Tag Archives: J. Stephen Gupton

I don’t want to say we don’t have broadband —Andrea Schruijer @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Unfortunately, Andrea Schruijer made clear that much of what had just been said at the the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013 hadn’t been heard.

It’s not that we’re saying we don’t have broadband. We have connectivity; that’s not the issue. We have great partners that help us with that.

Well, local “leaders” need to learn to say it: “we don’t have broadband!” Many of the people of Lowndes County and even more in the surrounding counties can’t afford Internet access at all, as Idelle Dear told the Lowndes County Commission. And the “great partners” Ms. Schruijer bragged about will never provide it for us without a lot of prodding, because AT&T and Verizon and Sprint and Comcast and Mediacom don’t think anything outside the Atlanta beltway has enough population density to bother with, and even in Atlanta all people get is U.S.-style low-speed low-reliability Internet connectivity that would never even be on sale in Japan or France or Korea or Finland or even Estonia.

Tom Call illustrated my point when he talked about a residential project where a provider installed cable and claimed they were providing voice, TV, and Internet access, but then didn’t actually have the capacity for Internet when people started using it.

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Broadband “huge strategic initiative for our community” —Mary Gooding for VSU @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Mary Gooding spoke up for VSU at the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013, saying that VSU President McKinney was in Athens (as was President Perrin of Wiregrass), but he and VSU:

We too believe that this is a huge strategic initiative for our community. And we were thrilled after the meeting that we attended that the city, the county, both educational institutions, the Industrial Authority, everyone there, the hospital for sure, all agreed that this had to be a significant incentive.

Mary Gooding added:

At Valdosta State it’s becoming one of our biggest road barriers to online degrees, to online classes. That’s again more bandwidth that’s needed to be able to deliver degrees and classes online.

That’s all good, but where were the superintendents and school boards of the two K-12 school systems? Where were library Continue reading →

Broadband top priority, education, jobs, quality of life —Angela Crance @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Angela Crance, Special Assistant to the President of Wiregrass Georgia Technical College, told the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013:

I’m here for Wiregrass, and we just want to thank you for bringing this up and making it a top priority for the community [looking at Lowndes County Commission Chairman Bill Slaughter] and the Industrial Authority….

 

 

It’s definitely a priority for us…. Only 14% of our citizens have a college degree and we need 70% to have a college degree within ten years. To be able to accomplish that we’d better have

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Broadband “one of the number one issues” —Bill Slaughter @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

 

Lowndes County Chairman Bill Slaughter told the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013 that broadband is: “one of the number one issues”.

…certainly one of the most important recruiting tools that we’re going to have to figure out in this community how we can get it. To be honest with you, it’s a wide open question. Do you have the infrastructure? How much will the infrastructure that we currently have support? We’re going to have to find a way to get with the professional providers and find out just exactly what these capabilities are in our community…. I see that as the big question. We’ve got to figure out where to start with it.

I think it is probably in my opinion one of the number one issues that this community is going to have to address from the standpoint of where we go with economic development in the future for this community not only for new economic development but for existing businesses as well. As a business begins to grow,

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Companies need broadband, especially in rural areas of our county —Andrea Schruijer @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Andrea Schruijer’s Executive Director’s Report to the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013 had one theme: Internet broadband speed and access.

It’s a concern, especially in more rural parts of our county….
It’s up to us to make sure that we create an awareness of the importance of having that technology in our community.

Why the sudden (just started late last year) emphasis on broadband?

We’ve worked with a few of our existing industries that do not have the capacity. Operations have had to change or move to different locations that have better connectivity.

That’s a not-so-veiled reference to the the company that located in Lake Park and discovered there was no broadband, and to the two companies that moved their IT operations to Thomasville.

She emphasized again that broadband throughout the county was important:

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Industrial Authority prospects need Internet broadband speed @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Internet access (as "telecommunications infrastructure") came up in Project Manager Allan Ricketts' report to the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013 as a requirement for a Fortune 500 customer service operation and for a National health care service provider, both considering locating here, also as bandwidth, as a requirement for jobs.

  • Fortune 500 customer service operation
    Needs secure telecommunications infrastructure; site visit 5 March. (And once again Col. Ricketts believes a company that says we're the primary option, without any sign of any due diligence to find out whether that's true.)
    Later, Tom Call asked how many jobs that company might bring, and Col. Ricketts elaborated on 100 jobs or more, with some detail on timeframe for bringing them on.
    Then Chairman Roy Copeland asked for elaboration on the telecommunications infrastructure issue. Col. Ricketts' answer was support for the training facility was what was needed, including bandwidth and security.
  • National health care service provider
    Needs telecommunications infrastructure.

Continued in the next post.

Here's a video playlist:

-jsq

Industrial Authority meeting tonight, about what, who can tell? @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Same old agenda tonight at the Industrial Authority (only the dates change each month). It’s now buried three levels down on their website, but at least they’ve started archiving old agendas. Still no minutes, though, going on two years since the VDT publicly exposed VLCIA’s expensive price tag for old minutes.

-jsq

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, February 19, 2013 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
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Videos: new website @ VLCIA 2013-01-15

Both Meghan Duke (PR and Marketing) and Andrea Schruijer (Executive Director) invited comments and additional information for the new website. They were speaking to their board at its meeting last night, but in the Industrial Authority’s new conversational spirit, maybe they’ll take suggestions from the rest of the community, as well. Both Allan Ricketts (Project Manager) and J. Stephen Gupton (Attorney) said the Hahira well site work was going well. They’ve got a new intern, and I reminded them about the need for fast Internet access. It was a long meeting by County Commission standards, yet short for Industrial Authority meeting: about half an hour.

Here’s the agenda, with links to the videos, and a few notes.

-jsq

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Industrial Authority: new website, same old agenda tonight @ VLCIA 2013-01-15

The Industrial Authority has a spiffy new website under a new domain, buildlowndes.com, and with their new logo, formerly only on their facebook page. Their meeting agenda for tonight, however, is the same old recycled content-free placeholder.

I sure don’t miss the old hexagon menu, the new menu is up top and usable before they waste a bunch of space with stock photos. The Our Team page even links to the Linkedin profiles of Andrea Schruijer and Meghan Duke. While Allan Ricketts does have a Linkedin profile, it’s not very fleshed out and they don’t link to it.

The Recent Investments page is interesting, although it would be more so if Continue reading →

Industrial Authority working for solar in south Georgia @ VLCIA 2012-12-18

The Industrial Authority is working to find locations for some of the 210 MW Georgia Power got the PSC to shift from biomass to solar back in September. That’s a good next step.

Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT 23 Dec 2012, Solar power push has Authority working to establish connections,

Since the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) approved Georgia Allan Ricketts, Projects and Existing Industry Manager, VLCIA, 2012-12-18 Power Company’s plan Nov. 20 to add 210 megawatts of solar power to its electrical grid, the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority has been devising strategies to draw solar energy producers to South Georgia.

Georgia Power will issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) from solar energy collection and production companies in early 2013, according to the PSC, and the company will contract with the lowest bidders to purchase their energy and place it on the Georgia Power electrical grid for public consumption.

Georgia Power plans to add 90 megawatts to its grid from distributed generation (small companies producing between 100 kilowatts and 1 megawatt), and 120 megawatts of large utility-scale projects producing up to 20 megawatts each. The company plans to price the solar energy at $0.13 per kWh for distributed generation and up to $0.12 per kWh for utility-scale projects, according to the PSC.

This government-approved commercial push for solar energy could be a boon to sunny South Georgia as well as the greater Valdosta area specifically, and the Authority is prepared to accommodate the solar energy producers they expect.

Andrew Schruijer, Executive Director, VLCIA, 2012-12-18 “I think there’s a very good possibility of solar energy coming to South Georgia,” Executive Director Andrea Schruijer said. “Possibly in the near future.”

There’s more in the VDT story. It’s pretty much what Col. Ricketts also told me after the VLCIA meeting Tuesday a week ago. He asked me if I knew what “distributed” meant. I pointed out Georgia Power’s version of distributed was actually not very distributed, compared to Continue reading →