Category Archives: Lowndes County Commission

Deaf, dumb, and blind –George Boston Rhynes

A comment Monday on

Budget Hearing wrapup: no questions were entertained from citizens -jsq:



Soon the people of South Georgia Will see that the old 1860 Valdosta
City Chater Mentality is still in force but has been extended to all
citiens. That is to keep all citizens deaf; dumb; and blind to what
is really going on in South Georgia. But in the end truth, right and
equal justice will most certainly win in the end as history always
records!
http://kvci.blogspot.com

-George Boston Rhynes

Lowndes County has transparency issues —John S. Quarterman @ LCC 28 June 2011



No unfinished drafts will be published while Ashley Paulk is chairman,
or so he told us.

I asked him how he recommended citizens provide input to the
budget process?
He said at every meeting.

So I said I wondered why the county attorney seemed to be overbudget.
No response.

Then I got to my main point, which was that the county seems to have
a number of transparency issues,
such as



the missing ordinances he’d just heard about,



or Vince Schneider’s Foxborough McDonald’s issues,



or the animal shelter issues,
or



the T-SPLOST list that the Commission approved
on the basis of a one page list of one-liner with no details
that turns out to include things like

$10 million to widen New Bethel Road to Lanier County.

I said I would like to compare the county’s submissions for T-SPLOST
funding to the county’s Thoroughfare Plan
and the Comprehensive Plan; if I could find those plans online.
The Chairman said my five minutes were up.
I said “Alrighty” and moseyed back to my seat.
As you can see for yourself, it was actually 4 and a half minutes.

-jsq

Here’s

the video:

Continue reading →

Missing records at GA Dept. of Ag. Animal Protection

Earlier I asked:

“So if the investigation takes more than 2 years, do the earlier files about it start to vanish?”
It appears that there’s no need to wait 2 years for records to vanish from
the Ga. Department of Agriculture Animal Protection.

Blogger Rattlin’ Georgia’s Cages wrote at some unknown date about

State Audits:



The author of this website is NOT an attorney, nor is attempting to
provide legal advice to ANY person or organizational entity. The author of
this website does not, nor does this website, represent, nor is affiliated
with, the Ga. Department of Agriculture Animal Protection Division. The
author of this website is a previous employee of the Ga. Department of
Agriculture, employed as an Animal Protection Inspector, from Dec 2003
until July 29, 2004.

The Ga. Department of Agriculture Animal Protection

Office was audited in 2000.

This office was also reviewed, by the State Audit Office, in 2003,

for a follow up – to determine if this office was adhering

to the state auditor’s recommendations.


* My comments are in red text.

I’ve included here a couple of examples from that audit,
with that blogger’s comments in red. -jsq



The Department has the authority to suspend or revoke a facility’s
license. If a facility is found to be operating without a license, the
Program notifies the facility of the licensure requirement, provides a
copy of the standards that must be met to obtain a license, and schedules
a pre-license inspection.


* Unlicensed breeders found to be operating unlicensed were not, during
my employment, monetarily fined for violations. Under the authority of
the Ga. Admin Procedures Act, Ag AP could, but rarely did, fine a person.

Continue reading →

Keep the business of our county in order —Gretchen Quarterman @ LCC 28 June 2011



Should it take more than six months to find the county ordinances
that code enforcement needs?

Gretchen Quarterman thanked County Clerk Paige Dukes for
helping her in the “neverending answering to my list of questions.”
She noted that:

The chairman thinks I’m badgering,
but really I’m not.


This body makes ordinances, and
some of the ordinances are on the website.
If you
go to the state website, and find out where all the laws of the state are;
go to the city of Valdosta’s website, and find out where all the laws of Valdosta are.
Go to our website and only find out some of the ordinances.



Paige says she has been diligently working on this
and I absolutely positively believe her.
And I know it’s very complicated
But I really encourage y’all as a body
— I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job —


but to keep the business of our county in order.
Thank you.

She’s been trying to get public access to all the ordinances since December.
The county doesn’t even have a list of all the ordinances.



Should it take more than six months to find the local laws
that code enforcement needs?
Chairman Ashley Paulk and 2 of 3 voting Commissioners, Crawford Powell and Richard Raines,
are businessmen.
Could they run a business when resolutions of the board were nowhere
to be found?

-jsq

Here’s

the video:

Continue reading →

“Once the investigation is complete and closed all documents will be provided to you.” —Custodian of Records

More from Susan Leavens:

—– Forwarded Message —-
From: “King, Shirley”

To: “sleavens4@bellsouth.net”

Sent: Wed, October 27, 2010 2:21:02 PM

Subject: Open Records Request

Ms. Leavens, as you requested under the Georgia Open Records Act,
please find message from the custodian of records for Animal Protection
attached.

If we may assist you any further, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Thanks.

Shirley J. King

Open Records Coordinator

The attached PDF is

here
on the

LAKE website.
Interestingly, although that message from
Patricia Mitchell, “Animal Protection Office Custodian of Records”
says

“Once the investigation is complete and closed all documents will be provided to you.”

it also says:

“By policy the department only retains 2 years (2008 & 2009) inactive files
and 1 years (2010) active files.”

So if the investigation takes more than 2 years, do the earlier files
about it start to vanish?

-jsq

Budget Hearing wrapup: no questions were entertained from citizens



Paulk and Pritchard wrapped up the budget hearing,
quite well, except at the very end,
when about 2 seconds were allowed for citizens to say they
wanted to speak before the hearing was ended.
So that’s two budget hearings with no citizen input:

the first one nobody knew about,
and this one where nobody was permitted to speak.

Chairman Ashley Paulk thanked county employees for their cooperation.
He noted that even the constitutional officers, who could appeal
their budgets, had not.
He noted the jail accounted for about half the sheriff’s budget,
calling it an expensive operation.
He said that his office had accounted for 3 of the 8 layoffs
last time, and fortunately there were no more this time.
He said:

Continue reading →

Budget presentation —Stephanie Black @ LCC 28 June 2011

More than half of Lowndes County expenditures go to law enforcement, including sheriff, courts, and the jail.



At Tuesday’s budget hearing,
Lowndes County Finance Director Stephanie Black
presented the proposed 2012 budget to the Commission.



Here are the

details of the budget,
as photographed by Gretchen from the single copy provided for the public
to see by the county clerk.



Here are

photographs of her slides.

Here’s

a playlist of the videos.

A couple more videos of this hearing
to come of remarks by Chairman Ashley Paulk
and County Manager Joe Pritchard in this budget hearing,
plus a related video from the Citizens Wishing to be Heard later
that same day.

-jsq

All employees were drug tested and interviewed —Joe Pritchard

Susan Leavens sent this Tuesday:

John, this is the first open records reguest I did with GDA. The rest
will be in order of date of the request.

The document Shirley King attached for Item #2 was this

PDF
of a letter
from Joe Pritchard of 27 August 2010
telling USDA GDA all employees (presumably of the animal
shelter) had been drug-tested and were being interviewed.

Documents about the animal shelter are appearing

here on the LAKE web pages.
Here are the messages Susan Leavens forwarded along with this particular letter.

-jsq

Continue reading →

I tried following the chian of command —Susan Leavens

Many comments are on

Animal shelter open records
and

Return cameras.
Susan Leavens provides specific information in this one.
-jsq

Concerned Citizen,

Please understand that there are state laws that people get arrested for
each day also; the county ordiance mirrors the state law(s) however if
you have not read the statements no one was arrested either. And do you
think the bulldog was the first incident? Keep reading!! Below are some
other things which have occured in the shelter.

Page 3 #15 Cruelty,

Page 5 #23 hoplesly disable animal,

page 5 #26 humane care,

page 7 #36 records,

Section 5 page 10 Emergencies involving animals,

to name a few of the Lowndes County Ordinance.

So when you say why didn’t I(Officer Leavens)end

Continue reading →