Richard Lee congratulated the current Commissioners
on being willing to serve.
He pointed at Commissioner Joyce Evans as having been to this rodeo before.
He said they could trust County Manager Joe Pritchard.
And he asked them to find money to stripe roads.
So if y’all can find some coins, and
Mr. Prichard has a real knack for doing that,
we’d appreciate it up in my end of the county.
A 300-ton reactor vessel bound for Plant Vogtle was stranded briefly
in south Georgia this week after a malfunction with the specially
designed rail car moving the nuclear component from Savannah to
Burke County. Workers examine a rail car that was transporting a
300-ton reactor vessel from the Port of Savannah to the Plant Vogtle
nuclear site in Burke County. A misalignment between the cargo
platform and the rail car caused the component to be returned to
Savannah.
“The platform that contained the RV (reactor vessel) during
transport became misaligned with the Schnabel railcar, so the
railcar stopped immediately,” said Georgia Power Co. spokesman
Mark Williams. “The platform and car were re-aligned the same
day and safely returned to the port.”
The Schnabel railcar, which features extra axles that help
distribute and support the weight of heavy objects, did not break,
he said. Georgia Power would not divulge the location of the
incident.
I wonder what the locals think.
We’d ask them, if we knew where they were.
Tired of Southern Company CEO Fanning’s
maybe “next decade” for solar power?
Tired of Georgia Power’s Bowers
trying to push solar off for fifty years?
Let’s hear from somebody who takes on big tasks and gets them done:
Elon Musk, who’s already built a rocket that is resupplying the International
Space Station, and who is also building all-electric cars.
When he’s not launching rockets, Musk is disrupting the notoriously
obdurate automobile industry (see National Treasure, p. 42). While
industry giants like Chevrolet and Nissan and Toyota were dithering
with electric-gasoline hybrids, this upstart kid said he would
design and manufacture an all-electric car that would travel
hundreds of miles on a single charge. The Tesla Roadster hit the
streets in 2008 with a range of 200 miles, and the far more
functional Model S, starting at $57,000, was introduced in June.
It’s the world’s first all-electric car that does everything my old
gasoline version does, only better. The high-end model travels 300
miles on a single charge, leaps from zero to 60 in 5.5 seconds,
slows from 60 to a dead stop in 105 feet, can seat up to five, has
room for mulch bags and golf clubs, handles like a race car and its
battery comes with an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty. If you
charged it via solar panels, it would run off the sun. One hundred a
week are being produced in a former Toyota factory in Fremont,
California, and nearly 13,000 people have put deposits on them….
The County Commission continues to do the peoples’ business in secret.
The solid waste exclusive franchise agreement was tabled for a month,
due to some mysterious new information,
and two citizens pleaded with the Commission to reconsider the whole thing.
The developer who got to speak at Monday’s Work Session
asked for his development to be tabled for a month, and the Commission did so.
After the meeting, three people from Moody AFB trooped into a side
room with the Chairman.
Also, if it’s a privilege to serve and an honor to be appointed,
why does the Lowndes County Commission not tell us who they are appointing?
In the
Work Session
they muttered some proposed names unintelligbly,
and in the Regular Session they didn’t say anything about who some of the
new appointees are, and none of the appointees spoke.
As near as I could tell, only one bothered to show up: VLCIA
reappointee Mary Gooding.
Update 2012-11-20: Jody Hall reminds me he was there as an appointee. He says he was ready to speak, but nobody asked him to.
Video playlist
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 November 2012.
Here’s
the agenda again,
this time with links to the videos plus a few notes.
The Lowndes County Commission invited a developer to speak
about his proposed rezoning at a Work Session
without inviting any opposition to speak.
Plus another rezoning, a proposed solid waste ordinance with exclusive franchise
agreement, and proposed appointments to five boards and authorities.
And at the end an animal event report.
Video playlist
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 12 November 2012.
Here’s
the agenda again,
this time with links to the videos plus a few notes.
Monday morning the Lowndes County Commission considers and
Tuesday evening votes on members of five appointed boards.
Who are the candidates?
The agenda doesn’t say.
The two rezonings are the same ones
the Planning Commission recently considered.
Presumably the solid waste ordinance has something to do with
the recent privatization decision.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2012, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2012, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Continue reading →
Here’s a single video of this morning’s entire Lowndes County Commission
Work Session.
The railroad item was neither of the ones
on which I was speculating.
The animal shelter wants a 24 hour “cooling-off period” with a submitted
animal kept at home before “evaluation” by the shelter.
The Tax Commissioner wants to refund some taxes they apparently accidentally
overcharged.
The Fire Chief has bids for equipment for the new fire truck.
And there’s going to be an animal health fair.
They vote tomorrow evening at 5PM.
Here’s
the video,
followed by
the agenda,
with links to the relevant parts of the video,
and a few notes.
Video of 6 minute meeting
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 October 2012.
Thanks to Dexter Sharper for use of his video camera.
RC11-000077 Georgia and Florida Railway (GFRR) — Valdosta to Willacoochee Rehabilitation
The Commission could just post the proposed agreement along with the agenda,
and then we’d all know.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2012, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2012, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
What’s that little shelter by the front gate of VSU?
It’s the last physical remnant of the Valdosta Street Railway,
an early 20th century streetcar
system, when Valdosta was the smallest city in the country to have one.
Valdosta had
5,613 people in 1900,
about twice as many as present-day Hahira.
You do know that Valdosta was the smallest city in the U.S.
that had a streetcar system, right?
Here’s a movie about what probably happened to it, like all the others,
followed by a movie about another mode of transportation: bicycles.
Public Event · By Valdosta State University Social Issues in Film Series
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
7:00pm
VSU University Center room 1171
DOUBLE-HEADER!
“Taken for a Ride” focuses on the Great American Streetcar Scandal
(or Conspiracy), in which major US companies deliberately bought-up
and dismantled the public light-rail streetcar lines in dozens of
American cities. The guilty companies? General Motors, Firestone
Tire, Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Trucks—all
companies that wanted to replace the public streetcars with buses
and then private cars.
“Pedal Power!” is an inside look at the world’s growing cycling
movement and how bikes are pushing-up against a dominant car culture
in North America. From Critical Mass bike rides and “bike-to-work”
programs, to increasingly popular “public bike” programs, bicycles
are becoming an ever-important component of cities.
Co-sponsored with the Valdosta Community Cycling Center.
The ghost of Commissions Past, in the form of former Commissioner
Richard Lee, pointed his finger at the Commission and staff
at
the 8 January 2013 Lowndes County Commission Regular Session.
