Tag Archives: GLPC

Width, houses, and inheritance: REZ-2012-01 Whitehead/Black @ GLPC 2012-02-27

Housing, driveway width and possible change to the ULDC, conveyance to relatives, number of housing units, and other issues: the Planning Commission discussed all these and recommended a rezoning with a few conditions (limit of 2 houses). The County Commission zipped through making a decision.

The first county case in the 27 February 2012 Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC) meeting was REZ-2012-01 Whitehead/Black, 218-82 & 82A, ~7.1 ac., 2 lots, E-A/R-A to R-A, well/septic. They spent more than 27 minutes (1:09 + 3:54 + 6:02 + 1:21 + 1:40 + 2:56 + 2:56 + 0:59 + 6:16) on REZ-2012-01.

Compare that to the 5 minutes in the 12 March 2012 Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission and approximately 5 minutes in the 13 March 2012 Regular Session as the Lowndes County Commission approved the rezoning with the limitation on only 2 houses.

Time isn’t everything, and staff did visit the site and clarify some points and Commissioners did ask a few questions in the Work Session, but the Planning Commission spent much more time examining this case.

Here’s a video playlist of REZ-2012-02 in all three meetings (GLPC, LCC Work Session, and LCC Regular Session):

Width, houses, and inheritance: REZ-2012-01 Whitehead/Black
Regular Session, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 February 2012.
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 12 March 2012.
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 March 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-jsq

Tonight: Planning Commission Agenda @ GLPC 2012-05-21

The Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC) meets tonight. Here’s the agenda.

The agenda was faxed by GLPC Chairman Bill Slaughter to Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, at her request; GLPC itself still doesn’t have agendas online, ten months after SGRC stopped posting them.

There’s one rezoning case on the agenda, a county case:

2. REZ-2012-09 John A. Copeland
Property Location: Loch Laurel Road, Valdosta, Ga
Request to rezone ~5 acres from R-A (Residential Agriculture) and R-1 (Low-Density Residential) to C-C Crossroads Commercial)

According to the Lowndes County Tax Assessors database, James R Copeland and Elizabeth J. Copeland own two lots on Loch Laurel Road with Situs/Physical Address of 0 Loch Laurel Road, one of 1 acre and the other of 8.67 acres, and another one mostly surrounded by those two at 3248 Loch Laurel Road of 1.5 acres. It will be interesting to see how those plots add up to about 5 acres. Whatever GLPC recommends, final action is scheduled for the Lowndes County Commission at its 12 June Regular Session.

Continue reading →

Videos @ GLPC 2012 01 30

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.

Here’s a video playlist:

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).

-jsq

Minutes on website? @ GLPC 2012 01 30

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.

Here's the video:

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.

There has been a little bit of improvement. The GLPC chair faxed LAKE the April agenda.

-jsq

Planning Commission agenda for Monday 2012-04-30

Here is the agenda for Monday’s meeting of the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC). It was faxed to Gretchen Quarterman of LAKE by GLPC chair Bill Slaughter, at her request.

Does anyone volunteer to transcribe it or OCR it?

There appear to be four cases for final action by Valdosta Mayor and Council on 10 May 2012, and three cases for final action by the Lowndes County Commission on 8 May 2012. GLPC itself is advisory: it votes on recommendations, but it does not decide.

You may wonder why we don’t just point to the official copy of the agenda on the GLPC website. That’s because that website no longer exists (try the above link; you’ll see). It’s still linked to from the City of Valdosta web page for GLPC. More on all that later.

-jsq

What’s the VLMPO?

So you’ve heard about the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC). What’s this Valdosta-Lowndes Metropolitan Planning Organization (VLMPO)? How is VLMPO different from the GLPC?

Well, it’s not exactly the same geographical area. GLPC is exclusively for Lowndes County, including its cities. VLMPO is for the Valdosta Urbanized Area, which does not include all of Lowndes County, but does include parts of Berrien and Lanier Counties. According to VLMPO’s home page:

In April 2003, Governor Sonny Perdue officially designated the Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC) as the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Valdosta Urbanized Area. As the MPO, the SGRC is responsible for carrying out transportation planning in the Metropolitan Planning Area using funding received from the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration, administered by the Georgia Department of Transportation. The MPO works with these and other transportation planning partners to fulfill the requirements of various federal, state and local transportation planning laws and plans.
And it’s not quite the same subject area. GLPC mostly hears rezoning cases, although it also deals with larger planning issues such as the Comprehensive Plan, which includes transportation. VLMPO is focused on transportation, but gets into all sorts of related issues: Continue reading →

Video playlist, GLPC 28 November 2011

Here’s a video playlist for the entire Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC) Regular Session of 28 November 2011. We’ve already blogged a couple of them separately: And we’ll probably blog more of these videos separately. But you don’t have to wait.

Here’s the playlist:


Video playlist, GLPC 28 November 2011
Comprehensive Plan,
Regular Session, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 28 November 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

We’re not done working on this —Jason Davenport @ GLPC 28 November 2011

Continuing the Comprehensive Plan Short Term Work Program (STWP) updates, the chairman asked if the board was ready

Lowndes County Planner Jason Davenport responded:

We’re not done working on this. But if you think it’s time to bring it before y’all.
Later, at about 11:40 in, Davenport clarified:
And the only that’s different right now is Lowndes County. Because Lowndes County did not hold a public hearing as required, so we’re on a different timeline. And if Mrs. Quarterman would have given me about until December 13th she would have seen that.

Because our initial resolution was not the same as the other communities. We’re on a little bit of a different timeline because we have to address that issue. That’s one thing; the county in this instance will be handled a little different than some of the smaller cities and Valdosta.

That would be the initial resolution the county did not provide in response to an open records request about the draft the county did not publish as required by the state. If the county had answered questions weeks ago, instead of waiting until they had to do makeup homework, nobody would have had to ask about it at that GLPC meeting….

Anyway, the County Planner has said there will be a public hearing. However, remember it was the County Chairman who said that the public hearing item on the agenda was not really a public hearing. It’s the Chairman, not the Planner, who sets the agendas for the County Commission. We’ll see what’s on the 13th December County Commission Agenda, and whether it really is handled as a public hearing in that meeting.

Then GLPC Board Member John Page expressed his concerns: Continue reading →

Don’t we still need farmers to feed us? —Gretchen Quarterman @ GLPC 28 November 2011

What was it that the Lowndes County government didn’t want its citizens to see in the draft it didn’t publish and didn’t provide in response to an open records request, and the hearing it didn’t hold about its updates to the Comprehensive Plan? Could it be the many items the county is deleting, having to do with feeding seniors, health care, transportation, work ethics and life skills, environmental impacts, agriculture, wells, wetlands, and many other topics, some of which Gretchen Quarterman detailed to the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission yesterday?

After Valdosta and Hahira City Planner Matt Martin explained how all the local city governments had or were going to have hearings about their Comprehensive Plan Short Term Work Program updates, the GLPC Chairman asked if any citizens wanted to speak on that topic. One citizen did, Gretchen Quarterman. She apologized for missing the September GLPC meeting because she would have raised some of these issues then.

I have an appointment with [Lowndes County Planner] Jason [Davenport] tomorrow to address some of my questions.

But I want to let you know that at the County Commission did not hold a public hearing after the changes. I was at the [Valdosta] City Council meeting, and the City Council did hold a public hearing, but the County Commission did not.

And I believe that is in violation of DCA’s guidelines. They sent a transmission letter that said they followed DCA’s guidelines. DCA’s guidelines say hold a public hearing. It was on the agenda, the public hearing, but no public hearing was held. So I didn’t have an opportunity to see the document, or to comment, before the county sent it.

She said she would provide written comments to Jason the next morning, and asked if GLPC would like to hear some of them. They said they would, so she read some of them. For example:
In Section 1.3 it was struck from the document:
Ensure supporting senior services such as health care,
Continue reading →

GLPC: Greater Lowndes Planning Commission, 28 November 2011

There’s a meeting of the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission tonight. They discuss rezoning requests relevant to the City of Valdosta, Lowndes County, Dasher, Hahira, and Lake Park. We don’t know which rezoning requests they will consider tonight, because they no longer post agendas.

The City of Valdosta’s writeup about GLPC still links to the Southern Georgia Regional Commission pages about GLPC, which is where GLPC agendas used to be, but no longer:

As of July 1, 2011 there will be no more updates to this site. For question contact:

Jason Davenport – Lowndes County
Alexandra Arzayus – City of Valdosta

The Lowndes County government’s website has nothing listed for GLPC, and when you search for it you get:

Search Results: planning commission
No Results Found

Sad, really, considering that GLPC used to be a good example of local government transparency.

Maybe they’ll have an agenda at the door tonight.

-jsq