Category Archives: Lowndes County Commission

Appointments to KLVB & Health, County Extension, Alapaha water treatment, Riverside Road, Bemiss Landing Subdivision @ LCC 2014-07-21

And an EMPG grant award application. As usual, no clue who the board applicants are. However, Nick Hinson’s term on KLVB is up this year, so I predict he’ll be reappointed.

Here’s who was on the Health Board at the end of 2012. One of their members, Mary Margaret Richardson, is also on the hospital board. Here are videos of the Board of Health 30 May 2013 meeting. The Board of Health meets again 7:30 AM Tuesday 22 July 2014.

Here’s the agenda.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, JULY 21, 2014, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, JULY 22, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

Videos: Half Nelson Hill and rezoning to Agricultural @ GLPC 2014-06-30

Only two cases, both Lowndes County. Johnny White withdrew his request to rezone to agricultural. GLPC tabled REZ-2014-13 Nelson Hill. And Vice Chair Diondra Nichols is moving to Las Vegas. She’s a county appointee, so expect to see an appointment on an upcoming Lowndes County Commission agenda.

Here’s the agenda. The date on the GLPC agenda for the following Lowndes County Commission Regular Session was wrong; should be 8 July 2014 (see the videos of that LCC meeting). That incorrect date confused GLPC Chair Johnny Ball, as well.

Here are links to the videos of the 30 June 2013 meeting of the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC), followed by a playlist. Continue reading →

Videos: a few appointees spoke @ LCC 2014-07-08

The Commission awarded no-bid contracts to Lovell Engineering (for Zipperer Road and Boring Pond Road) and ASA Engineering (for Coppage Road). Three of the seven board appointees showed up and spoke: Sam Allen and Penelope Schmidt for Library Board, and and Russell Mast for VLPRA. The Commission appointed all of them unanimously, including no-shows Terri Lupo to VLCIA, Martha Cunningham and Matt Lawrence to Library Board, and Susan Prince to VLPRA. Chairman Bill Slaughter consistently omitted the “Valdosta” from the names of all these boards, even though the reason VLCIA and VLPRA exist is a state law requirement for no overlap between uninincorporated and incorporated area taxation for such services.

There was no public hearing for Whitewater Road because the applicant withdrew it, and half of Nelson Hill was withdrawn while the other half was tabled.

Four of the nine contracts were approved all at once. Mr. Anti-Grant Commissioner Richard Raines actually made the motion to approve the EPMG grant request.

They finally posted an agenda after the Work Session. And they added another item to an amended agenda between the Work Session and the Regular Session.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, JULY 7, 2014, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, JULY 8, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor

Here are links to the videos in the order they actually held the meeting. See the videos of the previous morning’s Work Session for more detail on many of these items.

Here’s a video playlist:


Videos: a few appointees spoke
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 8 July 2014.

-jsq

Millage Hearings for Lowndes County

Even though the County Commission already voted on the budget for spending your tax money (and still hasn’t published that budget), it will have public hearings on the millage before final adoption of that number that decides how much tax you pay. While the proposed millage rate is still low compared to other counties it’s curious that while the Lowndes County Board of Education has published at least a summary of its new budget the Lowndes County Commission has not.

According to the county’s online calendar and Current Events (but not its Public Notices nor the VDT’s online public notices), these meetings are scheduled: Continue reading →

Videos: opaque appointments @ LCC 2014-07-07

Terri Lupo (Georgia Power regional VP) for the Industrial Authority; Martha Cunningham, Sam Allen, Penelope Schmidt, Matt Lawrence for the Library Board, and Dan Deaver, Susan Prince, and Russell Mast (Chairman) for two positions on Parks and Rec. Apparently the public was supposed to guess about the two public hearings (one about the frequently-staff-varianced subdivision Nelson Hill) or the nine contracts, since the county didn’t post an agenda before the meeting. Commissioner Joyce Evans did ask if the applicants would be at the Regular Session Tuesday evening, and was told they would. Will they speak this time, unlike the applicants two weeks ago?

They finally posted an agenda after the meeting.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, JULY 7, 2014, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, JULY 8, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

No agenda for tomorrow morning’s Work Session @ LCC 2014-07-07

The County Commission hasn’t posted an agenda for its own Work Session tomorrow morning, nor for its Regular Session Tuesday evening.

Under Current Events on the county’s website there’s this event posting:

Lowndes County Work Session Meeting (7/7/2014)

Lowndes County Board of Commissioners
327 N. Ashley St – Commission Chambers, 2nd Floor Administration Building
Valdosta, GA
8:30 a.m.

Where the agenda would be on the county’s website, there is none for July 7th or July 8th 2014.

-jsq

Videos: budget, baords, and approvals @ LCC 2014-06-24

None of the appointees spoke, but all were appointed unanimously, and they unanimously approved a landfill expansion item without ever seeing a site plan. Ray Devery and Barry Barr to the Library Board, Sheila Wakeley to the South Georgia Community Service Board, and John Sineath to the Valdosta-Lowndes County Construction Board of Adjustments and Appeals, even though Valdosta’s web page says he’s a city appointee.

They also unanimously approved everything else: a grant for help getting a grant, re-evaluation of all rural agricultural tax assessments, the annual mosquito testing contract with VSU, and the landfill public hearing clarification item about the hearing of the public notice already posted for 17 July 2014.

Here’s the agenda, with some notes, and links to the videos.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, JUNE 23, 2014, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

Videos: second and final budget hearing @ LCC Budget 2014-06-24

The Chairman refusing to publish a draft of the budget before the hearings didn’t get any more people to show up. Only a handful of people where there who didn’t work for the county, and no citizens spoke. I still don’t see the budget on the county’s website, two weeks later. I guess you can look at the LAKE video of Finance Director Stephanie Black’s presentation and hope it has the parts you want to see.

We didn’t know about the first budget hearing on 17 June 2014, but here are videos of the 24 June 2014 budget hearing.

Continue reading →

Agriculture, Tower, and Nelson Hills @ GLPC 2014-06-30

Twelve acres requested to rezone to agricultural and “an amendment to the zoning conditions” for the Nelson Hills Subdivision; the same one that previously got waivers from county staff with no public hearing. People might think that’s why the county didn’t want anybody to see this agenda.

After no electronic copy was available, Gretchen photographed a paper copy of the agenda, which I’ve OCRed. She heard that one item was withdrawn and another was requested to be tabled for 30 days. We’ll see.

Greater Lowndes Planning Commission

Lowndes County City of Valdosta City of Dasher City of Hahira City of Lake Park

REGULAR MONTHLY MEETING

AGENDA

Lowndes County South Health District Administrative Office
325 West Savannah Avenue

Tuesday, June 30, 2014* 5:30 P.M. * Public Hearing

Continue reading →

No agenda and few cases @ GLPC 2014-06-30

The Planning Commission meets tonight, we hear with no cases other than two for Lowndes County, one of which may be tabled. No agenda is available to the public, unless you show up in person 5:30 PM tonight at 325 W savannah Ave., Valdosta, GA.

-jsq