County Manager Joe Pritchard said Finance Director Stephanie Black has received a millage report from the Tax Commissioner. He and she will prepare something from it for the Lowndes County Commissioners for a later meeting.
The board packet is on the LAKE website, in response to a LAKE open records request.
Below are Continue reading
The resolution to reimpose the SPLOST tax as SPLOST VIII, was not included with the agenda for the tax-paying public to see. LAKE has filed an open records request for the entire board packet. Perhaps the county will supply it before they vote tomorrow.
Four bids were received for LAS and Pump Station Improvements with the high bid at $3.3 million, and the low at $2.5 million, but apparently the county negotiated the low bidder, Doyle Hancock & Sons, down to $1,520,858.00. This is “for improvements to the LAS [Land Application Site, aka wastewater spray field], Bevel Creek, Francis Lake, and Coleman Road lift stations.” The LAS is between Grassy Pond and Pike Pond, a few thousand feet from the GA-FL line, in the Withlacoochee River watershed. Continue reading
News about the Naylor Boat Ramp in an Engineering Projects Report! Chad McLeod also reported about the 911 center, the North Lowndes Soccer Complex, the fire warehouse classroom, the animal shelter, and the courthouse renovation project, all still to be completed from SPLOST VII funds, which run out next year. Even with that three-and-a-half-minute special engineering report, the whole meeting took ten minutes Monday morning.
Also not on the agenda, HR has a new employee. Also there will be a new traffic signal.
Should the County Manager and the Finance Director be able to approve Continue reading
The 2018 Lowndes County Commission Retreat was just about the exact opposite of a commission meeting, except that same group of people are present (almost). There was discussion, disagreement, laughing, sighing, interrupting, listening, inside jokes, outside jokes, and general exchange of views. Those things don’t happen in a commission meeting. This year’s retreat was particularly different because there was no time frame attached to any agenda item and they didn’t discuss topics in exact order, and some topics got covered repeatedly. Commissioner Evans said to me during a break that the previous format of having departments just give a report can “get boring” and she had suggested that they have a different format with more discussion about communications.
The agenda was available on-line but was hard to find and the link I followed to find it is gone now. I did manage to download it before it went away. Find it here: 2018 LCC Annual Planning Meeting Agenda (plus searchable text). There were paper copies available at the meeting after the first break.
I sometimes think that the commissioners may be getting used to me but then, no, don’t be silly.
At the lunch hour, the Commissioners stepped outside to take a group picture and as County Clerk Page Dukes suggested that they get closer and not have so much “space” between them, Commissioners Orenstein and Griner (I live in their districts) huddled together.
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Below are links to each LAKE video, with a few notes followed by a LAKE video playlist. Continue reading
By far the most time, almost eight minutes, on
6b. Abandonment of Portions of Old Lake Park Road and Hickory Grove Road SE,
the Lowndes County Commissioners spent two weeks ago,
involving reference to minutes they approved in that meeting
but that still aren’t on the county’s website two weeks later,
and resulting in a split vote.
More interesting: the county is finally starting construction on the Naylor Boat Ramp.
By their customary silent “acclamation” they appointed people to the Lowndes County Public Facilities Authority.
Below are Continue reading
Easy to see from Burnt Church Road, two solar farms near Lakeland, GA in Lanier County:
Here’s contact information: Continue reading
Tom Fanning, our genial CEO host, said some things I’ve never heard him say before like Southern Company is “pivoting towards wind” and SO’s board soon has to decide whether to go forward with Plant Vogtle “or not” probably by August. Fanning gets the first and last word in this blog post, plus a complete transcript of what I asked and Tom Fanning’s response, along with summaries of the other questions and answers.
Please hear me!
I think renewables are exceedingly important in the future.
— Tom Fanning, CEO, Southern Company
In SO’s own meeting video of the 25 May 2017 Stockholder Meeting, you can see much praise about solar power and wind and R&D and a smart grid, along with stockholders wondering: Continue reading
The Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline and others already in the county
came up in the
Comprehensive Plan approval discussion, as you can see in these
LAKE Videos from Monday morning; they vote tonight 5:30 PM.
Stephen Spradley and Georgia Forestry were still helping after Hurricane Matthew, but Ashley Tye reported on evacuees, Chad McLeod reported on engineering projects including the Naylor Boat Ramp at the Alapaha River, and Angela Crance reported on an art district; actually Buddy Boswell did that.
They also heard about a self storage rezoning, three road abandonments, a road widening, the annual MIDS bus service renewal, and a county resolution about bonds for another private LLC by the South Regional Joint Development Authority (SRJDA), different from the one with the public hearing October 21st at a private law firm. What does the resolution say? It’s not in the documents with the agenda.
Below are links to each LAKE video with a few notes, followed by a video playlist. Continue reading
Most people wanted to know which roads would be paved when,
in Bemiss, to Alapaha Subdivision, and next to the new Civic Center.
They did also talk about the
planned new civic center and the
Alapaha Boatramp they’re building.
I thank the Chairman for clarifying his remark about paving every road in the county. He and other county officials also went on about safety being a big concern, which is news to me, on my road the county insisted on paving that became a drag race track. And what’s this about Continue reading
Come to the Farm Bureau in two weeks to hear
Tax Assessor staff present their updates and provide your input
for changes to the
rural land revaluation, this time taking into account rivers, aquifer recharge zones, and uniformity.
Maybe the Tax Assessors actually don’t want more flooding in Valdosta;
both the City of Valdosta and GA-EDP have already shown interest in attending
about that point.
At an appeal on my property valuation, the Board of Equalization stopped short of actually ordering the Tax Assessors to redo last year’s rural land revaluation, because staff volunteered Continue reading
![[Land Application Site]](http://www.l-a-k-e.org/govt/loco/2019-08-12--lcc-packet/map-las.jpg)