It reads:
Climate Action.
Divest Now!
Nobody seems to know how it got there.
-jsq
Recent clear cutting in north of Lowndes County
Multiple people reported clearing work at the site of the
Moody Family Housing project on Val Del Road,
with its
sinkhole next to an aquifer recharge zone,
that
not even
Moody Air Force Base can get in to inspect.
So we went out to look. There is clear cutting happening on Val Del Road (both sides) but it does not appear to be happening on the property slated for Moody Family Housing.
There has been clear cutting going on in the north of Lowndes County
for some time on large tracts near Skipper Bridge Road, Staten Road (near the
new river bridge) and on Val Del Road immediately south of the Moody Family
Housing tract.
It appears that most of those properties are owned by Natco LLC: Continue reading
Open Records, let’s compare.
Recent open records requests at the City of Valdosta and the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office were similar. An unscheduled visit to the respective open records office (Valdosta City Clerk and Information Window at the Sheriff’s Office) resulted in a simple form and information returned on the spot. No waiting, no hassle.
Open records requests at the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners is a different story. It’s not too hard to get the form, it’s here: Continue reading
Open Records, Open Meetings
One effective way to keep an eye on what’s happening in our government is
through open records and open meetings, and Georgia has pretty good laws for both of those.
Attending meetings generally requires only a small amount of time for any agency. Some government agencies meet only once per month and sometimes for less than one hour. Some may meet twice a month (work session and regular session) or some as frequently as four times (two work sessions and two regular sessions). Attending meetings is a good way to show the elected and appointed officials that you are interested in what they are doing as your representative. Making open records requests is a good way to get additional information about issues in which you are interested.
In Georgia, the Open Records Act is O.C.G.A. §50-18 and the Open Meeting Act is O.C.G.A. §50-14 . The official copies of these can be found online at http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/gacode/, however there are handy links on the State Attorney General’s site at http://law.ga.gov/law which provide easily readable PDF files.
The introduction of O.C.G.A. §50-18-70 says: Continue reading
Maybe VSU should join this band of Fossil-Free Foundations
Maybe that’s what the VSU Foundation wants to tell SAVE when they dine Monday: VSU gets it (even if Harvard doesn’t) that fossil fuels are a bad investment and solar is where the profits, students, and investors are.
Diane Cardwell wrote for DealBook 30 January 2014, Foundations Band Together to Get Rid of Fossil-Fuel Investments,
Seventeen foundations controlling nearly $1.8 billion in investments have united to commit to pulling their money out of companies that do business in fossil fuels, the group announced on Thursday.
The move is a victory for a developing divestiture campaign that has found success largely among small colleges and environmentally conscious cities, but has not yet won over the wealthiest institutions like Harvard, Brown and Swarthmore.
But the participation of the foundations, including the Russell Family Foundation, the Educational Foundation of America and the John Merck Fund, is the largest commitment to the effort, and stems in part from a push among philanthropies to bring their investing in line with their missions.
“At a minimum, our grants should not be undercut by our investments,” Continue reading
GA bill for solar financing
What electric utilities fear most: bipartisan support for distributed rooftop solar financing. You can call your legislator and support HB 874, the Solar Power Free-Market Financing and Property Rights Act of 2014.
Dave Williams wrote for the Atlanta Business Chronicle 28 January 2014, Ga. Republican unveils solar bill,
Georgia property owners would be able to contract directly with solar energy installers to finance the installation of solar panels under legislation introduced in the General Assembly Tuesday.
The bill would let property owners lease solar panels instead of having to buy them with cash up front, said Georgia Rep. Mike Dudgeon, R-Johns Creek, the bill’s sponsor.
“We want to make it clear Continue reading
SAVE to dine with VSU Foundation Monday
The VSU Foundation has invited SAVE to dinner Monday.
No agenda is known, but the Foundation gets four attendees
and SAVE gets two.
Foundation attendees are to be:
-
Wayne Edwards, Chairman, who responded to
SAVE’s fossil fuel divestment request with
“your well-intentioned request is impractical”.
According to
Georgia Secretary of State,
he is also the Foundation’s CFO.
- Carolyn Eager, who is on the Foundation investment committee. She resigned as chair of the Industrial Authority in 2009, and was one of three former VLCIA chairs who in 2011 published a statement backing school system consolidation.
-
John Crawford, CEO, who is also
Vice President for University Advancement.
and was on the
inauguration steering committee for
-
William J. McKinney,
ninth president of VSU, and ex-officio VSU Foundation board member,
who at the solar canopy inauguration said
“I am committed to developing a culture of sustainability on this campus”.
The two attendees from Students Against Violating the Environment (S.A.V.E.), each apparently twice as heavyweight as a Foundation Trustee, will be: Continue reading
The trash problem could be worse: north of Naples
They call it the Triangle of Death because of the cancer clusters.
No, not Waycross: near Naples, Italy,
Jim Yardleyjan wrote for NYTimes 29 January 2014, A Mafia Legacy Taints the Earth in Southern Italy,
“The environment here is poisoned,” said Dr. Alfredo Mazza, a cardiologist who documented an alarming rise in local cancer cases in a 2004 study published in the British medical journal The Lancet.
“It’s impossible to clean it all up. The area is too vast.”
He added, “We’re living on top of a bomb.”
Maybe it’s not that bad Continue reading
Variances 2 x 4
Here’s the agenda:
Continue readingValdosta -Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals
Matt Martin,
Valdosta Planning and Zoning AdministratorCarmella Braswell,
Lowndes County Zoning Administrator300 North Lee Street, Valdosta, Georgia 327 North Ashley Street, Valdosta, Georgia (229) 259-3563 (229) 671-2430 AGENDA
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
2:30 p.m.
Weather report by Ashley Tye, Emergency Management Director @ LCC 2014-01-28
Lowndes County’s
Emergency Management Director
reported yesterday on projected icy roads today.
Here’s the video:
Weather report by Ashley Tye, Emergency Management Director
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 28 January 2014.
All the local schools are closed, public and private, K-12 and college, so the best thing to to is to stay home.
Commissioner John Page said a constituent had just asked him if Lowndes County owned any snow plows. Answer: no, but the county can get access to them if needed.
County Clerk Paige Dukes enumerated ways she had tried to get the word out, including this information on the county’s front web page, which will probably disappear without trace in a day or so, so I’ve copied it below. Continue reading