Tag Archives: John S. Quarterman

Same old agenda at VLCIA tonight @ VLCIA 2012-12-18

According to their website (but curiously not their facebook page):

VLCIA logo 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 Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, December 18, 2012 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
Continue reading →

Precincts on Election Day 2012 in Lowndes County, Georgia

Naylor There’s an election going on! Here are some pictures of precincts around Lowndes County today. I’ve seen no lines, and everything seems to be flowing smoothly. Except there are multiple reports that when people call the Board of Elections to ask where they vote they’re getting a “this number disconnected” message. Apparently there are ten phone lines down there but only three people answering them, and the phone is not rolling over properly. Given all the recent changes in precincts, this is a problem.

Ready for you to vote at Pine Grove Sara Crow voted at Pine Grove (Clerk of Court, Lowndes County) Around 1PM Sara Crow said she heard at Pine Grove that about 900 people had already voted there today.

Rainwater I’m not blogging much today because I’m out helping Gretchen for Lowndes County Commission Chair. If you’ve got something interesting, send it in; I’m checking in frequently.

Here’s a slideshow:

Everyone Matters, so go vote!
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Lowndes County, Georgia, 6 November 2012.

Everyone Matters, so go vote! Everyone matters, so go vote!

-jsq

Library Architect Submissions (part 3)

Here are the submissions from the final four architects that were considered for the new Five Points Lowndes County Library. This continues the series with Library Architect Selection Documents (part 1) and Library Architect RFP and “Bible” (part 2) which presents documents received by LAKE from SGRL in response to an open records request.

The four architect submissions are linked on this LAKE web page. Here they are separately:

If we missed anything please let us know.

Architects: feel free to put your submissions on your own web pages and send us a link.

-jsq

Most Early Voting Ever in Lowndes County, Georgia

Backed up onto the street More people have voted early in Lowndes County than ever before, with cars often backed up onto the street waiting to get into the Board of Elections.

Eames Yates wrote for WCTV Friday, Record Breaking Number of Early Voters in Lowndes County,

More people have now voted early in Lowndes County than any time in history. Sherrie Luther was voter 22,00[0]… People waiting to vote making her ballot the one that broke the previous record set four years ago.

In the 2008 presidential election, there were 45 days of early voting in Lowndes County. In this year’s election there were just 16 days. Nevertheless the record was broken.

Sherrie was rewarded

Continue reading →

Library Architect RFP and “Bible” (part 2)

Here is the Request for Proposals and the “Bible” of related documents that served as background for the architect selection process for the new library at Five Points. These were received on a CD as part of the library architect selection documents in the very organized open records response from the South Georgia Regional Library; see the previous post for related agendas and minutes.

Included in the RFP (which was issued by the County, not by the Library Board), is a list of fourteen numbered submittal instructions that looks like it might have been the basis for the list of 90 items on the Library Scoring Worksheet.

The RFP also includes this interesting section:

RESERVATIONS

Lowndes County Board of Commissioners reserves the following rights:

Rejection of any and all submittals
Negotiate changes in the Scope of Work
Negotiate services to be provided
Negotiate fee proposal
Waive any and all technicalities

That last line basically seems like it could be interpreted to mean they could select whatever appealed to them no matter what the fit (or not) with what was asked for in the RFP.

The “Bible” includes a cover sheet that says:

Continue reading →

Gretchen canvassing 2012-10-30

Gretchen Quarterman, running for Lowndes County Chairman, will come to your house to remind you that early voting is 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. this week at the Board of Elections, 2808 N Oak St., Valdosta.

Down a street To a house

He already voted for her, so she’s on to the next house. After early voting, Election Day is Tuesday November 6th at your precinct.

Talking to a constituent Here she comes

Here’s a video playlist:

Pictures and videos by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Lowndes County, Georgia, 30 October 2012.

-jsq

Library Architect Selection Documents (part 1)

Thanks to a very organized open records response from the South Georgia Regional Library, we have available agendas and minutes of the SGRL Board and other materials related to the selection of an architect for the new library at Five Points. Here is a first batch of those materials, which sheds a little light on the library architect selection process.

SGRL Minutes 2012-07-17 According to the SGRL Board minutes of 17 July 2012 as approved at the SGRL Board meeting of 18 September 2012,

SOUTH GEORGIA REGIONAL LIBRARY
BOARD MINUTES
July 17, 2012

…

V. Architectural (Building and Grounds Committee)

The Firm of Clemons, Rutherford and Associates (CRA) was approved as the architectural firm for construction of the Five Points Library.
Moved: Ray Devery Second: Wyn Miller
Ayes: All Nays: None

No further detail is provided in those minutes.

Library Scoring Worksheet A Library Scoring Worksheet for the design and construction of the “Lowndes County Library” was included in the materials received in response to the open records request (it’s the extra item in the left edge of the picture in the previous post). It lists 30 topics with a potential score of 3 points each for a total of 90 points, grouped in categories of “Responsiveness/Quality of Presentation/Capabilty”, “Experience, Design Concept and Creativity”, and “Personal Overall Impression of the architectural team”. However, no marked-up worksheets with scores for any architecture firm were included.

The complete agenda packets for the SGRL board meetings of 18 September 2012 and 17 July 2012 are available on the LAKE website where more will be added later.

Next: the RFP.

-jsq

Propaganda for charter school amendment 1 paid for by out-of-state donors

Who can afford to pay for these two glossy mailers pushing the charter school amendment? Who are GeorgiaHope2012.org and BrighterGeorgia.org, anyway? Recipients of millions from Alice Walton and the Walton Family Foundation to push a bill sponsored in the statehouse by ALEC’s “our state legislators”. Will we believe Alice Walton and ALEC, or will we believe our Georgia educators, who overwhelmingly oppose Amendment 1?

Two glossy mailers pushing the charter school amendment

GeorgiaHope2012.org’s mailer (the big one) says in really light grey type:

Paid for by Families for Better Public Schools Edward Lindsey Chairman

We’ve heard of them before. They raised $486,750 by September, about 96% from outside Georgia, including Alice Walton ($250,000), K12 Inc. of Virginia ($100,000), Charter Schools USA of Florida ($50,000), J.C. Huizenga and National Heritage Academies Inc. of Michigan ($25,000 each). Their spokesman Bert Brantley (who went to Lowndes County public schools) claims the bogus preamble to the charter school amendment, the one that uses ALEC Family Trigger jargon and asserts things that just aren’t in either of the authorizing bills; he claims that preamble is “factual”. His previous PR campaign was pushing the T-SPLOST transportation tax that failed by a landslide.

Families for Better Public Schools is still playing the charter school bait and switch in their mailer by pretending Amendment 1 is needed for charter schools:

EVERY CHILD DESERVES A CHANCE! VOTE YES! for Public Charter Schools on November 6th.

We don’t need this amendment to create charter schools. Any local school board can already do that.

BrighterGeorgia.org’s mailer (the smaller one) says in grey on grey type:

Paid for by Georgia Charter Schools Association

GCSA got $700,000 from the Walton Family Foundation last year, and is a member of Continue reading →

LibertYOUtbreak @ LO 2012-10-27

Open, non-partisan forum A local group, LibertYOUbreak, met at Valdosta High School Saturday for a series of brief talks of opinion on issues by a variety of local people.

The first talk, Why No on Amendment 1 by J.C. Cunningham for GA House District 175, has already been posted separately. Here’s a video playlist for the rest.

LibertYOUtbreak
Talks, Liberty Outbreak (LO),
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
VHS PAC, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 October 2012.

First they showed an animated movie, The American Dream by the Provacateur Network, which is mostly about money as debt. As I remarked to one of the organizers afterwards, that’s also the theme of Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber, one of the founders of Occupy Wall Street (here’s a video interview with him, and a text interview). The cartoon movie, while presenting that theme in some depth, only briefly mentions Wall Street and focuses on the Federal Reserve and an octopus-like long-lived financial villain it calls Red Shield, which is English for Rothschild. I find that last a bit far-fetched, not to say outdated, considering that recent research shows that the real current octopus-like set of interconnected corporations looks more like this. But then plenty of things were said in the recent local political forums that I didn’t agree with, either.

-jsq

Why No on Amendment 1 —J.C. Cunningham for GA House District 175

J.C. Cunningham, running for state representative district 175, reminded us all that the basic purpose of the Georgia state government is to provide public education, according to its constitution, and that local school boards already can and do approve charter schools. He gave five reasons for voting No on Amendment 1:

  1. Because out-of-state corporations are paying for this campaign….
  2. It creates a new Atlanta-based government bureaucracy.
  3. The new commission will be filled by appointments done by politicians, not the citizens.
  4. Georgia already has 200 charter schools, and we’ve already proven the process works.
  5. A Yes vote would… cost us an additional $430 million while most of our schools are not open a full year as it is….

The only reasoning that I can tell you that proponents have been giving us is school choice, and again, they already have school choice; we have school choice. The only new things about Amendment 1 are higher cost and unnecessary state bureaucracy….

Here’s the video, followed by a partial transcript.

Why No on Amendment 1 —J.C. Cunningham for GA House District 175
Talks, Liberty Outbreak (LO),
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
VHS PAC, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 October 2012.

Partial transcript:

Continue reading →