According to
their website:
The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority Monthly Meeting for
September Has Been Rescheduled For Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2012 5:30pm
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority Offices
That’s at
2110 N. Patterson Street, Valdosta.
They also posted this notice on
their facebook page yesterday.
No agenda is posted yet.
Here are videos of last month’s meeting.
-jsq
Here are videos of the
21 August 2012 Regular meeting.
of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA).
Here's
the agenda.
See also
Steeda Manufacturing moving into medical parts and new markets.
Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
Norman Bennett, Tom Call, Roy Copeland, Chairman, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett,
Andrea Schruijer, Executive Director, J. Stephen Gupton, Attorney, Tom Davis, CPA, Allan Ricketts, Project ManagerS. Meghan Duke, Public Relations & Marketing Manager, Lu Williams, Operations Manager,
Videos by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 21 August 2012.
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Dario Orlando, CEO of
Steeda Manufacturing,
which currently makes performance parts for Mustangs,
told the Industrial Authority at its
21 August 2012 Regular Session
that Steeda
is moving into making medical parts, plus selling to GM,
and into new geographical markets.
Here’s
Part 1 of 4:
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 21 August 2012.
Allan Ricketts, VLCIA Project Manager, explained that
Steeda had requested a second extension, and an amendment to reduce
the requirement of number of jobs from 40 to 30.
We certainly think that is justified in the very difficult economic climate
and conditions that we’ve had over the past couple of years,
and certainly acknowledging that in that very challenging economic time,
we’ve had steady continued growth by Steeda.
And so now we’re up to about 23 employees there.I think it is also significant to note […] that
Steeda has now moved its entire manufacturing operation to Valdosta.
That move represents about a million five investment in the community.
Actually specifically it is $1,480,950
in some very unique manufacturing equipment.
I think it is important to understand
that some of this manufacturing equipment provides a great resource here
that two of the current projects that we are chasing are very interested in.
Here’s
Part 2 of 4:
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 21 August 2012.
Dario Orlando then remarked that things were going very well, and:
We’re expanding into other markets
like I’d mentioned before the commencement of the meeting.
We’re moving into medical manufacturing because we do have the most advanced
manufacturing capabilities here in Valdosta.
Furthermore, we’re starting to supply General Motors
with performance parts,
the GM performance brand.
We opened up another company here in Valdosta called LSR Performance.I was telling Allan this morning… that we’re all going to be looking back at this day.
I plan to have a couple of hundred employees here in the next five years.
Then he
mentioned a new development, and Roy Copeland reminded him this was an
open public meeting.
Hint:
Why build nukes when wind can provide 3/4 of our power?
While Southern Company claims to be
“a company that is engaged in offering solutions, not just rhetoric”,
yet
does nothing about wind off the Georgia coast,
researchers in far California have demonstrated we can get
3/4 of all needed east coast electricity from offshore wind.
Bjorn Carey wrote for Stanford Report 14 September 2012,
Offshore wind energy could power entire U.S. East Coast, Stanford scientists say
A new analysis by Stanford researchers reveals that there is enough
offshore wind along the U.S. East Coast to meet the electricity
demands of at least one-third of the country.
The scientists paid special attention to the Maine-to-Virginia
corridor; the historical lack of strong hurricanes in the region
makes it a favorable site for offshore wind turbines. They found
that turbines placed there could satisfy the peak-time power needs
of these states for three seasons of the year (summer is the
exception).“We knew there was a lot of wind out there, but this is the first
actual quantification of the total resource and the time of day that
the resource peaks,” said Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and
environmental engineering at Stanford who directed the research.
“This provides practical information to wind farm developers about
the best areas to place turbines.”
Mark Z. Jacobson already worked out a framework for
powering the entire world from wind, water, and sun alone.
The late
John Blackburn, Ph.D., showed us how
to power North Carolina with sun, wind, and hydro,
plus less natural gas than NC uses now.
Now Jacobson is working out the details of implementation.
-jsq
PS: Owed to Seth Gunning.
Thanks to Jim Galloway, we learned that charter school proponents say
“No other state has had a positive outcome for a charter-positive ballot initiative.”
OK, what other states have had any sort of charter school referendums?
Such ballot initiatives have at least been tried in
Massachusetts,
Michigan,
and
Washington.
BallotPedia
records some state charter school referendums.
In Massachusetts,
charter school proponents couldn’t even get enough signatures to put a
pro-charter school referendum on the ballot this year.
The measure would have removed limits on number of charter schools,
their funding, and enrollment. Other changes would have been made in
laws that governed charter schools, including requiring approval of
qualified applications for charter schools to be in districts where
there was low student performance.
In Michigan,
a referendum to ban for-profit charter schools
may be on the ballot in November:
On facebook,
Save Strickland Mill
just posted
a critique of
certain parts of
the VDT’s writeup on the
Remerton City Council’s Strickland Mill vote.
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Valdosta Daily Times,
September 12, 2012
Mill to come down:
Buildings to be razed, historic tower to remain
by Quinten PlummerVALDOSTA — The iconic smoke stack will still tower over the
City of Remerton, according to local officials, but
the majority of
the historic Remerton Mill complex will be demolished and converted
into a park
after the City Council gave the mill’s owners the
go-ahead for demolition during Monday evening’s regular session.This is not a factual statement: the city council’s motion is as
follows: Councilman Bill Wetherington made the following motion
which was unanimously voted in by the council members present that
night (note that councilman Sam Flemming was not in attendance)“I move to approve the certificate of appropriateness 2012-04 for 1853
W. Gordon to be issued and effective as of October 25th 2012 for a
period of one year from that date with the condition that the cotton
mill smokestack remains intact and shall continue to remain intact
in accordance with title 18 of the code of City of Remerton.”The mill’s ownership group simply wants relief from its obligations
to the property, and Remerton
Mayor Cornelius Holsendolph said the
restoration of the mill is just too large of a project for a city of
Remerton’s size.
That is the reason why
A recent poll shows markedly lower support
for the November charter school
referendum than polls in March and July, which were already down from January.
At this rate, the charter school referendum can lose as badly in November
as T-SPLOST did in July.
Maybe people are catching on that diverting local taxes to control by
a state appointed body is a bad idea,
especially this time when the money would end up going to private profit.
Georgia Family Council wrote, presumably in January,
Poll Shows Support for Charter School Changes,
On January 24, the Georgia Charter School Association and My School,
My Choice Georgia held a news conference on Capitol Hill to release
the results of a new study regarding public school choice….The new numbers showed that 52 percent of voters are dissatisfied
with the public system as it currently stands. A whopping 72 percent
feel that a group other than local school boards should be able to
authorize charter schools, the basis for HB 881. Moreover, Georgia
voters tend to support a “money follows the child” approach to
charter school funding.
So there’s a baseline for January for what proponents
of charter schools claimed: 72% support for something very like
the charter school referendum that ended up on the November ballot.
Or not.
That writeup includes a link to
georgiaschoolchoice.com,
but that domain is no longer registered.
This is probably it over on
the snazzy new gacharters.org website.
The gacharters.org writeup doesn’t mention 72%, and does say:
T-SPLOST proponents are up to their old tricks again,
starting with the preamble to the charter school referendum.
And
Bert “Little Goose” Brantley,
formerly of Lowndes County, defends that wording.
Paul Crawley wrote for 11alive.com September 12 2012,
Is Charter Schools Amendment wording biased?
Here we go again, apparently another ballot issue with questions
about whether it’s worded fairly.First, it was the July 31st transportation sales tax issue, known as
T-SPLOST, which Georgia voters rejected overwhelmingly.Opponents howled when they found out the ballot preamble wording
promised to “create jobs” and “relieve traffic congestion”.Now, opponents of a November ballot question are also crying foul.
They’re upset over the preamble wording for the Charter School
Commission Amendment.It reads, “Provides for improving student achievement and parental
involvement through more public charter school options.”
How can the preamble say that?
The same people who pushed the failed T-SPLOST tax referendum
on the July primary ballot are now pushing the charter school referendum
on the November general election ballot.
Four of their leaders are the same specific individuals,
including one from right here in Lowndes County.
They’re pushing something they admit has failed in every other state.
Let’s not be the first to fall for it.
According to the
Georgia Charter Schools Association (GCSA),
No other state has had a positive outcome for a
charter-positive ballot initiative
So even one of the major proponents of charter schools admits
no other state’s voters have thought they were a good idea.
Their slides
lay out a pair of statewide major money campaigns to push the referendum anyway.
We know about this because these slides fell into the hands of
the AJC, and
Jim Galloway published them today, saying:
Here is the
Keep Lowndes-Valdosta Beautiful (KLVB)
2012 Executive Director’s Report,
provided to LAKE by KLVB Executive Director Aaron Strickland.
This is the report he discussed at the
10 September 2012 Lowndes County Commission Work Session.
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