Tag Archives: minutes

Minutes from 2006, Lowndes County Commission

Minutes aren’t on Lowndes County’s new website back more than a few years. 300x388 DecemberX12,X2006-015, in Loco minutes, by John S. Quarterman, 11 August 2015 Even on their previous website, three sets of minutes were not there. More than four years after Gretchen asked, she asked again, and today we finally got those three. Look who signed those minutes as County Clerk: K. Paige Dukes, the same County Clerk who took four years to return them in response to an Open Records request. Here’s the message, and I’ve linked in those minutes.

-jsq

From: Amanda Smith <asmith@lowndescounty.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2015 16:43:18 +0000
To: “‘land@quarterman.org'” <land@quarterman.org>
Subject: Meeting Minutes

As per your request, I have attached the meeting minutes from 8/8/06, 12/12/06, and 12/20/06. Continue reading →

Videos: Hasty waste meeting @ LCC Waste 2015-03-16

See the LAKE video below, the WALB story by Colter Anstaett including interviews with Cary Scarborough of Deep South Sanitation and Steve Edwards of Advanced Disposal Services. The county actually posted the resulting Solid Waste Ordinance on their County Ordinances web page (although I don’t see the updated franchise agreement anywhere), and they even posted the results of that meeting. Neither the county’s results summary nor WALB mentioned Commissioner Marshall’s question about recycling glass nor Chairman Slaughter’s response that glass can be disposed of as ordinary trash, which means they’re not going to recycle it.

Here’s the paper agenda from the meeting and the county’s results summary: Continue reading →

Hasty waste meeting this afternoon @ LCC Waste 2015-03-16

On their calendar, but no agenda, it’s another Special Called Meeting-Solid Waste Management. Will they talk about illegal trash dumping? Why can’t they wait until their regular meetings next week? Equally mysterious is why it took almost two months to get back to this after the two meetings in January.

Here’s their announcement of the meeting this afternoon: Continue reading →

Lowndes County’s own videos @ LCC 2014-12-09

Paige Dukes told us about this Monday, but why steal her thunder about the county’s new website and the videos on it?

Joe Adgie, VDT, 17 December 2014, Lowndes County website goes live,

County residents can pay bills, read county ordinances, search for real estate and read meeting agendas on the new site.

In addition, a first for the county government, videos of the Lowndes County Commission meetings are also available through the site and on YouTube.

“Due to schedules, Continue reading →

New loco web site

300x162 Just one more step., in New Lowndes County Website, by Gretchen Quarterman, 12 December 2014 As announced at the Lowndes County Commission meeting on Tuesday, the new county website was available this morning. I took a little self tour and then started sending in comments to County Clerk Paige Dukes. Paige has been responsive in answering my questions and comments and I heartily suggest to everyone that you take a look around and then send in your comments.

A few things I’ve noticed so far. Continue reading →

Lowndes County says it doesn’t know who’s on a board to which it appoints members

If you were a county government appointing members to an Authority, wouldn’t you know who the other members were, and what that Authority does? Lowndes County doesn’t seem to know those things about Deep South Solid Waste Authority (SWA).

Here’s the open records request from Brett Huntley of 7 June 2013:

Deep South Solid Waste Authority (SWA)
– List of members of the board, officers, and staff of SWA, who appointed each, and their terms of office
– Charter, bylaws, resolutions, and any other SWA organizational documents
– Agendas and Minutes for the past five years for SWA, and future meeting schedule
Please provide as much in electronic form as possible.

And here’s the response from Paige Dukes 12 June 2013:

Regarding information related to the Deep South Solid Waste Authority, you may contact Regional Commission Representative, Julia Shewchuk, at 229-333-5277. Lowndes County is not the custodian of the records you have requested.

This is the same SWA for which the county’s adopted GREATER LOWNDES 2030 COMPREHENSIVE PLAN SHORT TERM WORK PROGRAM (STWP) FY 2012 -2016 says:

4.3.1 –Maintain involvement and membership on Deep South Solid Waste Authority (SWA).

Our county government doesn’t know what this SWA is that it’s a member of?

-jsq

Valdosta Vimeo

I've been nagging Valdosta for years about putting some of their cable TV station content on the web. Turns out they are already doing some of that, which is a step towards acting like a modern metropolitan area. Received Wednesday via Tim Carroll; I added the links and the [clarification].

From: Sementha Mathews
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 11:48 AM
To: Tim Carroll
Subject: RE: "The rest of the story"

Councilman Carroll,

Thank you for the recent phone call. As a result, I will research the Austin, Tx media practices to see if they can be implemented in any way here at Metro 17. We used to include a council wrap segment in each show, and I'll ask Shemeeka [Johnson, Valdosta Channel 17 Media Coordinator] why we took that out. But we can easily add that back in.

City of Austin posts Continue reading →

Industrial Authority meeting tonight, about what, who can tell? @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Same old agenda tonight at the Industrial Authority (only the dates change each month). It’s now buried three levels down on their website, but at least they’ve started archiving old agendas. Still no minutes, though, going on two years since the VDT publicly exposed VLCIA’s expensive price tag for old minutes.

-jsq

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, February 19, 2013 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
Continue reading →

Members of the press or citizens are not welcome at library board? —George Boston Rhynes

Received today. To quote a VDT editorial of 3 March 2012:

When officials act like they have something to hide, they often do….

Here’s George’s Open Records Request. -jsq

George Boston Rhynes February 7, 2013

George Boston Rhynes (229-251-8645)
5004 Oak Drive
Valdosta, Georgia 31605

TO: Valdosta-Lowndes County; South Georgia Regional Library Director/Chair person along with Board Members Respectively, Georgia News Media Outlets concerned about open government and the sunshine brightness…

SUBJECT: An open records request on behalf of the general public right to know…

Continue reading →

Are Augusta and Richmond County special in transparency?

So why does Augusta have the second highest high tech job growth in the country? I can only speculate, but local government transparency could be a factor. If you had a high tech company and were looking to open an office, would you go for a place where you couldn't tell what the local governments were up to, or one where you could easily find out? Augusta's combined City Council and County Commission meetings (it's a consolidated government) are on video, online. Their agendas are available in either HTML or PDF, with attachments.

Here's an example, their 5 December 2012 Commission Meeting. It includes a proposed amendment to their land subdivision code. The actual proposed ordinance is linked right into the agenda so everybody can see it.

And yes, they link attachments into their agendas before their meetings; here's Augusta's agenda for their meeting tomorrow 18 December 2012, already with attachments, such as this one about a zoning exception, which was apparently submitted on a standard agenda submittal form, and approved by the Clerk of Commission.

Meanwhile, the outgoing Lowndes County Chairman complained the Chamber of Commerce hadn't read a proposed zoning code change even though that change is not linked into the agenda (nor is anything else) and last year the same Chairman said no drafts would be published. Tuesday last week, Lowndes County Commissioners passed changes to the solid waste ordinance and to the alcohol ordinance that voters and taxpayers and business owners did not get to see before the Commission voted on them. Those ordinances seem to be on the county website now that it's too late to provide input on them: alcohol and waste. Both ordinances were revised with no public hearings. And the Chairman even forgot to hold a scheduled public hearing on special tax lighting districts. Oh, and they apparently now have property owners paying on almost $9 million in bonds for a county palace that only two years ago they said was already completely paid off out of sales taxes.

If you had a high tech company and were looking to open an office, Continue reading →