Tag Archives: Law

Streetlights and Georgia Power @ Hahira 2012-10-01

To get a decent deal on streetlights, a small Georgia city may have to help change the Georgia Public Service Commission. Or, an energy concern in Hahira happened to coincide with a visit by PSC candidate Steve Oppenheimer.

Ralph Clendenin, City Council member, is looking into converting Hahira's streetlights to LEDs or maybe solar. He has discussed that with Georgia Power, which will do it for $250,000 up front. At a savings of $1,000 a month, that would take quite a while to pay back: more than 20 years.

Steve Oppenheimer, running for Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC), found the streetlight issue interesting:

Just like you're looking at options the city might do for better choices for lighting in terms of serving the people and meeting your budget, as Georgians we need that, too.

He indicated that there are more solutions than we're being told.

To me what's improtant are homeowners rights, and we get control over the power rates, because our residential rates and small business rates have gone up about 31% in five years.

He brought up Dublin's solar streetlights, and solar for energy and jobs. He indicated energy was a future source of jobs.

What it comes down to is people like you in this room in the small communities figuring out what pieces do we put together to make our community better for tomorrow.

Afterwards in the entranceway, Ralph Clendenin showed Steve Oppenheimer how he'd figured out that Georgia Power was charging about 73% maintenance above the electricity cost of the streetlights. Oppenheimer said there were many options. Clendenin suggested one:

The option I see right now is, the Commission somehow, has got to change the rules on how Georgia Power… structures payments.

Oppenheimer suggested a way to get there:

We need a commission with some new leadership, with some separation from industry, that doesn't have the apparent conflicts of interest.

Ralph summed it up pithily:

Ralph Clendenin: 73% is that forever payment to Georgia Power.

Steve Oppenheimer: It's a great deal, if you're on the right end of it.
[laughter]

What say we change the end of the stick we the taxpayers are getting from the PSC?

Here's a playlist.

Work Session, Hahira City Council, Hahira, Lowndes County, Georgia, 1 October 2012.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-jsq

Kickoff speeches @ SPLOST 2012-09-28

Apparently WCTV’s “at the South Georgia Medical Center Parking Garage”> meant actually in the nearby parking lot, because that’s where we found some city and county employees and a few volunteers standing in the shade of a Valdosta Police van. An invocation and six speeches from five speakers ensued, all in support of SPLOST VII, the Special Local Option Sales Tax on the November ballot. Several of the speakers were not so positive off the podium about the library and auditorium projects, and nobody from the library board spoke.

Here are videos of all of the speeches.

Also the VDT was there, and Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT yesterday, Committee kicks off SPLOST campaign,

The major theme of the event was a firm reminder that SPLOST VII is not a new tax, just a continuation of a penny sales tax that has been in place since 1987.

Fair enough. However, Sam Allen’s second talk summed up what’s wrong with SPLOST VII: Continue reading →

Democrats and Tea Party: both against charter school amendment

In the same month, both the Lowndes County Democratic Party and the Valdosta Tea Party had speakers explaining how bad the charter school amendment is. Neither group took a vote, but it seemed pretty clear most of the attendees at both meetings were against that referendum on the November ballot, and mostly for the same reason: nobody wants an unelected state committee taking away local control and local tax revenue. Parental choice is one thing, and charter schools are another, but nobody seemed to like Atlanta taking away local control.

As the PAGE slides say,

This isn’t a Democrat vs. Republican debate. Legislators voted across party lines to put the constitutional amendment on the ballot. Republican and Democrat voters must defeat it together.

You can watch for yourself. Here are the two presentations:

If you don’t want Atlanta taking away our educational control and local tax dollars, vote No on the charter school amendment in November.

-jsq

The charter school amendment is about control —Dr. Troy Davis @ LCDP 2012-09-10

Lowndes County Schools Assistant Superintendent Troy Davis gave his personal opinion: “it’s about control”. The charter school amendment on the November ballot is not about charter schools, which any community in the state can create now. It’s about control by the state of local schools and resources.

Dr. Davis pointed out Georgia already has 350 charter schools, up from 160 three years ago. All but 19 were established and agreed upon by local communities. There’s a successful one in Berrien County, established by the Berrien County school board. The process to create more is in place in every community. If we wanted one in Lowndes County, all it would take would be for one of the two school systems (Lowndes or Valdosta) to approve one.

He suggested looking at the sources of funds for Families for Better Schools, which is backing the amendment. Top of the list is a Wal-Mart heir. (It’s Alice Walton. Dr. Davis deferred to Al Rowell for that information, and that’s also where I heard about Alice Walton. And as I discovered, the Walton Family Foundation put in much more than that last year.) He noted the bulk of the rest comes from for-profit school operators. (They include K12 Inc. of Virginia.)

He noted that the state of Georgia just passed this fiscal year the third largest budget in the history of Georgia, $19.1 billion. Yet the public schools have been cut $6.6 billion (apparently since 2002). And the Lowndes County school system lost nearly $8 million last year, and $43 million in the past 10 years. So he asked:

Continue reading →

Our south Georgia school tax dollars would go to Virginia rich people —Karen Noll

Received yesterday on K12 CEO Packard: $5M in 2011, up 36% -jsq

Keep in mind that this company is based in Virginia, so our tax dollars from say, South Georgia meant for our school teachers, administraters, supplies, and educating our students, would go to bolster the economy in Virginia and line the pockets of the very rich. Meanwhile we have to raise taxes to simply educate the students attending our public schools. This is clearly NOT a plan to ‘improve academic achievement’ as the preamble boldly lies.

The preamble is boldly inaccurate and completely biased. The wording added to the question on the ballot implies that the amendment would improve student achievement and parent involvement. My stars, what breathing individual doesn’t want those things.

Facts are that by some measures charter schools perform 3% worse than traditional public schools. We would hope that schools where parents have to sign a commitment of parent involvement would have superior parent involvement. Might I just add that students can be kicked out of charter schools and all students are educated in the Traditional Public School setting as per our Georgia constitution.

The ‘biased and inaccurate’ wording in the preamble to the charter schools question is not found in HB 1162, the law that allowed this question to be placed on the ballot. It is not in HB 797, the law thaw would be enacted should the amendment pass. NO the wording that is on the preamble comes straight out of ALEC documents, which are the equivalent of ‘legislation for Dummies’ with a particular slant as you might imagine.

-Karen Noll

Bill Moyers on ALEC

Bill Moyers takes on ALEC.

Posted yesterday On Bill Moyers’ website, ‘United States of ALEC’ Video Previews

This week, Moyers & Company (check local listings) presents “United States of ALEC,” a report on the most influential corporate-funded political force most of America has never heard of — ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge.

He said more on Huffington Post Wednesday,

Continue reading →

K12 CEO Packard: $5M in 2011, up 36%

Does your school superintendent get paid $5 million a year? Ronald J. Packard, CEO of K12 Inc., the second biggest donor to the pro-charter school amendment campaign, does. Is that where you want your tax dollars to go?

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Executive Profile, Ronald J. Packard CFA, Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Director, K12, Inc. K12 CEO Packard made $551,539 in salary in 2011, but was awarded other compensation totaling $5,002,933. Which is even richer than the approximately $3,266,387 total compensation private prison company CCA’s CEO Damon Hininger got in 2010, which, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, apparently only went up to 3,696,798 in 2011.

According to Emma Brown for the Washington Post 9 December 2011, K12 Inc. chief executive Ron Packard paid $5 million compensation package in 2011,

That’s nearly twice the $2.67 million Packard earned in 2010. It includes $551,000 in cash, $4.2 million in stock awards and about $290,000 in other compensation.

Packard’s pay reflects a new employment agreement negotiated in September 2010 and good until 2014. The company had $522 million in revenue in 2011, up nearly 36 percent percent from the year before.

“We determined that these awards were necessary and appropriate to retain Mr. Packard as our Chief Executive Officer and in recognition of Mr. Packard’s leadership and performance over the term of his employment with the Company,” the filing said.

Do we want our tax revenue going to retain K12 Inc.’s CEO? What if we retain our local schools instead? After all, it’s dubious that charter schools would be any better Continue reading →

Georgia Power inches towards more solar, trailing New Jersey

If you’re quick, you may be able to sell solar from your roof to Georgia Power. If the PSC approves a pending request. If you get in before that new quota gets filled. And if you’re a Georgia Power customer. The rest of us? Not until the 1973 Georgia Electric Territorial Act is changed. Until then, Georgia will continue to lag way behind New Jersey in solar power.

210 MW is more than 50 MW but way less than 3,000 MW

Walter C. Jones wrote for the Augusta Chronicle today, Georgia Power plans to triple solar power use,

Georgia Power filed Wednesday seeking permission from state regulators to more than triple the amount of solar power it uses to generate electricity for its 2.4 million customers by swapping it for what was already planned from other renewable sources.

What “other renewable sources”?

The Georgia Power plan won’t affect rates because it is based on paying the solar providers what it would have paid the biomass provider, 13 cents per kilowatt hour, which is already figured into customer’s rates.

OK, that’s good, because it means biomass is well and truly dead in Georgia. But it also means Georgia Power isn’t very serious about solar, if all it’s doing is fiddling with accounting for the small amount of power biomass might have produced and not going for the real numbers solar can produce. OK, how many solar megawatts?

Continue reading →

Walton Family Foundation granted $1.05 million towards GA charter schools in 2011

The total amount of Walton family affiliate money backing the Georgia charter school referendum is far larger than Alice Walton’s $250,000.

In the Walton Family Foundation’s list of 2011 Education Reform Grants, there are two Georgia organizations:

Georgia Charter Schools Association Inc. 700,000
Georgia Family Education and Research Council, Inc. 350,000

GCSA has made the news quite a bit lately, and its name makes its purpose pretty clear. According to the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), GCSA is a NACSA member. You remember NACSA, the organization that Zaid Jilani discovered was an ALEC member, and that bailed out of ALEC two days later. That was in May 2012, after the Georgia legislature passed the bill putting the charter school referendum on the ballot.

Georgia Family Education and Research Council, Inc. (GFERC) is slightly less obvious. According Continue reading →

Video Playlist @ LCC 2012-09-24

A parade of speakers not on the agenda extended yesterday morning’s Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission. They spoke about the conference center, about South Georgia Partnership for Homelessness, and about health and life insurance. Commissioners heard from staff about repairs to a sewage lift station and laptops for the Sheriff’s office. They vote on all these things at their Regular Session tonight at 5:30 PM.

Here’s the agenda, annotated below with links to the videos and a few notes, and followed by a video playlist.

  1. Call to Order
  2. Invocation
  3. Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag
  4. Minutes for Approval
    1. Work Session — September 10, 2012
    2. Regular Session — September 11, 2012
    The Chairman announced guests not on the agenda.
  5. For Consideration
    1. Bevel Creek Lift Station Repair
      MR Systems’ quote for SCADA control panel was $13,775, plus another control panel $25,194, for a total of $38,969. Utilities Director Mike Allen said making an addition (presumably of the $25,194 control panel) would save four weeks of downtime.
    2. Dell Lease Agreement for Sheriff’s Office Laptops
    3. Contract with Corporate Health Partners
      County Manager Joe Pritchard said they had achieved $260,000 in savings towards projected $300,000 savings in health care expenses. He introduced Chris Park(?) with Park(?) Group and Jack Curtis with Corporate Health Partners. Pritchard said the county Wanted to add a wellness program to improve employee quality of life and wellbeing. Chris Park(?) spoke first. He introduced Jack Curtis, who spoke about a wellness program proposal.
    4. Agreement with Basic Life
      Chris Park(?) spoke again, saying what he was proposing would save $10,000 or 23% over the current plan while preserving all the current benefits.
  6. Reports-County Manager
    Joe Pritchard had no report, so they adjourned.
  7. Citizens Wishing to be Heard Please State Name And Address
    That’s only for the Regular Session.

Video Playlist
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Videos by Brandon Livingston for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 24 September 2012.

-jsq