Industrial Authority board meetings have turned into sidewalk cultural events. This was outside the 17 May 2011 meeting.
A couple of different signs:
Susan Wehling with her traffic signal stop biomass sign,
and a Honk for Clean Air sign.
-jsq
Continue readingGreat article John. Thanks for turning me onto the research presented here, I’ll be looking into and using it. I’d also suggest a book called “Breakthrough: from the death of environmentalism to the politics of possibility”. I think you will love it.
Beyond changing the messaging on signs, which I think is a great idea, I think what the research reflects is a fundamental change in the approach to the work.
A key to community organizing work, as opposed to activism,
Skipping in to the Industrial Authority office to file an open records request,
I noticed all five board members in the board room having a meeting.
So I asked whether an appointed board was bound by the same state law
as for an elected body that it had to announce meetings in advance.
Lu Williams said that it was a special called meeting,
that they sent a notice to the VDT, and yes, they were bound by
the same rule.
I asked if I could have a copy of the agenda of the meeting in progress. She said they had all the copies in there but she would get me one later.
A few minutes later I went back and asked if they were in executive session. She said yes, they already went from the open called meeting into executive session to discussion personnel.
However, I did pick up a copy of tonight’s agenda, and typed it in, so, for apparently the first time ever, here is the agenda for a VLCIA board meeting on the web before the meeting. -jsq
Continue readingValdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, May 17, 2011 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
And this is just the start of what’s going to happen to Georgia as long as that law is in effect.Legendary rock guitarist Carlos Santana, in town to be honored for a “Beacon of Change” award at Sunday’s MLB Civil Rights Game at Turner Field, called the state’s new immigration law “anti-American.”
Santana took his turn at the podium on the field in a pre-game ceremony before the Braves-Phillies game to criticize the immigration bill just signed into law by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal Friday.
“I represent the human race,” the Mexican-born Carlos Santana said. “The people of Arizona, the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves.”
The Georgia immigration law, HB 87, cracks down on illegal immigration by increasing enforcement powers and requiring many employers to check the immigration status of new hires.
But what do you really think, Carlos? Continue reading
Alden Hathaway of Sterling Planet said he hopes to expand the Wiregrass
Solar array in Valdosta to an additional megawatt, taking it from being
one of the largest in Georgia to one of the largest in the southeast.
This is the man
Sterling Planet Chairman Sonny Murphy singled out for praise.
This is the expansion project
Sonny Murphy promoted in the Sterling Planet press release.
Alden Hathaway knows what needs to be done, and
Pete Marte and Hannah Solar stand ready to do it.
Alden Hathaway also talked about how solar helps load distribution on the electric grid, lowering electric rates for everybody. He remarked that once power companies realized that, they’d be for solar. More on that later.
But meanwhile, let’s ask Mayor Fretti and Commissioner Crawford Powell when they’re going to do this: Continue reading
Shankar Vedantam wrote in the Washington Post 15 Sep 2008 about The Power of Political Misinformation, illustrating with a couple of well-known examples of misinformation (you’ll recognize them), and continuing:
Countering bad information directly just reinforces it.Nearly all these efforts rest on the assumption that good information is the antidote to misinformation.
But a series of new experiments show that misinformation can exercise a ghostly influence on people’s minds after it has been debunked — even among people who recognize it as misinformation.
Chris Mooney wrote more about why that is in Mother Jones 18 April 2011, The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science: Continue reading
OK, that’s all good. Congratulations!Sterling Planet, the leading national retail provider of renewable energy and other clean-energy assets, today announced at a commissioning ceremony the completion of a 200 kWAC output solar generating project in Valdosta. One of the largest solar arrays in the state of Georgia, the Wiregrass Solar, LLC project began commercial operation on April 6 and is now generating annualized output of approximately 350,000 kilowatt-hours. This is enough clean, emission-free electricity to power 350 Georgia homes using the average amount of 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity monthly.
Developed by Sterling Planet, Wiregrass Solar supplies green power for the Georgia Power Green Energy program, an option for the utility’s customers who voluntarily choose to support renewable power and help generate more of it in Georgia.
Also notice Sterling Planet doesn’t make the mayor’s mistake in saying this is the largest solar array in Georgia, like WCTV after Pete Marte of Hannah Solar corrected it, Sterling says “one of the largest”.
But what’s this about “first phase”? Continue reading
In Harrisburg, PA, same size as Valdosta, in a county of similar size,
a trash incinerator bit the dust once, but got revived anyway,
and will now probably only go away because:
Harrisburg, PA loses solvency and trust over incinerator.
There are many parallels here, especially the old boy network.
However, the main point I want to draw everyone’s attention to
at the moment is that although local activists may have gotten
that incinerator closed down once, it came back anyway.
Why? Because their local old boys thought it would make money, and Continue reading
It is unfortunate that such a wonderful event ; the commissioning of the large solar facility in our community, was sullied by Mr. Sonny Murphy’s comments about the viability of biomass. I was then compelled to ask the players in attendance the very pressing question, so where is the biomass issue. Mr Murphy & Mr Ricketts spoke of milestones to be met. The mystery continues.
THE BIOMASS MYSTERY: We all love a good murder mystery. The sleuth that finds the murderer of the dead biomass plant. Oh, that would be fun, but for the plot to work we need a dead biomass plant.
If they want to quietly disappear Mr. Murphy is sending the wrong messages. A disappearance has been the favored outcome from the officials I’ve spoken with. If they want to walk away quietly- fine. I can handle that. Just give us the proper clues that this monster is simply going to wander into the woods to die…, we’ll all look away politely, and then take a peek before celebrating. The mixed messages make for a very poor mystery novel.
-Karen Noll
Allan Ricketts (Acting Executive Director, VLCIA),
Georgia Power rep.,
Roy Copeland (VLCIA Board member),
Crawford Powell (Lowndes County Commissioner),
John J. Fretti (Mayor of Valdosta),
Therrell “Sonny” Murphy (Chairman of Sterling Planet),
Tim Golden (Georgia State Senator),
Pete Marte (CEO of Hannah Solar).