Tag Archives: Law

Partial packet items! @ LCC 2015-02-09

This agenda includes links to the Commission Agenda Item form for each item! That’s not all yet, since it does not link to the numerous maps and other materials for each of the three rezoning items, for example. But it’s progress! And the meeting dates also now appear. Good show! Also the name of the engineering firm is in the document for Professional Surveying and Engineering Services for Naylor Boat Ramp.

See also the LAKE videos of the 26 January 2015 Planning Commission meeting for background on the three rezonings, which are in this LCC agenda as REZ-2015-01 Gramercy 2, Old Pine Rd, R-1 to R-10, Water and Sewer, ~4.1 acres, REZ-2015-02 Devine Subdivision, Tillman Crossing Rd, R-1 to R-10, Water and Sewer, ~24 out of ~72 acres, and REZ-2015-03 Scurry Property, Skipper Bridge Rd, R-A to R-1, Well and Septic, ~1.97 acres, plus Public Hearing fo the Abandonment of Deloach Road E (CR 95).

Proposals are also in this agenda for Preliminary Engineering Services for Exit 22 and 29 Utility Relocations, Professional Surveying and Engineering Services for Naylor Boat Ramp, and Proposal for Bridge Foundation Investigation for Morven Road Bridge Replacement, plus a 2015 Public Defender Services Contract & 2015 Operating Contract.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2015, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2015, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor

Continue reading →

Illegal trash dumping @ LCC 2015-02-05

I’m shocked, shocked, to discover there’s illegal dumping going on in Lowndes County! County staff assured us all two yeas ago that wouldn’t be a problem, while telling us all we had no choice about waste disposal. Yet today at the county’s retreat they showed this map of illegal dumping locations throughout the county.

300x400 Map, in Illegal trash dumping @ LCC Retreat 2015-02-05, by Gretchen Quarterman, 5 February 2015 300x400 Legend, in Illegal trash dumping @ LCC Retreat 2015-02-05, by Gretchen Quarterman, 5 February 2015

(If the county published Continue reading →

Videos: Mike Allen, Anti-Tethering, Budget, Surplus, Abandonment, Evidence, Workers Comp, Manhole @ LCC 2015-01-27

The room was packed as the Chairman commented on Dr. Amanda Hall’s proposal for an anti-tethering ordinance, as did four citizens (realtor Alan Canup, veterinarian Jeff Creamer, LCDP Chairman Tom Hochschild, and Carol Kellerman), plus Chairman Slaughter again. Citizen Frenchie DePasture commented on trash, at Tuesday evening’s Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission. Mike Allen, Utilities Director until last Friday, got an offer he couldn’t refuse from Hilton Head, South Carolina and a presentation from County Manager Joe Pritchard. Finance Director Stephanie Black read from the agenda about a budget award (or passing grade) received by Lowndes County for the ninth year in a row, as one of 1400 awardees this year.

No rezonings, but Continue reading →

Videos: Anti-Tethering, Budget, Surplus, Abandonment, Evidence, Workers Comp, Manhole @ LCC 2015-01-26

Mike Allen, former Utilities Director, no longer works for the county as of last Friday, according to County Manager Joe Pritchard. Dr. Amanda Hall proposed an anti-tethering ordinance. Both at yesterday morning’s Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

Lowndes County won an award for its budget as “a policy document, a financial plan, an operations guide and a communications device.” All good except: as a communications device? They’d probably have to publish drafts of it before they passed it for that to be true. Unless they mean as in a public telling, not a public hearing. They won last year, too, along with 45 other winners in Georgia, including Valdosta. Award, or passing grade? They’ll present it tonight at the Regular Session.

No rezonings, but surplus computing devices, abandonment of Deloach Road E (CR 95), more on the never-ending juvenile justice Evidence Based Associates topic, Workers Compensation Insurance Renewal, and sewer gasses corrode manhole covers. I wonder how much gases corrode pipelines?

See the agenda. Videos are linked below, followed by a video playlist.

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 →

Budget, Surplus, Abandonment, Evidence, Workers Comp, Manhole @ LCC 2015-01-26

Update 25 January 2015: Additional item #5 Anti-Chaining Ordinance Request – Dr. Amanda Hall; see separate post.

Lowndes County won an award for its budget as “a policy document, a financial plan, an operations guide and a communications device.” All good except: as a communications device? They’d probably have to publish drafts of it before they passed it for that to be true. Unless they mean as in a public telling, not a public hearing. They won last year, too, along with 45 other winners in Georgia, including Valdosta. Award, or passing grade?

No rezonings, but surplus computing devices, abandonment of Deloach Road E (CR 95), more on the never-ending juvenile justice Evidence Based Associates topic, and sewer gasses corrode manhole covers. I wonder how much gases corrode pipelines?

The agenda (PDF) still doesn’t give the dates; just Monday and Tuesday, so I’ve inserted them in [brackets]. But congratulations on having the agenda online a week in advance!

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, [January 26th] 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, [January 27th] 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor

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 financing bill HB 57

You won’t have to mortgage the farm to install solar power if this bill passes, because you’ll be able to get reasonable financing.

Update 2015-02-07: HB 57 was favorably reported out of the House Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications Committee 28 January 2015, first time such a bill has ever cleared that hurdle.

The actual solar leasing bill in the Georgia House as of 14 January 2015 is HB 57 “…to provide for financing of solar technology by retail electric customers for the generation of electric energy to be used on and by property owned or occupied by such customers or to be fed back to the electric service provider”, aka the “Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act of 2015.” It includes the same old generation limits from the 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act (10 Megawatts per individual and 100 MW per company), but it blows a huge hole in the prohibition on power purchase agreements (PPAs).

Georgia Power and the Electric Membership Corporations have reportedly already agreed on this bill. If so, it should sail through the legislature. Still, it won’t hurt to call your Georgia House member and ask them to vote for it, and maybe become a co-sponsor.

Here’s PDF of the bill, and here’s the key provision: Continue reading →

DoJ ending civil asset forfeiture involving federal law

This should also reduce incarceration, through fewer unnecessary stops, so fewer drug busts. Next, how about end the failed War on Drugs?

By Robert O’Harrow Jr., Sari Horwitz and Steven Rich, Washington Post, 16 January 2015, Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police,

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without warrants or criminal charges.

Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.

Since 2008, Continue reading →

Georgia Power claims credit for solar leasing bill

That antique 1973 law may finally change to greatly facilitate solar financing through power purchase agreements (PPAs), now that Georgia Power has finally realized the good PR it’s getting for its own solar power deployments.

Walter C. Jones, Jacksonville.com, 13 January 2015, Solar access for residences, churches, small businesses could become easier under agreement,

ATLANTA | Homeowners, churches and small businesses would soon have access to the financing available in two-dozen states for the installation of solar panels with little upfront costs based on an agreement announced Tuesday during a legislative hearing.

Coming up with $18,000 or more in cash to install photovoltaic panels on the average home is difficult for most homeowners. But if the agreement becomes law, they could lease their roof to companies that pay them back with free electricity, selling the rest to the utilities.

Or cities or counties. Valdosta or Lowndes County, for instance, might save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on utility bills if they could finance solar power through PPAs.

Georgia has the fastest-growing solar Continue reading →