Lowndes County Commission Meets Tuesday Evening

It’s a light agenda, but that doesn’t mean nothing interesting or important will happen: you never know. Here is the agenda:

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LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION CANCELLED
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2011, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor

  1. Call to Order
  2. Invocation
  3. Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag
  4. Minutes for Approval
    1. Work Session – February 21, 2011
    2. Regular Session – February 22, 2011
  5. Public Hearings – REZ-2011-02 Cat Creek, 4097 Cat Creek Road, 0144 050, 9.18 ac., ~23 lots, R-21 to R-10
  6. Citizens Wishing to be Heard Please State Name And Address
  7. For Consideration
    1. Smith Northview Services Agreement
    2. Inmate Medical Savings Program
    3. Resolution and Contract for the Hazardous Waste Trust Fund (HWTF)
  8. Reports-County Manager
According to the Lowndes County Tax Assessor’s Office, the 9.18 acres at 4097 Cat Creek Road are owned by Narvel R. Briggs of 243 Park Street, Somerset, NJ 08873 with no sales on that land reported since 1982. I would guess this is not a big developer, rather a child of the original owner.

-jsq

ESPLOST election, now through 15 March 2011

Update 7 Mar 2011: election date fixed in this post title and text.
Here’s how to announce public finances:
To be published on February 11, 18, and 25, 2010 and March 4 and 11, 2010.
That’s five times the Lowndes County Board of Elections is publishing the details of the ESPLOST one percent sales and use tax for educational purposes. This is significant money: not more than $165 million dollars over five years, $94,875,000 for Lowndes County schools, and $70,125,000 for Valdosta schools. There are only two main ways of raising money for public schools: sales taxes, or property taxes. The local school boards use both. This is the sales tax part.

Well, there is a third way. Continue reading →

LAKE as a news medium

We are the media, and you can be, too!

According to the OPEN Government Act of 2007:

[T]he term ‘a representative of the news media’ means any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience. In this clause, the term ‘news’ means information that is about current events or that would be of current interest to the public. Examples of news-media entities are television or radio stations broadcasting to the public at large and publishers of periodicals (but only if such entities qualify as disseminators of ‘news’) who make their products available for purchase by or subscription by or free distribution to the general public. These examples are not all-inclusive. Moreover, as methods of news delivery evolve (for example, the adoption of the electronic dissemination of newspapers through telecommunications services), such alternative media shall be considered to be news-media entities.
It’s pretty obvious LAKE qualifies as a news medium with its blog, On the LAKE Front, as well as its web pages and its facebook page.

Here is the bill’s full text. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy and 17 others, ranging from Sen. Barack Obama to Sen. Johnny Isakson. It was signed into law by President George W. Bush 31 December 2007.

Of course that’s really just a detail, having to do with the Wikileaks comparison.

Most of what LAKE does has more to do with Georgia law, about open records requests and this passage, O.C.G.A. § 50-14-1-c.:

“Visual, sound, and visual and sound recording during open meetings shall be permitted.”

None of that requires a news medium. Any citizen can file open records requests or record public meetings. Remember, you are the media!

-jsq for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange

Precincts, Lowndes County, Georgia, January 2011

These are the precincts being used in the current ESPLOST election (more about that later). You don’t actually need these maps to see where to vote; for that, see Polling Places, by the Lowndes County Board of Elections. Also, early voting is always at the Board of Elections, 2808 N Oak St, Valdosta, GA.

Available on LAKE’s web pages are wall-sized precinct maps, actually two parts (left and right) of one big wall map, as two PDF files (each between 4 and 5 megabytes) and as a variety of JPEG image sizes in a flickr set.

Left SideRight Side
left side PDF right side PDF
These maps were obtained from Deb Cox, Elections Supervisor, Lowndes County Board of Elections, 4 March 2011 by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

NOAA Weather Radios needed on the edge of the county –John S. Quarterman

So I’ll give you my opinion, like I gave it to the County Commission, and at the end of this post there’s a chronological list of links to all the NOAA Weather Radio posts so far.

But first, what do these radios do? According to NOAA:

NWR is an “All Hazards” radio network, making it your single source for comprehensive weather and emergency information. In conjunction with Federal, State, and Local Emergency Managers and other public officials, NWR also broadcasts warning and post-event information for all types of hazards – including natural (such as earthquakes or avalanches), environmental (such as chemical releases or oil spills), and public safety (such as AMBER alerts or 911 Telephone outages).
So these radios provide all the types of information J.L. Clark referred to. There’s more information in that NOAA web page.

I spoke after J.L. Clark on 22 Feb 2011. There is no video, because LAKE had only one camera at that meeting. From memory, here is the gist of what I said.

I live out on the edge of the county. I remember when Ashley Paulk moved in next door.
Continue reading →

NOAA Weather Radios: “think before you act” –J.L. Clark, LCC, 22 Feb 2011

The week after Commissioner Raines said NOAA Weather Radios were “wasteful spending” and the commission voted 2:1 against them, J.L. Clark asked the Commission to “think before you act”.

Clark pointed out that nobody said anything when the state effectively raised property taxes. He read off a list of other grants the county has accepted, and asked:

Are you going to return those grants? I think not.
He brought up a recent earthquake and pointed out those radios would be quite useful in such a natural disaster.
I ask the Commissioners to think before you act, and not to react to you-know-what.
The commissioners made no response. Here’s the video:


Lowndes County Commission, 22 Feb 2011, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Video by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

NOAA Weather Radios “wasteful spending” –Richard Raines

Are NOAA Weather Radios “wasteful spending”?

We’ve already seen staff present the case for about 5,000 NOAA Weather Radios at $21.50 each, paid for out of grant money. They made that case at the 8:30AM 7 Feb 2011 Lowndes County Commission Work Session.

At the regular session the next day (5:30 PM Tuesday 8 Feb 2011), citizen Nolen Cox spoke against the NOAA grant and more generally said “just say no to grants”. He also went on at some length about how he didn’t believe in climate change. Nevermind that the fifth U.S. or British board of inquiry has reconfirmed yet again that the data and analysis for climate change are solid.

EMA Director Ashley Tye summarized the case for NOAA Weather radios, according to the minutes,

stating Lowndes County had been awarded $107,500.00, in Hazard Mitigation grant funding for the purchase of 5,000 NOAA weather radios to benefit all of Lowndes County. Mr. Tye added that Alert Works had presented the low bid in the amount of $21.50 per radio.
Finally, the Commission had some discussion. According to the minutes: Continue reading →

NOAA Weather Radios, LCC, 7 Feb 2011

We’ve already heard about NOAA Weather Radios from two different citizens, Nolen Cox and Ken Klanicki. What are they talking about? As usual, much of the discussion was in the work session (8:30 AM Monday 7 Feb 2011), available here in two parts.

In Part 1 staff talks about buying about 5,000 NOAA weather radios so the citizens can get weather news. Low bidder would charge $21.50 per radio.


Lowndes County Commission, 7 Feb 2011, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman and John S. Quarterman
for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

In Part 2, staff notes that the grant would require that the radios can’t be earmarked, so people could come to the county office to pick up radios, and staff proposes to have several community events throughout the community, well-advertised, for people to pick up radios and staff to answer questions about them.

One of the commissioners notes:

That’s almost $108,000 tax money what happens to that grant money if, we say you know, it might not be a good idea […] what happens to that?
Continue reading →

The business of carbon trading in Georgia

Rich McKay wrote for the ajc, Carbon limits a boon for traders: Proposed emissions standards may galvanize business in Georgia.
The carbon-emitting companies pay the farmers to not cut down the trees or to plant new trees. The idea is that the trees, which gobble up carbon, will store up the carbon from the atmosphere and offset what the smokestacks spew.
Blake Sullivan, of the Macon-based Carbon Tree Bank, has 26,000 acres of forest in the state under contract for carbon banking.

“Georgia has an abundance of forests right here, and trees are like the lungs of the Earth,” he said. “They inhale carbon and exhale oxygen. We can be part of the solution right here in our own backyard.”

Why is this suddenly a business? Continue reading →

“So, why should you care?” –Erin Hurley

The VDT isn’t the only newspaper in town. This LTE appeared in the VSU newspaper, the Spectator, yesterday, 3 March 2011. And the Spectator even puts LTEs online. -jsq
SAVE says Biomass spells bad news for Valdosta and VSU

By: Erin Hurley

How many of y’all have heard of the Biomass Plant that has been proposed for Valdosta? Many of ya’ll probably don’t know what Biomass is; I know I didn’t until about two years ago when this project first started. The Biomass plant is an incinerator that will burn sewage, sludge and tree “debris” in order to create energy. What’s the big deal, right?

Continue reading →