Tag Archives: Government

Water trails for economic benefit —Bret Wagenhorst

This letter demonstrates many public uses of the Alapaha River at Hotchkiss Crossing by everyone from Boy Scouts to doctors, and indicates economic benefits of water trails. -jsq

February 4, 2013
Lowndes County Board of Commissioners
327 North Ashley Street – 3rd Floor
Valdosta, GA 31601
RE: Hotchkiss landing closure

Dear Commissioners:

I have lived in the South Georgia region for the past 16 years. I am also a practicing physician and have a love of the out of doors, especially canoeing, camping and hiking. I also serve on the board of WWALS Watershed Coalition, a local river advocacy group trying to promote awareness and preservation of our local rivers. It has recently come to my attention that you are considering the potential closure of the Hotchkiss landing site along the Alapaha River near Naylor. I would like to put in a word in favor of keeping the landing site open.

I have canoed dozens of different sections of the Alapaha River from north of Tifton all the way to Statenville, as well as portions that join with the Suwanee River in Florida. Without a doubt, one of the most fun and scenic sections to paddle is from the put-in near Burnt Church outside of Lakeland down to the Hotchkiss landing. I have taken various groups

Continue reading →

Agenda: two appointments, a public hearing, and two grants @ LCC 2013-02-25

The county’s website, down earlier today, is back up, so we can see there is a Work Session this morning, with voting at the Regular Session tomorrow evening at 5:30 PM. The proposed abandonment of Old State Road at Hotchkiss Landing on the Alapaha River, tabled two weeks ago, is on the agenda, although the Georgia Supreme Court makes me wonder why. One of the two appointments is to the South Regional Joint Development Authority which Andrea Schruijer mentioned at the most recent VLCIA board meeting. Another is to the Southern Georgia Area Agency on Aging Advisory Council. I’m guessing one person to each agency; the agenda doesn’t say how many nor who the candidates are. Here’s the agenda. -jsq

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

County can’t “lawfully vacate a public street or highway for the benefit of a private individual” —Georgia Supreme Court

While I don’t know if the proposed closing of the end of Old State Road leading to Hotchkiss Landing at the Alapaha River is even on the agenda for this morning’s Work Session (Clarification: Monday 25 Feb 2013; they vote 5:30 PM Tuesday 26 Feb 2013), because the county’s website is down and I can’t retrieve an agenda, in case it is, it may be of interest to know that the Georgia Supreme Court appears to have explicitly forbidden what the county is proposing to do.

Georgia Supreme Court, GRIFFITH v. C & E BUILDERS, 231 Ga. 255 (1973), 200 S.E.2d 874:

Held:

1. “When a grantor sells lots of land, and in his deeds describes them as bounded by streets, not expressly mentioned in the deeds, but shown upon a plat therein referred to as laid out in a subdivision of the grantor’s land, he is estopped to deny the grantees’ right to use the streets delineated in such plat. Ford v. Harris [95 Ga. 97, 22 SE 144]; Schreck v. Blun, 131 Ga. 489 (62 SE 705); Wimpey v. Smart, 137 Ga. 325 (73 SE 586); Gibson v. Gross, 143 Ga. 104 (84 SE 373). By parity of reasoning those claiming under such conveyances are estopped from denying the existence of the streets so delineated upon the plat of the subdivision and given as boundaries of lots acquired by these and others from the grantor or those claiming under him. All persons claiming under such grantor are forever estopped to deny their existence. 19 CJ 928, § 127 (b).” Tietjen v. Meldrim, 169 Ga. 678, 697 (151 SE 349); Davis v. City of Valdosta,223 Ga. 523 (156 S.E.2d 345).

I am not a lawyer, but I wonder what a lawyer would say 1. above implies about the county doing nothing about a blocked public road?

But the Georgia Supreme Court didn’t stop there:

Continue reading →

Work Session this morning? Lowndes County web site down again @ LCC 2013-02-25

Is there a County Commission Work Session this morning at 8:30 AM? Can't find out from the county's website: it's down again. Is this a good way to demonstrate that Internet access is "one of the number one issues"?

Firefox First noticed about 7AM, http://www.lowndescounty.com/ not responding, same as three weeks ago. Once again I also tried it from somewhere far away geographically and on another ISP, with the same results as last time.

Alert!: Unexpected network read error; connection aborted.

So it looks like the Lowndes County Commission's website is down. Speaking of far away, why does it seem to be hosted in Dallas, Texas?

Well, let's see if there's any information on their facebook page. Nope; still content-free.

Here's a response Gretchen got from County Clerk Paige Dukes when she inquired after the last outage:

Continue reading →

Broadband on the table @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Internet speed and access (appearing as Broadband) played a starring role at the 19 February 2013 meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA), with a surprise cameo by Lowndes County Commission Chairman Bill Slaughter (appearing as himself) and a bravura performance by Angela Crance of Wiregrass Tech, with a strong supporting role by VLCIA Chairman Roy Copeland, and Mary Gooding standing in for VSU. Internet access (as "telecommunications infrastructure") came up in Project Manager Allan Ricketts' report as a requirement for a Fortune 500 customer service operation and for a National health care service provider, both considering locating here, also as bandwidth, as a requirement for jobs. That was the main theme of Executive Director Andrea Schruijer's report, especially in rural parts of our county, especially for a home-based call center. Even Rotary Clubs need broadband.

VLCIA is also helping find potential sites for several utility-scale photovoltaic solar installations.

The Industrial Authority Board was down to three members, barely a quorum: Mary Gooding, Chairman Roy Copeland, and Tom Call. Whereabouts of Norman Bennett and Jerry Jennett were undetermined. I can't complain; I was in bed with a sinus infection.

Here's the agenda (such as it is), with links to the videos and some notes, often in separate posts.

Continue reading →

Rotary Clubs need broadband @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Bill Slaughter, Dennis Marks, John Page, Gretchen Quarterman @ Valdosta Rotary Club 2012-09-12

Before the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013 meeting, Gretchen told Bill about how she’s now videoing at Rotary and putting playlists on the web with some delay. Bill and Gretchen (and Commissioner John Page) go to the same Valdosta Rotary Club. This is yet another use of Internet access: attracting participants to local community groups, and getting their speakers to a wider audience.

-jsq

 

I’m super-excited about the whole broadband thing —Gretchen Quarterman @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

And now a word from the only person in the room at the the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013 with actual experience in bringing Internet broadband access to new areas, invisible behind the camera but clearly audible, Gretchen Quarterman:

I’m super-excited about the whole broadband thing, because you know that’s near and dear to our heart, and our background.

But please be very careful about the buill that’s before the legislature that will prohibit municipal Internets. Right now the legislature is trying to take off the table muncipal Internets. And I think that a municipal Internet would be a really great solution here. So let your legislator know that’s a bad idea; they shouldn’t take that off the table from us.

That’s HB 282, in opposition to which Amy Henderson of Georgia Municipal Association said:

Broadband is economic development.

Gretchen continued:

At the Chamber’s annual meeting when a local speaker stood up she talked about the that’s doing really well right now is agriculture and I’m pleased to announce that the South Georgia Growing Local Conference will be here in January of 2014 the last weekend, a Friday and Saturday. It’s an equivalent of the Georgia Organics big conference that they have in Atlanta. Except that it’s for south Georgia local growers, farmers, homesteaders. We just were in Reidsville this last January and Lowndes County is going to have it next year.

And the whole series of South Georgia Growing Local Conferences (this will be the fourth) has been organized largely online, in yet another use of Internet access for economic development, in this case sustainable local development.

OK, one more: Rotary Clubs need broadband.

-jsq

I don’t want to say we don’t have broadband —Andrea Schruijer @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Unfortunately, Andrea Schruijer made clear that much of what had just been said at the the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013 hadn’t been heard.

It’s not that we’re saying we don’t have broadband. We have connectivity; that’s not the issue. We have great partners that help us with that.

Well, local “leaders” need to learn to say it: “we don’t have broadband!” Many of the people of Lowndes County and even more in the surrounding counties can’t afford Internet access at all, as Idelle Dear told the Lowndes County Commission. And the “great partners” Ms. Schruijer bragged about will never provide it for us without a lot of prodding, because AT&T and Verizon and Sprint and Comcast and Mediacom don’t think anything outside the Atlanta beltway has enough population density to bother with, and even in Atlanta all people get is U.S.-style low-speed low-reliability Internet connectivity that would never even be on sale in Japan or France or Korea or Finland or even Estonia.

Tom Call illustrated my point when he talked about a residential project where a provider installed cable and claimed they were providing voice, TV, and Internet access, but then didn’t actually have the capacity for Internet when people started using it.

Continue reading →

Broadband “huge strategic initiative for our community” —Mary Gooding for VSU @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Mary Gooding spoke up for VSU at the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013, saying that VSU President McKinney was in Athens (as was President Perrin of Wiregrass), but he and VSU:

We too believe that this is a huge strategic initiative for our community. And we were thrilled after the meeting that we attended that the city, the county, both educational institutions, the Industrial Authority, everyone there, the hospital for sure, all agreed that this had to be a significant incentive.

Mary Gooding added:

At Valdosta State it’s becoming one of our biggest road barriers to online degrees, to online classes. That’s again more bandwidth that’s needed to be able to deliver degrees and classes online.

That’s all good, but where were the superintendents and school boards of the two K-12 school systems? Where were library Continue reading →

Broadband top priority, education, jobs, quality of life —Angela Crance @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Angela Crance, Special Assistant to the President of Wiregrass Georgia Technical College, told the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013:

I’m here for Wiregrass, and we just want to thank you for bringing this up and making it a top priority for the community [looking at Lowndes County Commission Chairman Bill Slaughter] and the Industrial Authority….

 

 

It’s definitely a priority for us…. Only 14% of our citizens have a college degree and we need 70% to have a college degree within ten years. To be able to accomplish that we’d better have

Continue reading →