Slightly cheaper. Which we already learned is by having fewer guards per prisoner. Risking public safety for small dollar savings: does that sound like a good idea to you?.Private companies can build prisons faster and operate them for slightly less than the state, said Michael Nail, deputy director of the department’s corrections division.
How much cheaper? Continue reading
Tasha Biggers writes in the Gainesville Times that
Georgia’s largest private solar farm provides electricity to Blairsville homes:
Site produces 1 megawatt per year
If you live in Blairsville, part of your home’s electricity may be provided by solar energy, thanks to a recently opened solar farm on Ed King Road.The buyer for the power is the TVA, which says: Continue readingThe farm, built and maintained by ESA Renewables, a company headquartered in Castellon, Spain, is privately owned and takes up 5 acres, making it the largest privately held ground-mounted solar farm in Georgia….
The Blairsville site produces 1 megawatt per year.
That’s enough to provide power for 122 houses, according to Javier Latre, director of engineering for ESA Renewables.
Solar power is the fastest growing industry in the world,
and south Georgia is an excellent place for it to grow
and produce jobs, with plenty of rooftops and parking lots
for solar panels.
This is despite the misinformation people with vested interests in other energy sources put out about solar power. After Dr. Matthew Richard made some points about solar vs. biomass, one of the members of the 6 December 2010 panel that VLCIA spent more than $17,000 to assemble to defend biomass responded that he was in favor of the nearby 300kWatt solar plant, but: well, I’m going to interleave his buts with what he’s ignoring. Continue reading
It’s really unfortunate when City Councilmen like Vickers and Wright don’t care that:Continue readingWhen politicians vote for the interests of rich Atlanta investors
- The black infant mortality rate in Valdosta is twice as high for black babies as for white babies
The asthma rate nationally for African-Americans is 3 times higher than for white Americans
- The death to asthma rate nationally for African-Americans is 5 times higher than for white Americans.
- 75% of the biomass incinerators in Georgia have been proposed for black communities, and the rest for poor white communities.
A great honor and a terrible burden.
I think he meant not only the people in front of him but also everyone willing to do something.
As for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:
We cannot stop money but we can strip them of their credibility.That applies to some other organizations, as well.
We need to fight with art and music, too.10,000 young people went to DC to hear him in Power Shift 2011. We are all late to the fight. As he says:
Try to change those odds.
Here’s the video.
-jsq
PS: Owed to Raven.
And this is not just finger-pointing; it includes pointers on how to get out of this mess:Misplaced Priorities tracks the steady shift of state funds away from education and toward the criminal justice system. Researchers have found that over-incarceration most often impacts vulnerable and minority populations, and that it destabilizes communities.
The report is part of the NAACP’s “Smart and Safe Campaign,” and offers a set of recommendations that will help policymakers in all 50 states downsize prison populations and shift the savings to education budgets.Short version: Continue reading
How much should it cost for a citizen to get access to agendas
and minutes of a tax-funded board?
How does about $2 per meeting strike you?
Bobbi Anne Hancock filed an open records request for the agendas and minutes of all regularly scheduled and called meetings of the VLCIA letter asking $125.09 for copies of agendas and minutes of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) from 2006 to the present, and got this letter back:
So at 12 meetings per year for five years plus another 3 months, that would be about 63 meetings, divided into $125.09 gets about $1.99 per meeting.
Is this normal practice? Let’s compare. Continue reading
First, an excerpt from the paper paper story by David Rodock, “Farmers market proposal discussed by commission”, Tuesday, April 12, 2011, page 3A (it’s not online): Continue reading
Their board is considering passing an open records policy to match the Georgia state law, but doesn’t like it much:Boland had also been working to gain more information on the possible expansion of the Humpty Dumpty Hotel owned by Foodonics, however, she came under fire for holding private meetings with the company without the knowledge of the rest of the authority which has caused some in the community to cry foul.
But after the allegations arose, Boland maintained that the meetings were for gathering information only and that she was merely waiting to get all the facts before presenting them to the board.
“They can ask you until you’re blue in the face and they don’t have to explain what they’re going to do with them,” he said. “But I know there’s nothing you can do about it.”They also want to change their financial audit cycle from annually to every three years.
-jsq
Rezoning some land for 100 Black Men of Valdosta was the
first order of business on the
agenda for Valdosta City Council for 7 April 2011:
5.a. Consideration of an Ordinance to rezone 0.24 acres from Single-Family Residential (R6) to Office-Professional (O-P) as requested by 100 Black Men of Valdosta (File No. VA-2011-09). The property is located at the southeast corner of Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) Drive and South Troup Street. The Planning Commission reviewed this request at their March Regular Meeting and recommended approval (7-0-1 vote).
Planning Director Matt Martin, presented the case. Continue reading