Here are videos of the entire 30 January 2012 Regular Session of the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC). You’ll have to figure out what they’d doing, because they don’t post agendas or minutes.
Here’s a video playlist:
Videos
Regular Session, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 30 January 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
-jsq
Whatever happened to the agendas and minutes of the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC) that used to be on the SGRC website? Gretchen asked at the January GLPC meeting whether they would be posted again. The chair said he didn't know. County Planner Jason Davenport added:
The regional commission used to do the minutes on the website for us. We have the minutes. Ms Gretchen, if you'll email us, we have the ability to email those minutes back to you, but we don't have plans right now to put those minutes back on the web.
The chair suggested "Maybe at some point in the future would be good." Jason Davenport reiterated that they had no plans to do that.
Here's the video:
Minutes on website?
Regular Session, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 30 January 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
That's similar to what he told me by email back on 28 November 2011:
Last year the agreement between the SGRC and the various local governments regarding the GLPC responsibilities changed. This website is a result of those changes. I have your request and will plan on getting direction and clarification about how to deal with these types of requests.
There has been a little bit of improvement. The GLPC chair faxed LAKE the April agenda.
-jsq
A business our Industrial Authority wanted to get us into still risks bankrupting Irwin County: a private prison. Maybe we should do better due diligence around here and invest in better business ventures.
AP reported 23 April 2012, South Ga. detention center nearly sold at auction,
A privately owned detention center that houses hundreds of illegal immigrants in south Georgia is struggling with finances, and narrowly avoided being auctioned this year.
How bad is it?
Continue readingSo we heard about Chattanooga all during the school “unification” referendum. I turns out Chattanooga really does have something that attracts business (no, not a unified school system; if you want to go back into that, I’ve got the references available). What really attracts businesses to Chattanooga is fast Internet broadband access.
Christopher Mitchell wrote for Planetizen 30 April 2012, Should Your City Build Its Own Broadband Network?
While on a site selection visit in Chattanooga, a CEO asked about broadband access. When told that the slowest tier on Chattanooga’s community fiber network was 30 megabits per second, he turned to his IT adviser for a translation. Upon hearing “that’s more than we can get in our headquarters presently,” the company cancelled its other planned visits and located its new site in Chattanooga.
That’s right, Chattanooga really does have one thing going for it: high speed Internet access.
Why does that matter?
Continue readingWonder why Southern Company couldn’t get private financing for its new nukes at Plant Vogtle? Because back in June 2009 bond-rater Moody’s said this:
But from a credit perspective, the risks of building new nuclear generation
are hard to ignore, entailing significantly higher business and operating risk profiles, with construction risk, huge capital costs, and continual shifts in national energy policy.
In case that wasn’t clear enough, they spelled it out further.
Nuclear’s “bet-the-farm” risk
The NRC says about 14 companies to date have submitted COL applications, proposing numerous new nuclear reactors for power generation. The first of these COL’s is expected to be approved beginning in mid-2011. Many of the COL license applications include partners, but the next table lists the primary holding company entity behind each project, and our view of the activity level associated with the endeavor.
From a credit perspective, companies that pursue new nuclear generation will take on a higher business and operating risk profile, pressuring credit ratings over the intermediate- to long-term.
Moody’s wraps up with some reassuring words for financiers, but maybe not so reassuring to we the taxpayers:
Continue readingThe Valdosta City Council has apparently heard of transparency, but seems unclear on how to go about it, judging by this housing analysis issue.
David Rodock wrote for the VDT Sunday, Valdosta’s quality of life: Disagreement over how to fix the issues,
In early April, Valdosta City Council members voted almost unanimously to approve the submission of a plan to HUD that would address socio-economic problems for citizens — except for District 1 council member James Wright.
“I felt as if we didn’t have enough time to review the document,” said Wright, as the 100 page document was not provided until the day before the vote.
The document in question is the “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing” and was prepared by a Texas firm, J-QUAD Planning Group. The study is required of any city that receives funds directly under the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program though the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which Valdosta became eligible for in 2004.
According to the minutes of the 5 April 2012 Valdosta City Council meeting, Council Wright wanted to delay voting on the document because there was a lot of public interest in it. Mayor Gayle pointed out it was simply a pro-forma analysis required by HUD, and not a plan. Council Vickers said they could form a committee to make a plan. But the council didn’t seem to include formation of such a committee in the motion to accept the analysis that finally passed.
So Council Wright has moved ahead on his own:
Continue reading 
Here are videos of the entire Regular Session of the Valdosta City Council of 5 January 2012.
There were actually two meetings:
Here’s a video playlist:
Videos, Regular Session, Valdosta City Council (VCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 5 January 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
-jsq
Harvey Wasserman wrote for HuffPost 9 April 2012, America’s 2 New Nukes Are on the Brink of Death,
The only two U.S. reactor projects now technically under construction are on the brink of death for financial reasons.
If they go under, there will almost certainly be no new reactors built here.
The much mythologized “nuclear renaissance” will be officially buried, and the U.S. can take a definitive leap toward a green-powered future that will actually work and that won’t threaten the continent with radioactive contamination.
Those are the stakes. And in that high-stakes poker game, it seems Southern Company is doing a little bluffing.
In Southern Company’s (SO) Q1 2012 Earnings Call 25 April 2012, its CEO Thomas Fanning revealed another little flaw in the project:
Continue reading 
Here are videos of the entire March regular meeting of the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC). I would include a link to the agenda, but they don’t publish those anymore. They don’t even have a website anymore. So you’ll need to watch and try to figure out what’s going on.
They meet again tonight. For that meeting, we’ve got an agenda.
Here’s a video playlist for their March meeting:
Videos, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission March 2012-03-26
Regular Session, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 26 March 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
-jsq
Why is it so hard to get a company like Georgia Power or The Southern Company to get on with solar and wind power for clean energy, for national energy independence, and, most importantly to such corporations, for their own profit? Why instead do they keep investing in coal and natural gas and wasting our tax and customer dollars on nuclear financial boondoggles? Why did Cobb EMC back new coal plants until they had their nose rubbed in national shame about corruption and do nothing about solar until their shareholders revolted and changed a majority of their board? We don’t even need to wait for that forensic audit the new Cobb EMC board wants to get the big picture. Such companies consider what they’re used to to be low risk, and anything new to be risky. Why are they so stodgy, and how do we change that?
These companies have many decades of experience with coal and natural gas, so they consider them less financially risky. (Details like neighbors dying disproportionately from cancer cost a little bit to buy up property, but that’s nothing compared to readily predictable profits.) Even nuclear such companies consider not risky to them, since they’ve got the federal government and their own customers guaranteeing all the financial risk through Construction Work in Progress charges on their bills for power they’re not even receiving from the new nukes and agreement from Georgia PSC that cost overruns like those caused by concrete sinking into the dirt can be passed on to the customers.
Neal Stephenson wrote for World Policy Journal September 2011, Innovation Starvation,
The illusion of eliminating uncertainty from corporate decision-making is not merely a question of management style or personal preference. In the legal environment that has developed around publicly traded corporations, managers are strongly discouraged from shouldering any risks that they know about—or, in the opinion of some future jury, should have known about—even if they have a hunch that the gamble might pay off in the long run. There is no such thing as “long run” in industries driven by the next quarterly report. The possibility of some innovation making money is just that—a mere possibility that will not have time to materialize before the subpoenas from minority shareholder lawsuits begin to roll in.
But if the old ways turn out to be suddenly risky, change can come. Funny how Cobb EMC changed its tune after subpeonas started raining down for its former CEO Dwight Brown. Sure, he got off on a technicality, but it turns out Cobb EMC shareholders didn’t like Continue reading