Paul Wolff showed us his solar panels on Tybee Island:
That’s 28 panels. They’re SolarWorlds, roughly 18% efficiency rating, and it’s a 5.525 kilowatt system.
And another thing I tell people if your roof is at all questionable… right now there’s a 30% federal tax credit on the materials for an EnergyStar roof….
28 SolarWorld panels, 5.25 kilowatts –Paul Wolff renewable energy, Paul Wolff, The Volta Collaborative (TVC), Tybee Island, Chatham County, Georgia, 17 February 2012. Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
Instead of arbitrating a fixed-size LOST pie, what if Lowndes County and the local cities worked on increasing the size of the pie through broadband? It’s not just Chattanooga, 100 other municipalities have done it.
Chattanooga is not alone; more than 100 cities and towns have built their own broadband networks. The city of Lafayette, Louisiana offers probably the best deal for broadband in the nation: ten megabits symmetrical for less than $30/month. For non-geek readers, it is actually faster than my home Comcast connection at less than half the price. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance has just released a new report detailing how Chattanooga and Lafayette built their networks.
Hm, Valdosta and Lowndes County don’t seem to be on that map. Yet. We don’t have to wait for VLCIA to organize this; there are other ways.
The five local cities (Valdosta, Hahira, Remerton, Dasher, and Lake Park) presented their case in terms of changed demographics from the 2000 to the 2010 census. Much of the presentation was explained by Hahira City Manager Jonathan Sumner.
Lowndes County wasn’t interested in discussing, and is waiting for arbitration, which will happen in 60 days (presumably from when they started negotiating). The VDT writeup protrays that as a surprise, but it’s what County Chairman Ashley Paulk has been saying since before these negotiations began.
I would have preferred to hear what services the cities do now or could with more tax revenue provide that would benefit the entire county.
Even more, I think the local governments could spend their time together better talking about how to increase the pie, for example through solar energy for municipal revenue
or through county-wide fast Internet broadband access, either of which would help attract knowledge-based jobs, which would provide employment and increased tax revenue.
However, I salute the cities and the county for being transparent about their positions, as you can see in these videos.
Videos of Mayors and County in Hahira LOST Negotiation, Mayors and County in Hahira, Lowndes County Commission (LOST), Hahira, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2 May 2012. Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
Here are videos of the entire 30 January 2012 Regular Session of the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC). You’ll have to figure out what they’d doing, because they don’t post agendas or minutes.
Videos Regular Session, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 30 January 2012. Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
Whatever happened to the agendas and minutes of the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC) that used to be on the SGRC website? Gretchen asked at the January GLPC meeting whether they would be posted again. The chair said he didn't know. County Planner Jason Davenport added:
The regional commission used to do the minutes on the website for us. We have the minutes. Ms Gretchen, if you'll email us, we have the ability to email those minutes back to you, but we don't have plans right now to put those minutes back on the web.
The chair suggested "Maybe at some point in the future would be good." Jason Davenport reiterated that they had no plans to do that.
Minutes on website? Regular Session, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 30 January 2012. Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
That's similar to what he told me by email back on 28 November 2011:
Last year the agreement between the SGRC and the various local governments regarding the GLPC responsibilities changed. This website is a result of those changes. I have your request and will plan on getting direction and clarification about how to deal with these types of requests.
A business our Industrial Authority wanted to get us into still risks bankrupting Irwin County: a private prison. Maybe we should do better due diligence around here and invest in better business ventures.
A privately owned detention center that houses hundreds of illegal immigrants in south Georgia is struggling with finances, and narrowly avoided being auctioned this year.
So we heard about Chattanooga all during the school “unification” referendum. I turns out Chattanooga really does have something that attracts business (no, not a unified school system; if you want to go back into that, I’ve got the references available). What really attracts businesses to Chattanooga is fast Internet broadband access.
While on a site selection visit in Chattanooga, a CEO asked about broadband access. When told that the slowest tier on Chattanooga’s community fiber network was 30 megabits per second, he turned to his IT adviser for a translation. Upon hearing “that’s more than we can get in our headquarters presently,” the company cancelled its other planned visits and located its new site in Chattanooga.
That’s right, Chattanooga really does have one thing going for it: high speed Internet access.
Wonder why Southern Company couldn’t get private financing for its new nukes at Plant Vogtle? Because back in June 2009 bond-rater Moody’s said this:
But from a credit perspective, the risks of building new nuclear generation
are hard to ignore, entailing significantly higher business and operating risk profiles, with construction risk, huge capital costs, and continual shifts in national energy policy.
In case that wasn’t clear enough, they spelled it out further.
Nuclear’s “bet-the-farm” risk
The NRC says about 14 companies to date have submitted COL applications, proposing numerous new nuclear reactors for power generation. The first of these COL’s is expected to be approved beginning in mid-2011. Many of the COL license applications include partners, but the next table lists the primary holding company entity behind each project, and our view of the activity level associated with the endeavor.
From a credit perspective, companies that pursue new nuclear generation will take on a higher business and operating risk profile, pressuring credit ratings over the intermediate- to long-term.
Moody’s wraps up with some reassuring words for financiers, but maybe not so reassuring to we the taxpayers:
In early April, Valdosta City Council members voted almost unanimously to approve the submission of a plan to HUD that would address socio-economic problems for citizens — except for District 1 council member James Wright.
“I felt as if we didn’t have enough time to review the document,” said Wright, as the 100 page document was not provided until the day before the vote.
The document in question is the “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing” and was prepared by a Texas firm, J-QUAD Planning Group. The study is required of any city that receives funds directly under the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program though the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which Valdosta became eligible for in 2004.
According to the minutes of the 5 April 2012 Valdosta City Council meeting, Council Wright wanted to delay voting on the document because there was a lot of public interest in it. Mayor Gayle pointed out it was simply a pro-forma analysis required by HUD, and not a plan. Council Vickers said they could form a committee to make a plan. But the council didn’t seem to include formation of such a committee in the motion to accept the analysis that finally passed.
