Tag Archives: Gretchen Quarterman

Petition the Commission: Keep County Road 16 leading to the Alapaha River open to public access

Seen Monday. -jsq


Lowndes County Commission: Keep County Road 16 leading to the Alapaha River open to public access.



Petition by

April Huntley

This access to the Alapaha River is the only remaining public access
within Lowndes County. It has great historical significance to the
Naylor community. It continues to be used by boaters, fishermen and
families for recreation.



To:

Lowndes County Commission

Keep County Road 16 leading to the Alapaha River open to public access.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

The Commission

decided 26 October 2010 to keep that road open



but because they think they have new information

have scheduled it for another public hearing and vote

apparently at their next Regular Session,
which is next Tuesday, 12 February 2013.

-jsq

Video, hearing about abandoning Old State Road at the Alapaha River @ LCC 2010-10-26



Here is video of the

public hearing in which the Lowndes County Commission
decided 26 October 2010
not to abandon a portion of Old State Road leading to the Alapaha River.



This is the same stretch of road

that's scheduled for another such hearing in two weeks from tomorrow.



The camera aim is a bit erratic, and you can see why we hadn't already
posted this video (which is actually several briefer videos pasted together
with a few gaps).
Yet you can clearly see, after
Glenda Cofield and

Steve Bays

spoke against closing the road,



someone else

started speaking from the audience.
Then



Commissioner Joyce Evans
asked those opposed to stand up,
and many people did.
You can see County Engineer Mike Fletcher in the background.












Presumably some of the people who stood were among the 450 people
mentioned in

the minutes:

Glenda Cofield, Mullins Lane, spoke against the request, and presented
a petition submitted prior to the work session with the unverified
signatures of 450 area residents included.

Why were the signatures still unverified if she submitted the petition
before the work session of the previous day?

Continue reading

Public Hearing for Road Abandonment of Old State Road @ LCC 2010-10-26

In 2010, 450 people signed a petition to keep open
the road leading to Hotchkiss Landing on the Alapaha River,
according

the Lowndes County Commission minutes

for the 26 October 2010 Public Hearing.




Photograph by Brett Huntley.

Abandon a portion of Old State Road (CR 16), County
Manager, Joe Pritchard, presented the road closure for consideration,
adding that the engineering department had indicated twenty-five
vehicles per day on the road. Glenda Cofield, Mullins Lane, spoke
against the request, and presented

Continue reading

I have obtained the binder of the documents —Joe Pritchard

The County Manager has found the legal documents on
issuance of the
the bonds Chairman Slaughter listed in his letter of 18 January
.

Received yesterday (as a *.docx file, and still to the wrong email address,
but this time including both residence and postal addresses),
County Manager Joe Pritchard followed up on his

email of 29 January
,
in which he had seemed puzzled about the term

"financial instruments"

(it's a standard term in business and investing)
such as

I asked for 28 January
.
I thank Mr. Pritchard once again for responding.
(I thanked Chairman Bill Slaughter in person the other day.)
The relevant correspondance about the flyer that Mr. Pritchard
previously wrote

was created by the VDT
is still missing.
I will ask for that Monday, when I respond to Mr. Pritchard's most courteous
offer to inspect the financial instruments.

Here's Mr. Pritchard's letter.
-jsq


Joe Pritchard

February 1, 2013

John Quarterman

6565 Quarterman Road

3338 Country Club Road #L336

Valdosta, GA 31605

Dear Mr. Quarterman:

To follow up my email of yesterday, I have obtained the binder of
the documents executed at the closing of the $15,500,000 CVDA

Continue reading

Created by the newspaper, not the county —Joe Pritchard



Thanks to County Manager Joe Pritchard for responding to

my letter of Monday.

He partly (but not completely) answered my question by saying the VDT did it.
More on that later.

He included a PDF copy of

Bill Slaughter’s letter of January 18th
.
Perhaps Mr. Pritchard was unaware that letter didn’t
reach me until after my letter of Monday, because the
county sent it to the wrong address.
Mr. Pritchard’s email response was also sent to the wrong address,
although fortunately email to that business address does reach me.
He also copied the Chairman at his business address instead of at
his Lowndes County address.
In any case, electronic copy is almost always more useful than paper,
so I thank Mr. Pritchard for sending that PDF copy.

Here’s Mr. Pritchard’s letter. -jsq

Continue reading

Regarding the recently refinanced bonds —Bill Slaughter

Many thanks to Lowndes County Chairman Bill Slaughter for taking
the time to respond to a citizen's question in Citizens Wishing to Be Heard!
The response didn't actually answer my question, but that may be because
the question wasn't clear enough without a copy of

the flyer that claimed the county's new judicial and administrative complex
was "100% Paid by SPLOST" and "$0 Balance Owed"
;
see

next post.

An hour or two after I sent

a letter to County Manager Joe Pritchard Monday
,


someone from the county called to say Chairman Bill Slaughter
had sent me a letter in response to

my question to the Commission about bonds,

but it had been returned by the Post Office.
As you can see by the image of the envelope,
they sent it to my residence address, where I don't get mail.
That's why I always include my postal address on Citizens Wishing
to Be Heard forms, open records requests, etc.
Anyway, they made it available for pickup at the county palace.
Ten days after the PO sent it back to them is better than never.

Here's Chairman Slaughter's letter. -jsq

Continue reading

Tourism Board Meeting @ VLCCCTA 2013-01-23



Last week I went to the Rainwater Conference Center to attend the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Conference Center & Tourism Authority Board
Meeting.

I had discovered

the time and date of this meeting
by asking at the
information booth at the Conference Center one day when I was there
for another event.

I arrived slightly before the 8:00 appointed time and was greated
warmly by

Councilman Tim Carroll

and

Conference Center Director Tim Riddle
.


Being the Conference Center, they served a hot breakfast
(other morning boards have fruits and sweets but this was something
that you might get up for).

As 8:00 came there was apparently not a quorum, so calls went out to
missing

members
to see if one more could be attacted. At 8:15 it was
clear that there would be no additional members coming so no formal
meeting was held, no votes were taken but an informal review of the
agenda was performed:

Continue reading

Planning Commission yesterday: did you know? @ GLPC 2013-01-28

Did you see an agenda or an announcement that the Greater Lowndes
Planning Commission (GLPC) was meeting yesterday?

Agenda @ GLPC 2013-01-28

Nor did LAKE.
Matt Martin, Valdosta City Planner, usually sends an agenda to
Gretchen, but there were no Valdosta items on this agenda,
so he apparently didn’t even get one.
And the county still doesn’t publish GLPC agendas,
so if there was an item on there that affected you, how could you know?
Does that seem right to you?

On the agenda were three Lowndes County rezoning items,
all involving C-H (Highway Commercial),
and one Lake Park rezoning case, going to
R-P (Residential/Professional).
Here’s a summary of the cases.
You know, if I can do this in a couple of minutes by
typing it in from a photograph that Gretchen took, Lowndes County could
do it in a second by pressing Export to PDF.
Now that there’s a new Chairman, maybe he’ll say they should do that.

Lowndes County,

Final action

Tuesday 12 Feb 2013
4. REZ-2012-20 Corbett

US 41 South and Newsome Road, Valdosta

Request to rezone ~5 acres from E-A (Estate Agriculture) to
C-H (Highway Commercial)
5. REZ-2013-01 Barrentine

102 Davis Road East, Valdosta

Request to rezone 1.2 acres from
C-H (Highway Commercial)
to
R-1 (Low Density Residential)
6. REZ-2013-02 Interstate Land Management

Briarwood Road along I-75, Valdosta

Request to rezone 4.87 acres from
R-1 (Low Density Residential)
to
C-H (Highway Commercial)
Lake Park,

Final Action

Tuesday 5 Feb 2013
LP-12-2012-01 Karen K. Nolan and Blanche C. Bush

105 Broadway Street, Lake Park

Request to rezone 0.46 acres from
R-15 (Single Family Residential)
to
R-P (Residential/Professional)

-jsq

Dear Mr. Pritchard: How are we paying on something that was 100% paid off? —John S. Quarterman

I sent this today. -jsq

 

From: John S. Quarterman <questions@quarterman.com>

Cc: bslaughter@lowndescounty.com, jevans@lowndescounty.com, rraines@lowndescounty.com, cpowell@lowndescounty.com, dmarshall@lowndescounty.com, jpage@lowndescounty.com, questions@quarterman.com

Subject: How are we paying on something that was 100% paid off?

Dear Mr. Pritchard,

You may recall that at the Lowndes County Commission meeting
of the 8th of January 2013, I asked the following:

“When this building complex was opened in 2010, the county put out a


double-sheet flyer saying it was completely paid off out of SPLOST money,
with zero dollars owed. I’m wondering how it is that then, either in
November or

December
, the Commission just before your one here, refinanced
bonds that included I think it was six or seven million dollars for this
very building complex? I’m very confused by that. I wonder if someone
could clarify how we’re paying on something that was completely 100%
paid off with zero owed.”

I asked Commissioner Crawford Powell this question at the going-away
reception for former Chairman Ashley Paulk on 14 December 2012, and
he referred me to you for an answer. It has been more than two weeks
since I asked in a Commission Regular Session and I have received
no answer. So I ask again.

Specifically:

Continue reading

KLVB Alapaha River cleanup at Old State Road in 2007

So if Old State Road to the Alapaha River has, according to

the criteria recited by County Engineer Mike Fletcher
,
“ceased to be used by the public to the extent that
no substantial public purpose is served by it”,
why did Keep Lowndes/Valdosta Beautiful (KLVB) do a cleanup there in 2007?
Is the removal of that section of road
“from the county road system… in the public’s best interest”?

Jessica Pope wrote for the VDT 30 September 2007,

River cleanup
,

Saturday’s Alapaha River cleanup will be held in cooperation with
Rivers Alive, a statewide annual volunteer waterway cleanup that
targets Georgia’s 70,150 miles of streams and rivers each October,
and Hands On Georgia Week 2007, which will culminate on Saturday
with Hands on Atlanta Day, the largest volunteer service day in the
country. A number of volunteers will spend the day cleaning
Georgia’s waterways, building wheelchair ramps, collecting cans of
food for Georgia’s food banks and as picking up trash along
Georgia’s highways.


Anyone interested in participating in the Alapaha River cleanup
Saturday should head on U.S. 84 East past Naylor, turn left on Good
Hope Road then turn right on Old State Road. Small boats and canoes
are welcome. Registration will begin at 8:30 a.m., and participation
waivers must be signed.

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