Category Archives: Trash

Videos @ LCC 2012-12-10



A surprising amount of discussion at yesterday morning’s Lowndes County Commission Work Session,
on ZBOA appointment, alcohol Sunday sales, rezoning next to Moody,
and more.
They said nothing about the solid waste ordinance, however;
maybe they’ll table that loser again.
They vote tonight:

REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2012, 5:30 p.m.

327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor

Here’s

a video playlist of the Work Session,
followed by the agenda with the videos linked into it.


Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),

Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 10 December 2012.

Here’s

the agenda,
this time with links to the videos and some notes.

Continue reading →

Trash on the table again? @ LCC 2012-12-10

Will the County Commission table trash again,
or will they make a hasty decision to privatize,
granting a monopoly in a public-private partnership,
and leaving many people in the unincorporated parts
of Lowndes County to burn their trash, probably including
materials that the rest of us don’t want to breathe?
We can’t tell from yesterday morning’s

Lowndes County Commission Work Session.
They vote or table tonight at 5:30 PM.


6.b. Solid Waste Ordinance.


County Manager Joe Pritchard reminded the Commissioners
they tabled it last time.
Maybe they’ll table it again tonight.
They said nothing yesterday morning.

Here’s

Part 1 of 2:


Trash on the table again? Part 1 of 2:

Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),

Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 10 December 2012.


8.b. Exclusive Franchise Agreement for Residential Solid Waste Collection Services with Advanced
Disposal Services of Central Alabama, Inc.

Staff finally told us publicly that

Continue reading →

More developer favors at the County Commission Work Session this morning? @ LCC 2012-12-10

At the 8:30 AM Work Session this morning,
will the Chairman


Clint Joyner and J.D. Yeager of Joyner Realty


Clint Joyner (speaking) and J.D. Yeager (seated on right)
of Joyner Realty at LCC Work Session 2012-11-12


invite Clint Joyner of Joyner Realty to speak
like he did last month, without inviting anybody else?
Will Chairman Ashley Paulk invite J.D. Yeager of Joyner Realty (and formerly
Sheriff Paulk’s lieutenant at the Sheriff’s office) to speak?
That plus
solid waste

(if privatization is bad for Moody, why is it good for a county public
health and safety service like solid waste collection?),
Dollar General

(where’s the marketing plan to indicate whether tiny Naylor needs the
area’s nineteenth Dollar General?),
Library,

(Houston County’s SPLOST passed in a landslide after they held
public hearings; maybe Lowndes County should try that),
and
Alcohol

(county staff say they’re coalescing previous changes into the body
of the ordinance),
all at the Lowndes County Commission Work Session this morning;
here’s the agenda.

When

he spoke 12 November 2012, Clint Joyner started by referring to
a nearby subdivision “In 2007”.
2007 was the year Mr. Joyner got

(according to the Commission’s minutes of 26 June 2007)
$130,000 in road construction labor from the Commission because of
“an unforeseen Department of Transportation requirement regarding a costly intersection improvement.”
Why couldn’t the County Engineer or Mr. Joyner forsee such a requirement?

This time many people

do forsee that rezoning to develop in the Moody Activity Zones
would be a bad idea.

Houston County is using state and local tax money to buy up houses
in similar zones around Warner Robins Air Force Base.
Doubtless Houston County would love it if Lowndes County encroached
enough on Moody AFB that Moody’s missions moved to Robins AFB.

-jsq

Privatization: if it’s bad for Moody AFB, it’s bad for county trash collection

Why is Lowndes County Chairman Ashley Paulk decrying alleged privatization
of Moody Air Force Base while promoting actual privatization
of a basic Lowndes County public service, trash collection?

Jason Shaefer wrote for the VDT
5 December 2012,

County disagrees with proposed zoning amendment,



Paulk alleged Moody’s intervention has prevented development
before—the establishment of a small schoolhouse within a
church near the base, for example, he said. He told the committee
that Moody had 30,000 acres to the east on which to build, and that
the air base has become “privatized.”

According to

the free dictionary:

pri·va·tize: To change (an industry or business, for example) from governmental or public ownership or control to private enterprise:

And yet at the

upcoming commission meeting,
Chairman Paulk will ask the commissioners to vote on this agenda item:

8.b. Exclusive Franchise Agreement for Residential Solid Waste Collection Services with Advanced Disposal Services of Central Alabama, Inc.



Seems to me that’s a privatization of one of our own county governmental
services.
Perhaps the commissioners will reconsider the “curbside only
by a private firm” path they are on and conduct some public hearings in an
effort to understand what the citizens might want in solid waste disposal.

-gretchen

Veolia bought by Advanced Disposal Services of Alabama, owned by Highstar Capital of New York City @ LCC 2012-12-10

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 →

Solid Waste, Developer Favors, Dollar General, Library, and Alcohol: Agenda @ LCC 2012-12-10

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.

Trash

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 →

How to implement trash, health, and safety?

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

  • unfriendly to those who currently own, or want to
    start

    a waste collection business in our county    ,
  • unfriendly to the
    residents who are counting on the government to follow
    the state-legislated goals to

    “protect the health
    safety, and well-being of its citizens and to protect
    and enhance the quality of its environment” ,

  • unfriendly to the environment as trash ends up on the side of the
    road or polluting the air by being burned and leaves us to
    face a new problem on a different day.

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

Who implements trash, health, and safety?

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,

Diagram of the waste hierarchy

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

Trash, health, and safety

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

Video playlist @ LCC 2012-11-13



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 →