Category Archives: Lowndes County Commission

Rezonings at LCC work session 9 May 2011



Lowndes County Commission met in work session yesterday morning,
and meets in regular session to make decisions this evening.
A couple of rezonings and an alcohol ordinance are on the agenda.
Remember rezonings affect sprawl which affects schools and everything else.

Citizens Wishing to be Heard has moved to the end again.

Here’s

the agenda
with videos from the work session interleaved.
Gretchen got there one minute late and they were already on item 4.
The whole meeting lasted about 20 minutes.

Yes, we know the sound is bad.
LAKE will be using a different camera tonight.

-jsq


LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

PROPOSED AGENDA

WORK SESSION, MONDAY, MAY 9, 2011, 8:30 a.m.

REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2011, 5:30 p.m.

327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor

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Lot size and code enforcement on Old Pine Road, 8 June 2010



Ashley Paulk said he is code enforcement!
Let’s go back a year to the rezoning of Old Pine Road on 8 June 2010,
as an example of how some things fit together around here.
First a bit more about lot size, and then code enforcement and traffic.

Commissioner Richard Lee wanted to know if Coy Brightwell
was the spokesperson for the people against.
Brightwell said some others would also speak,
but R-10 was the closest to a quarter acre lot, and that’s what they
were for.

Here’s

Part 1 of 3:




Lot size and code enforcement on Old Pine Road, 8 June 2010 Part 1 of 3:

Rezoning REZ-2010-06, Glen Laurel, Old Pine Rd,

Regular monthly meeting of the Lowndes County Commission (LCC)

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 8 June 2010,

Videos by Gretchen Quarterman and John S. Quarterman

for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

A Mr. Mulligan of Bemiss Road wanted to know


A Mr. Mulligan of Bemiss Road wanted to know

Who develops these plans, the county, or the developer?

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Everyone agrees there’s a problem with education — pro and con CUEE @ LCDP 2 May 2011

Pretty much everyone agrees there are problems with the two local
school systems in this county, those of Lowndes and Valdosta.

Proponents and opponents of school unification even agree on many
of the details.
They just don’t agree on the solution.
CUEE believes that unification will somehow lead to solutions to all this,
and

believe is the word they use,
because they have no evidence.
Opponents such as me

don’t see any plan to get to better education, and some think that unification
will cause problems that CUEE is not even considering,

just like integration did in 1969.

Here’s a pair of pie charts from 2008 from

Who’s losing in Winnersville?
a project unification opponent Dr. Mark George was involved in:


And here is a similar comparison

from CUEE using data from 2009-2010.:

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Valdosta City Governnment 101

Tim Carroll pointed out on LAKE’s facebook page that Valdosta’s

Government 101
will be graduating soon.
Jane Fleming Osborn remarked that

It is an enlightening and eye-opening class you should not miss !”

According to the city’s writeup about it:

…is designed to give City of Valdosta residents age 21 and older
an inside look at how their city operates daily. Participants will be
exposed to all city departments according to the following itinerary:

  • April 4 Introduction to Class
  • April 11 Public Safety and Municipal Court
  • April 18 Engineering, Public Works and Utilities
  • April 25 Financial Administration, Industrial and Economic Development
  • May 2 Community Building and Neighborhood Development
  • May 9 Facility Tour and Graduation



Last year’s class was the first,

with 23 graduates.

For Lowndes County residents who do not live in Valdosta,
the equivalent is…

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Wake-up and break off the spell of the Leviathan —George Boston Rhynes

This comment from George Boston Rhynes arrived just now,
on “Talk to my chairman”. -jsq



I was at

the last LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS MEETING when
Chairman Ashley Paulk shared information about the Biomass Project
extension being denied and the alleged secrecy surrounding keeping the
general public ignorant.

“Because certain people won’t share with you and I think it’s
unfair. We were approached about three weeks ago, Mr. (Joe) Pritchard
(County Manager) was, by the Industrial Authority, and we were tentatively
asked to make a move to ask that they not extend the contract.”
(Chairman Paulk!)

Chairman Paulk words prove that there is an apparent pattern and practice

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I’m all for openness —Tom Call



The member who hardly ever speaks at board meetings makes a strong case for openness.

Tom Call

called me back about the biomass plant,
and we talked about a number of other matters.
He remarked that he was not an appointed spokesperson for the Industrial
Authority, so this is just him talking.

I asked him about

Ashley Paulk’s remarks in the 26 April 2011 Lowndes County Commission
meeting.
Tom Call said VLCIA was not standing behind any other body,
and he clarified what had happened.

He said the biomass plant had been brought to the Industrial
Authority by

Continue reading →

Who’s for What at the VLCIA

I don’t like to publish hearsay, but since the Industrial Authority
won’t talk, that’s what I’ve got.
According to Leigh Touchton, Ashley Paulk told her Tuesday night:

He said that Jerry Jennett took the biomass vote off the agenda at last
Industrial Authority meeting (April 19) even though Mary Gooding and
Roy Copeland wanted the vote to be taken ( a vote that was to oppose an
extension of the biomass contract since the biomass incinerator had not
met timeline benchmarks like having a buyer, etc). He said that Allan
Ricketts, Industrial Authority attorney Steve Gupton, and Jerry Jennett
went up to Atlanta to meet with Wiregrass officials and that’s when he
(Chairman Paulk) got a call telling him all this and he said he wouldn’t
keep quiet about it. He said the three men asked Wiregrass LLC officials
to rescind their letter asking VLCIA for an extension on their contract
and to substitute a new letter saying they were withdrawing their request
for extension (or not going forward to ask for extension).

This is in addition to what you can see him

on video saying during the meeting.
More after this picture of the cast of characters:

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Tornado Warning in Lowndes County right now

The

National Weather Service map right now shows a tornado warning for part
of Lowndes County:

This is at least the second time this month; here
another tornado warning for Lowndes County, from 5 April 2011:

Continue reading →

Move on, find other avenues, other projects —Ashley Paulk

Ashley Paulk agrees with my mother about
what the Industrial Authority should do.

At the Lowndes County Commission meeting last night, Chairman Paulk
discussed the biomass plant with Dr. Noll, and said:



Certain people won’t share it with you, and I don’t think it’s fair.

We were approached … almost three weeks ago by the Industrial Authority
and we were asked to … ask them not to extend the contract.
Well, it’s not our contract; we could do that, but … we didn’t.

And then last week the Tuesday of their meeting, I received a call
… on my way back fromm Atlanta and they had gone up
there to talk to Wiregrass Power,
because they’d written a letter asking for an extension.

My understanding was that they asked Wiregrass to write another letter
to remove that extension request.

These are things, I think should be public knowledge.

There’s more in

the video.




Regular meeting of the Lowndes County Commission, Lowndes County, Georgia, 26 April 2011
Video by Alex Rowell for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

He told me several weeks ago about the commission being asked to vote not to extend.

Continue reading →

How much does it cost to pave a county road?

How much does it cost to pave 3.5 miles of dirt road?
Apparently $1,413,097.92, or around a million dollars a mile,
when the county insists on paving it like a state highway
at the expense of safety:

How Much To Whom From For What
$7,200.00 Lovell Engineering Associates Valdosta Design of Culvert
$48,010.00 Doyle Hancock & Sons Construc. Doerun Clearing and Grubbing
$1,357,887.92 The Scruggs Company Valdosta Paving
$1,413,097.92 All contractors Total

This financial information comes from an open records request
filed by Carolyn Selby more than a year ago
and finally fulfilled 17 March 2011.
Copies of all the pages received are
in the flickr set.



How many other roads could have been paved for $1.4 million?
If this road had been paved like a local rural road,
instead of like a state highway (literally according to
state highway standards) it would not have cost nearly
as much and probably another shorter road could have been paved, too.
And if other roads were paved like local roads instead of state
highways, how many more of them could be paved?
They still wait while this one got paved to the tune of $1.4 million.

-jsq