Hahira Market Days Part 1 of 3:
Hahira Market Days,
Hahira, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 June 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Ensuring that people who will
engage in dialog and seek the benefit of the entire community are
appointed to boards lies in the hands of the elected officials.
Electing people who engage in dialog and seek the benefit of the
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Hahira, GA – After a lengthy search, the City of Hahira recently hired a new
Special Event Coordinator. Sherri Burgess will work with the Hahira City
Council and Hahira business owners to enhance economic development
opportunities in Downtown Hahira. She will coordinate special events and
implement new ideas for the citizens of the City of Hahira.
Mrs. Burgess has experience with event planning and retail business
management. A long-time resident of Las Vegas, Nevada, she and her husband,
Paul, are newcomers to the Hahira area. Paul recently retired as Chief
Master Sergeant with the United States Air Force. “We are tremendously
pleased to have Sherri join our team,” stated Hahira Mayor Wayne Bullard.
“Her talents will only enhance the quality service that citizens of Hahira
and the surrounding area have come to know and love in our City.”
Many events are currently in planning for 2011 in Hahira. However, because
of the transition, Third Thursday will not have the traditional activities
that patrons have come to know and love.
For Further Information, Please Contact:
Jonathan Sumner
City Manager
City of Hahira
(229) 794-2330
How much should it cost for a citizen to get access to agendas
and minutes of a tax-funded board?
How does about $2 per meeting strike you?
Bobbi Anne Hancock filed an open records request for the
agendas and minutes of all regularly scheduled and called
meetings of the
VLCIA letter asking $125.09 for copies of agendas and minutes
of the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA)
from 2006 to the present, and got this letter back:
So at 12 meetings per year for five years plus another 3 months,
that would be about 63 meetings, divided into $125.09 gets
about $1.99 per meeting.
The 75% pot of T-SPLOST funds is what the project lists recently
submitted by Lowndes County
and the City of Valdosta are about,
according to
Corey Hull, continuing his presentation on T-SPLOST at the Lowndes County
Democratic Party (LCDP) meeting.
Those are projects of regional significance
that the local jurisdictions want the voters to actually
vote on that project.
The other 25% goes to local jurisdictions, like this:
Corey Hull of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Metropolitan Planning Organization (VLMPO)
explains T-SPLOST (HB 277) and the Transportation Investment Act of 2010
at the monthly meeting of the Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP),
Gretchen Quarterman (Chair), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Video by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Such publicly owned networks can offer services that incumbents don’t,
such as the 1Gbps fiber network in Chattanooga, Tennessee, run by the
government-owned electric power board. And they sometimes have more
incentive to reach every resident, even in surrounding rural areas,
in ways that might not make sense for a profit-focused company.
According to this map of
Community Broadband Networks
by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance,
quite a few small cities in south Georgia have municipal cable networks:
It’s an opportunity for those of us who are not currently
searching for our next meal to help those who need jobs,
and thereby to help ourselves, so they don’t turn to crime.
Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession
greener than ever, if we choose wisely.
Switchgrass seemed like a good idea five or ten years ago,
but there is still no market for it.
Not just strictly organic by Georgia’s ridiculously
restrictive standards for that, but also less pesticides
for healthier foods, pioneered as nearby as Tifton.
That’s two markets: one for farmers, stores, and farmers’ markets
in growing and distributing healthy food, and one for local
banks in financing farmers converting from their overlarge
pesticide spraying machinery to plows and cultivators.
Similarly, biomass may have seemed like a good idea years ago,
but with Adage backing out of both of its Florida biomass plants
just across the state line, having never built any such plant ever,
the biomass boom never happened.
Meanwhile, our own Wesley Langdale has demonstrated to the state
that
Susan Hall Hardy says that in most places industrial authority executives
don’t interact with their communities.
Well, paraphrasing what Yakov Smirnoff used to say,
in Lowndes County, community interact with officials!
Not to be rude, although honesty is very often perceived that way
these days, but, the industrial authority executives rarely thank their
communities. In the six states I’m most familiar with, these fellows
see themselves as beholden only to their employers. After all, they work
with their directors, elected officials, a few bankers and city/county
department heads. Rarely do they come in direct contact with the average
voter, employee or homeowner, although all those people often pay a large
part of their salaries and office operating expenses. Despite the public
funding, these groups are usually tight lipped about how they do business
and rarely provide the public with records or audits. We’ve all put up
with that manner of doing business for so long we now see it as just
that — the way you do business. We’d never accept that from a nonprofit
organization, a charity group or most elected officials. Shame on us all.
Susan, you’re helping by reading, and you’re helping more by posting.
Many local officials have noticed LAKE and this blog because
they know people read it.
Anyone who wants to help still more,
you, too, can go to a meeting.
The Industrial Authority is a good one to attend,
but I hear the Tree Commission isn’t trying as hard to enforce things,
and does anybody know anything the Hospital Authority does?
The Airport Authority?
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I understand the point about beliefs.
But it’s not all about just the beliefs of just the people on the board.
It’s also about things like
is there enough water, and do we want businesses that soak up
a lot of water, like
Ben Copeland said at the Lake Park Chamber of Commerce.
Beliefs are good, but facts are better.
Thank you.
John S. Quarterman at the
regular monthly meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA)
Norman Bennett, Roy Copeland, Tom Call, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett chairman,
J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Brad Lofton Executive Director, Allan Ricketts Program Manager,
15 March 2011.
Video by David Rodock for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Hahira Market Days.
It’s an opportunity for those of us who are not currently
searching for our next meal to help those who need jobs,
and thereby to help ourselves, so they don’t turn to crime.
Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession
greener than ever, if we choose wisely.
