Category Archives: Elections

The issue of the proposed biomass incinerator is far from over –Dr. Noll

LAKE has reviewed the allegedly “threatening” letter Chairman Paulk referred to in his interrogation of Dr. Noll, and we find nothing alarming about a wakeup call, so we have posted it on LAKE’s website. More on that later. -jsq
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:05:59 -0500
From: noll_family
To: apaulk@lowndescounty.com, jevans@lowndescounty.com, rraines@lowndescounty.com, cpowell@lowndescounty.com CC: noll_family@bellsouth.net, kay.harris@gaflnews.com, “John S. Quarterman” <jsq@quarterman.org>
Subject: Re: Tuesday’s Meeting

Dear Chairman Paulk and Commissioners.

I again would like to extend my invitation as President of WACE to the upcoming event this Thursday (see attachment).

The issue of the proposed biomass incinerator is far from over and concerned citizens of Lowndes County and Valdosta will use their constitutional rights to (respectfully) speak up at future meetings, as they have done in the past.

Continue reading →

Paulk interrogates Noll

Last night the County Commission Chairman turned a routine event invitation into front page news in the VDT this morning: http://valdostadailytimes.com/local/x1162624684/Paulk-No-more-biomass:
Lowndes County Commission Chairman Ashley Paulk called a halt Tuesday evening to commissioners hearing biomass comments during public portions of regular board meetings.
LAKE has videos; here’s a playlist, and here it is embedded: Continue reading →

Superdistricts on Lowndes County web pages

Update: the agenda for the 3 Jan 2011 special session is posted on the county webpages.
Lowndes County staff have an update about the recent vote for adding two new superdistricts:
COMMISSION EXPANSION

On Monday, January 3, 2011, the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners held a special called meeting during which the adoption of a resolution expressing the county’s desire to move forward with the expansion of the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners, as previously directed by the voters of Lowndes County, was unanimously approved.

This is on the county’s front page, with links to I suppose this explains why I didn’t hear back about this same information in response to my open records request: they put it on the county web pages. That’s fine with me.

What is not included Continue reading →

Who just voted for the new Districts for Lowndes County?

Citizens, your new Lowndes County Commission:

County Commission Chairman - Ashley Paulk
Ashley Paulk, Chairman 		District 1 Commissioner - Joyce Evans
Joyce Evans, District 1 		District 2 Commissioner - Richard Raines
Richard Raines, District 2 		District 3 Commissioner - Crawford Powell
Crawford Powell, District 3

This is the Commission that as its first act held a special session to propose adding two new superdistricts.

The pictures for the two new Commissioners, Richard Raines and Crawford Powell, are from Valdosta Daily Times writeups while they were running, since the Commission’s own web pages do not yet have pictures for them.

-jsq

Which new districts did the County Commission just vote for?

The VDT and the Commission’s district maps don’t agree, and the Board of Elections doesn’t know. David Rodock writes in the VDT today that County revives expanding Lowndes commission:
During a special meeting Monday, county commissioners unanimously approved a resolution to include two additional voting districts within Lowndes County.

The two proposed voting districts would allow for greater representation at County Commission meetings by allowing for an expansion of the current available voting representatives from three to five, while keeping a non-voting commission chairman.

Last year, this expansion failed in the legislature on a technicality. If the Commission and staff don’t make the same mistake, it seems likely the legislature will approve these new districts.

But the district map the VDT published (see above) is not the same Continue reading →

Harrisburg, PA loses solvency and trust over incinerator

Michael Cooper wrote in the New York Times on 20 May 2010 about An Incinerator Becomes Harrisburg’s Money Pit:
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Officials here decided seven years ago to borrow $125 million to rebuild and expand the city’s enormous trash incinerator, which the federal government had shut down because of toxic air pollution.

But the incinerator burned through the money faster than the trash, leaving Harrisburg residents feeling like they were living through a sequel to the 1986 movie “The Money Pit.”

There were contractor troubles, delays, cost overruns and squabbles. The city borrowed tens of millions more, shoveling good money after bad into the job.

The Patriot-News Editorial Board wrote on 12 April 2010 about Harrisburg incinerator fiasco deserves an investigation to understand how it happened:
Over nearly a decade, officials at the Harrisburg Authority and City Hall made a series of decisions that sought to get the trash incinerator working and profitable, but which instead brought Pennsylvania’s capital to the brink of bankruptcy.

The 2003 deal that took on $125 million in debt to repair the incinerator neglected to include a performance bond.

Inexperienced firms were hired. Fees were paid for work poorly done. Loans were taken on disastrous terms.

Officials were aided, or rather misled, by the advice of numerous attorneys, bankers and engineers apparently far more interested in collecting handsome fees than they were in protecting the interests of taxpayers.

As a result, there is a deep distrust of the fundamental institutions that created this fiasco.

Something else sounds familiar about this situation:
While some of the seats have changed, many of the same people in government today had their fingerprints on these decisions.
It’s the same old boy network locally as approved Sterling Chemical, and the chair of the county commission at that time is now on the Industrial Authority. And the VLCIA has taken on what is reputed to be a $15 million bond issue.

How big is Harrisburg? 50,000 people, same as Valdosta. What is Harrisburg considering? Bankruptcy. Who profited anyway? Local developers.

What’s the moral?

All of the guarantees proved worthless.

All of the fail-safes failed.

What say we have the investigation now, before the fail-safes fail?

-jsq

South Georgia GBI; Roundup of Blacks In Quitman

In the appended post about yesterday’s events in Quitman, George Rhynes cites the WCTV and WALB stories. Curiously, the nearest local daily newspaper, the Valdosta Daily Times, seems to have nothing online about this. -jsq
At 8:30 AM, I began receiving phone calls from Quitman, Georgia in the County of Brooks where the County Sheriffs Office was arresting citizens at random concerning the recent Absentee Ballot Problems.

These arrests reminded me of the alleged problems Black Voters/Citizens have had with the GBI harassing them during their investigation before and during the last run off election. This included alleged actions by the GBI Investigators that local citizens complained about intimidation before, during and after the election. However little or no Public Media Attention was given to alleged Black Voter intimidation by local media. Moreover, little to nothing was published in the FREE PRESS surrounding citizen’s fear from GBI Investigators. This was a major point of discussion when I along with a local Pastor from Valdosta, Georgia walked the streets to get a better understanding of what Brooks County Voters had to go through during the last election.

Today’s arrest will surely end up in the courts.

Continue reading →

VLCIA biomass event Q&A

Here are videos that illustrate the VDT’s point today in What We Think:
While officials continue to downplay local citizen anger about current projects, citizens are organizing in a variety of ways to affect change the next election cycle. When Sterling Chemical came to Lowndes County in the 1990s, citizens were told the project was a “done deal,” and so it was. Sterling is still here, but those in office at the time aren’t, and the director of the Industrial Authority at the time is no longer here either.

As has been shown worldwide, citizens are tired of being told what’s best for them, having no say so in how their tax dollars are spent, and having their concerns ignored.

Until officials understand that it is coming from all directions and not just led by a few malcontents, the swell will continue to grow. And those who continue to ignore the anger and frustration do so at their own peril.

Maybe the VDT is referring to this kind of response from the VLCIA panel on 6 Dec 2010:
“these things do prop up the local economy, period, end of discussion.”
A previous questioner who had a job in Vietnam notes he was lied to about Agent Orange and asks “can you assure me that I won’t be affected by this?” Continue reading →

VDT Elevates Biomass and Renewable Energy as Political Issues

The Valdosta Daily Times (VDT) has apparently decided biomass and real clean energy instead are political issues. As part of the VDT’s sudden turn against the VLCIA and its biomass plant, which was provoked by citizen and student activism, the VDT started a week of articles with the headline “Proposed plant said to be ‘medical atrocity'”, about Dr. William Sammons’ Monday talk about health problems of biomass and how solar is better.

The VDT then featured biomass in its reporting on the AAUW Candidate Forum: Continue reading →

Candidates, Lowndes County Commission, District 2, at LCDP BBQ

Every year the Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP) has a barbecue to which it invites candidates for public office. These include local candidates. Here we have the two Democrats running for Lowndes County Commission in District 2, in alphabetical order: Debra M. Franklin and John S. Quarterman. Notice the two candidates dining amicably side by side.

Debra M. Franklin: Continue reading →