Only one ZBOA case tomorrow, in the county: a setback variance so Applicant can put up a carport for his new truck, while avoiding mature trees.
The agenda is not on the City of Valdosta website, but it is on the LAKE website, courtesy of ZBOA member Gretchen Quarterman. Continue reading
Come to the Farm Bureau in two weeks to hear
Tax Assessor staff present their updates and provide your input
for changes to the
rural land revaluation, this time taking into account rivers, aquifer recharge zones, and uniformity.
Maybe the Tax Assessors actually don’t want more flooding in Valdosta;
both the City of Valdosta and GA-EDP have already shown interest in attending
about that point.
At an appeal on my property valuation, the Board of Equalization stopped short of actually ordering the Tax Assessors to redo last year’s rural land revaluation, because staff volunteered Continue reading
They meet again today 2:30 PM.
Last month,
ZBOA voted 5 to 1 to let
Moody Family Housing
have a reduction of 25% (half of the 50% they wanted)
so as to include a requirement of native trees.
Gretchen Quarterman made the motion, Paul Alvarado seconded, and Satrina Plyler (filling the unexpired term of Scott Orenstein) voted against.
See for more background.
Here’s a video playlist:
Videos: Moody Family Housing doesn’t want to replace trees it cut down on Val-Del
Regular Session, Valdosta-Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBOA),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 August 2015.
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Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce members just got a message from Bruce Allred, Government Affairs Council Chairman, saying:
MONDAY IS DEADLINE TO APPEAL PROPERTY TAX ASSESSMENTS!
You can look up your property on the Tax Assessors’ website: www.qpublic.net/ga/lowndes.
See also the LAKE Videos: Rural revaluation meeting at Farm Bureau 2015-08-04.
That Chamber message includes this useful information: Continue reading
See for yourself the Tax Assessor response to local landowners, in these
LAKE videos of
last night’s meeting at Farm Bureau.
Do you think there’s a problem?
If so, what do you think we should do to fix it?
The attendees appointed Gretchen to take notes. Here are her notes, followed by the videos.
Accessibility is not about access, it’s about geographic location…. That was done by one of our appraisers on staff. —Chief Appraiser Silas Hrobar
Rural and commercial land owners got surprises in the mail in July when they received the updated assessments of their properties. Lowndes County Assessors engaged a contractor last year to help with the reassessments of approximately 10,000 properties. Rural properties were categorized as small (under 20 acres) and large (over 20 acres) but complaints were the same, inconsistent and confusing application of criteria.
On Tuesday evening, Farm Bureau hosted Continue reading
2:30 PM today,
should developers not have to follow code and put back trees
on the unnecessary and environmentally hazardous Moody Family Housing
on Val-Del Road?
You wouldn’t know who this was by a pretty name like
Azalea Commons,
or an acronym like
ACC Group III Housing,
and only the
board packet
mentions Balfour Beatty,
but it’s the same
Moody Family Housing
in an
aquifer recharge zone
that
already had a sinkhole
as admitted by
a K Street lawyer to the
Lowndes County Commission
and told to them and to the Air Force by VSU professors
that the Air Force proceeded to ignore in its
environmental assessment
and the Lowndes County Commission rezoned anyway.
Staff recommend 20% “relief” from planting trees.
How about the county get some relief from unnecessary sprawl?
They did provide
a table of the trees they want to cut down.
Here’s the agenda, which is not on the City of Valdosta website, appearing here courtesy of Continue reading
Are Bill Gates and subdivisions really more important than agriculture
or rivers or public transportation?
Come to Farm Bureau tomorrow evening
and find out what’s
going on with the rural land revaluation. facebook event.
When: 7PM, Tuesday, 4 August 2015
Where: 3296 Greystone Way, Valdosta, GA, (229) 242-7876
By: Farm Bureau board member Buddy Coleman called this meeting.
What: Compare the Comprehensive Plan to this revaluation here (PDF).
Sprawl: sprawling residential growth is a certain ticket to fiscal ruin (Or at least big tax increases). PDF of the report by UGA Prof. Jeffrey H. Dorfman Lowndes County paid for in 2007, The Local Government Fiscal Impacts of Land Use in Lowndes County.
Who: At least some of the Lowndes County Tax Assessors Continue reading
Does this
rural land revaluation map
resemble the
Comprehensive Plan Future Development map?
Why not?
And why were rivers and public transportation not considered either
by the Lowndes County Tax Assessors
while tracts with road frontage were considered the
“highest market area”
and
land purchases by Bill Gates
were considered
“benchmark sales” instrumental in pricing large tracts?
This rural land revaluation is yet another vehicle to drive development straight north into the agricultural areas of the county, not even stopping at the Withlacoochee River.
That way lies sprawl, which as Dr. Jeffrey H. Dorfman of UGA has said, “is a certain ticket to fiscal ruin* * Or at least big tax increases.”
The City of Valdosta better watch out! Much of this Continue reading
Some of this is happening locally: Valdosta is planting trees along Hill Avenue, Lowndes County is building Naylor Park with a boat ramp that will be part of the Alapaha River Water Trail and VLPRA has long been thinking about a blueway on the Withlacoochee River, where it already has a string of parks and ramps. Valdosta has the Azalea City Trail across several parks and VSU. Imagine if that Trail extended a little farther on each end, connecting the Withlacoochee River and the Alapaha River: a greenway between two blueways. Imagine if Lowndes County planted trees in that concrete median in Bemiss Road. Imagine a bus running down that parkway….
Janice Astbury, the nature of cities, 29 March 2015, Green Transport Routes Are Social-Cultural-Ecological Corridors,
…natural corridors do not appear on the standard online GPS systems that people increasingly use to plan their routes. In other cases, the path is suddenly interrupted by infrastructure hostile to pedestrians and cyclists. It is clear that green and active transport routes are an afterthought, an add-on, rather than a core part of the city’s transport strategy.
Local government should invest in developing and maintaining the natural connective tissue of the city. In the same way that significant investment is made in arterial roads because they are believed to serve everyone and to connect up vital places, so inviting connective green infrastructure should be supported. The canals, footpaths, and cycleways that provide routes for active transport should appear prominently on maps and signage. Whole systems should be indicated when possible, even when portions of them are currently inaccessible, in order to enhance system understanding, and to encourage thinking about connecting up fragmented corridors.
Few people complain when a county or city spends millions of dollars on Continue reading
11AM this morning the County will plant three hardwood trees
where the Annex was at the historic Lowndes County Courthouse.
At the 9 April 2013 Regular Session, The Chairman announced that at 11AM on Earth Day, Monday 22 April 2013,
over at the historical Courthouse square, Lowndes County Board of Commissioners and Lowndes County Public Works Department will plant three trees that are native to south Georgia in celebrating a three-day free-to-the-public electronic recycling event. The public is welcome. And I’d like to also recognize at this time special thanks to Advanced Disposal and Yancey Caterpillar for helping with the funding of this event.What we’re doing is at the request of the Committee for the Preservation of the Courthouse. The scene around the Courthouse as you see it now the Annex has come off. There is sod down at this point. We’re going to add three more trees on that, which would be the north side of the Courthouse. It would be three different species of hardwood trees. And when that is completed, we should have a sample of each hardwood tree that is representative of south Georgia around the perimeter of the Courthouse.
So it’s going to be really nice, and it will still allow us to be able to use that green space and all right there for some events and such as that, for Farm Days and what have you. So if you do have it, put it on your calendar, take the opportunity to come out and enjoy the morning with us as we plant those three trees.
There’s no press release about this on the Lowndes County website. Buried in their calendar there is this blurb: Continue reading
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