Category Archives: Planning

Bicycles noted in appointment to VLMPO Citizens Advisory Committee @ LCC 2012 03 27

Lowndes County cares about bicycles? That’s news!

The Lowndes County Commission appointed Edward Rawls, retired professional engineer and Blake Waagner, owner of Valdosta Bike Center to the Valdosta-Lowndes County Metropolitan Planning Organization (VLMPO) Citizens Advisory Committee. Commissioner Crawford Powell surprisingly said:

I think the perspective from the bicycle group would be interesting on the MPO.
Interesting development!

Also, the Commission continued the tradition which I believe was started by Commissioner Joyce Evans of attempting to get all applicants for appointed boards to introduce themselves. I think that’s a good thing.

Here’s the video:


Bicycles noted in appointment to VLMPO Citizens Advisory Committee
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 March 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

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Austin solar sunflowers

What does a city with clean industry and clean energy do to attract more of it? One such city planted a solar sunflower array along its main interstate corridor.

Ariel Schwartz wrote for Inhabitant.com 17 August 2009, Solar Sunflower Field Energizes Austin, Texas

A retail lot in Austin, Texas recently sprouted a stunning field of solar sunflowers that soak up the sun’s rays to provide shade while generating a steady stream of renewable energy. Designed by public art team Harries/Heder, the installation consists of 15 flower-like solar photovoltaic panels located on a pedestrian and bike path between the village of Mueller and Austin’s highway I-35. According to Harries/Heder, the flowers are “an icon for the sustainable, LEED certified Mueller Development and a highly visible metaphor for the energy conscious City of Austin.”


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Are these solar sunflowers practically profitable? Perhaps:

In addition to providing shade for walkers and bikers, the solar flowers collect energy during the day to power the installation’s blue LED lights at night. Leftover power is sent to the grid to offset the cost of maintaining the installation.
But practicality of this particular field of solar flowers is not the point.

This is the point: Continue reading →

Lowndes County and Valdosta history: origins of the old boys

If we want good clean industry for jobs for local people, we need good clean local government, too. Why do our local government bodies hide when they discuss public goods like waste disposal, try to avoid stating public positions on issues, and fail to publish minutes of elected bodies?

A little reading in local histories of the area or talking to people who were involved even a generation or two back indicates that Lowndes County has always been a cliquish sort of place, mostly run by old boys, for reasons that made some sense in the early days (lack of resources, mainly), but doesn’t so much anymore in these days of I-75 and I-10, airport, railroads that still go everywhere, Moody AFB, VSU as a regional university, technical and community colleges, two hospitals and medical industry, TitleTown, Grand Bay WMA, Wild Adventures, and south Georgia sunshine we can export to Atlanta and points north.

Here are a few books about the old days, all available in local libraries and possibly in local bookstores: Continue reading →

4 down and counting: Kraft and Intuit exit ALEC

After Pepsi and Coke, now Kraft (processed food products) said
“Our membership in ALEC expires this spring and for a number of reasons, including limited resources, we have made the decision not to renew.”
and Intuit (Turbo Tax and Quicken) also decided to let its ALEC membership lapse.

Reasons such as petitions by numerous organizations asking companies to ditch ALEC? We seem to have a case of the cheese fleeing the rat ship…. (Sometimes I wish I could draw.)

Here’s another petition for corporations to ditch ALEC. Let’s not forget ColorofChange’s petition about voter suppression.

And how about ALEC board member UPS, based in Atlanta?

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County quantifies some infrastructure payback times @ LCC 2012 03 31

Water and sewer take decades for return on investment, and roads and bridges probably aren’t any better. That’s worth remembering whenever solar, busses, or trains come up.

David Rodock wrote for the VDT Sunday, Commission wraps up annual retreat: Utility payments, road projects and waste disposal discussed

The cost of one mile of construction for water takes 23 years for a return on the initial investment; sewer takes 21.3 years.

The VDT didn’t specify the similar return times for road paving or bridge construction, but it’s a safe bet they’re at least as long. The farther water or sewer lines or roads or bridges are from population centers, the more they cost both directly in installation and indirectly in trips for fire and sheriff vehicles, and especially school busses. The county commissioned a report on that several years ago, as Gretchen reminded them last year. In the particular rezoning case on Cat Creek they were discussing then (Nottinghil), they made a decision to table which seems to have caused the developer never to come back with that particular sprawl plan. I congratulated the Commissioners at that time, and I congratulate them again on not promoting sprawl.

Sprawl costs the county, payback takes years, and longer the farther out it goes. What if we did something different? More on that later.

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Judge OKs Barnes and Richardson CWIP suit against Georgia Power

Historic Davids get approval for slingshot against power company Goliath.

Judge allows lawsuit over Georgia Power surcharge to go forward,

Fulton Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville’s ruling Thursday allows the lawsuit filed by former Gov. Roy Barnes and ex-Republican House Speaker Glenn Richardson to go forward.

The complaint said Georgia Power has improperly collected sales tax and fees on a surcharge created by a 2009 law. They say it has added up to as much as $100 million in costs to ratepayers.

This lawsuit opposes Georgia Power’s Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) that is already charging gapower customers for the Plant Vogtle nukes that won’t produce any power for years yet. If this lawsuit wins, they may not ever be built.

But you don’t have to wait for this lawsuit, or for the legislature to ban CWIP. You can oppose CWIP by paying for it in a separate check.

Maybe soon we can get rid of Georgia Power’s territoriality law so we can, like we could in 46 other states, generate our own solar or wind power and sell it to whomever we choose.

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Videos @ LCC 2012 03 26

These are videos of the Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 26 March 2012. They vote at their regular session tonight, 5:30 PM.

See also these special presentations:

Here’s the agenda.

Here’s a playlist of everything except the above two special presentations.


Videos
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 26 March 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

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Conservation records @ LCC 2012-03-13

Update 21 May 2012: Fixed meeting date. See also Planning Commission discussion of this item.

An issue of conservation records came up at the 28 February 2012 13 March 2012 Lowndes County Commission meeting, regarding a rezoning at Lake Alapaha, in far northeast Lowndes County, near the Alapaha River.

County Planner Jason Davenport described the problem, which came up in a request to rezone a piece of property that was partly zoned RA (Residential Agriculture) and partly Conservation:

We did get help from the clerk’s office to try to clear up when this property was zoned and why it was zoned conservation. I just don’t have anything [unintelligible]. We have minutes that say one thing and a zoning map that says another.

He said they had had limited time to investigate, and had not been able to resolve this issue.

That issue is still on the table. I would just remind you that in the grand scheme it is a minor issue.

Commissioner Richard Raines made the motion:

For my part I’m for rezoning the entire property RA and eliminating the conservation.

And that’s what they did. Which raises issues of what we should do.

Here’s a playlist:


Conservation records
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 28 February 2012 13 March 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

The issue here is at least fourfold:

Continue reading →

Videos @ LCC 2012 03 13

Here are videos of the entire 13 March 2012 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission (LCC).

See separate items on the appointment of Sheila Cook to the Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Addictive Diseases Region Four Planning Board and “We expect you to run a clean, quiet establishment” —Ashley Paulk.

Other notable parts of this meeting were when staff said conservation status was a small detail and and Commissioners proceeded to get rid of it in a rezoning.

At the end of the meeting, County Manager Joe Pritchard didn’t listen to Commissioner Powell’s request and proceede to recount details of road paving property signatures until Chairman Paulk nudged him that the question was about tornadoes, after which Pritchard gave a recap of Ashley Tye’s tornado report of the previous morning.

Here’s the agenda. Here’s a playlist:


Videos
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission, (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 March 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

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ALEC, Trayvon Martin, CCA’s private prisons, and charter schools?

What’s the connection between the Florida law that’s letting the killer of Trayvon Martin hide, the private prisons CCA runs in Georgia and other states, and HB 797, the Georgia charter schools bill that’s on the floor today for Senate debate today? ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Paul Krugman wrote yesterday for the NYTimes, Lobbyists, Guns and Money,

ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization.

What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism.

And in case you were wondering, no, the kind of privatization ALEC promotes isn’t in the public interest; instead of success stories, what we’re getting is a series of scandals. Private charter schools, for example, appear to deliver a lot of profits but little in the way of educational achievement.

Same as private prisons. The only real benefit goes to private prison company executives and shareholders.
Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from a Birmingham jail in 1963:
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
And today we have an organized threat to justice everywhere. That threat is called ALEC.

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