Tag Archives: Economy

Volunteers for Lowndes County Board of Equalization

Update 2014-11-21:
Brad Shealy from the District Attorney’s office called back.
The reason there was no decision at day before yesterday’s
Grand Jury meeting was there were no applicants.
He said qualifications include you must be 18, a high school
graduate, and a property owner, presumably meaning real estate.
Plus you have to go to Tifton or Athens for a 40 hour course.
Which he said is better than it used to be when the only
location for the course was Athens: Tifton is close enough
to drive up and back daily.
If you want to serve, please contact the Clerk of Court
(see below for her number).

When will new members be appointed to the Board of Equalization,
who are the candidates, and how are people to know?
Maybe you’d like to volunteer.
If so, send your resume to the Clerk of Court (not the County Clerk).
Apparently you have about two weeks.

As public comment on

facebook by Becky Vaughn Herndon today:

Lowndes County is looking for volunteers to be members of the Board
of Equalization (BOE). The purpose of the BOE is to hear property
tax disputes between the Lowndes County Board of Assessors (BOA) and
property owners. The board must not be biased towards the Lowndes
County Assessor’s office or the taxpayer. It hears evidence from
both sides and decides, based on the evidence presented, what the
value of the contested property should be. The board may:

Find the Continue reading →

Keystone XL pipeline rejected in U.S. Senate

We are all Indians to the fossil fuel cowboys, but this time the
Indians won.
The U.S. Senate

yesterday rejected the Keystone XL pipeline.
It won’t end there, but it should, because solar power is cheaper, faster, cleaner,
and actually does bring jobs to the U.S.

Picture from US Uncut

Of course, TransCanada has a backup plan for getting its dirty Alberta tar sands
oil to overseas market:

a pipeline entirely through Canada to New Brunswick.
Which means the past several years of TransCanada insistence that Keystone XL
was necessary was just so much bs.
Which indicates how much we should believe other Keystone XL claims,
such as

those about jobs the pipeline would supposedly create.

Source: Reuters

Angelo Young, International Business Times, 8 October 2014,

No Keystone XL Pipeline? No Problem, Says Canadian Firm Planning To Send Crude East Instead Of South, Continue reading →

Even more U.S. solar jobs than in coal or oil and gas extraction

In a year solar jobs increased more than 20% to 142,000,
according to the

National Solar Jobs Census 2013.

Let’s remember Politifact Rhode Island rated as true
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s claim that

there are already more solar jobs than coal mining jobs.
And already last year there were

more solar jobs than in production and nonsupervisory oil and gas extraction.
That was 119,000 solar jobs according to the

National Solar Jobs Census 2012
by the Solar Foundation; thus the 20% increase.

Meanwhile, “production and nonsupervisory employees” in the oil and
gas extraction industry increased 4% from 106,400 in September 2013 to
110,600 in September 2014, according to

Oil and Gas Extraction: NAICS 211 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Total oil and gas industry employment increased 8% from
197,500 to 213,100 in the same period.

Of course, we really should be using the 2013 (not 2014) oil and gas figures
to compare Continue reading →

Best Practices for Economic Development @ VLCIA 2014-11-18

Looks like some of them have been (or are thinking of) going to
an

Area Development Conference & Forum,
about Best Practices for Economic Development.
Here’s the agenda.

Valdosta-Lowndes Development Authority

Tuesday, November 18, 2014 5:30 p.m.

Development Authority Conference Room

103 Roosevelt Drive
Monthly Meeting Agenda

Continue reading →

Board Packet @ LCC 2014-11-11

Here is the

board packet for the
11 November 2014 Regular Session
and
10 November 2014 Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

Although the County Clerk once again provided this packet only on paper
and only in black and white, we got via CD-ROM color maps for

REZ-2014-17 Grand Bay Estates
and
REZ-2014-18 White
from County Planner Jason Davenport in response to a separate Open Records Request.
The request to the County Clerk also asked for
electronic copy, but once again she chose not to honor that part of the request.

But who can say?
Perhaps things will be different after

the Open Government Symposium this Friday, 21 November 2014.

Meanwhile, I have already filed an Open Records Request for the board packet
for the next County Commission meeting, which is in December.

-jsq

China, U.S., and Russia energy deals: bad news for Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline?

The U.S. and China made a historic deal on climate change this week.

Here’s the good (it’s real, it’s huge, and it’s positive economically
for both countries), the bad (nuclear is first on the list of those “clean energy” sources), and the ugly.
Also this week China made a second huge natural gas deal with Russia:
what does that mean to the current U.S. push for LNG exports,
including the proposed Sabal Trail pipeline gouge through Georgia?

The Deal

Rebecca Leber, The New Republic, 12 November 2014,

The World Has Waited for the U.S. and China to Take Action on Climate Change. They Just Did.

President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced on
Wednesday commitments to reduce both countries’ greenhouse gas
emissions. The surprise announcement, which came while Obama visits
Beijing this week, is the clearest sign yet the two countries are
serious on climate change.

After months of negotiations Continue reading →

Videos: Pipeline, agriculture, lighting, appointments, and parks @ LCC 2014-11-11

Update 2014-11-17: board packet.

Three

citizens

spoke

against
the unnecessary and hazardous Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline.
Several Commissioners even spoke up in

Other Business,
turning it into de facto Commisioner Comments.
But none of them called for a resolution or ordinance against the pipeline.

The

subdivision rezoning
still got no objections,
while the

rezoning for agricultural use
got massive objections and a compromise solution.

The

emergency security monitor replacement
is, you guessed it, Continue reading →

Videos: 9 consideration, 6 tax lighting, 4 appointments, 2 rezonings, 1 proclamation @ LCC 2014-10-27 LCC 2014-11-10

They vote tonight on what they discussed yesterday morning in these videos. A

subdivision rezoning
gets no objections
while a

rezoning for agricultural use
gets massive objections.
Also few if any of those objectors have said anything about

the Sabal Trail pipeline.
Do priorities around here seem odd?

The

emergency security monitor replacement
is, you guessed it, a no-bid contract with the same company that
originally installed them.
Which fits with the no-bid

Alapaha Water Plant Expansion,
back this time for property acquisition after twice failing to get
a setback variance at ZBOA.

The state changed the qualifications Continue reading →

Valdosta’s Penn Station to be torn down –Alfred Willis @ VCC 2014-10-23

Received as a response to

Outside corporation trumps Valdosta citizens about historical Nichols house? –Jim Parker @ VCC 2014-10-23. -jsq

The City Council’s deliberations on the 23rd had nothing to do with
any construction project, but rather focused on the sale of a parcel
— as

Councilman Carroll’s message of the 25th accurately
conveys. The Council’s vote was historic because it signified openly
the supremacy of certain private property interests (specifically,
those entailed in selling as a form of enjoyment) over civic
cultural interests, at least within the municipality of Valdosta. In
doing so it gave Valdosta’s citizens a peek behind a curtain that
had remained drawn over historic preservation here since 1980. The
construction of buildings, the demolition of buildings, the
remodeling or moving of buildings, the maintenance and preservation
of buildings, their sale and their purchase, their adaptive reuse
— all of those processes are historical processes that turn on
the resolution of conflicts among interests. Thus they all reveal
structures of power and the machinations of powerful individuals and
groups. How could they not?

The construction of the Nichols house in
the early 1950s showed with a degree of clarity that probably no
other Valdosta building of that time did, the identity, values,
attitudes, and mode of operation of Valdosta’s leadership. Its
demolition will Continue reading →

9 for consideration, 6 special tax lighting, 4 appointments, 2 rezonings, 1 proclamation @ LCC 2014-11-10

Only one emergency expense this time, and it’s not for a road or water treatment!

It’s for

security video monitors for their own palace.
Presumably those are different from

the big monitor behind their podium
that very rarely we see in use.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA

WORK SESSION, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2014, 8:30 a.m.

REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2014, 5:30 p.m.

327 N. Ashley Street – 2^nd Floor