Category Archives: GLPC

Tonight: Planning Commission Agenda @ GLPC 2012-05-21

The Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC) meets tonight. Here’s the agenda.

The agenda was faxed by GLPC Chairman Bill Slaughter to Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, at her request; GLPC itself still doesn’t have agendas online, ten months after SGRC stopped posting them.

There’s one rezoning case on the agenda, a county case:

2. REZ-2012-09 John A. Copeland
Property Location: Loch Laurel Road, Valdosta, Ga
Request to rezone ~5 acres from R-A (Residential Agriculture) and R-1 (Low-Density Residential) to C-C Crossroads Commercial)

According to the Lowndes County Tax Assessors database, James R Copeland and Elizabeth J. Copeland own two lots on Loch Laurel Road with Situs/Physical Address of 0 Loch Laurel Road, one of 1 acre and the other of 8.67 acres, and another one mostly surrounded by those two at 3248 Loch Laurel Road of 1.5 acres. It will be interesting to see how those plots add up to about 5 acres. Whatever GLPC recommends, final action is scheduled for the Lowndes County Commission at its 12 June Regular Session.

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Videos @ GLPC 2012 01 30

Here are videos of the entire 30 January 2012 Regular Session of the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC). You’ll have to figure out what they’d doing, because they don’t post agendas or minutes.

Here’s a video playlist:

Videos
Regular Session, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 30 January 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-jsq

Minutes on website? @ GLPC 2012 01 30

Whatever happened to the agendas and minutes of the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC) that used to be on the SGRC website? Gretchen asked at the January GLPC meeting whether they would be posted again. The chair said he didn't know. County Planner Jason Davenport added:

The regional commission used to do the minutes on the website for us. We have the minutes. Ms Gretchen, if you'll email us, we have the ability to email those minutes back to you, but we don't have plans right now to put those minutes back on the web.

The chair suggested "Maybe at some point in the future would be good." Jason Davenport reiterated that they had no plans to do that.

Here's the video:

Minutes on website?
Regular Session, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 30 January 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

That's similar to what he told me by email back on 28 November 2011:

Last year the agreement between the SGRC and the various local governments regarding the GLPC responsibilities changed. This website is a result of those changes. I have your request and will plan on getting direction and clarification about how to deal with these types of requests.

There has been a little bit of improvement. The GLPC chair faxed LAKE the April agenda.

-jsq

Videos, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission March 2012-03-26 @ GLPC 2012 03 26

Here are videos of the entire March regular meeting of the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC). I would include a link to the agenda, but they don’t publish those anymore. They don’t even have a website anymore. So you’ll need to watch and try to figure out what’s going on.

They meet again tonight. For that meeting, we’ve got an agenda.

Here’s a video playlist for their March meeting:

Videos, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission March 2012-03-26
Regular Session, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 26 March 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-jsq

Planning Commission agenda for Monday 2012-04-30

Here is the agenda for Monday’s meeting of the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC). It was faxed to Gretchen Quarterman of LAKE by GLPC chair Bill Slaughter, at her request.

Does anyone volunteer to transcribe it or OCR it?

There appear to be four cases for final action by Valdosta Mayor and Council on 10 May 2012, and three cases for final action by the Lowndes County Commission on 8 May 2012. GLPC itself is advisory:
it votes on recommendations, but it does not decide.


You may wonder why we don’t just point to the official copy of the agenda on the GLPC website. That’s because that website no longer exists (try the above link; you’ll see). It’s still linked to from the City of Valdosta web page for GLPC. More on all that later.

-jsq

What’s the VLMPO?

So you’ve heard about the

Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC).
What’s this

Valdosta-Lowndes Metropolitan Planning Organization (VLMPO)?
How is VLMPO different from the GLPC?

Well, it’s not exactly the same geographical area.
GLPC is exclusively for Lowndes County, including its cities.
VLMPO is for the Valdosta Urbanized Area, which does not include
all of Lowndes County, but does include parts of Berrien and Lanier Counties.
According to

VLMPO’s home page:



In April 2003, Governor Sonny Perdue officially designated the Southern
Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC) as the Metropolitan Planning
Organization (MPO) for the Valdosta Urbanized Area. As the MPO,
the SGRC is responsible for carrying out transportation planning
in the Metropolitan Planning Area using funding received from the
US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration and
Federal Transit Administration, administered by the Georgia Department
of Transportation. The MPO works with these and other transportation
planning partners to fulfill the requirements of various federal, state
and local transportation planning laws and plans.

And it’s not quite the same subject area.
GLPC mostly hears rezoning cases, although it also deals with larger planning
issues such as the

Comprehensive Plan, which includes transportation.
VLMPO is focused on transportation, but gets into all sorts of related issues:

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Some answers and some remaining questions about the Comprehensive Plan


When I spoke at the
Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC) about

the Short Term Work Projects (STWP) document
on Monday, November 28th,
I had questions about several sections,
and many of the deleted or modified items.
The next day I met with



Lowndes County Planner Jason Davenport
to discuss my questions.
Some of my questions were answered to my satisfaction, some I still
had concerns about, and some are still unanswered because they were
not actually in his area of expertise.

The document covers all the cities in Lowndes County as well as the
unincorporated area. I did get some questions about Valdosta projects
answered by Valdosta City Planner Matt Martin in a telephone conversation.

Questions I had about Conservations of Sensitive Areas were answered in detail.
For example:

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Video playlist, GLPC 28 November 2011



Here’s a video playlist for the entire Greater Lowndes Planning Commission
(GLPC) Regular Session of 28 November 2011.
We’ve already blogged a couple of them separately:

And we’ll probably blog more of these videos separately.
But you don’t have to wait.

Here’s

the playlist:




Video playlist, GLPC 28 November 2011

Comprehensive Plan,

Regular Session, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC),

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 28 November 2011.

Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

We’re not done working on this —Jason Davenport @ GLPC 28 November 2011



Continuing the
Comprehensive Plan Short Term Work Program (STWP) updates,
the chairman asked if the board was ready

Lowndes County Planner Jason Davenport responded:

We’re not done working on this.
But if you think it’s time to bring it before y’all.



Later, at about 11:40 in, Davenport clarified:

And the only that’s different right now is Lowndes County.
Because Lowndes County did not hold
a public hearing as required, so we’re on a different timeline.
And if Mrs. Quarterman would have given me about until December 13th
she would have seen that.

Because our initial resolution was not the same as the other communities.
We’re on a little bit of a different timeline
because we have to address that issue.
That’s one thing;
the county in this instance will be handled a little different
than some of the smaller cities and Valdosta.

That would be the initial resolution the county



did not provide in response to an open records request about the draft
the county did not publish as
required by the state.
If the county had answered questions weeks ago,
instead of waiting until they had to do makeup homework,

nobody would have had to ask about it at that GLPC meeting….

Anyway, the County Planner has said there will be a public hearing.
However, remember it was the County Chairman who said that

the public hearing item on the agenda was not really a public hearing.
It’s the Chairman, not the Planner,
who sets the agendas for the County Commission.
We’ll see what’s on the 13th December County Commission Agenda,
and whether it really is handled as a public hearing in that meeting.

Then GLPC Board Member John Page expressed his concerns:

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Don’t we still need farmers to feed us? —Gretchen Quarterman @ GLPC 28 November 2011

What was it that the Lowndes County government didn’t want its citizens to see
in
the draft it didn’t publish
and
didn’t provide in response to an open records request,
and
the hearing it didn’t hold about
its
updates to the Comprehensive Plan?


Could it be the many items the county is deleting, having to do with
feeding seniors, health care, transportation,
work ethics and life skills,
environmental impacts, agriculture, wells, wetlands, and many other topics,
some of which Gretchen Quarterman detailed to the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission yesterday?

After Valdosta and Hahira City Planner Matt Martin explained
how all the local city governments had or were going to have
hearings about their

Comprehensive Plan Short Term Work Program updates,
the GLPC Chairman asked if any citizens wanted to speak on that topic.
One citizen did, Gretchen Quarterman.
She apologized for missing the September GLPC meeting
because she would have raised some of these issues then.

I have an appointment with [Lowndes County Planner] Jason [Davenport]
tomorrow to address some of my questions.

But I want to let you know that at the County Commission

did not hold a public hearing after the changes.
I was at the [Valdosta] City Council meeting,
and the City Council did hold a public hearing,
but the County Commission did not.

And I believe that is

in violation of DCA’s guidelines.
They sent a transmission letter that said they followed
DCA’s guidelines.
DCA’s guidelines say hold a public hearing.
It was on the agenda, the public hearing, but no public hearing was held.
So I didn’t have an opportunity to see

the document, or to comment, before the county sent it.

She said she would provide written comments to Jason the next morning,
and asked if GLPC would like to hear some of them.
They said they would, so she read some of them.
For example:

In Section 1.3 it was struck from the document:

Ensure supporting senior services such as health care,

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