It’s a good thing the county held these first-ever (as far as I know)
comprehensive budget sessions.
Here are videos of the first day.
Most of the departments are asking for more money,
due to increased population and increased demand for services
during a period of economic downturn.
Something needs to be done, and these sessions are one step in
getting to doing something.
Here’s the agenda.
Lowndes County Sheriff Prine
talked about
Administration,
the
Jail,
the
Commissary,
and
Enforcement
at the
first day of Budget Presentations to the Lowndes County
Commission, 10 March 2014.
Like most other county-funded departments, he asked for more personnel.
The long squeeze of the economic downturn needs to be addressed somehow.
These videos show how the Sheriff proposes to address them.
Indefatigable reporter gets FBI to investigate profiteering private prison company: again. CCA already lost the contract for Idaho State Prison and two other CCA prisons have closed. Maybe this time the FBI will shut CCA down.
Rebecca Boone wrote for AP yesterday, APNewsBreak: FBI investigates prison company,
The FBI has launched an investigation of the Corrections Corporation of America over the company’s running of an Idaho prison with a reputation so violent that inmates dubbed it “Gladiator School.”
The Nashville, Tenn.-based CCA has operated Idaho’s largest prison for more than a decade, but last year, CCA officials acknowledged it had understaffed the Idaho Correctional Center by thousands of hours in violation of the state contract. CCA also said employees falsified reports to cover up the vacancies. The announcement came after an Associated Press investigation showed CCA sometimes listed guards as working 48 hours straight to meet minimum staffing requirements.
The Idaho State Police was asked to investigate the company last year but didn’t, until Continue reading
No penalties and no proposed criminal sanctions in TPP for environmental destruction, in sharp contrast to the U.S. proposal for new criminal penalties for “unintentional infringements” intellectual property.
Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) – Environment Consolidated Text
Today, 15 January 2014, WikiLeaks released the secret draft text for the entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Environment Chapter and the corresponding Chairs’ Report. The TPP transnational legal regime would cover 12 countries initially and encompass 40 per cent of global GDP and one-third of world trade. The Environment Chapter has long been sought by journalists and environmental groups. The released text dates from the Chief Negotiators’ summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 19-24 November 2013.
The Environment Chapter covers what the Parties propose to be their positions on: environmental issues, including climate change, biodiversity and fishing stocks; and trade and investment in ‘environmental’ goods and services. It also outlines Continue reading
They vote tonight at 5:30PM. Probably there won’t be a repeat of
yesterday morning’s presentation
by
District Health Director Dr. Grow.
The county wants
an architect for a new roof and shower in one jail pod;
it’s considering two interagency agreements,
one for
Valdosta Inspections for Lake Park
and the other for
the county extension,
plus
setting election qualifying fees
and
a Special Assessment Rate for 2014.
There’s a
beer license
and acceptance of
infrastructure for part of Grove Pointe Subdivision.
Here’s the agenda with links to the videos:
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERSContinue reading
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 2014, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
We can probably guess who
“Dr. Grow” is
and the general topic of his presentation,
but why does the county make us guess?
The county wants
an architect for a new roof and shower in one jail pod;
it’s considering two interagency agreements,
one for
Valdosta Inspections for Lake Park
and the other for
the county extension,
plus
setting election qualifying fees
and
a Special Assessment Rate for 2014.
There’s a
beer license
and acceptance of
infrastructure for part of Grove Pointe Subdivision.
Here’s the agenda: Continue reading
The VDT report doesn’t say when or where, and doesn’t say whether
Dexter Sharper (District 177) wasn’t invited or chose not to attend.
There’s nothing about this meeting in the online agendas or calendar, even though that calendar lists Pictures with Santa at the Historical Courthouse (12/19/2013).
There is this undated public notice with no agenda:
The Lowndes County Board of Commissioners will meet with members of Lowndes County’s Legislative Delegation on Friday, December 20, 2013, at 4:00 p.m. in the Commissioner’s Conference Room located on the 3rd floor of the Judicial-Administrative Complex, 327 North Ashley Street, Valdosta, Georgia.
K. Paige Dukes, County Clerk
pdukes@lowndescounty.com 229-671-2400
Matthew Woody wrote for the VDT 22 December 2013,
Commissioners host local delegation,
oddly omitting the when and where and much of the why from
the traditional
who, what, when, where, and why of journalism.
The Lowndes County Commission hosted Continue reading
The twenty-first amendment to the U.S. Constitution
was ratified eighty years ago today, repealing the eighteenth amendment,
ending alcohol prohibition, and along with it the alcohol mobs
it had bred.
It’s time to do the same with drug prohibition,
and along with it not only drug gangs
but also
the epidemic of incarceration in this country.
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her newspaper column My Day, 14 July 1939, Prohibition, Continue reading
Who’s responsible for the recent partiality in budget reports?
The newspaper, or its source of information, namely the county government
at its secretive retreat on the Chairman’s private property that even the VDT reporter had trouble finding?
When the Coroner and the Sheriff (often at odds lately) agree that the VDT’s version of the county government’s remarks about their budgets was at best partial, where is the source of that partiality? Who’s responsible for budgeting for the county, reporter Matthew or editor Kay Harris or Dean Poling? Or is it the local government our taxes pay to do that job, namely the Lowndes County Commission and its staff, which is managed by County Manager Joe Pritchard?
Maybe somebody down at the county palace should,
as Gretchen suggested recently,
“check our work”.
-jsq
Like
the Sheriff, the Coroner reports
that something’s rotten in the
Lowndes County Commission and staff’s version of his budget.
Dean Poling write for the VDT today, Coroner responds to county budget issues,
Lowndes County Coroner Bill Watson explained Friday that comments calling him one of the county budget’s “worst offenders” did not explain why his office’s expenses change from year to year.
“I have no control over the number of people that dies each year,” Watson told The Times, “and I have to fund the transportation for autopsies. Any time there is an autopsy, it costs my office about $750.”
These costs include Continue reading
