It's Valdosta Farm Days this morning, 9AM to 1PM, at the historic Lowndes County Courthouse. Local food, community, and economy. Y'all come!
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Tag Archives: Agriculture
REZ-2012-09 Copeland rezoning @ LCC 2012-06-12
How can a man with health care financial troubles make a living with a shop he’s had for decades when some of the neighbors complain about a rezoning that is now required? A controversial case that raised issues ranging from wetlands to public safety to Moody Air Force Base jets flying out of Valdosta Airport made its way through two appointed boards to a Solomonic rezoning decision by the elected Lowndes County Commission. Nobody wanted to deny a man a living, but many people wanted to limit potential commercial uses of the subject property. The Commissioners attempted to take all that into account, yet failed to incorporate two major considerations raised by neighbors, mentioning one of them only to disparage it. Even that isn’t the end of it, since it may head back to the Zoning Board of Appeals for a buffer variance. Here are videos of REZ-2012-09 Copeland at the Lowndes County Commission.
It had been to the Planning Commission for a recommendation on rezoning, it had been to the Zoning Board of Appeals for a buffer variance, Monday morning it had been to the County Commission Work Session at which we learned a bit more, and Tuesday evening it went to the Lowndes County Commission Regular Session for a vote on rezoning.
Monday 11 June 2012 Work Session
At the 8:30 AM Monday Work Session, County Planner Jason Davenport had several updates since Commissioners had received their packets the previous week.
- An email from a Mr. Bradford in opposition.
- Some open records requests to be filled after the work session.
- Some opponents of the rezoning had hired a lawyer. (Those of you who watched Bill Nijem at the Zoning Board of Appeals meeting already would have guessed that. Nijem also spoke the next day at the Regular Session.)
- Davenport had met with the applicant, Mr. Copeland, who had provided more materials because he believed there were some accusations about lack of continuous operations in the building.
Davenport summarized that he thought there were three camps:
- Those not supporting the case.
- Those supporting the case,
- Those supporting the case with conditions,
He said one possibility would be for he and the county attorney to meet with the opposition attorney to try to work out some conditions.
Tuesday 12 June 2012 Regular Session
The agenda item was
6. Public Hearings – REZ-2012-09 Copeland, 3258 & 3264 Loch Laurel Rd, R-A & R-1 to C-C, well & septic, ~5 acres
Here’s a list of every citizen speaking for, at any of GLPC, ZBOA, or County Commission: John A. Copeland (the applicant), Kevin Copeland (applicant’s son), Nancy Hobby, Charles Miles, Fuller Sorrell, Alan Davis, Robert Roffe, and Norman Bush, plus a petition for.
Here’s a list of every citizen speaking against, at any of GLPC, ZBOA, or County Commission: Bill Nijem (attorney for several neighbors), Jimmy Hiers, Gail Hiers, Greta Vargas, and Patty Haynes.
For the rezoning
Continue readingBetter cities and counties make better watersheds
Want jobs, low taxes, and less flooding? Help maintain our watersheds with good local planning.
What’s a watershed? Kaid Benfield wrote for Atlantic Cities today, The Cost of Sprawl on Clean Water:
Watersheds are topographic areas where all the rain that falls eventually ends up in a namesake steam, river, lake, or estuary.
These are our local watersheds. Purple is the Little River Watershed, blue is the Withlacoochee Watershed, and Valdosta is where the Little River flows south into the Withlacoochee. Green is the Alapaha watershed, and Tifton is where all three meet. Every drop of rain or used well water or wastewater overflow or pesticide runoff or soapy shower water or clearcut mud that runs downhill into one of these rivers is in their (and our) watersheds.
Becoming greener doesn’t just mean a municipality’s adding a pleasant new park here and there, or planting more trees, although both components may be useful parts of a larger effort. How a town is designed and developed is related to how well it functions, how well it functions is related to how sustainable it really is, and how sustainable it is, is directly related to how it affects its local waters and those who use those same waters downstream.
Compact, mixed-use, well-designed in-town growth can take some of the pressure off of its opposite on the outskirts — or beyond the outskirts — of towns and cities. We know that sprawling growth is generally pretty bad for maintaining environmental quality in a region (air pollution from cars that become necessary in such circumstances, displacement of open land, water pollution from new roads and shopping centers that are begot by such growth patterns).
We also know, as UGA Prof. Dorfman told us several years ago,
Local governments must ensure balanced growth, as
sprawling residential growth is a certain ticket to fiscal ruin*
* Or at least big tax increases.
Kaid Benfield explains how town planning is related to watersheds:
Continue readingStrickland Mill in Remerton —Emily Foster
Received yesterday. -jsq
FYI: The Strickland Mill in Remerton is being threatened with
demolition. Remerton City Council will meet to discuss this situation on Monday, June 4th at 5:30pm during their work session, and on Monday, June 11th at 5:30pm to vote on the matter. The public is invited to both of these meetings to express opinions on the possible demolition of the Mill. As you all are aware, this mill complex dates to 1899 and is one of the few surviving textile mills in our region. This is an important community landmark and was very influential to the development of Valdosta, not to mention integral to Remerton's existence.
Emily Conklin Foster
Downtown Valdosta Farm Days today
Tasty food, local community, and local economy, all on the grounds of the historic Lowndes County Courthouse: Downtown Valdosta Farm Days is here again this morning, from 9AM to 1PM.
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Prisoners as cheap labor
Quite likely you thought massive prison populations used as cheap labor were some sort of medieval tradition. Nope. Here’s an article that debunks that misconception and informs you about many other things I (and perhaps you) didn’t know about prisoners as cheap labor.
Locking Down an American Workforce Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman wrote for TomDispatch 19 April 2012, Prison Labor as the Past — and Future — of American “Free-Market” Capitalism,
Penal servitude now strikes us as a barbaric throwback to some long-lost moment that preceded the industrial revolution, but in that we’re wrong. From its first appearance in this country, it has been associated with modern capitalist industry and large-scale agriculture.
So where and when did it come from?
As it happens, penal servitude — the leasing out of prisoners toprivate enterprise, either within prison walls or in outside workshops, factories, and fields — was originally known as a “Yankee invention.”
First used at Auburn prison in New York State in the 1820s, the system spread widely and quickly throughout the North, the Midwest, and later the West. It developed alongside state-run prison workshops that produced goods for the public sector and sometimes the open market.
A few Southern states also used it. Prisoners there, as elsewhere, however, were mainly white men, since slave masters, with a free hand to deal with the “infractions” of their chattel, had little need for prison. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery would, in fact, make an exception for penal servitude precisely because it had become the dominant form of punishment throughout the free states.
In case you’ve never read it or have forgotten, here is the Thirteenth Amendment (emphasis added):
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Got a population you don’t like? Continue reading
Earth Day and Valdosta Farm Days Saturday 21 April 2012
It’s a food festival Saturday in Valdosta!
Before, after, or during stocking up on local food at
Valdosta Farm Days at the historic Lowndes County Courthouse,
you can mosey up Patterson Street to Drexel Park for lunch, music, fun, and
education at Earth Day!
Drive, bike, or even walk; it’s only a little more than a mile.
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Appended is the text of the announcement.
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Continue readingImporting illegal immigrants into private Georgia prisons
Ocilla, about an hour north of here, took the private prison gamble, and now is scrambling to import enough prisoners to fill it.
Jim Galloway wrote for the AJC 11 April 2012, Importing illegal immigrants — into private Georgia prisons quoting Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan Seville in The Nation 10 April 2012, How One Georgia Town Gambled Its Future on Immigration Detention,
Deportations have reached record levels under President Barack Obama, and demand for detention facilities has increased. Starting in 2002, ICE had funding for 19,444 beds per year, according to an ICE report. Today, ICE spends about $2 billion per year on almost twice the number of beds.
ICE’s reliance on facilities like the Irwin County Detention Center has put small rural towns at the center of one of today’s most contentious policy arguments—how to enforce immigration law. A yearlong investigation by The Nation shows how much politics has come to rule detention policy. Even as Georgia and Alabama passed harsh new immigration laws last year designed to keep out undocumented immigrants, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that politicians from both states were lobbying hard to bring immigrant detainees in. ICE succumbed to the pressure, sending hundreds of detainees to the financially unstable facility in Georgia that promised to detain immigrants cheaply. That promise came at the expense of the health, welfare and rights to due process of some 350 immigrants detained daily in Ocilla.
Marvelous. Pass a low to eject illegal immigrants, except it really locks up a bunch of them, but not enough to keep Ocilla’s private prison full, so import a bunch of them back in as prisoners.
Aren’t you glad we didn’t accept a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia?
Ocilla and Irwin County didn’t just make that bad bet once, they doubled down on it:
Continue readingEven George Will is calling for drug legalization
We can’t afford this anymore:
A $200 transaction can cost society $100,000 for a three-year sentence.It’s time to legalize, regulate, and tax drugs, taking tax money away from private prisons and police militarization, and freeing it up for education, health care, and rehabilitation.
George F. Will wrote 11 April 2012, Should the U.S. legalize hard drugs?
Amelioration of today’s drug problem requires Americans toWill-like, he ignores the real reasons we’re locking up so many people (corporate greed), but he does get at the consequences: Continue readingunderstand the significance of the 80-20 ratio. Twenty percent of American drinkers consume 80 percent of the alcohol sold here. The same 80-20 split obtains among users of illicit drugs.
About 3 million people — less than 1 percent of America’s population — consume 80 percent of illegal hard drugs. Drug-trafficking organizations can be most efficiently injured by changing the behavior of the 20 percent of heavy users, and we are learning how to do so. Reducing consumption by the 80 percent of casual users will not substantially reduce the northward flow of drugs or the southward flow of money.
Farm Bill Forum in Tifton 2012-03-16
Here’s a playlist of videos of Saxby Chambliss’ Farm Bill Forum in Tifton. It seems the Farm Bill is about big agro crops like corn and soybeans. Peanuts are considered a specialty crop. Fruits and vegetables are not really considered.
Some more videos will be added, but here is the first bunch:
Farm Bill Forum, Senator Saxby Chambliss,
Gary Black, Charles Hall, Robert Redding, John Maguire,
UGA Tifton Campus Conference Center, Tifton, Tift County, Georgia, 16 March 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
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