Tag Archives: Economy

Challengers made statehouse incumbents work in south Georgia



Hardly-funded insurgents led by Haley Shank put a scare into turncoat south Georgia statehouse
incumbents.
What would happen with well-funded candidates?

As we’ve already seen,

in new district 177 Dexter Sharper (D)
won 2 to 1 over opponent J. Glenn Gregory (R).
(All election data in this post is from
GA Secretary of State.)

Conversely, Jason Shaw (R-176) ran unopposed, perhaps because
he is the least offensive of the incumbents (he voted
against HB 1162
that put

the Atlanta-power-grab “charter school” amendment on the ballot,
although

he did vote for HB 797
that will funnel more of your local tax dollars to charter schools
imposed by Atlanta even if your school board doesn’t want them).

Other south Georgia statehouse incumbents, all Republicans, had
challengers, all Democrats.
All the challengers opposed Amendment 1.
Haley Shank did best, in District 173 against Darlene K. Taylor,
8,324 to 12,048 (40.86% to 59.14%).

Next was

Continue reading →

Allocate resources in a yearly budget?

Received today on

SPLOST VII lost. -jsq

After reading this post, a question came to mind. Have we the
citizens of Lowndes County


actually been encouraging our elected
officials to be fiscally irresponsible with public funds by allowing
SPLOST to continue? if elected officials had to allocate resources
in a yearly budget, we may actually encourage our officials to
allocate resources towards public projects that would be desirable
by the public rather than a priority in pthe minds of our elected
officials.

-Bill Grow

SPLOST VII lost



Speaking of

transparency,
Lowndes County voters defeated SPLOST VII 18,864 to 17,923 (51.28% to 48.72%).

Kay Harris in the VDT today quoted Ashley Paulk with this reason:

The defeat came as a surprise to Mayor John Gayle but not to Lowndes
County Commission Chairman Ashley Paulk, who said he warned the
mayors of the five municipalities that if they continued to argue
over

LOST, the local option sales tax, that voters would turn
against SPLOST in retaliation.

“I told them at the beginning if they didn’t stop arguing over
a few percent of the LOST and refused to leave the numbers as is by
taking the county’s offer, that taxpayers were going to turn against
the SPLOST,” said Paulk.

“Voters are disenchanted with the way their local governments
have gotten greedy and they’re tired of the arguments over money.
They voted SPLOST down because they don’t trust us with their tax
dollars, and it’s a real shame.”

I would agree
bickering over the
LOST pie was one of the reasons
SPLOST lost, and add to that the opaque back-room processes by which
the SPLOST VII projects were selected.
While the library needs updated and expanded facilities,

the lack of documented decision process
for the architect

and lack of adequate explanation for that
probably didn’t help, either,
nor did
the county’s puzzling lumping of the library in with Parks and Rec.

which they later tried to clarify.
Perhaps the voters are

tired of seeing transparency be a constant source of tension.
And I’m using the library as just one example. I could equally cite the
project for a farmers market under the overpass, which I think is a bad idea
because the farmers market already has a fabulous location at the historic
Lowndes County Courthouse, and so far as I know none of the vendors who sell there
were even asked if they wanted a new location, much less the public who buy there.

At the public-not-invited
SPLOST VII kickoff speeches
the last speaker said they were not there

Continue reading →

Georgia Power raising rates



Georgia Power is raising rates
in January, despite its recent announcement that it would lower
rates because of lower fuel bills.
Why raising?
Mostly the new nukes and for a new natural gas plant.
And 16% of the rise is for energy efficiency.
Does that seem like the right proportion to you?

Kristi Swartz wrote for the AJC 1 Nov 2012,

Georgia Power bills to increase,

The average Georgia Power bill will increase about 44 cents a month
starting in January, not decrease as many might have expected when
the company announced last month its fuel costs had dropped.

The utility, which serves 2.4 million customers, notified state
regulators in October that it would be applying for a residential
rate reduction because the amount it pays for fuel has fallen 7
percent, saving $122 million. The utility cannot profit from lower
fuel costs and must pass those savings on to customers.

So why are customer rates going up?

About $1.05 of the typical residential bill will go toward paying
for a new natural gas unit at Plant McDonough-Atkinson in Smyrna.
That increase already was approved as part of a three-tiered rate
hike set in 2010.

Yep, that’s that

set-in-2010 and keep-rising-’till-2013 natural gas
rate hike
that Georgia Power got away with while complaining about
any potential solar subsidies.
The one
AJC complained would be “on autopilot”:

Continue reading →

Nuclear reactors near here

If you think of nuclear reactors as something far away,
or as much safer than Fukushima,
you’re in for a surprise.
The most notorious reactors are the ones not yet built,
units 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle near Augusta and their

famous financial boondoggle.
But others are closer, older, and more numerous than you may know.

Here’s a map by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).


That map’s not clickable, so here’s a table,
selected from an

NRC table
by distance from Valdosta:

Name Owner Where Distance
from
Valdosta
Hatch 1 & 2* SNOC 11 miles N of Baxley, GA 100 miles
Farley 1 & 2 SNOC 18 miles SE of Dothan, AL 125 miles
Crystal River 3 PGN 80 miles N of Tampa, FL 160 miles
Vogtle 1 & 2 SNOC 26 miles SE of Augusta, GA 200 miles
Summer SCEG 26 miles NW of Columbia, SC 300 miles
Saint Lucie 1 & 2 FPL 10 miles SE of Ft. Pierce, FL 325 miles
Oconee 1,2,3 Duke 30 miles W of Greenville, SC 330 miles
Robinson 2 PGN 26 miles NW of Florence, SC 350 miles
Sequoya 1 & 2 TVA 16 miles NE of Chattanooga, TN 360 miles
Catawba 1 & 2 Duke 18 miles S of Charlotte, NC 390 miles
McGuire 1 & 2 Duke 17 miles N of Charlotte, NC 410 miles
Browns Ferry 1,2,3* TVA 32 miles W of Huntsville, AL 410 miles
Turkey Point 3 & 4 FPL 20 miles S of Miami, FL 440 miles
Brunswick 1 & 2* PGN 40 miles S of Wilmington, NC 480 miles
Waterford 3 Entergy 25 miles W of New Orleans, LA 495 miles
Shearon Harris 1 PGN 20 miles SW of Raleigh, NC 498 miles
* GE Mark I;
Duke: Duke Energy Power Company, LLC;
Entergy: Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc.;
FPL: Florida Power & Light Co.;
PGN: Progress Energy;
SCEG: South Carolina Electric & Gas Co.;
SNOC: Southern Nuclear Operating Company;
TVA: Tennessee Valley Authority

Five operating nuclear power reactors are closer to us

Continue reading →

Fair bidding practices and community public input —Barbara Stratton

Received today on

County trash plan already failing. -jsq

Yet another example of government contracting not following the fair
bidding practices or allowing community public input. Even if you
attend government meetings no bid information is made public & even
if bids are referred to the amounts are always in those elusive
"packets before you" that only the members have access to.

In a recent Hahira City Council meeting the city attorney ruled that
the city council did not have to put out the garbage service for
bids & that it did not even have to have a contract. As of December
31, 2012 the city collection services will not be under contract at
all so who knows what the rates may be or if a lower bid would have
saved citizens money?


Barbara Stratton
I've been involved in government contracting for years & I can tell
you that the recent path government bodies have endorsed is leading
further & further away from the bidding procedures that were enacted
to prevent good old boy politics & kick backs & is opening the door
wide for public/private partnerships that never answer to the
citizens.

The state attorney general's office which should regulate bidding
practices will not interfere with county or municipal issues unless
a citizen is willing to pay $500 to a lawyer to present the case to
them. They justify this as catering to "home rule" but in actuality
they are turning a blind eye because it is within their jurisdiction
to rule on non-adherence to proper bidding practices.

If the state believes in "home rule" why is Governor Deal pushing a
state charter school board amendment that will take away local rule?
The state seems to pick & choose its standards.

-Barbara Stratton

-jsq

The power of going solar —John S. Quarterman


Solar panels on farm workshop --John S. Quarterman
My op-ed in the VDT today. Remember
to vote today or Tuesday.
-jsq

This spring,

the University at Buffalo turned on 750 kilowatts of
solar electricity.

Rutgers U., in New Jersey, installed 1.4
megawatts in 2009 and started on 8 MW this summer. Down here with a
lot more sun, how about solar panels on VSU parking lots?

There’s

plenty of private solar financing available. Also in New
Jersey, a company installed 6 MW of solar on high school land and
leased the power to the school supplying most of its needs win-win.


You can go see a solar farm already working fine here,

200 kilowatts at Mud Creek Wastewater Plant.
Why not do the same


View Larger Map


at Lowndes High School, where all the world on I-75 could see,

attracting business to our community?

Why not?

Continue reading →

New solar in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida: where’s Georgia?

What are these

new solar projects?
Here are a few FERC lists,
in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Florida,
and there are more in Texas.
Not so many in Georgia.



  • Zongyi Solar America’s 20 MW Tinton Falls Solar in Monmouth County,
    New Jersey, is online. Tinton Falls Solar is the largest
    photovoltaic project in New Jersey.
  • Southern Sky Renewable Energy LLC’s 5.6 MW Canton Landfill Solar
    Project in Canton County, Massachusetts is online. This photovoltaic
    project is built on the closed and capped Canton Landfill. It is the
    largest solar facility in New England. The electricity generated is
    sold to the Town of Canton under a long-term agreement.

New Jersey again!
20 Megawatts is even larger than the

6.1 MW at Lawrenceville School.
And Massachusetts, even farther north.
Let’s also look just south of us:



  • SunEdison’s 3.6 MW Phase 2 Lakeland Regional Airport Solar Project
    expansion in Polk County, Florida is online. The Lakeland Regional
    Airport Solar has a total capacity of 6.3 MW. It is the largest
    photovoltaic project in Florida. The electricity generated is sold
    under long-term contract to Lakeland Department of Electric Water
    Utilities.

Ah, but

that’s illegal in Georgia!
Here you can sell electricity only to your one and only monopoly utility,
predetermined for you by the 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act.
Maybe we should change that?

The Lakeland Chamber of Commerce

helped promote that solar project.
Maybe better PR than

feuding with the newspaper?

Also only slightly farther south of us,

Continue reading →

Wind and solar were all the new U.S. electric generation in September 2012

Wind and sun provided all the new electric power generation
deployed in September 2012.
As Moore’s Law continues to decrease solar prices, solar
power gets deployed still more rapidly,
and wind also gets installed on time and on budget.
Meanwhile, nuclear takes a

three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool
and hardly any new reactors get finished anyway.


Stephen Lacey wrote for TP Climate Progress 24 October 2012,

Wind And Solar Make Up 100% Of New U.S. Electricity Capacity In September,

September was tied for the

hottest of any September on record
globally. It was also a very hot month for renewable energy in the
U.S. According

to figures from the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission, wind and solar accounted for all new electricity
capacity added to America’s grid in September.

New wind is up 25% Jan-Sep 2012 over the same period last year,
and new solar is up 78%.
For comparison, new coal is

Continue reading →

VDT and Chamber feuding about which is the most negative


popcorn



Image courtesy Fir0002/Flagstaffotos under GFDL v1.2

Break out the popcorn!
The VDT and the Chamber of Commerce are feuding.
About which one is the most negative!
Also, the Chamber hates agriculture.
And everything good around here is to the Chamber’s credit,
but anything bad is not their fault; just ask them.

The VDT editorialized 18 October 2012,

Is Valdosta really one of the poorest?
mostly criticizing

the recent report that ranked
Valdosta MSA as the third poorest in the country.
The VDT added:

Now that the world wide web has broadcast this story, what can be
done locally to combat this image? And what are the various entities
involved in job and business recruitment, i.e. the Chamber of
Commerce and the Industrial Authority primarily, doing to fix the
underlying problem — low household income and the high
percentage of individuals living below the poverty line.

Valdosta can attract retailers. But can Valdosta step it up and
attract larger industries offering high paying jobs? Has the
community turned away from what made this a successful, viable up
and comer in the state, namely manufacturing and agriculture? These
industries sustained Valdosta for many years and provided good, well
paying, solid blue collar and middle income jobs. Educational
opportunities are far greater today, there are more high school,
tech and college graduates in the area than ever, and blaming the
quality of the work force is starting to lose its luster as a viable
excuse for not bringing in industry. We have the land, we have the
workers, we have the infrastructure and we have a great location
with a good quality of life.

Perhaps the community leadership should focus on the assets that are
already here and less on what’s not. Then maybe the next time a
story like this appears on the Internet, Valdosta won’t be cast in
such a poor light.

The Chamber fired back a broadside to its members, which
I’ve included below here, since I don’t think you can find it online elsewhere.
Here’s the most precious part:

Second, while there is still farmland in Lowndes County, it’s
shrinking and when it sells, it’s for uses at prices that rule out
agricultural use. Agriculture had begun moving to nearby more rural
counties even before the cotton field at the end of Baytree Road
was paved over for Valdosta Mall. Our largest tractor and farm
implement dealers followed.

That’s right, farmland is good for nothing but paving over,
so says the Chamber!
Nevermind that knowledge-based workers generally like

Continue reading →