Category Archives: Government

Video playlist of Remerton City Council Work Session @ RCC 2012-06-04

Here are videos of the Remerton City Council Work Session of 4 June 2012, including three citizens speaking first against demolition of Strickland Mill. They meet again tonight.

First speaking was Emily Foster, who first informed us about this issue.

Here's a video playlist:

Video playlist of Remerton City Council Work Session
Work Session, Remerton City Council (RCC),
Remerton, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 June 2012.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

Previously I said I couldn't find the agenda, but it was actually online; here it is.

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CITY OF REMERTON
WORKSESSION AGENDA
MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012
COUNCIL CHAMBERS

5:30 PM

WELCOME GUESTS.

CITIZENS TO BE HEARD.

NEW BUSINESS:
  1. Discussion regarding Certificate of Appropriateness 2012-04 for 1853 W. Gordon Street, Remerton, Ga.— Jessica Freeman
  2. Discussion regarding continuation of moratorium to update Sign Ordinance for an additional 30 days — Jessica Freeman and Brad Folsom
  3. Discussion regarding Statewide Mutual Aid 2012 Agreement requested by Ashley Pye with Lowndes County — Rachel Tate
  4. Discussion regarding removal of speed bumps on Plum Street — Mayor Holsendolph
  5. DEPARTMENT REPORTS:
    1. City Clerk —Rachel Tate
    2. Probation — Jessica Freeman
    3. Police — Mike Terrell
    4. Fire/Utilities/Public Works — Scott Fowler
ADJOURN.

Agenda for work session @ LCC 2012-06-11

Better late than never, I suppose; yesterday there was no agenda posted; this morning it’s there: the agenda for this morning’s work session. It does not appear to have anything about waste management. It does have appointments to there boards, a rezoning, and a bunch of for considerations.

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LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, JUNE 11, 2012, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2012, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
  1. Call to Order
  2. Invocation
  3. Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag
  4. Minutes for Approval
    1. Work Session — May 7, 2012 (May 21, 2012, Work Session cancelled)
    2. Regular Session — May 8, 2012 (May 22, 2012, Regular Session cancelled)
  5. Appointments
    1. Lowndes County Department of Family and Children Services Board
    2. Public Facilities Authority
    3. South Georgia Community Service Board
  6. Public Hearings – REZ-2012-09 Copeland, 3258 & 3264 Loch Laurel Rd, R-A & R-1 to C-C, well & septic, ~5 acres
  7. For Consideration
    1. Speed Zone Ordinance
    2. Abandonment of a portion of Brinson Drive
    3. Motorola Support Agreement for Offendertrak and PMDC
    4. Nondisclosure Agreement with JMF Solutions, Inc.
    5. Contract with Municipal Code Corporation
    6. Lowndes County Fire Rescue Firehouse Subs Grant
    7. Funding approval for a new Message Switch (Server) for Lowndes County Telecommunications
  8. Bid — SCBA Cylinders
  9. Reports-County Manager
  10. Citizens Wishing to be Heard Please State Name And Address

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Video Playlist @ LCC 2012-05-08

An appointment, a road abandonment, three rezonings, and a bunch of for considerations: they did take longer than five minutes. Here are videos of the entire Tuesday 8 May 2012 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission. Here’s the agenda. Here are videos of the previous morning’s work session.

They unanimously reappointed four people to the Lowndes County Development Authority. They held a public hearing about abandoning part of an unopened right of way off US 41 South. Nobody spoke either for or against, and they approved the abandonment unanimously.

They heard several items we saw discussed at much more length in the GLPC 30 April videos.

They zipped through everything else on the agenda, approving everything unanimously, including a no-bid item for $60,354.32 to Scruggs Company. There was some discussion about the need for a contract with an audit firm they hadn’t used for three years. They tabled that one, unanimously, of course.

One citizen spoke, me, about Internet speed and access in Lowndes County as necessary for knowledge-based jobs and businesses.

Here’s a video playlist:

Video Playlist
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 8 May 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

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The solar train is leaving the station, but the nuclear buggywhip is in the way

The president of the Georgia Solar Energy Association Solar Energy Industries Association says the solar train is leaving the station nationwide, but Georgia remains enmeshed in tangled legislation. We could have changed that last year with SB 401 if Georgia Power and Southern Company’s vested interested in new nuclear plants at Plant Vogtle hadn’t gotten in the way. We can change it next year with a similar or better law. The time to contact your Georgia legislator or candidate is now, while election season is on.

Update 14 June 2012: Fixed Rhone Resch employment attribution.

Rhone Resch wrote for the Saporta Report, 3 June 2012, It’s time to put solar to work in Georgia

There are now more than 100,000 Americans employed at over 5,600 solar businesses in all 50 states. Many of these are small businesses that have been hit hard by the recession, but they are finding new opportunity for growth in the solar industry.

In Georgia, there are more than 80 companies in the solar value chain including Suniva, MAGE Solar, Inc. and Enfinity Corporation. I will be joining representatives of each of these fine companies — and many others — at the Southern Solar Summit on June 15 in the Georgia Tech Research Institute Conference Center in Midtown Atlanta to talk about the strides solar is making, and what remains to be done.

These companies are leading rapid innovation — across the entire value chain, from manufacturing improvements to new financing and sales mechanisms, that are allowing more and more Americans to go solar.

He points out that more solar was installed in 2011 than the total installed in 2008 and 2009, which shows that Moore’s Law continues to work for solar: the price per watt continues to go down, causing demand to go up. He projects forward:

The U.S. is on pace to install nearly 3,200 megawatts of new solar capacity this year with an annual growth rate of 30 percent through 2016.

At that rate, the United States would add more than 25,000 megawatts of new solar capacity between now and 2016. That is roughly the size of 25 coal-fired power plants and represents a significant opportunity for states that aggressively move to obtain a share of this exponentially growing market.

Hm, at Plant Vogtle the operating nuclear reactors produce about 2,430 megawatts and the two new ones under construction are supposed to produce about 2,200 megawatts. So that 25 gigawatts of new solar capacity by 2016 would be about 20 nuclear plants, a number that may be familiar from what Germany has already deployed. Somebody remind me again: why are we building any new nukes? How about if we end the nuke boondoggle and get on with clean green jobs for community and profit?

Rhone Resch says what Georgia can do:

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Videos of Shareholder Questions to Southern Company @ SO 2012-05-23

Slides and sound for Southern Company (SO) CEO Thomas A. Fanning’s main presentation at the 23 May 2012 SO shareholder meeting are available from SO on their website. SO doesn’t seem to have posted videos yet, although they had professional video equipment in use, and I was told just after the event that their videos would be on the web later that same day.

These items have already been blogged about this meeting:

I missed at least one questioner: Colleen Kiernan, Director of the Georgia Sierra Club. I plead unfamiliar cameras. Maybe soon SO will publish its own videos. SO was using a camera in front of the questioners, so you should be able to see them better.

Related blog posts:

Many more blog posts are in the nuclear category in the blog.

Here’s a video playlist for the 23 May 2012 SO shareholder meeting:

Videos of Shareholder Questions to Southern Company
Shareholder Meeting, Southern Company (SO),
Callaway Gardens, Pine Mountain, Georgia, 23 May 2012.
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

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Clean green jobs for community and profit

Tell me who doesn’t want clean jobs for energy independence and profit?

“Environmental sustainability… can lead to more and better jobs, poverty reduction and social inclusion,”

The above quote is Juan Somavia in an article Stephen Leahy wrote for Common Dreams 1 June 2012, For an Ailing Planet, the Cure Already Exists,

Germany’s renewable energy sector now employs more people than its vaunted automobile industry.

No wonder, when German solar power produces more than 20 nuclear plants. How many jobs? According to Welcome to Germany 13 April 2012, Renewable Energies Already Provide More Than 380,000 Jobs in Germany, which cites a report from the German government,

The boom in renewable energies continues to create new jobs in Germany. According to a recently published study commissioned by the Federal Environment Ministry, the development and production of renewable energy technologies and the supply of electricity, heat and fuel from renewable sources provided around 382,000 jobs in 2011.

This is an increase of around 4 percent compared to the previous year and more than double the 2004 figure.

“Current employment figures show that the transformation of our energy system is creating entirely new opportunities on the job market,” said German Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen.

“It is the major project for the future for German industry. This opens up technological and economic opportunities in terms of Germany’s competitiveness as an exporter and location to do business.”

Wouldn’t we like some of that here in sunny south Georgia, a thousand miles south of Germany?

Back to the Stephen Leahy article:

Globally, the renewable energy sector now employs close to five million workers, more than doubling the number of jobs from 2006-2010, according to a study released Thursday by the International Labor Organization (ILO).

The transformation to a greener economy could generate 15 to 60 million additional jobs globally over the next two decades and lift tens of millions of workers out of poverty, concluded the study, “Working towards sustainable development”.

Everyone will benefit. Everyone can benefit starting right now.

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Fukushima destroying nuclear-owning electric power utilities

The world’s worst nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan has had economic effects on nuclear-owning power utilities. What will happen to the Southern Company as Georgia Power customers and U.S. taxpayers get tired of paying for cost overruns which are already almost a billion dollars?

Erik Kirschbaum wrote for Reuters 26 May 2012, Germany sets new solar power record, institute says,

The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022.

And closing those nuclear plants caused German electric utility E.ON to lay off up to 11,000 staff, to take its first quarterly loss in a decade, and to cut its shareholder dividend. According to Forbes, E.ON in 2006 was the biggest electric utility in the world (and TEPCO, owner of the Fukushima nuclear plants, was number 6). In March 2012, E.ON was number 22. (TEPCO dropped from number 6 to number 45.) Southern Company (SO) jumped from number 16 in 2006 to number 6 this year, quite possibly because E.ON and TEPCO and others dropped so rapidly.

Hm, I wonder what Southern Company’s nukes, already almost $1 billion over budget, will do to SO’s ranking in Forbes’ list of top utilities? Maybe there’s a reason Moody’s called nuclear “a bet-the-farm risk”. What will SO do when this big nuclear bet goes bad? And how big a bill do Georgia Power customers and we the taxpayers want to let SO run up that we’ll get stuck with?

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Plant Vogtle is why Georgia is not a leader in solar power today

Could Georgia approach that German 20 gigawatt solar power figure? We’d already be there if we weren’t building Plant Vogtle.

Remember, John Hanger figures:

The Vogtle $913 million cost overrun by itself could have paid for approximately 1,000 megawatts of natural gas generation; 450 megawatts of wind power; and 330 megawatts of solar power.

That’s not 20 gigawatts. But the population of Germany is about 81 million, while the population of Georgia is about 9.8 million people, so the Georgia equivalent of 20 gigawatts would be about 2.4 gigawatts. The federal government has guaranteed about $8.3 billion in loans related to Plant Vogtle. That $8.3 billion would pay for about 3 gigawatts of solar power.

That big dish at Plant Vogtle? That’s not just a nuclear containment vessel, it’s a solar prevention wall. Preventing jobs, energy independence, and profit through solar power in Georgia.

Plant Vogtle is why Georgia is not a leader in solar power today.

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Germany solar equal to 20 nuclear plants

What's 20 times more powerful than a nuclear plant and didn't already run a billion dollars over budget? German solar plants!

Erik Kirschbaum wrote for Reuters 26 May 2012, Germany sets new solar power record, institute says,

German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour—equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity—through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said….

Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs….

The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world's leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed.

Berlin is at more than 52 degrees north latitude. Even southern German city Munich is at 48 degrees north. That's a thousand miles north of where we sit here in south Georgia at 31 degrees north.

Germany has sun like Alaska, while Georgia has sun like the south of Spain.

"Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity," Allnoch told Reuters. "Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over."

Maybe it's time for the Southern Company and Georgia Power to get out of the way and let the Georgia legislature change the Georgia Territorial Electric Service Act of 1973 so we can get on with solar power in Georgia. How about if Southern Company and Georgia Power also stop pouring money into the leaking nuclear bucket and buy solar power instead.

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Nydia Tisdale returns to city council where she was thrown out for videoing

Remember Nydia Tisdale, who got illegally ejected from a Cumming City Council meeting for videoing an open meeting? She’s back, in the front row, videoing.

Previously we called Cumming someplace worse than here. But look at this:

A city of Cumming audio-visual recording policy sheet was available outside council chambers.

“Handheld audio and/or visual recording devices may be used from any location within the public seating area,” wrote Gerald Blackburn, city administrator. “No audio and/or visual recording device may be set up in the aisles.”

Hm, that’s better than the Lowndes County Commission, whose chair Ashley Paulk famously said,

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