A million dollar loan wasn’t worth scheduling on the regular agenda for the May 9, 2023, Lowndes County Commission Regular Session?
Apparently not, since Chairman Bill Slaughter added it after the previous morning’s Work Session. Commissioner Demarcus Marshall wanted to know Continue reading
The Lowndes County Commission spent nine minutes yesterday morning discussing spending $124,454 and borrowing $1,734,000. They vote this evening at 5:30 PM.
The county has now gotten up to not just demanding landowners give road right of way to the county, but also condemning property if they don’t get it donated.
The longest item at less than two minutes was 6.d. Request for Professional Engineering Services Proposals – CDBG. As Gretchen remarks in the notes, apparently this is in support of Arglas, the Japanese glass products manufacturer locating on Rocky Ford Road.
Second longest was 7.b. Bid for a Breathing Air System for the Fire Department, due to a question by a Commissioner.
Below are Continue reading
Lowndes County staff are proposing to spend $124,454, according to all the “BUDGET IMPACT”s board packet: $48,500 for a Jury Management System, $1,469.00 for Condemning ROW for Howell Lane Paving Project, $3,500.00 (approx.) for Second Modification of GEFA Loan Agreement, and for the Fire Department $29,195.00 for a 1/2 Ton Truck and $41,790.00 for a Breathing Air System.
![[Survey plat: Revised County RoW for Howell Lane]](http://www.l-a-k-e.org/govt/loco/2019-09-23--lcc-packet/September-23--24-2019-Agenda-Packet-0017.jpg)
Survey plat: Revised County RoW for Howell Lane
They propose to borrow $1,734,000 from the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority (GEFA).
The Lowndes County Commission discusses Monday morning at 8:30 AM. They vote 5:30 PM Tuesday.
![[Project Budget]](http://www.l-a-k-e.org/govt/loco/2019-09-23--lcc-packet/September-23--24-2019-Agenda-Packet-0026.jpg)
GEFA Loan Agreement Project Budget
For the first time ever! Lowndes County has returned the board packet before the Work Session.
LAKE sent an open records request Tuesday, and the county actually supplied the packet Friday, with this note: Continue reading
Southern Company doesn’t want to pay $17 to $52 million to get an $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee. That’s 0.2% to 0.62%. Why should we guarantee SO’s bad bet for pennies down? Let’s just call it off!
Ray Henry wrote for AP yesterday, Talks continue over Ga. nuclear plant loans,
Three years after the U.S. government promised $8.3 billion in lending for a nuclear plant in Georgia, Southern Co. and its partners have not sealed a deal.
President Barack Obama’s administration recently agreed to a fourth extension of the deadline for finalizing lending agreements between Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power and the other owners of the nuclear plant now under construction. Congress authorized the funding in 2005 to revive a nuclear industry that at the time expected growth.
Few utilities secured even a preliminary agreement, mostly because power companies dropped plans to build nuclear plants. The Great Recession trimmed the demand for energy, and plummeting natural gas prices made it cheaper to build gas-fired plants. The slumping economy also pushed interest rates to historic lows, reducing borrowing costs and undercutting the need for subsidized lending.
All that and ten nukes have been closed or cancelled in the past year. Even France’s EDF has exited nukes in the U.S. and has already built more U.S. solar and wind power than SO’s new Plant Vogtle nukes would produce.
Southern Company now claims this federal loan guarantee isn’t necessary: Continue reading
We don’t know the federal cost estimates or the terms and conditions or why Plant Vogtle just got another three month extension on that $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee.
Rob Pavey wrote for the August Chronicle yesterday,
Federal loan guarantee offer for Vogtle expansion extended again,
The owners of Plant Vogtle have secured — for the third time — an extension to allow further negotiation with the U.S. Energy Department over its 2010 offer of up to $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees to help finance two new nuclear reactors.
Georgia Power and co-owners Oglethorpe Power and Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia were conditionally approved in February 2010 for loan-guarantee financing, in which the government promises to assume a company’s debt if the company defaults. However, the details were never agreed on. Two extensions have since expired, with the most recent deadline — June 30 — passing without any formal agreement in place. Jeannice M.W. Hall, a Southern Co. spokeswoman, said in an e-mail Wednesday that the new extension sets a Sept. 30 deadline for completing the loan guarantee arrangements.
With Southern Company’s stock already downgraded because of Kemper Coal and Plant Vogtle, after S&P’s downgraded SO’s credit, and with still more cost overruns at Kemper on top of Vogtle being 19 months late and a billion dollars over budget, as Gloria Tatum asked back in May, why is SO gambling on nuclear instead of solar?
If you’re tired of this, you can ask DoE Secretary Ernest Moniz to revoke that loan.
-jsq
The central city of a major MSA,
Austin, Texas, publishes its own video reporting on
local issues, like this one on local energy efficiency.
AustinEnergy has brought back its best offer ever deal, which allows customers to receive both rebates and a loan to make energy efficiency improvements. The rebates can total as much as $3200, and can cover as much as a third of the cost of the improvements, including the air conditioning unit. Remaining costs after the rebates can be financed through a low interest loan through the Austin Credit Union.
The best offer ever is financed in part by a $10 million better buildings grant from the U.S. Department of Energy….
Here’s the video:
Continue reading
To pave or not to pave?
That is the question that was danced around by County Engineer
Mike Fletcher and County Manager Joe Pritchard, with interest,
at
yesterday morning’s Lowndes County Commission Work Session,
on agenda item
8.d. Georgia Department of Transportation Local Maintenance & Improvement Grant.
County Engineer Mike Fletcher said Lowndes County was receiving from GDOT a Local Maintenance and Improvement Grant (LMIG) of $746,984.75 for FY “two thirteen”. Because T-SPLOST didn’t pass, the county has to come up with a 30% match, which is $224,095.43. He said there was a work sheet and project list in the board packet (which the rest of us don’t get to see).
County Manager Joe Pritchard said with change from LARP (Local Assistance Road Projects, primarily for resurfacing) to LMIG the county could now use these funds for any purpose, and had planned to use LMIG for Continue reading
Received yesterday on Hahira approved for water well loan by state. -jsq
It’s nice to know Hahira will get a break in interest, but tax
payers will still have to pay back the loan. I missed the council meeting which is unusual for me. Does the video show anything about the fact some council members voted not to raise the tap fees for new construction which would certainly help pay back the loan instead of depending so much on tax monies? Developers should not be allowed to come in and make huge profits from new construction, then take their profits and let the citizens pay the price for increased water demands. Raising the one time tap fees would have distributed some of the costs to the developers who enjoy the profits from increased demands on the infrastructure and water usage.
-Barbara Stratton
Yes, we have video of the entire Hahira City Council meeting, which will be posted soon. LAKE is always happy to accept help in taking or labeling videos.
-jsq
Parker Wallace wrote for GPB 1 August 2012, Water Program Awards Loans,
The Governor’s water supply program awarded funding to eight water supply projects across the state.
The Georgia Environmental Finance Authority and the Georgia Department of Community affairs announced more than 90 million dollars in loans.
They’re aimed at helping finance water supply infrastructure.
The cities of Hahira and Vienna were approved for loans to construct new water supply wells. Newton, Oconee and Walton counties were all awarded 40 year loans to construct new reservoirs.
A bit more detail in the Montgomery Advertiser 2 August 2012, Funding flows to Georgia reservoir, water projects,
Continue readingSouthern Company wants even more special loan guarantee terms for its new Plant Vogtle nukes. When that or CWIP gets revoked, maybe Southern Company will see that solar is a lot less trouble, and more profitable.
The license authorized by the NRC 9 February 2012 for the new Plant Vogtle nukes 
is the first one in thirty years. Harvey Wasserman wrote for CounterPunch 18 April 2012, The Big Liability,
It’s about a proposed $8.33 billion nuke power loan guarantee package for two reactors being built at Georgia’s Vogtle. Obama anointed it last year for the Southern Company, parent to Georgia Power. Two other reactors sporadically operate there. Southern just ravaged the new construction side of the site, stripping virtually all vegetation.
It’s also stripped Georgia ratepayers of ever-more millions of dollars, soon to become billions. This project is in the Peach State for its law forcing the public to pay for reactor construction in advance.
Look on your Georgia Power bill for Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery Rider, 
aka Construction Work in Progress (CWIP). It’s probably about 3% of your bill, for power you may never receive.
If you get your electricity from an EMC instead, remember Georgia’s Electric Member Corporations already participate in the existing Plant Vogtle nukes, so you’ll be on the hook one way or another for the new nukes.
When the project fails, or the reactors melt, the public still must pay.
And even before then, Georgia Power customers get to pay for cost overruns. Not to worry; last time nukes were built at Plant Vogtle, they only ran over budget by a factor of seven.
Southern Company’s existing Plant Vogtle reactors had an unexpected shutdown last year days after NRC said they were fine. And Southern Company says Continue reading
![[Hightower Road, Wild Adventures, Briggston Road, $1 million housing loan, @ LCC Regular Session, 9 May 2023]](http://www.l-a-k-e.org/govt/loco/2023-05-09--lcc-regular-videos/many.jpg)