Category Archives: Forestry

Help fix land revaluation: come to Farm Bureau –Board of Equalization

Come to the Farm Bureau in two weeks to hear
Tax Assessor staff present their updates and provide your input

Contents
for changes to the
rural land revaluation, this time taking into account rivers, aquifer recharge zones, and uniformity.
Maybe the Tax Assessors actually don’t want more flooding in Valdosta;
both the City of Valdosta and GA-EDP have already shown interest in attending
about that point.

At an appeal on my property valuation,
the Board of Equalization stopped short of actually ordering the Tax Assessors to redo last year’s rural land revaluation, because staff volunteered Continue reading →

Comprehensive Plan Update Workshop @ SGRC 2016-03-07

As promised, there is
an updated Work Book online, dated February 29, 2016.

Title page
As Ariel Godwin also promised, the SGRC website says:

The next workshop will be Monday, March 7, 2016, 5:00-7:00 p.m. at
the SGRC office, 327 W. Savannah Ave., Valdosta, GA.

It will be interesting to see if this version of the Work Book for the
2016 Greater Lowndes County Comprehensive Plan Update
contains any changes about the issues

Greg Odom raised last month (22 February 2016)
about road paving, trees, and reducing expense to the county.
And LAKE will be at the meeting with the video camera.

-jsq

Canopy roads, agriculture, materials? –Greg Odom about Comprehensive Plan Update @ SGRC 2016-02-22

So well attended there weren’t enough handouts,

as remarked on by Greg Odom,


who

later also said the proposed Comprehensive Plan Update didn’t have any plans for canopy roads, or roads on existing rights of way like in Virginia:
“For the past 25 years there has not been a healthy attitude
about people who want to maintain dirt roads.
There has been an attitude of let’s pave everything,
and let’s pave it in an outrageous way….”

Last night’s meeting was billed Continue reading →

Videos: Forestry, river gage, abandon two roads, dedicate another @ LCC 2015-09-21



They vote this evening, about right now.
Here are videos of yesterday morning’s Work Session.
The
Forestry report referred to a report that the public can’t see.
What the forestry rep reported was mostly numbers of burn permits.

County Manager Joe Pritchard had to

stop Chairman Bill Slaughter from
adjourning so he could say:
“Friday afternoon we received a request for electronic signalling at highway 41.”
County Engineer Mike Fletcher elaborated that it was a
railroad pre-empt that would not allow for left turns onto Tillman Crossing
when there’s a train.
Request came from Norfolk Southern.
Chairman agreed to add it to the agenda, then they adjourned.


The annual continued funding for the Little River USGS stream gage at GA 122
costs $400 more this year.
Commissioner Marshall wanted to know what happened with the automated gage reporting system he thought they voted for previously, that would send reports
when the gage was high.
County Manager Joe Pritchard said that was actually the SCADA system for the county’s wells and sewage lift stations.
Commissioner Mark Wisenbaker wanted to know how this gage operates.
Box on bridge, tube down into river, monitors height and flow,
reported through a cell phone,

real time data on the web.
It’s been there long enough to establish flood stages and advanced warning levels
so people can protect their property.

The
Abandonment of a portion of Spain Ferry Road and Kinderlou Clyattville Road turns out to be from Continue reading →

River gage, abandon two roads, dedicate another @ LCC 2015-09-21

This morning at 8:30 AM,
USGS Funding Agreement for HWY 122 Stream Gauge
continue funding for Little River USGS stream gage at GA 122,


Abandonment of a portion of Spain Ferry Road and Kinderlou Clyattville Road because “the county has received a request” from whom wasn’t said,
Dedicate a portion of Shiloh Road to whom or what wasn’t said.
Plus
GEMA Sheltering Memorandum of Agreement
“for the sheltering of evacuees from Coastal Georgia and/or Florida in the event those areas are threatened by a hurricane”.
Plus
Declaration of Surplus Items and Authorization to Sell on GovDeals.com.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

PROPOSED AGENDA

WORK SESSION, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2015, 8:30 a.m.

REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2015,  5:30 p.m.

327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor

Continue reading →

Videos: Moody Family Housing doesn’t want to replace trees it cut down on Val-Del @ ZBOA 2015-08-04

They meet again today 2:30 PM.



Last month,
ZBOA voted 5 to 1 to let

Moody Family Housing
have a reduction of 25% (half of the 50% they wanted)
so as to include a requirement of native trees.
Gretchen Quarterman made the motion, Paul Alvarado seconded, and Satrina Plyler (filling the unexpired term of Scott Orenstein) voted against.

See for more background.

Here’s

a video playlist:



Videos: Moody Family Housing doesn’t want to replace trees it cut down on Val-Del

Regular Session, Valdosta-Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBOA),

Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 August 2015.

-jsq

Land is not just money: appeal tax valuations today




Appeal today if you think there’s more to land (or business)
and woods and fields and streams than money,
unlike the Tax Assessors, whose revaluation would drive development
into agricultural areas of the county where it doesn’t belong,
while avoiding populated areas such as the south side of Valdosta.
We can expect pipeline companies and utilities from other states
to think nothing of pillaging our lands for their profit.
We shouldn’t expect that of our neighbors whom we elected Tax Asssessors.
If you have affection for your land, your county, your neighborhood,
today’s the deadline

to appeal your valuation.
And there will be an election later.

As Wendell Berry said,



Whatever has happened in what economists call “the
economy,” it is generally true that the land economy has been
discounted or ignored.

Are the Tax Assessors boomers?
Are you a sticker?
Wendell Berry explains: Continue reading →

Monday August 10th deadline to appeal tax valuations –VLCoC

Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce members just got a message from
Bruce Allred, Government Affairs Council Chairman,
saying:


MONDAY IS DEADLINE TO APPEAL PROPERTY TAX ASSESSMENTS!

You can look up your property on the Tax Assessors’ website:
www.qpublic.net/ga/lowndes.


See also the

LAKE Videos: Rural revaluation meeting at Farm Bureau 2015-08-04.

That Chamber message includes this useful information: Continue reading →

Videos: Rural revaluation meeting at Farm Bureau 2015-08-04



See for yourself the Tax Assessor response to local landowners, in these
LAKE videos of

last night’s meeting at Farm Bureau.
Do you think there’s a problem?
If so, what do you think we should do to fix it?

The attendees appointed Gretchen to take notes. Here are her notes,
followed by the videos.

Accessibility is not about access, it’s about geographic location…. That was done by one of our appraisers on staff. —Chief Appraiser Silas Hrobar

Rural and commercial land owners got surprises in the mail in July
when they received the updated assessments of their properties.
Lowndes County Assessors engaged a contractor last year to help with
the reassessments of approximately 10,000 properties. Rural
properties were categorized as small (under 20 acres) and large
(over 20 acres) but complaints were the same, inconsistent and
confusing application of criteria.

On Tuesday evening, Farm Bureau hosted Continue reading →

Moody Family Housing doesn’t want to replace trees it cut down on Val-Del @ ZBOA 2015-08-04



2:30 PM today,
should developers not have to follow code and put back trees
on the unnecessary and environmentally hazardous Moody Family Housing
on Val-Del Road?
You wouldn’t know who this was by a pretty name like
Azalea Commons,
or an acronym like
ACC Group III Housing,
and only the

board packet
mentions Balfour Beatty,
but it’s the same

Moody Family Housing
in an
aquifer recharge zone
that
already had a sinkhole
as admitted by
a K Street lawyer to the
Lowndes County Commission
and told to them and to the Air Force by VSU professors
that the Air Force proceeded to ignore in its
environmental assessment
and the Lowndes County Commission rezoned anyway.
Staff recommend 20% “relief” from planting trees.
How about the county get some relief from unnecessary sprawl?



They did provide

a table of the trees they want to cut down.

Here’s the agenda, which is not on the City of Valdosta website,
appearing here courtesy of Continue reading →