Tag Archives: Economy

Clean streams to attract business —Al Browning



Al Browning of

WWALS
made a point yesterday that I haven’t heard mentioned
by local Chambers of Commerce or economic development agencies:

Suppose there’s a business looking to south Georgia, to move into an area.
They can go to the

Adopt-A-Stream website for that particular area,
and get an idea of where the best water is.
And they may choose… that Berrien County has terrible water;
I’m going to go to Cook County, or Lowndes!

Here’s

the video:

That’s

Georgia Adopt-A-Stream,
which currently doesn’t show any water quality testing sites
for any of those counties, but that could change soon.
Maybe economic development organizations should help it change,
because that lack could be steering businesses elsewhere.

A prominent local economic development appointee asked me last year,

Why would you want absolutely clean ear or water?

Well, businesses considering moving here might want those things
because their employees do.
And their employees might want those things because they
don’t want to get sick.
And besides, who doesn’t like clean air and water?

-jsq

LOST Lawsuits Ahead?

Looks like history may repeat itself like last decade,
now that LOST negotiations between the cities and the county have failed.
Except this time apparently the law has changed so they can’t sue each
other directly.

Gretchen on LOST
Instead next it goes to

Superior Court “baseball arbitration”.
However, I bet that still involves lawyers at taxpayer expense,
not to mention the Court’s time.

Greg Gullberg reported for WCTV yesterday,

Tax Negotiations Hit Another Dead End In Lowndes County,
and asked Gretchen down at the County Extension, who said,

It’s sort of sad because it is a waste, if you will, of taxpayer dollars.
That the elected officials can’t get together and come to some agreement
to say that they all understand how the money has to be divided up
Yeah, it’s sad that more money has to go to lawyers
insted of being spent on services.


I continue to think the local governments could spend their time together
better

trying to increase the size of the pie instead of squabbling over slices of it.

-jsq

Distributing information to citizens —George Boston Rhynes

Received yesterday on
Valdosta LMIG resurfacing and transparency. -jsq

Thanks you so much for keeping us informed and it is still a


disgrace that our elected officials cannot publish their meetings to
all citizens. When will our Mayor; Council and County Commissioners
start informing all the citizens and not just a select few of
conservatives?

When will it all end? The time has come for change to take place in
Valdosta for the good of all citizens and visitors. We need and
should demand television, radio, internet and other means of
distributing information to citizens.

How sad in 2012?

George included a video
of his thoughts on elections hereabouts and elsewhere:

Words from our YOUTHS….and where are you?
Indeed George Rhynes is out there reporting the truth as he sees it,
this time along with two VSU students.

-jsq

WSJ misunderstands why T-SPLOST was defeated

Inaccurate labelling is the reason T-SPLOST was defeated,
along with Atlanta is not all of Georgia,
but the Wall Street Journal doesn’t understand that.

Cameron McWhirter wrote for the Wall Street Journal 1 August 2012,

Tea Party Ties Up Tax to Ease Atlanta Traffic

ATLANTA—Money and heavyweight endorsements don’t secure an
election — especially when you propose higher taxes in a
deeply conservative state with a robust tea-party movement.

A plan for a transportation sales tax was endorsed by Georgia’s
Republican governor and the Democratic mayor of the state’s largest
city. It was backed by the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and the
area’s top businesses. It was pushed by top political consultants
funded by more than $8 million in corporate and other donations.

Those against the plan were a loose coalition of tea-party
activists, some environmentalists and a local branch of the NAACP.
Their total raised? About $15,000.

But David slew Goliath.

That’s lazy reporting.
Those “some environmentalists” included the

Georgia Sierra Club,
an organization which reportedly has
more members than the state Democratic Party.
And that’s just in Atlanta.



Opponents in our region included
Democrat Ashley Paulk,

who was on the T-SPLOST executive committee
and is the current Chairman of the Lowndes County Commission,

Democrat Gretchen Quarterman,
who is the Chairman of the Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP)
and

is running for Chairman of the Lowndes County Commission,
as well as

Nolen Cox, Chairman of the Lowndes County Republican Party (LCRP),
and Roy Taylor,
LRCP First Vice Chair and well-known Tea Party activist,
along with a wide range of other opponents.



Look at the difference between that Region 11 T-SPLOST vote map and this map of
the Atlanta Metro T-SPLOST vote.
Atlanta metro is clearly centered around Atlanta.
Region 11 isn’t an economic region:
the vote was split right down the middle between No on the east and west
and Yes in between.

Region 11 throws together three population centers:

Lowndes, Tift, and Ware Counties, with their largest cities Valdosta,
Tifton, and Waycross.
Lowndes and Tift are at least connected by I-75, and they and most
of the ones around them voted against
(Ben Hill, Turner, Berrien, Cook, Lanier, Echols, and Brooks).
Ware County and all the counties east of it (Pierce, Brantley, and Charlton)
voted against.
In between there’s a complete barrier of counties that voted for T-SPLOST
(Irwin, Coffee, Bacon, Atkinson, and Clinch).
Those No counties completely separate the eastern Ware County group
from the western Lowndes-Tift group.

The perception around here is that T-SPLOST was made up to affect
metro Atlanta, and the rest of the regions were

Continue reading →

PSC rubberstamps Vogtle costs; next day Fitch affirms Southern Company ratings

Need any more proof that Southern Company’s nuclear boondoggle
only works with Georgia Power customer and taxpayer subsidy?
PSC rubberstamps one day and Fitch affirms ratings the next day.
Maybe we should elect Public Service Commissioners who will
serve the public.

Georgia Power PR 21 August 2012,

Georgia PSC approves Vogtle construction costs



The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) today in a 5-0 vote
approved Georgia Power’s spending on Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4 for
the period including July 1, 2011 through Dec. 31, 2011.

The next day, Fitch PR 23 August 2012,

Fitch Affirms Ratings for Southern Company and Subsidiaries,

Continue reading →

Transit-Oriented Development or Communities not Cul-de-Sacs

It’s not just

VLCIA’s Community Assessment that argues for
a public transportation system in Valdosta-Lowndes County.
Getting people

to work without requiring cars is an even
bigger problem in larger metropolitan areas, but many of the
issues are the same here.



Nancy Andrews and Audrey Choi wrote for Huffpo 20 Aug 2012,

How Transit-Oriented Development Can Help Get America To Work,

To truly get America back to work, we have to focus on more than



jobs, jobs, jobs. It is about integrating jobs, transportation,
housing and community services in ways that work equally well for
lower- and upper-income families.

Vibrant communities where residents can walk to shops, restaurants,
grocery stores and community services; and where public
transportation provides convenient connections between home and work
can be built. Planning community development with public
transportation as a central consideration — transit-oriented
development or TOD — can spur economic growth, sometimes
dramatically. But that approach has not been systematically applied
to communities of all income levels.

For these reasons, it is important for government, public transit
agencies, nonprofits, foundations and the private sector to come
together so that thriving communities for families of all economic
levels can be created.



It’s a safety issue, too.
Far more Americans die in traffic accidents than in foreign wars,

and widening roads farther out just makes the problem worse.
Currently, Lowndes County
says that’s not pertinent.

Maybe we should change that.


What if we built

communities, not cul-de-sacs?

-jsq

VLCIA meets tonight, about what, we can’t tell @ VLCIA 2012-08-21

According to its website:

The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority’s Regular Monthly Meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, August 21, 2012, 5:30 PM at the Industrial Authority Conference Room, 2110 N. Patterson Street.

Last meeting, VLCIA Executive Director Andrea Schruijer told me the results of the focus groups would be presented this month. Maybe she meant at this meeting. On the VLCIA facebook page, there’s this paragraph from 14 August 2012:

We are excited to present our final Target Business Analysis to the community at the end of August. We took at 360 degree approach to targeting economic development activity concentrating on employment, workforce skill, investment, and innovation to identify clusters of economic activity and developing targeted strategies for economic development.

It links to this (unembeddable) video of Andrea Schruijer talking about cluster analysis. It’s good they’re branching out to new ways of doing PR. It would be even better if they also published agendas and minutes with content.

Here’s the (content-free) agenda for today’s meeting:

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, August 21, 2012 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street

Continue reading →

ALEC, private prisons, fossil fuels, and charter schools



It’s good to see someone trying a coordinated strategy for something good in multiple states, as Our Children’s Trust is doing for air as a public trust. We already knew going to multiple states at once works, because ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange, gets reactionary results that way.

How does ALEC do it? By

So once again, it’s refreshing to see somebody successfully try multiple states for something worthwhile!

The above ALEC projects are just some I’ve run across while researching local topics.

It often seems as if every rock I turn over has the ALEC millipede scurrying around under it. Far more about ALEC is available through ALEC Exposed.

ALEC Exposed has a list of companies that have dumped ALEC recently.
Georgia Power’s parent The Southern Company and UPS are still not on that list. You can help. Let them know you want them to dump ALEC!

-jsq

 

There are no private schools in Finland: the opposite of Atlanta-imposed charter schools

Privatizing isn’t the answer, rote tests are irrelevant, and competition doesn’t help win. Those are a few of the lessons Finland learned that made its schools world leaders in education. So why would we consider letting Atlanta force privatized charter schools on us?

Anu Partanen wrote for the Atlantic 29 December 2011, What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success

“Oh,” he mentioned at one point, “and there are no private schools in Finland.”

Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education’s Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland,

said that offhand while talking at a private school in New York. Nobody seemed to pay much attention. Maybe we should.

He also noted Finland has no standardized tests until the equivalent of high school graduation, and they don’t have any particular system for accountability for teachers or administrators.

“Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted.”

So why do teachers and administrators in Finland so successfully take that responsibility?

Continue reading →

New research shows Natural Gas far more dangerous for climate stability —Seth Gunning

Received yesterday on U.S. CO2 emissions lowest in 20 years: that's good and bad: natural gas is methane, after all. -jsq

Yet another comprehensive article. I might also add that one of the major down-falls (if not the most significant) of large-scale conversions to natural gas is the resources lifecycle methane emissions.

As your readers likely know, Methane is about twenty times as 'potent' a greenhouse gas as Carbon Dioxide. That is to say, it is far more efficient at trapping heat then Co2. So, less methane has a far greater impact on climate disruption then more Co2.

Natural Gas, from the point of combustion, releases about half the amount of Co2 released from burning coal, and about 30% of what's released in burning oil. To keep the benefits of reduced Co2 levels when switching from coal to natural gas, natural gas wells and transport lines must leak less then 2% of methane into the atmosphere. Recent research from Cornell is showing that Fracking wells are regularly releasing more then 4%, and often as much as 8% —far exceeding the 2% threshold— and thus making Natural Gas a far more dangerous resource for climate stability.

Tom Zeller Jr. wrote for the NYTimes 11 April 2011, Studies Say Natural Gas Has Its Own Problems

-Seth Gunning

-jsq