Tag Archives: VLCIA

Industrial Authority next Tuesday @ VLCIA 2012-05-22

VLCIA has announced a meeting date change (to next Tuesday) in multiple places, and has already posted an agenda!

According to their facebook site and meetings webpage:

Notice: The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority Regular Meeting has been rescheduled for the month of May. The meeting date will be Tuesday, May 22, 2011, 5:30 P.M. in the Industrial Authority Conference Room.

That’s at 2110 N. Patterson Street, Valdosta, GA.

Their facebook page has a new logo on it (shown on the right above). Also this snazzy cover image:

Both the new logo and the cover image are legible (unlike their old swoosh logo, still on their website, and seen to the right here). And the cover image has useful information, like what VLCIA is about and how to reach them!

However, I note that of those

3 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT VALDOSTA BUSINESS
  1. Major Transportation Network
  2. Competitive Incentives
  3. Pro-Business Attitude

none of them is clean solar energy or fast Internet access. (Also, why are they SHOUTING?)

Here’s the agenda, which is back to their old content-free style. They don’t even say what the executive session is for. (Is it legal for them not to say?)

-jsq

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, May 22, 2012 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
Continue reading →

Rezoning density outside of Hahira @ LCC 2012 05 07

Two rezonings had no comments. The third, just north of Hahira, got opposition at the Planning Commission, which recommended a qualification, which County Planner Jason Davenport interpreted as trying to limit the density of development of the property.

At the Lowndes County Commission at its 7 May 2012 Work Session during the discussion on

7.c. REZ-2012-07 McNeal Property, McNeal Road E-A to R-A, Well & Septic, 25 acres

Crawford Powell, Commissioner for District 3, which is the south end of the county, asked a question, while Richard Raines, Commissioner for District 2, which is the north end of the county including Hahira, sat silent, although he did nod his head.

A neighbor sent a letter with details of opposition. I wonder what’s in it? If you want to know, you can submit an open records request to the county. Of course, with the three day time limit for the county to respond, the Commission will have already voted on it this evening before you find out what’s in the letter.

Here’s the video:

Rezoning density outside of Hahira
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 May 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-jsq

100 broadband municipal networks: where’s ours?

Instead of arbitrating a fixed-size LOST pie, what if Lowndes County and the local cities worked on increasing the size of the pie through broadband? It’s not just Chattanooga, 100 other municipalities have done it.

Christopher Mitchell wrote for Planetizen 30 April 2012, Should Your City Build Its Own Broadband Network?

Chattanooga is not alone; more than 100 cities and towns have built their own broadband networks. The city of Lafayette, Louisiana offers probably the best deal for broadband in the nation: ten megabits symmetrical for less than $30/month. For non-geek readers, it is actually faster than my home Comcast connection at less than half the price. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance has just released a new report detailing how Chattanooga and Lafayette built their networks.

Hm, Valdosta and Lowndes County don’t seem to be on that map. Yet. We don’t have to wait for VLCIA to organize this; there are other ways.

-jsq

Ocilla prison nearly sold at auction: better due diligence would be a good idea

A business our Industrial Authority wanted to get us into still risks bankrupting Irwin County: a private prison. Maybe we should do better due diligence around here and invest in better business ventures.

AP reported 23 April 2012, South Ga. detention center nearly sold at auction,

A privately owned detention center that houses hundreds of illegal immigrants in south Georgia is struggling with finances, and narrowly avoided being auctioned this year.

How bad is it?

Continue reading →

What actually gets companies to locate in Chattanooga?

So we heard about Chattanooga all during the school “unification” referendum. I turns out Chattanooga really does have something that attracts business (no, not a unified school system; if you want to go back into that, I’ve got the references available). What really attracts businesses to Chattanooga is fast Internet broadband access.

Christopher Mitchell wrote for Planetizen 30 April 2012, Should Your City Build Its Own Broadband Network?

While on a site selection visit in Chattanooga, a CEO asked about broadband access. When told that the slowest tier on Chattanooga’s community fiber network was 30 megabits per second, he turned to his IT adviser for a translation. Upon hearing “that’s more than we can get in our headquarters presently,” the company cancelled its other planned visits and located its new site in Chattanooga.

That’s right, Chattanooga really does have one thing going for it: high speed Internet access.

Why does that matter?

Continue reading →

Tired of tax abatements: Occupy Buffalo and NY state reps @ ECIDA 2012-02-13

Lots of people, from Occupy Buffalo to at least one New York state representative, are tired of tax abatements doled out by ECIDA (the Erie County Industrial Development Agency, aka The Economic Development Corporation for Erie County). ECIDA thinks it knows better. Sound familiar?

Occupy Buffalo complained to ECIDA about tax abatements for luxury residential lofts that had already been completed, saying “this board is not a democratic process”. They noted the people’s representative on the ECIDA board had said it was a clear waste of taxpayer resources but was ignored, and couldn’t stop county resources being “fleeced by this board”. They added, “This experiment has gone on for long enough, and it’s time for immediate change” of “this crony corrupt process”. Occupy Buffalo demanded suspension of tax abatements by ECIDA until a public town hall meeting could be held.

Here’s the video:

Tired of tax abatements: Occupy Buffalo and NY state reps @ ECIDA 2012-02-13

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, .
Video by for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

Occupy Buffalo wrote 16 February 2012, Occupy Buffalo and the Erie County Industrial Development Agency,

Continue reading →

Development authority issues in Erie County, NY

In case you thought local elected and appointed governments in Lowndes County, Georgia were alone in not always being coordinated or strategic, here’s another example.

Not only does Erie County, New York have an industrial authority (ECIDA, the Erie County Industrial Development Agency, aka The Economic Development Corporation for Erie County) but many of the towns also do and there isn’t always coordination. Even in densely developed Erie County, there is a clash between rural and urban development.

Sandra Tan wrote for the Buffalo News 22 April 2012, Bad breaks given by IDAs? As a state lawmaker drafts a bill that would handicap town IDAs, those groups defend the deals they make,

“And there is no way rural communities such as Concord and the Village of Springville would ever get taken seriously by the ECIDA, said Concord Supervisor Gary Eppolito, who heads the least active town IDA in the county.

He recalled an instance where a local business asked the ECIDA for help expanding its agricultural business and was shown properties in the City of Lackawanna.”

-gretchen

HB 397 sunshine bill is now law: open government forecast partly cloudy

It’s a cloudy sunrise for open government in Georgia with HB 387 now law. Will anyone enforce it? Will local governments comply? Will the legislature extend this law into a sunshiny day in Georgia?

Aaron Gould Sheinin and Bill Rankin wrote for the AJC yesterday, Governor signs Open Records rewrite into law,

House Bill 397, which took effect upon Deal’s signature, is the first major rewrite of Georgia’s sunshine laws in more than a decade. New provisions in the open records and meetings laws increase fines for offenders. The maximum penalty of $500 is now $1,000, and offenders who commit repeat violations within a year face fines of up to $2,500.

Previously, the sunshine laws allowed only criminal complaints to be filed against suspected violators, meaning a prosecutor would have to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. The rewrite now allows the filing of civil complaints, which have a lower burden of proof.

That could be interesting if anyone actually files a complaint.

The rewrite also would provide new exemptions for some gatherings of governing bodies, such as allowing a quorum of members to attend the same civic function, receive training or visit government agencies — provided no official business is discussed or transpires.

So the various elected boards meeting together at the end of last month was probably OK, since they weren’t making decisions, merely educating each other. But the Lowndes County Commission repeatedly hiding from the public while discussing solid waste disposal, among other issues, does not seem to fit that exception.

It also reduces the cost of most documents disclosed under the Open Records Act from 25 cents to 10 cents per page.

That means the price of the Industrial Authority’s old minutes just went down, Continue reading →

Importing illegal immigrants into private Georgia prisons

Ocilla, about an hour north of here, took the private prison gamble, and now is scrambling to import enough prisoners to fill it.

Jim Galloway wrote for the AJC 11 April 2012, Importing illegal immigrants — into private Georgia prisons quoting Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan Seville in The Nation 10 April 2012, How One Georgia Town Gambled Its Future on Immigration Detention,

Deportations have reached record levels under President Barack Obama, and demand for detention facilities has increased. Starting in 2002, ICE had funding for 19,444 beds per year, according to an ICE report. Today, ICE spends about $2 billion per year on almost twice the number of beds.

ICE’s reliance on facilities like the Irwin County Detention Center has put small rural towns at the center of one of today’s most contentious policy arguments—how to enforce immigration law. A yearlong investigation by The Nation shows how much politics has come to rule detention policy. Even as Georgia and Alabama passed harsh new immigration laws last year designed to keep out undocumented immigrants, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that politicians from both states were lobbying hard to bring immigrant detainees in. ICE succumbed to the pressure, sending hundreds of detainees to the financially unstable facility in Georgia that promised to detain immigrants cheaply. That promise came at the expense of the health, welfare and rights to due process of some 350 immigrants detained daily in Ocilla.

Marvelous. Pass a low to eject illegal immigrants, except it really locks up a bunch of them, but not enough to keep Ocilla’s private prison full, so import a bunch of them back in as prisoners.

Aren’t you glad we didn’t accept a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia?

Ocilla and Irwin County didn’t just make that bad bet once, they doubled down on it:

Continue reading →

Videos @ VLCIA 2012 03 20

Likely new industry, private prison really cancelled, strategic planning, and trees in the median!

Here are videos of the entire March regular meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA). Here’s the agenda.

It’s good that they approve minutes after emailing them to each other. Maybe someday we the taxpayers will get to see those minutes.

Did you know they had two executive sessions on 23 February 2012, at 10AM and 2:25 PM in addition to their retreat and regular meeting of that same day? If they’re having all these executive sessions, presumably all the material about personnel and real estate that needs to be kept confidential is in there, and the minutes of the regular meetings shouldn’t contain anything the public should not see.

For example, Continue reading →