Tag Archives: SGRC

Bicycle Workshop June 10th –VLMPO

Biking is the lead story in the Spring Transportation Newsletter from the Valdosta-Lowndes Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Southern Georgia Regional Commission.

Regional Bicycle Workshop On Monday, June 10, 2013, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. the Southern Georgia Regional Commission will host a Regional Bicycle Workshop to discuss local bicycle infrastructure planning and safety efforts.

Bicycling is becoming a more popular mode of transportation throughout the nation and here in Southern Georgia. Our pleasant climate and relatively flat landscape makes bicycling popular for both commuting and recreation. Individuals of all ages are bicycling more for various reasons, whether it be to save money on gas, to get to work or the store, for exercise, or to go see a friend across town.

GA Bicycle Route 10 This event will feature speakers on the topics of challenges to building bicycle friendly infrastructure, bicycle safety and how our communities can be healthy, happy, wealthy and wise when it comes to bicycling. Brent Buice, from Georgia Bikes! will help lead a discussion on what our communities can do to become more bicycle friendly.

To RSVP for this event, please contact Corey Hull at chull@sgrc.us or at 229-333-5277.

The newsletter also has a list of bike trails, with a pointer to Public Hiking and Walking Trails of Southern Georgia. The state also has maps of bicycle routes, including this one for the Valdosta area:

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Valdosta Plans Flooding Discussions

Valdosta is finally announcing the 11 April 2013 watershed-wide flooding meeting organized by the Army Corps of Engineers.

WCTV yesterday carried a press release from the City of Valdosta; PR which, oddly, does not appear to be on the city’s website. I have added a few links. Prominently missing from the PR is any mention of water quality, the Floridan Aquifer, or sinkholes. -jsq

The City of Valdosta initiated planning discussions recently that brought together representatives from key local, state and federal agencies to seek solutions to a regional flood issue.

The 50-year flood event that occurred in late February, early March 2013 was a vivid reminder of the 2009 flood event that significantly impacted south Georgia. Since 2009, the city has worked to help identify potential causes and the scope and area of the regional flooding that occurred. This information has been shared with various state and federal officials and agencies in the hopes of gaining their interest and support to work together to address the regional flooding. Since Valdosta is located

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SB 104 that changed comprehensive plan rules: good or bad?

The Georgia legislature overwhelmingly passed a rather brief bill that changes the requirements for Comprehensive Plans by local governments. ACCG and GMA both supported it. It seems to be related to recent Department of Community Affairs (DCA) rulemaking that was mostly positive. Does that make it a good law? Opinions seem to differ. Here’s what I’ve found.

The Bill: SB 104

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SGRC: New DCA Minimum Local Comprehensive Planning Standards

Local governments are now required to update their Comprehensive Plans every five years (used to be every ten years). Here’s video of the new rules and a playlist of the entire meeting at which this was discussed in Valdosta on 7 February 2013.

facebook event:

In response to concerns about the complexity of the 2005 Local Government Planning Standards, Georgia DCA adopted new Rules for the Minimum Standards and Procedures for Local Comprehensive Planning (Chapter 110-12-1). The rules were adopted on November 1, 2012 and became effective on January 1, 2013. The five workshops are held as a continued education event around the region to familiarize all local governments elected and appointed officials, government staff, the development community, citizens and any other interested party with the new rules, so that all may remain in compliance with those rules.

This session was held Thursday, February 7th at the Valdosta City Hall Annex Multipurpose room.

Additional sessions are scheduled for:

  • February 21, 2013 —Tifton
  • March 7, 2013—Douglas
  • March 21, 2013—Irwin County
  • April 4, 2013—Waycross

Sessions are geared toward community planners but they are open to the public.

Here’s a video playlist:

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Why are federal Interstate projects on the T-SPLOST list?

Why are any I-75 interchange projects on the final T-SPLOST list? Especially now that Congress finally got around to passing a transportation bill? I-75 is a federal highway; shouldn’t it be paid for with federal tax dollars, not $31.5 million of “local” sales taxes?

About the transportation act, and then three T-SPLOST I-75 projects. Richard Simon reported for the Sacramento Bee 29 June 2012, Congress passes transportation bill, halts student loan rate increase. Jamie Dupree’s Washington Insider had some more detail in the AJC 28 June 2012, Congress moves highway, student loan bills. Here’s the actual H.R.4348 — MAP-21 (Enrolled Bill [Final as Passed Both House and Senate] – ENR).

In the final T-SPLOST District 11 report there are still two I-75 interchange projects:

  • $19,872,610 TIA for RC11-000081 I-75 at CR 27/Lake Park-Bellville Road Interchange Improvements – Exit 2
  • $11,631,517 TIA for RC11-000082 I-75 at SR 31 Interchange Replacement – Exit 11
  • $31,504,127 total TIA for two I-75 interchange projects in Lowndes County

Those are just the T-SPLOST dollar amounts; not the total costs of those two projects. A third project, for exits 22 and 29, got moved to TIP money, which is federal money. Why didn’t these two also get moved to TIP and off of the T-SPLOST list?

Previously I reported on Corrected T-SPLOST Southern Region Cost Changes including a list of projects. Of three I-75 projects, two are still on the final project list of October 2011. Here’s a summary:

Number
+ Name		Original Total
Cost Estimate
+ Updated 		Difference
Diff%		TIA Funding
(includes Inflation)		In Final List?
RC11-000081
I-75 at CR 27/Lake Park-Bellville Road Interchange Improvements – Exit 2		 $38,965,901.00
$39,745,219.00		 $779,318.00
2%		 $22,379,786 yes
RC11-000082
I-75 at SR 31 Interchange Replacement – Exit 11		 $22,806,928.00
$23,263,033.00		 $456,105.00
1.99985%		 $13,098,977 yes
RC11-000083
I-75 from North of SR 133 to Cook County Line – Exits 22 & 29		 $44,617,196.00
$44,617,196.00		 $0.00
0%		 $0 no

Finally, here are the details for each of those projects, extracted from the final report for exits 2 and 11, and from the unconstrained list for exits 22 and 29. Why are the remaining two not like the one that got moved to federal funding?

-jsq

Project Sheet

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Transportation plan open house @ SGRC 2012-05-22

Received 1 June 2012 about the 22 May 2012 VLMPO Open House at SGRC. The “Transportation Improvement Program, or TIP, is the short-range plan approved by the VLMPO Policy Committee that allows federal funds to be spent on various transportation projects in the region.” -jsq

I attended the transportation plan open house on the day that anyone could come from early morning until 7:00 PM and when I went at 5, I was only the sixth person who had been there all day. Corey Hull showed me and four other people the plan, answered our questions, explained the difference between this long term plan and the TSPLOST and there was a discussion about how one might go about becoming a bus services provider in the area. The amount of money allocated to the city of Valdosta for transportation is not an amount that is near what a bus system would cost, so there still will have to be other funds available to make that possible. Even though our group brought the attendance for the day up to 10 citizens, it was a huge improvement over the last open house, when NO ONE showed. Corey Hull was very helpful and had a lot of information that probably would have been fascinating to others if they had attended, but once again there was virtually no input.

-Jane F. Osborn, MSSW
Valdosta, GA
229-630-0924

According to projects submitted for T-SPLOST, a bus system would cost about $7.5 million (startup and a few years run-time), but that got cut first pass, while $12 million for widening one road is still in the T-SPLOST list. I’m told that public transportation is not an issue around here. If people think it is, maybe they should show up at meetings like the one SGRC organized about the other transportation plan and say they want a bus system.

-jsq

JLUS Transparency and Videos @ SGRC 2012-06-08

The South Georgia Regional Commission held a public hearing on Wednesday June 6th to give an overview of the current Implementation Phase draft of the Joint Land Use Study (JLUS) for Moody Air Force Base and surrounding communities.

Todd Miller, the project coordinator, gave a power point presentation. When asked if the presentation could be made available on the SGRC web site, he said yes (and then called to make sure I could find it).

The complete draft implementation phase documents are available at http://www.sgrc.us/JLUS/implementation.htm and the comment period is open until the end of June. Comments should be sent to Todd Miller at tmiller (at) sgrc.us.

Here's a video playlist:

JLUS Transparency and Videos
Public Hearing, Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC), Todd Miller,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, Fri, 8 Jun 2012 10:21:39 -0400.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-gretchen

T-SPLOST discretionary projects —Winter 2012 SGRC Newsletter

Received from Corey Hull 9 January 2012:
Please find attached the “Transportation in the Region” newsletter for the Southern Georgia Regional Commission and the Valdosta-Lowndes Metropolitan Planning Organization. For more information please visit our website at www.sgrc.us/transportation.
I’ve put a copy on the LAKE website here.

Here’s the lead story:

Local Discretionary Project Lists for TIA

On October 10, 2011 the Southern Georgia Regional Transportation Roundtable approved a regional transportation project list that contains 75% of the funds this region would receive if a transportation sales and use tax is approved by the voters on July 31, 2012. The tax is estimated to generate $670,985,361 total; $503,239,020 of which is reserved for the 75% regional projects list.

The remaining 25% of the funds ($167,746,439) are allocated to local governments by formula (based on population and road centerline miles). While these funds are to be spent at the discretion of each local government on transportation related projects, it is recommended that your local government begin to consider how these funds might be spent over the next 10 years. By identifying these projects now, your local voters will be able to know how all of the funds from this proposed sales and use tax will be spent in their local community.

In order to have a central source for information about the proposed sales tax, we are asking local governments to submit their project lists for the 25% discretionary funding by March 31, 2012 to the following address: SGRC; ATTN: Corey Hull; 327 W Savannah Ave.; Valdosta, GA 31602; or by email at chull@sgrc.us.

It will be interesting to see what projects local governments submit. Maybe you’d like to suggest something to them.

Hm, looks like there’s plenty of discretionary funds for a bus system such as is recommended by the Industrial Authority’s Community Assessment.

-jsq

Public hearing doesn’t mean the public gets to know anything

Jane Osborn wrote:
Requesting such a hearing before January 24 would give the opportunity to have all this information presented and for questions to be asked and answered.
Except that’s not the way it works around here. Public hearing locally means the chairman or mayor or whoever says “Who wants to speak for?” and maybe somebody speaks. And then “Who wants to speak against?” and maybe somebody speaks. It doesn’t mean that the Commission or the Council or the Authority presents anything for the public to consider.

Witness the hearing the Lowndes County Commission held in December on the documents related to the Comprehensive Plan. The only reason the public knew anything about what was in those documents was that Gretchen got them from somewhere else after the Commission refused to supply them in response to an open records request. The Commission never distributed any of the relevant documents to the public. Only one citizen spoke, perhaps because nobody else knew what to speak about.

Almost none of the local municipalities or boards or authorities routinely present to the public the information that is in the packets they see before the discuss or vote. There are rare exceptions, such as the VLMPO and other organizations or projects administered by the Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC). SGRC is a state agency, not a local agency. Why does Lowndes County and all its municipalities and boards avoid transparency?

Why can’t you, the public, see what’s in a rezoning request before Continue reading →

T-SPLOST Lunch and Learn today at SGRC

There’s a Lunch and Learn about T-SPLOST at noon today at the SGRC offices:
327 W. Savannah Ave
Valdosta, GA 31601
Phone: (229)333-5277
FAX: (229)333-5312
Corey Hull says they’re almost full. However, the presentation is already on the SGRC web pages. The City of Valdosta will be videoing the event. Once Corey knows when it will be televised on the City’s TV channel, SGRC will advertise that. There’s also some unknown level of possibility that the videos may be made available on the web.

-jsq