Service Delivery Strategy (SDS) Meeting: Lowndes County and cities @ SDS 2019-02-04

Update 2019-03-04: WWALS videos.

At least some elected officials from at least Lowndes County and Valdosta will be gathering Monday on neutral ground to discuss tax revenue allocation. Apparently this is a public meeting which anyone can attend.

In its usual laconic manner, this is all the county says in its online calendar:

SDS Meeting

Date: February 4, 2019

Time: 5:00 PM

Location: Valdosta- Lowndes County Parks and Recreation Authority Offices

Address: 1901 North Forrest Street
Valdosta, GA 31601

Street View, Image
Google Street View, VLPRA, 1901 N. Forrest Street, Valdosta, GA 31601

A usually reliable source says this meeting is for voting Council and Commissioners, and the Mayor and Chairman were not invited. I don’t know if elected members of Council would only be from Valdosta, or also from Remerton, Lake Park, Hahira, and Dasher. If a quorum of any Council or Commissioners for any of these elected bodies is present, Georgia law requires it to be an open meeting which the public may attend. I can’t imagine the county would have posted it publicly if it wasn’t.

The offices of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Parks and Recreation Authority (VLPRA) are neutral ground, because nobody has asked for any changes to its finances since it was made into its own Authority with 1.5 mil of property tax revenue, back in 2008 during the previous SDS negotiations.

Here is an explanation of Service Delivery Strategies (SDS) by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs.

Valdosta and Lowndes County have in past years spent a lot of money on attorneys litigating their SDS disagreements.

Here is an overview by the City of Valdosta, dated 11 January 2017.

Here are some slides by the county, apparently from 2016. They itemize what sorts of services are at issue.

I don’t know if there have been any further developments on negotiations since in June 2017 a Superior Court Judge restored access to state funding for Valdosta and Lowndes County, leaving the 2008 SDS active.

-jsq

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