Tag Archives: Planning

Videos of Rally for HOPE @ LCDP 2012 03 24

Rain kept the numbers down, but the enthusiasm was strong in Lakeland at the Rally for HOPE, 24 March 2012.

The announcement said:

This will be a Rally for the Hope Scholarship and a Voter Registration. Everyone concerned about HOPE is invited. We will have guest speakers and will hear from those students and families affected by the current status of HOPE.

The featured speaker was Janice Barrocas of HOPE for Georgia, which is running a three year nonpartisan campaign to save HOPE scholarships.

Bikram Mohanty explained that there will be a shortfall of $270 million for the HOPE scholarships in 2012. Janice Barrocas pointed out there were really two HOPEs now: the other one being the Zell Miller scholarships. Bikram showed a map that illustrates that very few Zell Miller Scholarships go to south Georgia.

Janice Barrocas and Bikram Mohanty discussed that HOPE is funded by a lottery, and lottery funds are down in the recession. The blue line on the chart is deposits from the lottery into the HOPE program, the red line is expenditures, and the green line, dropping rapidly, is reserves at the end of the year.

Janice Barrocas noted that

The end users of this program were not at the table

when the recent HOPE changes were passed. Especially students mostly found out when they got stuck with bigger bills they had to pay. Students and their families may still be too polite to mention they have financial troubles, but it’s time to break the culture of silence when it’s a choice between the family eating or the student going to school. Betty Marini pointed out students loans add up to $1 trillion dollars, which is a huge drag on the economy.

Matt Flumerfelt observed that there is a push for divestiture and privatization these days, and he wondered if the silence around the quick passage of the recent HOPE changes wasn’t because it was a money grab for the lottery funds.

Tech school HOPE is grants, and most tech school students get them. If HOPE went away, the lottery would Continue reading →

Underfunded ethics commission makes mistakes

Underfunding of Georgia’s ethics commission has led to numerous inappropriate fines, some of which are still being straightened out after many months. Maybe the legislature should fund the ethics commission to a working level and make it independent of the legislature.

David Rodock wrote for the VDT 29 September 2011, Transparency Confusion: New campaign contributions system leads to officials owing fines,

The Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Commission posted a seven-page list online earlier this week ethics.ga.gov of local government officials who have supposedly failed to submit their campaign contribution information this year.

According to the state organization’s website, each late filer owes fines of different amounts.

Various elected officials were quoted in that article saying the fines were inappropriate. Many of those fines had already been removed from the list by the time that article was written.

There have been calls to properly fund that agency and to make it independent of the legislature. The Columbus Ledger-Inquirer wrote 25 January 2012, Ethics panel needs funding and independence,

Continue reading →

Even George Will is calling for drug legalization

We can’t afford this anymore:
A $200 transaction can cost society $100,000 for a three-year sentence.
It’s time to legalize, regulate, and tax drugs, taking tax money away from private prisons and police militarization, and freeing it up for education, health care, and rehabilitation.

George F. Will wrote 11 April 2012, Should the U.S. legalize hard drugs?

Amelioration of today’s drug problem requires Americans to understand the significance of the 80-20 ratio. Twenty percent of American drinkers consume 80 percent of the alcohol sold here. The same 80-20 split obtains among users of illicit drugs.

About 3 million people — less than 1 percent of America’s population — consume 80 percent of illegal hard drugs. Drug-trafficking organizations can be most efficiently injured by changing the behavior of the 20 percent of heavy users, and we are learning how to do so. Reducing consumption by the 80 percent of casual users will not substantially reduce the northward flow of drugs or the southward flow of money.

Will-like, he ignores the real reasons we’re locking up so many people (corporate greed), but he does get at the consequences: Continue reading →

Four minute work session @ LCC 2012 04 09

As I walked in the door, a couple minutes late due to construction on the hospital parking lot, Commissioner Crawford Powell said,

John, you’re late!

They were milling about and looked like they were about to start. But no, they had started early and Chairman Paulk told me the meeting had lasted four minutes because there hadn’t been much to say. So there are no videos of this morning’s Lowndes County Commission Work Session.

I remarked that it had seemed like a fairly complicated agenda, but he didn’t think so.

I asked him about this mysterious item:

7.b. Request from LCSO — GOHS Grant #2013-TEN-0077-00 & #2013-GA-0040-00

He said it is about some equipment to automate Sheriff’s deputies checking license plates against databases. I told him I had assumed they had already been doing that. He said they could do it by hand, but they’d get really tired trying to do as many as this device could do.

Presumably it’s similar to the Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) described by Doug Nurse in the AJC 20 March 2009, New police license plate scanner eyes criminals.

Alpharetta Police Officer John Allen said that a few weeks after the system became went online last August, he was driving home after a shift when the system alerted him that he had passed a stolen car. He wheeled around, and after a chase, arrested the thief.

“I never even saw the tag myself,” Allen said. “I would have just kept going. It catches things I would be unable to see.”

While I don’t know that I’m in favor of ALPR, it’s common enough elsewhere that I was actually surprised the famously drug-interdicting LCSO wasn’t already using it.

To the Chairman’s credit, as soon as I asked about the LOST meeting with the mayors, he said it was at 9:30 in the room next door, and the public was invited. I took videos of that LOST meeting, and they will appear soon.

-jsq

County quantifies some infrastructure payback times @ LCC 2012 03 31

Water and sewer take decades for return on investment, and roads and bridges probably aren’t any better. That’s worth remembering whenever solar, busses, or trains come up.

David Rodock wrote for the VDT Sunday, Commission wraps up annual retreat: Utility payments, road projects and waste disposal discussed

The cost of one mile of construction for water takes 23 years for a return on the initial investment; sewer takes 21.3 years.

The VDT didn’t specify the similar return times for road paving or bridge construction, but it’s a safe bet they’re at least as long. The farther water or sewer lines or roads or bridges are from population centers, the more they cost both directly in installation and indirectly in trips for fire and sheriff vehicles, and especially school busses. The county commissioned a report on that several years ago, as Gretchen reminded them last year. In the particular rezoning case on Cat Creek they were discussing then (Nottinghil), they made a decision to table which seems to have caused the developer never to come back with that particular sprawl plan. I congratulated the Commissioners at that time, and I congratulate them again on not promoting sprawl.

Sprawl costs the county, payback takes years, and longer the farther out it goes. What if we did something different? More on that later.

-jsq

 

 

Judge OKs Barnes and Richardson CWIP suit against Georgia Power

Historic Davids get approval for slingshot against power company Goliath.

Judge allows lawsuit over Georgia Power surcharge to go forward,

Fulton Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville’s ruling Thursday allows the lawsuit filed by former Gov. Roy Barnes and ex-Republican House Speaker Glenn Richardson to go forward.

The complaint said Georgia Power has improperly collected sales tax and fees on a surcharge created by a 2009 law. They say it has added up to as much as $100 million in costs to ratepayers.

This lawsuit opposes Georgia Power’s Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) that is already charging gapower customers for the Plant Vogtle nukes that won’t produce any power for years yet. If this lawsuit wins, they may not ever be built.

But you don’t have to wait for this lawsuit, or for the legislature to ban CWIP. You can oppose CWIP by paying for it in a separate check.

Maybe soon we can get rid of Georgia Power’s territoriality law so we can, like we could in 46 other states, generate our own solar or wind power and sell it to whomever we choose.

-jsq

Videos @ LCC 2012 03 26

These are videos of the Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 26 March 2012. They vote at their regular session tonight, 5:30 PM.

See also these special presentations:

Here’s the agenda.

Here’s a playlist of everything except the above two special presentations.


Videos
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 26 March 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-jsq

 

 

 

Strategic Plan Update and Personnel Policy @ VLCIA 2012 03 20

The Industrial Authority meets this evening at 5:30 in their usual location. It seems to be mostly about business parks this time, plus these interesting items:

Director’s Report –Andrea Schruijer

  • Strategic Plan response

  • Update on Personal Policy and Procedure Manual

Maybe they’re serious about input from the community for their strategic plan process.

Their website still has sidebar error messages like this:

Deprecated: Function eregi() is deprecated in /home/industri/public_html/modules/jsCookMenu/JSCookMenu.class.php on line 277

But it’s fixed enough that I could retrieve the agenda. This time they do not list what any of the expansion projects or potential projects are. They also still don’t say what the various executive sessions were for; I think real estate or personnel are the usual two reasons allowed by state law.

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, March 20, 2012 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street

 

Continue reading →

Barnes and Richardson against Georgia Power’s CWIP

Two former big-time politicos join the fight against CWIP.

Melissa Roberts wrote for CBS Atlanta yesterday, Unlikely duo challenges Ga. utility over rates,

The unlikely duo of ex-Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes and former Republican House Speaker Glenn Richardson are heading to court to challenge Georgia Power over a surcharge they say has cost ratepayers as much as $100 million.

They're going after Construction Work in Progress (CWIP)!

Jim Galloway in the AJC yesterday noted the irony,

The gentleman knows of what he speaks, and that is only one of the ironies here. The legislation that has allowed Georgia Power, for the last 15 months, to charge ratepayers for financial costs associated with the construction of two new nuclear power plants, was passed in 2009 during Richardson’s final session as the second- most powerful man in the Capitol.

Maybe he can help undo the harm he helped do. Ditto Roy Barnes, who got coal-plant-building Cobb EMC former head Dwight Brown off on a technicality.

Melissa Roberts wrote:

The lawsuit contends the utility is charging sales tax on the finance surcharge and the franchise tax paid to cities. Richardson said in a phone interview he and Barnes are two "Davids against the Goliath."

Add those two Davids to the two Davids of Savannah, Drs. Sidney Smith and Pat Godbey and their Lower Rates for Customers LLC. Add a few more thousand Davids around the state paying their CWIP in separate checks with objections.

New Hampshire banned CWIP and their nuke-building utility went bankrupt. Missouri banned CWIP. Iowa is working on banning CWIP. Georgia can ban CWIP, too. Watch out Goliath!

-jsq

 

 

 

 

I am very concerned about a community that would purchase an armored vehicle over weather radios —Sharon Flory

Received 17 February. -jsq
My name is Sharon Flory and I am the Sales Representative for Alert Works Products, the company who was working with Lowndes County to distribute roughly 3,500 weather radios to the community. After working for about 8 months with Ashley Tye we were both ecstatic when the grant came through only to be shot down by the newly appointed commissioner. I could not believe what I read below.
She quoted Lowndes County priorities: tanks and lunches for Commissioners, but no lunches for seniors? -jsq
I am very concerned about a community that would purchase an armored vehicle, that would only protect about 5 people at a time, over purchasing weather radios that would protect upwards of 10,000 people when you consider the families that live in each home.

I am a sales rep and my job is to sell radios BUT my job is also my passion. I live in Ohio and have been affected by storms all of my life. I have been down right scared to death from storms and feel that the politics in this town is not moving in the right direction.

I see that you have the same feelings and hope that you can make a difference. Thank you for caring and keep up the good work. Someone will listen!!!

-Sharon Flory
Alert Works
419-779-8132