Received today on Solid Waste, Developer Favors, Dollar General, Library, and Alcohol: Agenda @ LCC 2012-12-10:
Veolia was acquired by Advanced Disposal, there is no conspiracy theory here or a change of vendor than was previously voted for. http://www.wasterecyclingnews.com/article/20121120/NEWS01/121129990/advanced-disposal-closes-veolia-deal, Continue reading
Updates 9 Dec 2012: Marked with *.
Will the Lowndes County Commission Tuesday evening
finish railroading through their non-solution to solid waste disposal,
without shouldering its legal responsibility to protect
the environment and the public health, safety, and well-being from solid waste,
and what’s this about a vendor change?
Will the Chairman once again invite a developer to speak in Monday morning’s
Work Session without letting anyone else speak?
Will the Commission change the zoning code and rezone inside and against
the Moody Exclusion Zone for that same developer they already
provided $130,000 in road construction labor to back in 2007?
Does Naylor need the area’s nineteenth Dollar General, and who’s behind it, anyway?
How come the Five Points library is still on the agenda even though SPLOST VII failed?
And what are they doing to the Alcoholic Beverage Ordinance this time?
Come Monday morning at 8:30 AM and Tuesday evening at 5:30 PM and see!
Better yet, also call or write your Commissioner before then.
6.b. Solid Waste Ordinance
Will the Commissioners finish
railroading through their
already-failing non-solution to solid waste disposal
in the last session of this Chairman?
The plan for which they held
zero public hearings while any of
the Commissioners who voted on it this October were on the Commission,
yet someone down there feels free to
anonymously ridicule concerns about that plan failing?
Two citizens
spoke up anyway,
even though
Citizens Wishing to Be Heard
was after the scheduled vote last time,
and
another on this blog,
all willing to state their names, unlike the anonymous pro-trash-railroad
ridiculer.
What was that
unspecified new information
that caused them to table it last time, anyway?
8.b. Exclusive Franchise Agreement for Residential Solid Waste Collection Services with Advanced Disposal Services of Central Alabama, Inc.
What happened to Veolia; Continue reading
Disposal of solid waste (trash/garbage) is a matter of community public health and safety and providing such service is the responsibilty of the local governing bodies. How should trash health and safety responsibly be implemented?
We cannot be left in a situation where residents are either “forced
to buy” service from a provider, or have no option but to burn
their trash. The government can levy a tax, but they cannot say that
residents are forbidden to buy a service from an independent provider.
Such a ruling is
“protect the health safety, and well-being of its citizens and to protect and enhance the quality of its environment” ,
Residents in the unincorporated areas of the county who want curb side collection, for the most part, already purchase it. Those of us using the collection centers do so because it is our preference.
The county should (in my opinion) create a special tax district for waste disposal (it already makes special lighting districts) and tax the residents for the maintenance of the collection centers.
-gretchen
As we’ve seen, solid waste is a matter of public health, safety, well-being, and the environment, according to Georgia state law. Whose responsibility is it to protect the environment and the public health, safety, and well-being from solid waste?
Many health and safety issues are handled through the health department,
including the Georgia Department of Public Health,
and the
South Health District
(Ben Hill, Berrien, Brooks, Cook, Echols, Irwin, Lanier, Lowndes, Tift and Turner Counties).
Particularly, water quality (septic tanks, well water), food safety,
cleanliness of hotels, motels, restaurants, swimming pools and so on
are the responsibility of the local health department,
such as the
Lowndes County Health Department.
However, disposal of solid waste (trash/garbage) is handled by the local municipality or governmental body (county).
The EPA has a variety of documents available about solid waste.
So does the state EPD, as enabled through Georgia Legislation: Existing Rules and Corresponding Laws.
So, where does this leave us? See next post.
-gretchen
Solid waste is a health and safety issue, according to Georgia law.
According to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources copy of the GEORGIA COMPREHENSIVE SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT ACT OF 1990 AS AMENDED THROUGH 2004,
O.C.G.A. § 12-8-21. Declaration of policy; legislative intent
a) It is declared to be the policy of the State of Georgia, in furtherance of its responsibility to protect the public health, safety, and well-being of its citizens and to protect and enhance the quality of its environment, to institute and maintain a comprehensive state-wide program for solid waste management and to prevent and abate litter, so as to assure that solid waste does not adversely affect the health, safety, and well-being of the public and that solid waste facilities, whether publicly or privately owned, do not degrade the quality of the environment by reason of their location, design, method of operation, or other means and which, to the extent feasible and practical, makes maximum utilization of the resources contained in solid waste.
Emphasis added on the parts about
health, safety, well-being, and the environment.
Those are the goals of this legislation, stated twice in the first paragraph.
Georgia being a home rule state, the implementation of these goals
is now left to the local governing bodies.
More on that next.
-gretchen
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.
Here’s a video playlist:
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.
Continue reading
Cary Scarborough of
Deep South Sanitation
told the Commission he and his wife and son and daughters
started a business, but he
“didn’t think it would come down to what we’ve seen here lately.”
He spoke at Tuesday’s
Lowndes County Commission Regular Session.
I understand … that the county has a responsibility for the solid waste…. I understand we have these big corporations, Advanced Disposal, Veolia. I know some of these people at Veolia, good people; they’ve got a good company, and they pick up several thousand cans every day. What we do offer the citizens here… we offer just a personal service. I know a lot of these people first hand….
He told a story about a customer whose husband lost his job. He stopped billing until the man got another job.
Cary Scarborough’s summation:
Don’t do this to private enterprise, to an individual. If it’s done to me, it will get easier later down the road to do it to someone else.
Yes, why is the county taking customers away from a local business and giving them to a company that isn’t even based here?
County Manager Joe Pritchard, once again, was mostly not paying attention.
Here’s the video:
Continue reading
William Geyer expressed two widespread opinions,
keep the solid waste disposal sites open, and reprioritize SPLOST,
when he spoke at Tuesday’s
Lowndes County Commission Regular Session.
County Manager Joe Pritchard, the driving force behind the waste disposal decision,
still wasn’t listening.
There’s people out there that can’t afford what y’all are offering. And with a budget as large as we got, I know there’s some way to keep them open. Not only that, Florida has them, and they don’t even man them. I talk to a lot of people out there, they don’t come here, but I wish you really would reconsider, because it is a plus for this county, the elderly, a lot of people here who are struggling, who can’t afford it. I’m not saying I can’t; I can afford it, but there’s a lot of people here who can’t afford it.
At that first SPLOST meeting, it was around 1984 or 5 they did my road, Union Road. What happened to the rest of the roads that are dirt? We’ve somehow lost our priorities. We want a new library, we want a new this or that. What about these people who live on these dirt roads that were promised they’d be paved. County Manager, how many miles of dirt roads do we have in this county?
County Manager Joe Pritchard obviously wasn’t listening,
“Pardon me?” he said, after the Chairman prodded him.
He didn’t know, either; he motioned
Continue reading
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.
Here’s a video playlist:
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.
Continue reading
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