Tag Archives: Gary Cannon

Videos: Appointments to 2 boards, 2 law grants, 2 lift station items, 1 Comp. Plan contract @ LCC Regular 2025-07-22

Two citizens spoke at the Lowndes County Commission Regular Session.

Gretchen Quarterman about water wells
, including private wells
getting contaminated since Hurricane Helene, or running dry,
and expenses of testing and well drilling.
Commissioners actually discussed afterwards that you can take a water sample
and get Public Health to test it.


Keyara Hamilton spoke about Goodwill
.


[Collage @ LCC 22 July 2025]


Collage @ LCC 22 July 2025

The Lowndes County Commissioners appointed Scottie Orenstein, Joe Brownlee, and Rob Green
to the

Lowndes County Development Authority
,
which apparently never meets.
Then they also

reappointed
Jerome Tucker and Barry Green.

They reappointed Michael Walker and J.D. Rice to the

Lowndes County Public Facilities Authority
.
Then they also appointed Lowndes County Commissioner Mike Smith
to succeed Clay Griner, and Andy Griffin to succeed Crawford Powell.
They also clarified the when each term will end.

Chairman Bill Slaughter

recommended that Commissioners should

get a list of boards and their meeting dates and times so they
can attend an learn things.
This is good advice for citizens in general.

The Commissioners approved everything else unanimously.

County Manager Paige Dukes’s

Reports
lasted almost ten minutes,
including Fire Department people speaking.

Below are Continue reading

Videos: Appointments to 2 boards, 2 law grants, 2 lift station items, 1 Comp. Plan contract @ LCC Work 2025-07-21

Update 2025-07-25:
Videos: Appointments to 2 boards, 2 law grants, 2 lift station items, 1 Comp. Plan contract @ LCC Regular 2025-07-22.

The Lowndes County Commissioners discussed much more than usual,
making yesterday morning’s Work Session 44 minutes long.


[Collage @ LCC Work Session 21 July 2025]


Collage @ LCC Work Session 21 July 2025

They vote today at 5:30 PM, which is about now.

Yesterday, the County Attorney weighed in on

both
the board appointment

items
.

The

Comprehensive Plan update
won’t change the Service Delivery Strategy (SDS)
that the county and the five cities agreed would last for ten years.

Both of the

Juvenile Justice grant items
lasted more than 9 minutes.

The longest item was not on the agenda:
a

report by Jeff Lovell
on well issues and river water infiltration.

And we got a clue where the

Blue Lake Lift Station
is:
near I-75 Exit 13.

Below are links to each LAKE video of each agenda item,
with a few notes by Gretchen Quarterman,
followed by a LAKE video playlist.

See also the Continue reading

Packet: Appointments to 2 boards, 2 law grants, 2 lift station items, 1 Comp. Plan contract @ LCC 2025-07-21

Update 2025-07-22:
Videos: Appointments to 2 boards, 2 law grants, 2 lift station items, 1 Comp. Plan contract @ LCC Work 2025-07-21.

The Lowndes County Commission this Monday and Tuesday will consider and decide
on many appointments to two boards, and two Juvenile Justice grants.

The county is also outsourcing part of its five-year Comprehensive Plan Update to the Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC), for $30,000.


[Collage @ LCC Packet 2025-07-21]


Collage @ LCC Packet 2025-07-21

Lowndes County is still fixing problems from Hurricane Helene,
this time at the Blue Lake Lift Station.

  • In
    September 2016
    they replaced a pump there for no-bid $43,959.
  • In
    June 2020
    they did a $71,789 no-bid emergency repair there due to corrosion.
  • In

    October 2021

    they applied for
    $700,000
    from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA)
    for
    “Permanent bypass pumps at lift station” for
    Bevel Creek,
    Whitewater,
    Heart road,
    Blue Lake,
    Highway 84,
    and
    Frances Lake,
    as well as
    $300,000
    for “On-Site Crane/ Hoist lift station” for Whitewater, Frances Lake, and Blue Lake,
    all at the recommendation of Carter & Sloope.
  • In
    June 2022

    they approved an apparently no-bid agreement with Carter & Sloope:

    “The scope of work at the County’s lift station is two-fold. A permanent bypass pump will be
    installed at the following six (6) lift stations: Bevel Creek, Whitewater, Heart Road, Blue Lake,
    Highway 84, and Frances Lake. The bypass pump will serve as the station’s
    backup/redundancy method if the primary pumping failed at any time. The new pump will be
    connected to the existing wet well and force main at the station on a concrete housekeeping
    pad. Where necessary based on location, the pump can be installed in an enclosure to reduce
    sound (i.e. if near a residential neighborhood). Electrical and controls will be installed on site
    with the new pump. Of the 6 stations, the following three (3) will also be retrofitted with an on-
    site crane/hoist system: Whitewater, Frances Lake, and Blue Lake. Those stations need a local
    mechanism for retrieving pumps from the wet well because of their layout and location.”

This time they have bids for the control panel,
but still only one no-bid source for the pump: xylem, Inc.
However, the county is going for repairing the pump this time, for $44,661.

It’s good Lowndes County is fixing its sewer infrastructure before it breaks.
And it’s good they’re bidding at least part of the repairs this time.

Meanwhile, we still don’t know where the Blue Lake Lift Station is.
So far as I can tell, there is no waterbody, road or street, or subdivision
name Blue Lake in Lowndes County.
More on that in a later post.

Cost What
$44,661.00 Blue Lake Lift Station Pump Repair
$43,615.00 Blue Lake Lift Station Control Panel
$88,276.00 Blue Lake Subtotal
 
$30,000.00 2026 Comprehensive Plan Technical Assistance Contract
 
$118,276.00 Total

Here is the
agenda.

The board packet, received in response to a LAKE open records request,
is
on the LAKE website
.
Images of each page are below.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

PROPOSED AGENDA

WORK SESSION, MONDAY, JULY 21, 2025, 8:30 a.m.

REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, JULY 22, 2025, 5:30 p.m.

327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor

Continue reading

FFA, Appointments, Liquor, Rezonings, Roads, Forestry, DUI, Holidays, Insurance, Calendar, Trucks @ LCC 2020-12-07

Update 2020-12-15: Board packet is on the LAKE website.

A million and a half dollars, mostly for insurance, on the agenda for the final
Lowndes County Commission session of 2020, and that’s not counting
the many-years-long ramifications of rezoning for new subdivisions
and acquiring right of way for a new road.

[Rezonings: REZ-2020-17 3833 Inner Perimeter Road; REZ-2020-19 3435 Bemiss Knights Academy; REZ-2020-20 6712 Clyattstone Road]

Rezonings: REZ-2020-17 3833 Inner Perimeter Road; REZ-2020-19 3435 Bemiss Knights Academy; REZ-2020-20 6712 Clyattstone Road

Cost What
$1,240,297.00 2021 Stop Loss Insurance Coverage Renewal Through Symetra Life Ins. Company
$174,759.00 2021 ACCG Workers’ Compensation Insurance Renewal
$60,862.00 Bid for 2 – Three Quarter Ton Trucks for the Engineering Department
$27,367.00 Bid for a Sport Utility Vehicle for the 911 Center
$920.50
Georgia Forestry Commission Services [LAS prescribed burns] Agreement
$381.00 Office of the Governor Criminal Justice Coordinating Council Accountability Court Lowndes County DUI Court- State Court
$1,504,586.50 Total

Lowndes County Development Authority
Terms are up for Brooks Akins, Gary Cannon, and Jerome Tucker. Cannon and Tucker want reappointment, and the Commission almost always reappoints.

Resolution Rejection Quitclaim Deed; Affidavit Regarding Title- Branch Point.
The County has laid out the right-of-way for a county road known as Fender Road between Williams School…
Trading a parcel to William Q. Touchton, Jr. for another parcel for the road.

REZ-2020-20 Ballyntyne 6712 Clyattstone Road (0071 008) R-1 to R-10, Water & Sewer, ~40.3 acres .
For 105+ house lots. In 2006, for a more complicated plan on the same site, GLPC recommended denial 7:0, County Commission denied 2:0. What did GLPC vote this time?
And how about factoring in all the costs of paving Clyattstone Road over many previous Commission meetings? Continue reading

Videos: Emergency road repair bids! Appointments: Library Board, Development Authority, millage @ LCC 2017-08-22



The added agenda item

6e. Emergency Repairs to Rocky Ford Road

got a couple of bids (unusual procedure; different from their
usual no-bid emergencies) passed.
The Chamber sent

Gary Wisenbaker
to speak in Citizens Wishing to Be Heard
to ask for (after a very long preamble by John Page)
apparently money from GDOT for a long list (in a letter the taxpayers
did not get to see) of
transportation projects to help “the business community”,
apparently including the truck bypass.

They only appointed six of the seven members of the

Development Authority of Lowndes County
,
although a Commissioner did ask about that.
It’s also curious they said all the terms expired right then,
since the Wayback machine has a snapshot of 4 April 2017, which shows three expiring in June 2017 and four already
expired in December 2016.
Apparently they just didn’t bother to appoint anybody to the four slots
that expired in December 2016 until eight months later,
and then they didn’t appoint anybody to one of the 2017 slots.

Below are links to Continue reading

Videos: Bids for emergency road repair! Appointments: Library Board, Development Authority, millage @ LCC 2017-08-21



Bids for an emergency repair!
This could be a first, instead of their usual sole source approve-it-right now method.
See

the County Manager’s Report
, in which County Engineer Mike Fletcher
describes bids incoming from both Scruggs and Reames for temporary
repair to Rocky Ford Road.

Below are links to each LAKE video of yesterday morning’s Work Session with a few notes, followed by a LAKE video playlist.
See also
the agenda
with notes about appointments and millage.
And see also
the 5 PM today Millage Rate Meeting.

Continue reading

Appointments: Library Board, Development Authority, millage, cameras @ LCC 2017-08-21

Maybe the county would have enough applicants their Work Session,
Monday morning at 8:30 AM,
if they advertised for applicants for open board seats,
such as on the Development Authority of Lowndes County,
And if they posted the application sheets for the applicants they did get,
such as for the Lowndes County Library Board,
we’d have some idea of who they are.
They could even say whether the millage is going up or down.

According to the

agenda sheet

for the appointment to the
Lowndes County Library Board,

There is a vacant seat on the Lowndes County Library Board. The
Board of Trustees of the South Georgia Regional Library System
respectfully requests the appointment of Mr. Gene Toffolo to fill the
vacant seat.

They don’t say who applicant Gene Toffolo is.
According to the South Georgia Regional Library
he’s a 2016 Friends of the Library Board member:




Front Left to Right: Kay Scott, Janet Toffolo, Mary Helen Watson (President), Merrilee Casady,
Sarah Smart (Vice President), Robert DeVan (Treasurer)

Back Left to Right: Gene Toffolo, Patricia Marks, Riley Howard, Karl Osmus, John Swiderski (Secretary)

The county’s agenda and agenda sheet for the Lowndes County Library Board
don’t say whose seat expired or maybe somebody resigned.
The county’s

web page for this board

is no more helpful, listing these members and expirations,
none of which expires in 2017: Continue reading