Apparently
VLCIA
collects $3 million in tax revenues annually
and pays about $368,000 in staff salaries and benefits,
plus $125,000 in legal and accounting costs, as well as
other items in general operations.
This is according to VLCIA’s
Operating Budget (FYE 30 June 2011),
obtained by
open records request in February 2011,
and given to LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Look for yourself;
here it is
in PDF and two different single-page forms.
-jsq
Continue readingFormer Lowndes County commissioner Richard Lee once told me “…the learning curve is very steep for first-time commissioners.” Our new county commissioners, Richard Raines and Crawford Powell, are living proof of the veracity of that statement. In case Bill O’Reilly is reading this, here’s a few examples.
Earlier this month a grant application for the purchase of 5,000 weather emergency radios was nixed by a 2 – 1 vote. The radios could’ve been a means for citizens residing in remote areas of the county to
The owl in Hahira:
Monthly LAKE MeetingThomas says:
When: 5:30-6:45 PM, Tuesday 1 March 2011
Updated meeting location
Where: home of Thomas Ieracitano
414 East Main Street, Hahira
229-251-2462
That’s on US 122, just east of the Masonic Lodge.
“Bring a lawn chair, laptop (I will have Mediacom wireless) and your own food and drink.”If it rains or there are too many bugs or something, we will move to:
Down Home Pizza
103 South Webb Street, Hahira
229-794-1888
Help cover food, water, transportation, incarceration, solar energy, biomass, and regular local government meetings: you never know when news will be made!
Popular topics lately on the LAKE blog, On the LAKE Front, include Continue reading
Now Wally was purchased with grant funds. Rudy was trained with grant funds. Our mobile command center was purchased with grant funds. Several other pieces of equipment for Police and Fire departments are purchased with grants. Now, there are those that scream and shake their fist at government to say, “Take no grants, for they are evil”.Continue reading
Continue readingEveryone wants jobs for those who need them and jobs for young people so they don’t have to go somewhere else to find one. But what good is that if those jobs suck up all the water those people need to drink?
At the Lake Park Chamber of Commerce annual dinner Brad Lofton gave a speech which I liked, and I told him so afterwards, because it was mostly about real industry with real jobs that that the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) has brought into the area.
But it had a problem:
All these protesters were in favor of the groundbreaking today for the
Wiregrass Solar LLC plant, but they wanted to object to the
related biomass plant proposed for next door.
Here you can see Valdosta police saying they’re going have to
issue a summons to some protesters because they didn’t have a permit,
Valdosta Mayor Fretti saying the permit process is simple,
and Dr. Michael Noll president of Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy (WACE)
explaining that they only heard of the event recently,
and besides he’d be happy to pick up a shovel and help with the
groundbreaking for the solar plant:
The Lowndes County Commission seems to have suddenly gone from
lecturing citizens about how it’s a waste of tax money for
people to speak too often to inviting all sorts of citizen
groups to show up and speak or be recognized.
I call that a good thing.
We’ll see if this
era of good feelings lasts.
In addition to
the many students speaking about Tranqulity Trail,
at the same meeting the Chairman recognized
a Boy Scout troop
(at least I think that’s what that one was)
and
Boy Scout Troop 418
(I’m pretty sure about that one).
Also the
Chidren’s Advocacy Center
(more about that one later).
And
Sheriff Prine thanked the Commission for their support
in
searching Ocean Pond for seventeen days.
-jsq
VLCIA says
it paid for hotel rooms in December for
Bob McCann and Gil Waldman of Sterling Energy. Why?
How much more has VLCIA spent on travel for Sterling?
And how can this public-private keep Sterling documents related
to the biomass plant confidential?
According to the VDT, “Biomass plant said good for Valdosta and Georgia,” by Johnna Pinholster, 4 Nov 2010, “Gilbert Waldman is vice president and general manager of Sterling Energy Assets” and “Sterling Energy brought in Robert McCann, Jr. from Golder Associates Inc.” It’s curious that VLCIA paid for a room for the general manager of Sterling Energy, which I thought VLCIA said was the principle investor in the project. Seems like more we, we, we to me. This is yet more evidence that VLCIA and Sterling Energy do indeed have a public-private partnership. In which case, why can Sterling and VLCIA claim Sterling’s wood fuel sourcing study is proprietary?
The VDT also said:
On Tuesday, Waldman, an environmental consultant, members of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority board, and Brad Lofton, executive director of the authority, sat down to discuss the plant, how it works and how clean it will be.Did VLCIA also pay for rooms for Waldman and McCann for that Tuesday 2 Nov 2010 meeting? How much money has VLCIA spent bringing them down here?
-jsq
VLCIA spent
more than
$17,000 on speakers and catering for their 6 Dec 2010 “Forum”, according
to VLCIA’s response to an open records request.
Yet local speakers against the biomass plant
who would have charged nothing were not
invited to be on the panel.
VLCIA insists on referring to it as an “information exchange”,
even though their hand-picked moderator said
“we’re not going to get into debate.”
Here is a summary of the expenses: Continue reading
In the new
era of good feelings,
Dr. Noll asked the Lowndes County Commission
whether they thought all the medical associations
and doctors who oppose biomass plants are lying,
same as he later
asked the Valdosta City Council.
He also offered to
discuss with biomass proponent Nolen Cox,
who spoke immediately before.
Here’s
the video.
-jsq