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 AuthorityContinue reading
Agenda
Tuesday, February 19, 2013 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
How about if Lowndes County buys the land next to Old State Road
at Hotchkiss Crossing on the Alapaha River and turns it into
Acree Park?
That would be a much better solution to the trash, tresspassing,
and hunting problems there than closing the road.
And Lowndes County itsels claims it has plenty of money available
for just such a purpose.
As we’ve seen, Lowndes County’s own Comprehensive Plan says the county has $500,000 in Acquisition Funds Available to “Adopt, implement, and update provisions of the Greenspace Initiative Plan to include land acquisition and resource enhancement/protection.” And that it plans to “Continue preparation and implementation of the Withlacoochee River Greenway Plan.”
What say the county acquires parkland at Hotchkiss Landing from Continue reading
Is the Lowndes County Commission a “Qualified Local Government”?
Georgia state law says perennial river corridors
shall be protected,
all of the major rivers in Lowndes County
(Alapaha, Withlacoochee, Little)
qualify as perennial,
and
GA EPD rules say
to be a “Qualified Local Government” a comprehensive plan including
River Corridor Protection Plans with protection for a natural vegetative
buffer area bordering each protected river is required.
GA DCA keeps a list of all the comprehensive plans in the state. Here’s Lowndes County’s 2030 Comprehensive Plan. The main document is the Community Agenda and here is the map. Hm, the map shows a light blue color for “Park/Recreation/Conservation” for parts of the Little, Withlacoochee, and Alapaha Rivers in Lowndes County, but not all. What about the rest of those rivers in the county?
What does the Community Agenda say? It doesn’t mention any River Corridor Protection Plans. However, it does say this:
Continue readingSeen today on the WACE facebook page is an image of an op-ed in the VDT, and alongside it I include here Michael Noll’s initial comments, plus a few links.
Continue reading
There is good reason why Stephen Hawkins once said “the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” When entities like Fox News can claim that “solar won’t work in America because it’s not as sunny as Germany”, we shouldn’t be surprised by the results of such “educational” efforts. The fact is that we have a number of clean and renewable forms of energy (e.g. wind, solar, geothermal) that already work. Just go to Spain, Germany, Denmark, Iceland, or simply stay in the US and visit places like from New Jersey and New York to California and Arizona. Combine these pieces of a larger energy puzzle with meaningful initiatives of energy conservation and energy efficiency, and we find a way out of our current predicament (i.e. continuing dependence on finite and dirty sources of energy), while saving money (see solar vs. nuclear), preserving our natural resources (e.g. water, forests), and providing clean, healthy and safe environments to live in (e.g. wind and solar do not produce radioactive waste, pollute our air and groundwater).
The guest columnist appearing above is the same individual who thought
Old State Road at the Alapaha River is a county-maintained public road.
How could Lowndes County not have known that it was
blocked by two huge blocks of concrete
at Hotchkiss Landing from late 2010 through at least early 2012?
Why did Code Enforcement do nothing about it?
These blocks of concrete have to be quite heavy. This is not random litter, and no partier or hunter or 4-wheeler would have any motivation to block the road, much less with blocks this size. Who would? Why didn’t the county find out and do something about it?
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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
Continue reading
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
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
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.
“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
Education at Wiregrass Tech, startup competition and awards by Guardian Bank,
and more!
Chamber president Tim Jones invited me to the quarterly luncheon of the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce,
held 18 December 2012 at the Rainwater Conference Center.
I counted about 70 people there, and only maybe a dozen were Chamber
board and staff, so that was a very well-attended meeting.
Keynote speaker
Dr. Ray Perrin,
president of
Wiregrass Technical College said:
“Strong education systems are the heart of economic development.”
He congratulated VSU on the recent football win, as well as the various other local school systems, government bodies, and businesses, and proceeded to give an overview of what Wiregrass Tech is and what it does, which includes everything from automobile repair to computer science; from adult education for high school equivalency to advanced courses, in the eleven counties it serves, through the campuses in Valdosta, Fitzgerald, and Adel, as well as at Moody AFB and online overseas. He noted that changes in the HOPE scholarship and economic improvement had decreased enrollment, but Wiregrass Tech still has a large student body and is adding programs, such as in nursing and respiratory therapy. Plus a 97.5% placement rate.
Also in the plans is an Allied Health Education building 100,000 square foot facility that would cost about $20 million, for which Wiregrass Tech will be approaching the Georgia General Assembly in the next few years. Dr. Perrin invited feedback and requested assistance, both financially and in getting the word out about what Wiregrass Tech can do.
Tim Jones remarked that he was also on the board of the
Wiregrass Tech Foundation which was in a fundraising drive,
so anybody who wanted to donate could see him.
(And it turns out you can also
donate online.)
Here’s a video playlist of the entire meeting, followed by a few notes.
Continue readingAccording to their website (but curiously not their facebook page):
The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority’s Regular Monthly Meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, December 18, 2012, 5:30 PM at the Industrial Authority Conference Room, 2110 N. Patterson Street.
I mentioned to a VLCIA board member Friday that the agendas never changed, except for the dates for minutes of previous meetings and of financial statements. I really must apologize! This one also differs from last month’s agenda in three more ways:
old Executive Director’s Report-Allan Ricketts on behalf of Andrea Schruijer
new Executive Director’s Report- Andrea Schruijer
old Adjourn General Meeting into Executive Session
old Adjourn Executive Session into General Meeting
old Adjoujrn General Meeting
new Adjourn General Meeting
That’s right: apparently Andrea Schruijer is in town this time, there’s no scheduled Executive Session, and a typo is fixed.
However, they didn’t change any of the lists of existing or prospective businesses, or meetings attended, or changes to the website, or acreage owned. Because the agenda never lists any of those things, nor anything else of substance. While that sort of secrecy was perhaps useful in trying to sneak in a private prison and a biomass plant, I wonder if it really helps attract high tech business like Richmond County or attract a solar park like Decatur County?
Here’s the agenda.
-jsq
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial AuthorityContinue reading
Agenda
Tuesday, December 18, 2012 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street