Jerome Tucker
mentioned that it was
Willie Paulk who enticed MAGE SOLAR
to Dublin and Laurens County, Georgia.
She’s
president of the Dublin Laurens County Chamber of Commerce.
Here’s
a writeup in GeorgiaTrend
about what’s going on there.
Hm, instead of taking out $15 million in bonds to be paid back by the taxpayers, the community around Dublin joined together and made available just as much money: Continue reading
You’ve heard Corey Hull of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Metropolitan Planning Organization (VLMPO) give a brief version of T-SPLOST at VLCIA. Here he talks at greater length at the Lowndes County Democratic Party:
So who are these regional commissions? Continue readingThe Georgia legislature passed what was then known as House bill 277 called Transportation Investment Act of 2010…. It created or proposed a one percent sales tax for transportation purposes throughout the state of Georgia. It creates twelve special transportation taxing districts that are based on the boundaries of the regional commissions. And that is where the connection with the regional commission stops. They are not the same body….
Presumably that would be the “Project Critical Path time-line is attached” that wasn’t actually attached to documents returned for an open records request of 17 February 2011. Hm, since VLCIA did supply such a document to the VDT, presumably it is now a VLCIA document subject to open records request, even though it was not what VLCIA told VDT it was.The reporter who conducted the interview with Industrial Authority Project Manager Allen Ricketts has been subsequently repeatedly contacted by Ricketts for what he deems “false reporting.” According to Ricketts, the timeline was never official and was only something the Industrial Authority threw together to appease the Times when given an official Open Records Request. Ricketts is apparently unaware that legally he cannot produce a document that does not exist to comply with said request. If he knowingly did so, as he now claims, that is a clear violation of the Open Records Act.
Back to the VDT editorial: Continue reading
Come hear Chairman Ashley Paulk and MPO Director Cory Hull give us information about T-SPLOST. The special local option tax for Transportation.Ashley Paulk is Chairman of the Lowndes County Commission.
Corey Hull is Coordinator for the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Metropolitan Planning Organization (VLMPO).
So you’ll have some idea what to expect, here’s Corey Hull’s explanation of T-SPLOST to VLCIA in February.
Here’s a very interesting
question by Norman Bennett at that same meeting.
You can come ask questions tonight!
-jsq
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2011 08:59:49 -0400Continue readingJames:
Thanks so much for sharing this and for your continued strong support of our client’s green renewable energy project. In addition to assisting the country in reducing our consumption of middle eastern fuel and improving the environment, this project will provide a much needed economic impact for landowners of every race, and the Industrial Authority will assist in the efforts underway to assist local farmers. Google “benefits of biomass electricity,”
© BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Commons.
Molly Duet
writes in the VSU newspaper today:
Protestors wearing respirator masks held signs reading “Biomass? No!” in front of the Valdosta City Hall building on Thursday. Members of the Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy, the VSU student organization Students Against Violating the Environment, and other concerned Valdosta citizens showed up to protest the construction of the Wiregrass Power: Biomass Electric Generating Plant.The Spectator article quotes from two speakers for whom LAKE happens to have video, linked below. Continue reading“We already have solar power resources in place that we could be using and I feel like money should be directed towards that,” Ivey Roubique, vice-president of the Student Geological Society, said. “It wouldn’t be good for the community and even though I’m in college here it still matters.”
Studies like this one for Scotland and this one for the whole world.Nuclear power is a gamble we don’t need to take. Studies show that the UK can meet its energy needs and tackle climate change without resorting to nuclear power or burning fossil fuels – all that is lacking is the political will.
And the U.K. is way north of Georgia. Georgia gets a lot more sunlight and has plenty of wind off the coast. All that is lacking here, too, is the political will.
If Atlanta won’t lead, why not Valdosta and Lowndes County?
-jsq
Here’s the video:I’m the president of Students Against Violating the Environment at VSU. I’m here representing 200+ members of SAVE, that consists of students, faculty, community members. We are deeply concerned with environmental issues and we are networking together to make this city a more humane and sustainable community for future generations.
As a student, I feel I have the right to be able to breathe clean air at the college I attend. With this biomass plant possibly being built here, the future for generations to come are in jeopardy, and we want to protect our fellow and future students’ health.
Please take into consideration the future health of this university and its community, and don’t sell grey water to the proposed biomass plant.
Erin Hurley, President of
SAVE, Students Against Violating the Environment, speaking at
Regular meeting of the Valdosta City Council, 24 March 2011,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
She said who she was, who she represented, how many, what they were for, what they wanted, quickly enough that attention didn’t waver, slowly and loudly enough to be heard, and briefly enough to transcribe, with pathos, logic, and politic. Even the mayor looked up at “As a student….”
-jsq
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:
All three of Moultrie, Thomasville, and Cairo use CNS, whose brochure for Moultrie says you can get:
| Downstream | Upstream | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Mbps | 1 Mbps | $29.95 |
| 12 Mbps | 2 Mbps | $35.95 |
| 22 Mbps | 3 Mbps | $49.95 |
If Moultrie, Thomasville, and Cairo, and yes, Doerun can do this, why can’t Valdosta and Hahira?
And then how about add on a wireless network to reach the rest of us rural folk?
Maybe then we wouldn’t be the Internet backwoods.
-jsq
Here is my response to James R. Wright’s questions about jobs and priorities. -jsq
Continue readingIt’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.
Meanwhile, local and organic agriculture is booming, and continued to boom right through the recession.
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
![](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emperor_Norton_proclamation_re._assumption_of_prerogatives_WFHM_SF.JPG")