The twenty-first amendment to the U.S. Constitution
was ratified eighty years ago today, repealing the eighteenth amendment,
ending alcohol prohibition, and along with it the alcohol mobs
it had bred.
It’s time to do the same with drug prohibition,
and along with it not only drug gangs
but also
the epidemic of incarceration in this country.
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her newspaper column My Day, 14 July 1939, Prohibition, Continue reading
Maybe filing the lawsuit in the first place was “premature”, to use Chairman Bill Slaughter’s word in the VDT yesterday about a possible appeal. Commissioner Demarcus Marshall had the common courtesy on WCTV to apologize to DSS for the unnecessary lawsuit. How much did the Commission spend on that waste of time and effort?
Editor Kay Harris wrote on the front page of the Valdosta Daily Times yesterday, Company wins fight to stay in business: Deep South wins case brought by County,
Southern Circuit Judge Harry J. Altman issued a ruling Monday in the civil action filed by Lowndes County against Deep South Sanitation, LLC to enjoin Deep South from continuing its garbage business. Advanced Disposal Services was later added as an intervenor plaintiff in the case against Deep South as well.
In the ruling, Altman denied the County’s request for an injunction to put Deep South out of business. The order addresses the County’s ordinance passed in 2012, saying that to “simultaneously invoke an exclusive franchise agreement with one company would, in effect … permit Lowndes County to construct a monopoly while simultaneously putting pre-existing companies out of business.”
Well, it appears the judge thought it was about right or wrong.
The county Chairman’s view now? Continue reading
The WCTV reporter interviewed Lowndes County Commissioner Demarcus Marshall at yesterday’s Chamber of Commerce Legislative Lunch because Chairman Bill Slaughter was not there.
Winnie Anne Wright wrote yesterday for WCTV, Deep South Sanitation Will Continue Work In Lowndes County, quoted Cary Scarborough about winning the lawsuit the Lowndes County Commission brought against his company, and then:
He has invested quite a bit of money in his only truck that you can see here. Despite all of the litigation, he is proud to be born and raised in Lowndes County.
One of the Commision’s newest representatives, Demarcus Marshall, says he hopes the County and private businesses will be able to negotiate out of court, if an issue like this comes about again.
“I commend him for his efforts. Commend his family. And I just really apologize to them that they had to undergo this. And I hope that in the future, don’t be afraid to do any business here in Lowndes County”, says Marshall.
Residents of Lowndes County will now be able to choose between Deep South Sanitation and Advanced Disposal, as well as any other sanitation service for their trash collection.
-jsq
Maybe Lowndes County could also welcome tourists instead of using them as a ticketing revenue stream that’s costing us $200,000 to process. And maybe both Lowndes County and Valdosta could put their agenda packets online like tiny (population 3,067) Tybee Island does.
Jim Galloway wrote for the AJC today, Your daily jolt: Tybee Island nixes license plate surveillance,
Tybee Island has decided that the National Security Agency isn’t a model worth following. On Monday, The coastal city’s council retracted its approval of a pair of license plate scanners intended to greet tourists. From the Savannah Morning News:
Citing mostly negative feedback from the public and concerns over how the information from the scanners would translate to a tourism study being conducted by a local professor, the council instead voted to purchase a higher quality model of the current hose-like vehicle counter the city has stretched over U.S. 80.
Meanwhile, the Lowndes County Sheriff’s office last year was Continue reading
According to
Deep South Sanitation’s facebook page today,
DSS won
the court case brought against them by the Lowndes County Commission.
So how much money did the alleged County Attorney spend sueing a local company to benefit ADS investors in New York City? The County Commission was very concerned recently about how much the Sheriff and the Coroner spent (which the Sheriff and the Coroner ably rebutted). Why isn’t the Commission as concerned about spending money on a completely unnecessary lawsuit that they started? Why do they let that same attorney set prices for purchase orders?
That
exclusive franchise with ADS: not so exclusive anymore, is it?
Will ADS sue the county, as many people rumored was the Commission’s greatest fear?
Will the county now have to pay DSS’s attorney fees? As a taxpayer I don’t like the idea of wasting more of my tax dollars on that lawsuit, so maybe they could take it out of the fees or salaries of whoever recommended and approved that lawsuit.
Maybe somebody down at the county should
“check our work”.
-jsq
Who’s responsible for the recent partiality in budget reports?
The newspaper, or its source of information, namely the county government
at its secretive retreat on the Chairman’s private property that even the VDT reporter had trouble finding?
When the Coroner and the Sheriff (often at odds lately) agree that the VDT’s version of the county government’s remarks about their budgets was at best partial, where is the source of that partiality? Who’s responsible for budgeting for the county, reporter Matthew or editor Kay Harris or Dean Poling? Or is it the local government our taxes pay to do that job, namely the Lowndes County Commission and its staff, which is managed by County Manager Joe Pritchard?
Maybe somebody down at the county palace should,
as Gretchen suggested recently,
“check our work”.
-jsq
Like
the Sheriff, the Coroner reports
that something’s rotten in the
Lowndes County Commission and staff’s version of his budget.
Dean Poling write for the VDT today, Coroner responds to county budget issues,
Lowndes County Coroner Bill Watson explained Friday that comments calling him one of the county budget’s “worst offenders” did not explain why his office’s expenses change from year to year.
“I have no control over the number of people that dies each year,” Watson told The Times, “and I have to fund the transportation for autopsies. Any time there is an autopsy, it costs my office about $750.”
These costs include Continue reading
LTE in the VDT today. -jsq
Sheriff’s Response to “budget woes”
The Sheriff’s Office has received a lot of criticism in the last several months. It appears to be the fashionable thing these days and an easy target. Sheriff Prine did not receive an invitation to the Chairman’s personal property for a review of the county’s budget and criticism of the Sheriff’s budget in particular. There are some facts that have not been reported by the Valdosta Daily Times, which may or may not have been provided.
First it should be noted that the Sheriff’s Office general fund budget was reduced from last year’s budget by $171,306.
This was before another $130,492 was taken away in August as a result of shift in traffic citation processing responsibilities to the Clerk’s Office.
A closer look at some of the specific line items targeted for criticism will show Continue reading
Commissioners at least listened about the proposed Sabal Trail Transmission pipeline, at the Lowndes County Commission Regular Session 2013-10-22. Now what will they do?
Video.
The Chairman started out reiterating his disclaimer of county responsibility from back in June,
but
at least this time said they’d take a look at it and they understood
what people were going through.
Carol Singletary started to respond, and Slaughter said they would
talk to her in a few minutes.
And they did.
Here’s Part 1 of 2:
Commissioners listened about the pipeline Part 1 of 2:
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 October 2013.
Video of after adjournment. See
previous post about how unusual Continue reading
A citizen didn’t appreciate a pipeline company’s bullying, especially when a second pipeline would make his land mostly useless and hard to sell, at the Lowndes County Commission Regular Session 2013-10-22.
Video.
He said he had an existing pipeline less than fifty feet from his back yard,
and this one would be less than sixty feet on the other side,
wiping out the use of much of his property,
including planting trees.
He said he probably couldn’t even sell his property with two pipelines on it.
He asked for help from the Commission.
Commissioner Crawford Powell asked for the name of the road Kicklighter lived on.
Here’s the video: Continue reading