According to their website, the Valdosta-Lowndes County Parks & Recreation Authority (VLPRA) board meets Thursday:
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I don’t have a detailed agenda, but their website says they’ll vote on rental rates, and they include links to: Continue reading
Ocilla, about an hour north of here, took the private prison gamble, and now is scrambling to import enough prisoners to fill it.
Jim Galloway wrote for the AJC 11 April 2012, Importing illegal immigrants — into private Georgia prisons quoting Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan Seville in The Nation 10 April 2012, How One Georgia Town Gambled Its Future on Immigration Detention,
Deportations have reached record levels under President Barack Obama, and demand for detention facilities has increased. Starting in 2002, ICE had funding for 19,444 beds per year, according to an ICE report. Today, ICE spends about $2 billion per year on almost twice the number of beds.
ICE’s reliance on facilities like the Irwin County Detention Center has put small rural towns at the center of one of today’s most contentious policy arguments—how to enforce immigration law. A yearlong investigation by The Nation shows how much politics has come to rule detention policy. Even as Georgia and Alabama passed harsh new immigration laws last year designed to keep out undocumented immigrants, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that politicians from both states were lobbying hard to bring immigrant detainees in. ICE succumbed to the pressure, sending hundreds of detainees to the financially unstable facility in Georgia that promised to detain immigrants cheaply. That promise came at the expense of the health, welfare and rights to due process of some 350 immigrants detained daily in Ocilla.
Marvelous. Pass a low to eject illegal immigrants, except it really locks up a bunch of them, but not enough to keep Ocilla’s private prison full, so import a bunch of them back in as prisoners.
Aren’t you glad we didn’t accept a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia?
Ocilla and Irwin County didn’t just make that bad bet once, they doubled down on it:
Continue readingFollowing up on something I heard last night, I called Valdosta-Lowndes County Parks & Recreation Authority and determined they’re having a citizens meeting tonight in Hahira:
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    Image by Old Shoe Woman |
There was one of these yesterday at Mildred Hunter in south Valdosta. For unknown reasons these events were not posted on VLPRA’s website, which is odd considering this earlier report:
In March there will be about six public meetings concerning the master plan. According to Mr. Page the meetings will be advertised on the VLPRA website, in the Valdosta Daily Times, and by word of mouth.
I heard by word of mouth there was a notice in the VDT yesterday, so that’s two out of three.
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Likely new industry, private prison really cancelled, strategic planning, and trees in the median!
Here are videos of the entire March regular meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA). Here’s the agenda.
It’s good that they approve minutes after emailing them to each other. Maybe someday we the taxpayers will get to see those minutes.
Did you know they had two executive sessions on 23 February 2012, at 10AM and 2:25 PM in addition to their retreat and regular meeting of that same day? If they’re having all these executive sessions, presumably all the material about personnel and real estate that needs to be kept confidential is in there, and the minutes of the regular meetings shouldn’t contain anything the public should not see.
For example, Continue reading
Here are videos of the entire
“first annual Valdosta-Lowndes Governmental Leadership Meeting”
that was held 6:30 PM 29 March 2012 in the Lowndes High School Lecture Hall.
Here’s
the announcement.
The meeting was introduced by Dr. Steve Smith, Superintendent, Lowndes County Schools. Lowndes County Schools had a written position statement, with everything from a broad variety of test scores and other metrics to specific examples of existing collaborations such as loaning busses to the Valdosta School System for away sporting events.
Dr. Smith
clarified that:
This is not a community forum, it is not an open dialogue.He told me before the meeting started that he was concerned that if they opened it up to questions from the audience it would take all night and it had been hard enough to get the various elected officials to show up at all without expecting them to stay for that. I didn’t see but maybe a dozen non-elected audience members, so I wonder whether that really would have happened, but I applaud the various governments for collaborating at all. He did say if you had a question you could write it down and hand it to a member of your elected government or school board. He also indicated that committees might form, not that evening, but perhaps growing out of that evening’s meeting. He reiterated this meeting was for brainstorming among the elected officials.
The elected officials included Valdosta Schools Superintendent and many VBOE members, Lowndes School Superintendent and Superintendent-elect and many LCBOE members, Valdosta Mayor, City Manager, and many city council members, and Lowndes County Manager, Clerk, and voting commissioners, but not the Chairman.
Wes Taylor, Lowndes High School Principal & Lowndes County Schools Superintendent Elect
talked about finances.
Valdosta Mayor John Gayle said
we’re regional now (regional hospital, regional university, etc.).
He talked about how Troup County went about landing the Kia plant,
which had to do with each governmental entity taking a role and collaborating.
(It had nothing to do with school consolidation.)
VBOE member Vanassa Flucas said they try to put everything related
to their schools on their website, in an effort of transparency for
parents and students. Plus:
We noticed that since we put our strategic plan on our website approximately three years ago, it was very well received. It was very heartening; people could find the information that they wanted.Imagine that! Continue reading
Industrial Authority board meets about something or other Tuesday; hard to tell what. Maybe this will reveal some sort of strategy:
- Target Market Study Update
VLCIA’s website is restored enough to say:
The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority will hold a Regular Board Meeting on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 5:30pm in the Industrial Authority Conference room.
They’ve also posted a notice on their facebook page.
The agenda doesn’t say much. I guess that one time they put a lot of information in it was a one-shot. And if you want to see any old agendas, you’ll need to wait until they finish fixing their website. Or look in the LAKE blog….
Now, let’s see, where are those minutes?
Here’s the agenda.
-jsq
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial AuthorityContinue reading
Agenda
Tuesday, April 17, 2012 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
Underfunding of Georgia’s ethics commission has led to numerous inappropriate fines, some of which are still being straightened out after many months. Maybe the legislature should fund the ethics commission to a working level and make it independent of the legislature.
David Rodock wrote for the VDT 29 September 2011, Transparency Confusion: New campaign contributions system leads to officials owing fines,
The Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Commission posted a seven-page list online earlier this week ethics.ga.govof local government officials who have supposedly failed to submit their campaign contribution information this year.
According to the state organization’s website, each late filer owes fines of different amounts.
Various elected officials were quoted in that article saying the fines were inappropriate. Many of those fines had already been removed from the list by the time that article was written.
There have been calls to properly fund that agency and to make it independent of the legislature. The Columbus Ledger-Inquirer wrote 25 January 2012, Ethics panel needs funding and independence,
Continue readingThe Lowndes County Board of Education (LCBOE) often includes along with its agendas detailed information from its board packets. The Lowndes County Commission could do the same.
Here’s their November FY2012 Finance Report in their 12 December 2012 agenda. Sometimes they even include details of items for their executive sessions, as in Personnel recommendations attached to that same agenda.
The Valdosta Board of Education (VBOE) does the same thing. Here’s a football ticket proposal and a Coke contract from VBOE’s 27 February 2012 agenda; also health insurance cost information. That particular agenda has several more financial documents attached.
Both LCBOE and VBOE use eboardsolutions.com. Other companies sell other products that facilitate posting board agendas and minutes.
Travis County, Texas, which includes packet items with its agendas, appears to have constructed its own website. Travis County adds videos after the meetings. I bet they’d tell other local governments how they do it.
So there’s part of a spectrum of solutions to posting board packet items online with agendas: use a turnkey cloud solution, or roll your own.
The Lowndes County Commission could pick a solution, and inform the public about what they are doing by putting agenda packets online with their agendas.
-jsq
Your county commission might have a problem with transparency when no item in a voting session takes more than a few seconds longer than the invocation and pledge. Or perhaps a public hearing in which the public is not invited to speak.
Another five minute meeting, like the previous morning’s four (Chairman’s count) or five (VDT’s count) minute work session. They did not spend even one minute on any item of the agenda.
We did get to learn that the cryptic
7.a. Seminole Circle Property
is owned by the county which wants to sell it off. Commissioner Richard Raines even read from Georgia Code the reason why the county could do that without putting it up for bids. If you did have any objection, or maybe you wanted to buy it, you’re too late, because a few seconds after we learned what it was, they sold it off. That was the longest item, at 1 minute and 20 seconds.
They didn’t mention that the subject property is apparently a splinter of a much larger 538.31 acre parcel, 0172 119, which is presumably the “land application site” they referred to. According to the 8 December 2009 minutes they use it as a hay field. After land application of what? Continue reading
Here are videos of the
Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) talks yesterday morning
between Lowndes County and the local cities (Valdosta, Hahira, Remerton, Dasher, and Lake Park.
Not really negotiations, these were more an exchange of views.
The county’s position is the same as Chairman Ashley Paulk told me after
the county’s
four minute work session earlier that morning:
the county could claim 72% of LOST based on cost of services delivered
to the whole county,
but the county’s offer is to stick with the 58% share from 2002.
The cities all would like a bigger share.
The venue was the county’s meeting room next to Commission Chambers. There was no sound feed available in there, so sound is variable.
First
County Manager Joe Pritchard explained
the state-mandated procedures
and
Lowndes County’s position,
both of which were spelled out in a
three page paper.
Basically, the county wants to stick to the percentages negotiated in 2002,
although by the county’s reckoning it could ask for a much higher percentage.
None of the cities had a written position paper.
Valdosta Mayor John Gayle noted Valdosta had grown more than the
county as a whole.
County Chairman Ashley Paulk responded that the city couldn’t grow
without the county growing.
The Mayor said nontheless most growth was in Valdosta.
The Chairman asked whether that was growth in households?
The Mayor said he didn’t know the answer to that right now.
The Chairman remarked that according to his reading of the census,
it was mostly not in households.