Continue readingAGENDA
REGULAR MEETING OF THE VALDOSTA CITY COUNCIL
5:30 PM Thursday, November 10, 2011
COUNCIL CHAMBERS, CITY HALL
79.07% No Consolidation with 14 out of 16 precincts. All that is outstanding is provisional ballots and military, which are usually a handful. The percentage of no votes kept going up. Also more people voted on the school consolidation referendum than there were validated signatures on CUEE’s petition.
It looked like a landslide, and it was:
In other news, the mayoral vote almost voted that of four years ago. John W. Gayle will be the new Mayor of Valdosta with 57.3%.
Ben H. Norton retains his Valdosta City Council Seat with 76.56%.
Sunday sales of alcohol in Valdosta won with 52.3%. A similar alcohol referendum won in Lake Park with 65.99%.
It looks like Ben Futch will be the new Mayor of Lake Park with 54.85%.
Sandy Sherrill, Russell H. Lane, Paul Mulkey, and Roanald Carter will apparently be on the Lake Park City Council.
In Dasher, Edwin R. Smith will be City Council P3 and Donald J. Bryan will be P2.
In Hahira, Ralph Clendenin retains his City Council seat.
The school referendum details: Continue reading
According to their letters of transmission to the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) Valdosta, Hahira, Remerton, and Lake Park all held public hearings on the Short Term Work Programs and Report of Accomplishment documents.
Here is video of the Valdosta Public Hearing.
The
Lowndes County resolution
does not say that a public hearing was held.
That’s because no public hearing was held, as you can see in the video below.
A public hearing was listed in the agenda of the 11 October 2011 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission.
7. Public Hearing
a. REZ-2011-13, Fred’s Dept. Store, 4401 Bemiss Rd., 145c-90a, 2.0 ac., water/sewer, C-H(c) & C- G(c) to C-G
b. Greater Lowndes 2030 Comprehensive Plan Updates – Lowndes County Report of Accomplishments (ROA) and Short Term Work Program (STWP)
However, citizens were not invited to speak for or against the document. In fact, the document was not provided to the citizens for comment and an open records request for the document has not been satisfied by the county. Here is video of items 7a and 7b.
The County’s Resolution to Transmit says in part: Continue reading
The Standards and Procedures for Local Comprehensive Planning,
established by the Georgia Planning Act of 1989, require updates
to the Short Term Work Projects (STWP) list and the Report of
Accomplishments (ROA) every 5 years.
Lowndes County and the cities in Lowndes County have submitted the
documents to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs
(DCA)
An open records request to Lowndes County for the documents was not satisfied. However other government agencies were willing to abide by the Georgia Open Records Law ocga 50-18-70.
The documents are available for review on the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange website for Valdosta, Lake Park, Remerton, Hahira and Lowndes County.
I encourage you to read carefully what our elected officials see as the future of our community.
-gretchen
Jeff Bryant wrote for Campaign for America’s Future 13 October 2011, Starving America’s Public Schools: How Budget Cuts and Policy Mandates Are Hurting Our Nation’s Students
Critics of America’s public schools always seem to start from the premise that the pre-kindergarten-through-12th-grade public education system in this country is failing or in crisis.
This crisis mentality is in stark contrast to years of survey research showing that Americans generally give high marks to their local
schools. Phi Delta Kappa International and Gallup surveys have found that the populace holds their neighborhood schools in high regard; in fact, this year’s survey found that “Americans, and parents in particular, evaluate their community schools more positively than in any year since” the survey started.
The first factor: New austerity budgets passed by state legislatures are starting to have a huge influence on direct services to children, youth, and families.Well, we don’t have that problem in Valdosta City and Lowndes Schools. For example, graduation rates in Valdosta schools have been improving year over year, and both school systems are solvent.
So what happened instead?
Why, they made up a crisis instead!
A local business group convinced enough registered voters to sign a petition to get a referendum on the November 8th ballot to decide whether to abolish the Valdosta City School System, which would force the Lowndes County School System to take it over, and also would result in massively raised taxes, which still wouldn’t be enough, so services would have to be cut. Voila! Forced budget crisis! Fortunately, the two school systems have seen through it, and Continue reading
Greg Gullberg wrote for WCTV 22 October 2011, ‘Vote No’ For Consolidation March,
For the second week in a row, protesters picket outside the Chamber of Commerce to the tune of: ‘No Consolidation’.
But unlike the occupy movement, this rally has one message; one voice.
They say: ‘Vote No’…..
But what does Valdosta’s first black mayor say about it?
“Just Vote No,” the Mayor chants from a podium.
Mayor Sonny Vickers is one of the strongest opponents of the consolidation plan. “The group that’s pushing this has no authority. No kind of plan to tell us anything. Because they are not on the board. So they cannot tell us anything specific about what’s going to happen,” says Mayor Vickers.
Videos of the Candidates Forum put on last night by the Valdosta-Lowndes County
Chamber of Commerce (VLCoC) are starting to appear in
this playlist.
The three Valdosta Mayoral candidates are there already (in order of appearance):
There’s one more candidate video to come.
Here are the videos so far:
Candidates Forum, Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce (VLCoC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 October 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
-jsq
The Chamber’s Meet the Candidates Reception provides an opportunity for Chamber members to meet and hear from candidates running in the Nov. 8 general election. All Chamber members and guests are invited to attend this event at the Rainwater Conference Center. There is no cost to Chamber members to attend.Here’s the link to RSVP or if you need directions.
Here’s a list of who qualifed to run. As you can see, most local incumbents are running unopposed. Maybe they’ll show up anyway, and there are at least a few contested positions (Valdosta Mayor and Council At Large, Hahira Council 3, Dasher Post 3, and Lake Park Council At Large. This being an odd year, there are no county-wide posts up for election, but the municipal elections affect everyone around here, even people like me who do not live in any of the cities. Whether at this event or elsewhere, you may want to ask the candidates their platforms and positions on local issues.
Usually there’s also an AAUW Lowndes County Political Forum; I don’t know what’s up with that this year. Usually it’s immediately after the Chamber thing, and the AAUW Forum is open to all.
-jsq
What’s the Shock Doctrine?
It’s been around for a long time, but Naomi Klein researched it for
her book of the same name. It’s
“the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock”She was writing mostly about wars, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters. Locally here we haven’t had any of those. But we may be about to create a disaster, a shock, at the ballot box in November, if voters fall for the school “unification” snake oil.
What’s the next step after CUEE has accidentally revealed that Continue reading
Mayor Sonny Vickers said he thought it was important for children
and grandchildren and proper for the City Council to take a stand
against school consolidation, and City Manager Larry Hanson read
the statement (transcript appended).
For:
James Wright District 1 
Hoke Hampton District 3 
Alvin Payton District 4 Ben Norton At Large Didn’t Have to Vote: 
Sonny Vickers Mayor |
|---|
Against:
Robert Yost District 6 
Tim Carroll District 5 Missing: 
Deidra White District 2 |
|---|
That means Ben Norton changed his vote since since their last non-binding vote related to school consolidation. (Nonbinding because they didn’t have any authority to decide whether the referendum went on the ballot or not.) Council Deidra White of District 2 was absent throughout the meeting, which I find rather odd since she seemed quite aware when I spoke to her the previous day that this vote was going to occur. Back in August she voted against putting the referendum on the ballot. Yes, I know the motion was not exactly the same, so the votes are not exactly comparable. In any case, this time there was no tie and thus no need for the (new) mayor to break a tie.
Here’s the video:
Valdosta City Council voted to oppose school consolidationo
education, consolidation, resolution,
Regular Session, Valdosta City Council (VCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 6 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Here’s the statement transcribed as accurately as I could from the video: Continue reading
