Dr. Noll raised a number of issues about community priorities
at the Lowndes County Commission meeting of 22 March 2011
and asked what are our priorities?
The Sierra Club letter he mentions was posted last week. For NOAA Weather Radios see previous posts. Here is the video:
California can do it, and it turns out Brooks County can do it:
install solar hot water heaters on low-cost housing.
In Brooks County, they also installed solar electric panels.
Kevin Skeath explains the 2.03 kilowatt solar electric panels
on an apartment office, 9 solar thermal systems on the apartments,
and how you can reduce your power bill upwards of 30% just by heating
your regular hot water, and even more by using it for heating your rooms.
Continue reading
Speaking to the Lowndes County Commission on 8 March 2011,
Nolen Cox said businesses produce money and government consumes it,
and he doesn’t like taxes.
He appears to be opposed to the ESPLOST election.
He’s the same fellow who introduced the topic of climate change denial in a Lowndes County Commission meeting.
Here’s the video.
-jsq
Speaking to the Lowndes County Commission on 8 March 2011,
I read from
VLCIA “inter-governmental funding agreement” with Lowndes County,
noting that VLCIA’s own audited annual financial report seems to be out of date,
since it still says VLCIA asks the Lowndes County Commission for its funds.
And I wondered about this part in Note F:
The bonds are secured by an “inter-governmental” funding agreement between the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority and Lowndes County, Georgia.I repeated what I wrote before:
If the Lowndes County government is co-guarantor of VLCIA’s bonds, how can the Lowndes County Commission say it has no responsibility or control over what VLCIA does? I am not a CPA, but the term “fiduciary responsibility” comes to mind.
I quoted myself from VLCIA Bonds: $15M becomes $23.5M?
If I’m reading that right (I am not a CPA), VLCIA took out about $15M in bonds for which they will pay back a total of about $23.5M. Is that really $8.5M in debt service, or about 56% of the original principal?I pointed out that VLCIA seems to have about $8.3 million in cash Continue reading
We are the media, and you can be, too!
According to the OPEN Government Act of 2007:
[T]he term ‘a representative of the news media’ means any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience. In this clause, the term ‘news’ means information that is about current events or that would be of current interest to the public. Examples of news-media entities are television or radio stations broadcasting to the public at large and publishers of periodicals (but only if such entities qualify as disseminators of ‘news’) who make their products available for purchase by or subscription by or free distribution to the general public. These examples are not all-inclusive. Moreover, as methods of news delivery evolve (for example, the adoption of the electronic dissemination of newspapers through telecommunications services), such alternative media shall be considered to be news-media entities.
Here is the bill’s full text. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy and 17 others, ranging from Sen. Barack Obama to Sen. Johnny Isakson. It was signed into law by President George W. Bush 31 December 2007.
Of course that’s really just a detail, having to do with the
Wikileaks comparison.
Most of what LAKE does has more to do with Georgia law, about open records requests and this passage, O.C.G.A. § 50-14-1-c.:
“Visual, sound, and visual and sound recording during open meetings shall be permitted.”
None of that requires a news medium. Any citizen can file open records requests or record public meetings. Remember, you are the media!
-jsq for
LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange
Are NOAA Weather Radios “wasteful spending”?
We’ve already seen staff present the case for about 5,000 NOAA Weather Radios at $21.50 each, paid for out of grant money. They made that case at the 8:30AM 7 Feb 2011 Lowndes County Commission Work Session.
At the regular session the next day (5:30 PM Tuesday 8 Feb 2011),
citizen Nolen Cox spoke against the NOAA grant and more generally said
“just say no to grants”.
He also went on at some length about how he didn’t believe in climate change.
Nevermind that the fifth U.S. or British board of inquiry has
reconfirmed yet again that the data and analysis for climate change
are solid.
EMA Director Ashley Tye summarized the case for NOAA Weather radios,
according to the minutes,
stating Lowndes County had been awarded $107,500.00, in Hazard Mitigation grant funding for the purchase of 5,000 NOAA weather radios to benefit all of Lowndes County. Mr. Tye added that Alert Works had presented the low bid in the amount of $21.50 per radio.Finally, the Commission had some discussion. According to the minutes: Continue reading
We’ve already heard about NOAA Weather Radios from two different citizens,
Nolen Cox
and Ken Klanicki.
What are they talking about?
As usual, much of the discussion was in the work session
(8:30 AM Monday 7 Feb 2011), available here in two parts.
In Part 1 staff talks about buying about 5,000 NOAA weather radios so the citizens can get weather news. Low bidder would charge $21.50 per radio.
In Part 2, staff notes that the grant would require that the radios can’t be earmarked, so people could come to the county office to pick up radios, and staff proposes to have several community events throughout the community, well-advertised, for people to pick up radios and staff to answer questions about them.
One of the commissioners notes:
That’s almost $108,000 tax money what happens to that grant money if, we say you know, it might not be a good idea […] what happens to that?Continue reading
Some people compare LAKE to Wikileaks, so let’s go there.
Julian Assange, like
Wendell Berry,
links the civil rights movement and the environmental movement.
He
then says:
“For the Internet generation this is our challenge and this is our time. We support a cause that is no more radical a proposition than that the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state. The state has asserted its authority by surveilling, monitoring and regimenting all of us, all the while hiding behind cloaks of security and opaqueness. Surely it was only a matter of time before citizens pushed back and we asserted our rights.”
LAKE’s motto is:
Citizen dialog for transparent processThat makes Assange’s proposition
“the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state”sound very familiar to us.
Locally it’s more a matter of elected and appointed bodies ignoring their chartered responsibilities to the public good and the general welfare. Well, many people are also tired of the permit inspection brigade, but that’s another story.
Assange also adds: Continue reading
The Lowndes County Commission seems to have suddenly gone from
lecturing citizens about how it’s a waste of tax money for
people to speak too often to inviting all sorts of citizen
groups to show up and speak or be recognized.
I call that a good thing.
We’ll see if this
era of good feelings lasts.
In addition to
the many students speaking about Tranqulity Trail,
at the same meeting the Chairman recognized
a Boy Scout troop
(at least I think that’s what that one was)
and
Boy Scout Troop 418
(I’m pretty sure about that one).
Also the
Chidren’s Advocacy Center
(more about that one later).
And
Sheriff Prine thanked the Commission for their support
in
searching Ocean Pond for seventeen days.
-jsq
Valdosta City Council member James Wright and students speak
to the County Commission about
Tranquility Trail.
The students have a number of good points, such as
“It’s not about me but our community”
and
“Don’t Litter, Make Our Trail Glitter”,
and
trees have educational and recreational benefits,
and
“We need our community to come in with us…
how our community can get involved.”
James Wright wraps up with
“Development of our community and our citizens.”
There’s more. Here’s the whole thing:
-jsq