Lowndes County for the
Library and Parks & Recreation, represents a division of
approximately $14.5 million for the Library and approximately $7.5
million for Parks & Recreation. In addition, the $7.5 million
proposed for Parks & Recreation is not allocated for parks and
improvements at the 5-Points site. Parks & Recreation will use these
funds for improvements in other areas of the county.)
payment of bond debt for acquisition and construction of and
equipping a new library facility and parks and recreation facilities
$ 22,000,000
Can somebody explain why the new library and Parks and Rec were lumped together
in the first place?
At least the county is sort of trying to explain the difference now.
They didn’t include the pie chart with their clarification.
Here are some
pictures and videos from last year.
The food and festivities start early in the morning and continue all day,
with the parade in the middle.
They had about 35,000 people last year, more than a dozen times
the usual population of Hahira.
To get a decent deal on streetlights, a small Georgia city may have
to help change the Georgia Public Service Commission.
Or, an energy concern in Hahira happened to coincide with
a visit by PSC candidate Steve Oppenheimer.
Ralph Clendenin, City Council member, is looking into converting
Hahira's streetlights to LEDs or maybe solar.
He has discussed that with Georgia Power, which will do it for
$250,000 up front.
At a savings of $1,000 a month, that would take quite a while to pay back:
more than 20 years.
Just like you're looking at options the city might do for better choices for lighting
in terms of serving the people and meeting your budget, as Georgians we need that, too.
He indicated that there are more solutions than we're being told.
To me what's improtant are homeowners rights,
and we get control over the power rates,
because our residential rates and small business rates have gone up about 31% in five years.
What it comes down to is people like you in this room in the small communities
figuring out what pieces do we put together to make our community better for tomorrow.
Afterwards in the entranceway,
Ralph Clendenin showed Steve Oppenheimer how
he'd figured out that Georgia Power was charging about 73% maintenance
above the electricity cost of the streetlights.
Oppenheimer said there were many options.
Clendenin suggested one:
The option I see right now is, the Commission somehow, has got to change the rules
on how Georgia Power… structures payments.
Oppenheimer suggested a way to get there:
We need a commission with some new leadership,
with some separation from industry, that doesn't have the
apparent conflicts of interest.
Ralph summed it up pithily:
Ralph Clendenin: 73% is that forever payment to Georgia Power.
Steve Oppenheimer: It's a great deal, if you're on the right end of it.
[laughter]
What say we change the end of the stick we the taxpayers are getting from the PSC?
Work Session, Hahira City Council, Hahira, Lowndes County, Georgia, 1 October 2012.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
Apparently
WCTV’s “at the South Georgia Medical Center Parking Garage”>
meant actually in the nearby parking lot, because that’s where we found
some city and county employees and a few volunteers
standing in the shade of a Valdosta Police van.
An invocation and six speeches from five speakers ensued,
all in support of SPLOST VII,
the Special Local Option Sales Tax on the November ballot.
Several of the speakers were not so positive off the podium about the
library and auditorium projects, and nobody from the library board spoke.
The major theme of the event was a firm reminder that SPLOST VII is
not a new tax, just a continuation of a penny sales tax that has
been in place since 1987.
Fair enough.
However, Sam Allen’s second talk summed up what’s wrong with SPLOST VII:
Continue reading →
A local middle school teacher spelled out problems with the
charter school referendum: no local control over creation or operation
of the charter schools it would authorize; money siphoned off from
existing local schools; and charter schools actually perform
worse than traditional public schools anyway.
Christie Davis, a teacher at Hahira Middle School,
speaking at the Lowndes County Tea Party monthly meeting Thursday,
pointed out it’s not just the
preamble
to the referendum that’s misleading.
The actual wording of the referendum is also misleading:
Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow state or local approval
of public charter schools upon the request of local communities?
She remarked:
It sounds very good that we should say yes.
It’s very misleading.
And the reason why it’s misleading is totally purposeful.
It says something about local communities.
We already have that right in our local community, our local boards, to go ahead
and implement a charter school, if we see the need.
However, they put it in there so that voters that don’t really know
what’s going on think they’re helping our local schools by voting yes.
However, by voting yes, it will be funding a parallel state school system
that we have no control over.
A parallel state school system that we have no control over. —Christie Davis
Video by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 September 2012.
Thanks to Diane Cox, President, Lowndes County Tea Party, for the invitation.
It would be easier for people to vote for SPLOST VII if they knew
what they were getting.
So far, that’s difficult to tell from what’s been published.
Many questions remain to be answered.
The county projects penny sales tax collections through SPLOST VII
to total at least $150 million during a six-year period, a sum that
could fund a library complex, an auditorium, the installation of a
mandated public safety radio system, an array of municipal water and
sewage improvements, new equipment for police officers and
firefighters, and road maintenance projects.
There is not adequate funding for these projects if the SPLOST
referendum does not pass, according to city and county planners.
$150 million is not $35 million.
$150 million divided by six is $25 million, not $35 million.
The MiFi I’ve got is a slightly older model of the one pictured
above, because for years
AT&T DSL
Verizon 4G
I’ve been using it and its predecessors
on road trips, for Skype, web browsing, blog posting, etc.
It’s also come in very handy as a
plan B home Internet access method
on the many occassions when AT&T’s DSL has flaked out.
Mostly I did not use it for uploading videos or watching them much,
because until recently it was relatively slow,
using
EVDO technology at about 1Mbps down and 0.7Mbps up.
Suddenly, the MiFi has gotten much much faster, ten times faster,
because Verizon has turned on their 4G LTE service in Lowndes County,
at least for mobile access.
Several recent elections here have been decided by less than 100 votes.
Your vote counts!
