Leadership Lowndes Class of 2015 was there,
and Gretchen Quarterman spoke about
the WWALS Alapaha River Water Trail Conference.
Everything else went as predicted
with the rezonings and pretty much everything else unanimously approved,
at the Tuesday 10 October 2015 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission.
Tag Archives: History
Videos: Historic Courthouse, 2 rezonings, 1 utilities, MIDS bus, CDBG @ LCC 2015-03-09
These videos are of yesterday morning’s Work Session,
and they’re voting right now on
the annual grant paperwork
for the county’s on-call bus system, run by MIDS, Inc.,
on a
commercial and a
subdivision rezoning, both previously recommended
unanimously by the
Planning Commission.
Plus they will accept
Utilities for Creekside West Phase II, i.e., water and sewer.
They will declare at least two
Potential Conflict(s) of Interest for Commissioner Joyce Evans and County Clerk Paige Dukes
on the board of the
hildren’s Advocacy Center of Lowndes County, Inc. (CAC),
before agreeing for the Chairman to sign a
Resolution
to submit to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs for a
$500,000 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) for the CAC.
We don’t know what those conflicts are, because as usual
the county only published the agenda sheets for
each agenda item,
without the rest of the details that are in the board packets.
Judge H. Arthur McLane spoke yesterday about the Courthouse Preservation Committee; see LAKE videos of its public meetings.
Tonight they have Citizens Wishing to Be Heard on the agenda.
It’s a welcome change that for rezonings they now consider traffic on nearby roads, unlike back in 2011 when then-Chairman Ashley Paulk said:
I’m not going to argue Bemiss Highway, it’s not a pertinent fact.
Who knows? Next maybe they’ll consider expanding to
regular routes on the bus system.
Below are links to the LAKE videos from Monday morning, followed by a video playlist. Continue reading
Historic Courthouse, 2 rezonings, 1 utilities, MIDS bus, CDBG @ LCC 2015-03-09
The county has an on-call bus system, run by MIDS, Inc., and
they’re doing
the annual grant paperwork.
Judge H. Arthur McLane will speak this morning about the
Courthouse Preservation Committee; see
LAKE videos of its public meetings.
Tuesday the County Commission will decide
the rezonings, one
commercial and one
subdivision, previously recommended
unanimously by the
Planning Commission:
will they discuss the poor people they’re displacing, unlike the Planning Commission?
Plus they will accept
Utilities for Creekside West Phase II, i.e., water and sewer.
They will declare at least two
Potential Conflict(s) of Interest for Commissioner Joyce Evans and County Clerk Paige Dukes
on the board of the
hildren’s Advocacy Center of Lowndes County, Inc. (CAC),
before agreeing for the Chairman to sign a
Resolution
to submit to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs for a
$500,000 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) for the CAC.
We don’t know what those conflicts are, because as usual
the county only published the agenda sheets for
each agenda item,
without the rest of the details that are in the board packets.
It’s a welcome change that for rezonings they now consider traffic on nearby roads, unlike back in 2011 when then-Chairman Ashley Paulk said:
I’m not going to argue Bemiss Highway, it’s not a pertinent fact.
Who knows? Next maybe they’ll consider expanding to regular routes on the bus system. Continue reading
TVA needs to listen to former chair S. David Friedman about solar power
Will you bet on the blinkered money-only policies of the current TVA Chair, or the accurate clean solar future predictions of former TVA Chair S. David Friedman?
Seven years ago S. David Friedman wrote:
“As a substitute for oil, coal, and nuclear energy, the sun can replace the three poisons with inexhaustible fuel.”
The former TVA Chairman wrote that in 2007 his boook Winning Our Energy Independence: An Energy Insider Shows How, which also says (page 4):
There are breakthroughs in new technology that promise to make the cost of solar power as low as that of coal, nuclear, and oil. Almost simultaneously in South Africa and the Silicon Valley in the United States, companies are building huge new solar factories to manufacture a paper-thin solar coating that can generate electricity that could actually lower our electric bills. These breakthroughs promise solar power at 75 percent less than today’s price. Continue reading
MLK and pipeline opposition
The fossil fuel opposition is the child and grandchild of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
With their nonviolence, truth, and action as a model, we shall overcome.
Bill McKibben, The Guardian, 25 August 2011, Martin Luther King’s legacy and the power of nonviolent civil disobedience: In opposing the Keystone XL oil pipeline, demonstrators are getting a sense of the civil rights leader’s courage,
Preacher, speaker, writer under fire, but also tactician. He really understood the power of nonviolence, a power we’ve experienced in the last few days. When the police cracked down on us, the publicity it produced cemented two of the main purposes of our protest: First, it made Keystone XL “ the new, 1,700-mile-long pipeline we’re trying to block that will vastly increase the flow of “dirty” tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico “ into a national issue. A few months ago, it was mainly people along the route of the prospective pipeline who were organising against it. (And with good reason: Continue reading
Solar boom charts
When a power source grows 66% a year on average people start taking notice. Few had heard of the Internet in 1993: now it’s in your pocket. In less than a decade, by 2023, solar power will generate more energy than any other U.S. source. To keep Georgia from being left behind, this is the year to change a 1973 law.
If charts like this one aren’t familiar yet, they will be in the next year or two:
Tim McDonnell, Mother Jones, 7 November 2014,
Here Comes the Sun: America’s Solar Boom, in Charts:
It’s been a bit player, but solar power is about to shine.
At 66% more per year, solar power’s current 1% of U.S. electricity next year will be 1.66%, then 2.76%, then Continue reading
More military enlistments from Southwest Georgia
Yet another reason Atlanta doesn’t understand south Georgia:
military enlistment is 1 in 100 people in south Georgia from
Columbus to Valdosta, and less than a third of that in the Atlanta Metro area.
Enlistment is probably related to two other major features
of south Georgia that Atlanta doesn’t understand:
it’s agricultural (traditionally a bastion of military supporters),
and it’s poor (and enlisting is one way to a career).
A certain pipeline company may not have taken this factor
into account, either. Continue reading
Solar bills in the Georgia legislature
Every year since about 2000 one or more solar bills have been
before the Georgia legislature to modify the
1973 Territorial Electric Service Act
to enable solar financing.
2015 could be the year one of them finally passes,
what with
influential people finally waking up
to the cost-saving and energy-independence power of solar panels.
If you want
real energy reliability, lower power bills, and local jobs,
you can help pass whichever bill gets before the legislature this year,
and right now is a good time to help draft that bill.
Here are a few recent bills.
-
2013:
SB 51, The Georgia Cogeneration and Distributed Generation Act
That year even the Georgia Municipal Association fell for opposing SB 51, and ALEC and Georgia Power once again smothered it in committee. This year two people in the Valdosta City government have told LAKE of their interest in passing a solar financing bill, so that’s a big change. Continue reading
ADS wants a trash collection rate hike: who could have forseen? @ LCC 2014-12-08
Who could have forseen the rate hike ADS requested Monday morning at the Lowndes County Commission Work Session? Maybe anybody who noticed that ADS’ bid was 40% more than its quickly-acquired subsidiary Veolia’s bid.
Update 2014-12-10: No report from ADS in the board packet. Joe Adgie reported on this topic in the VDT 10 December 2014, Advanced Disposal wants price increase.
8.a. Advanced Disposal —Steve Edwards (work session)
Video. ADS wants to amend the exclusive franchise for solid waste collection due to “lost revenue and unanticipated costs”. And their number one reason: competition with “another hauler”, in other words Continue reading
Bloomberg notices solar now cheaper than all other forms of energy
What Jon Wellinghoff predicted a year ago is starting to filter
into the news media: solar is going to win, and very quickly.
Welcome to a sunny world!
Tom Randall, Bloomberg, 29 October 2014, While You Were Getting Worked Up Over Oil Prices, This Just Happened to Solar,
After years of struggling against cheap natural gas prices and variable subsidies, solar electricity is on track Continue reading