Only fifteen minutes on any topic, said Chairman Bill Slaughter, even though 8 people wanted to speak about trash at last night’s Lowndes County Commission Regular Session. But there is no such rule in the county’s relevant ordinance.
He was enforcing an odd mashup of the county’s 25 January 2013 ordinance about
Citizens Wishing to Be Heard.
It does have these two rules: Continue reading
At last night’s
Lowndes County Commission Regular Session,
Commissioner John Page prayed about
“the freedoms to serve in government, knowing that this government is supposed to be of the people by the people and for the people”.But the Commission seems to care more about this part he also said:
“our decisions and everything be done decently and in order”.
The county government still seems determined to take
the shirts
off these people’s backs.
Here’s the video:
Freedom or Order?
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 June 2013.
-jsq
Update 23 June 2013:
Now with sound!
Update 24 June 2013: Added links to separate posts for the newly audible items.
Unscheduled: Emergency Director Ashley Tye said more about
the proposed juvenile justice grant;
Kevin Beals announced the winners of the county’s
Wellness Weightloss Challenge;
and three
unscheduled Library Board applicants.
You can hear starting with the third of those last, but
you can’t hear the few potential appointees for KLVB, VLCCCTA, ZBOA, because
the county’s sound system
was out (due to a consultant or lightning, depending on who you ask)
and Gretchen didn’t notice and go to the camera’s mic until a few minutes in.
They did talk about
fixing the sewer force main that spilled into the Withlacoochee River.
Nothing was said about
the exclusive franchise for solid waste services.
Maybe you’d like to come tonight and say a few words.
Here’s the agenda, plus links to the videos and a few notes.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERSContinue reading
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, JUNE 10, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Why did the Lowndes County Commission make
this exclusive franchise
with a Florida or Alabama or New York company
and then
sue a local Lowndes County company after
the VDT reported the previous spring that any contract
would be non-exclusive and wouldn’t put anybody out of business?
Here, obtained by LAKE through an open records request,
is the
contract with ADS of Middle Georgia, LLC.
The
the agenda item for the 11 December 2012 Commission meeting at which
this contract was approved
says ADS of Central Alabama, Inc.
The contract says ADS is “a Florida corporation”,
and we know ADS is owned by
Highstar Capital of New York City.
Once again,
why is granting a cheap monopoly to an out-of-state company
more important than either letting local companies compete for the service
or having the county continue to provide a public service directly to
its taxpayers and citizens?
The termination clause I pointed out to the Commission after an ADS executive made excuses for nonperformance is Paragraph 18 of the contract:
Continue reading
No names for appointments (KLVB, VLCCCTA, ZBOA),
and nothing on the agenda about
solid waste collection
or
the public hearing they didn’t hold
or
why they picked Veolia’s highest bid
or
ADS buying more companies when its spokesman said that wasn’t forseen
or
how much the Commission forsees waste collection fees going up
or
suing a local company
at the Lowndes County Commission.
Wasterwater is on the agenda twice,
which is good after that
sewer spill into the Withlacoochee River,
but nothing about
a five-year action plan.
Let’s listen to what the preacher Commissioners pray about:
that’s usually a clue to what’s on their minds,
even if they proceed to do the opposite.
Here’s the agenda.
Continue reading
Here’s a
video playlist
of Wednesday morning’s
Lowndes County Commission Budget Discussion Meeting.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 5 June 2013.
They broke for lunch shortly before noon, and Gretchen had another appointment, so the video ends there, although the Commission apparently continued te discussion in the afternoon. Hm, if they had real discussion at their other meetings, they wouldn’t have to save it up for long marathon sessions like this….
-jsq
Yesterday’s County Commission meeting was billed as a
Budget Discussion Meeting,
and apparently it was not a public hearing on the county’s budget,
because state law requires such a hearing to be advertised in the newspaper
or published as a news story, a week in advance.
This is different from public notice for other Commission meetings:
for budget hearings the notice has to be not just sent to the newspaper:
it has to be published, and not in the legal notices section,
and it has to appear at least a week before the hearing.
It’s also illegal
to refuse to provide a copy of the submitted
draft budget to the public or the news media:
O.C.G.A. 36-81-5.(d) On the day that the proposed budget is submitted to the governing
authority for consideration, a copy of the budget shall be placed in a public location which is convenient to the residents of the unit of local government. The governing authority shall make every effort to provide convenient access to the residents during reasonable business hours so as to accord every opportunity to the public to review the budget prior to adoption by the governing authority. A copy of the budget shall also be made available, upon request, to the news media.
LAKE is a news medium,
according to federal law.
Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts has Georgia Law on Local Government Budgets: Continue reading
Speaking of Veolia winning its high bid for garbage collection, here’s a clue to how much more its rates may go up.
Remember
ADS Veolia was bought hardly a month later by ADS, owned by Highstar Capital
of New York City?
Look at ADS’s bid for Proposal D: $18.39.
That’s $220.68 a year. Which is even higher than Wakulla County, Florida’s $196 a year, which Gretchen warned us all about more than a year ago. And more than double the $100 a year for the former county waste collection sites.
Want to guess how much ADS’s monthly rates will rise? Maybe Continue reading
Popped up since 3PM today on the Lowndes County Commission online calendar:
That’s tomorrow morning, the morning after the Georgia Supreme Court decision about LOST was expected today.Budget Discussion Meeting (6/5/2013)
On June 5, 2013, at 8:30 a.m., the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners will meet for a budget discussion, in the Executive Conference Room on the 3rd Floor of the Lowndes County Administration Building. For more information, please contact the Office of the County Clerk at 229-671-2400.
-jsq
The facts don’t match County Chairman Bill Slaughter’s assertion
(according to the VDT Thursday):
That decision was made in a good-faith effort to find the lowest possible rate for garbage service for the citizens of Lowndes County, he said Tuesday.
Commissioner Richard Raines moved and the Commission voted to approve 9 October 2012 Proposal D and awarded it to the lowest bidder for that specific proposal, which was Veolia. But that wasn’t the lowest-priced proposal, according to the sheet of choices they were using in that meeting:
Continue reading