All Meetings will be held at 5:30pm in the Industrial Authority Conference Room, 2110 N. Patterson Street, unless otherwise notified.I would post a link to their agenda, if they had it online, but they don’t.
Meanwhile, here they are.
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Roy Copeland |
Tom Call |
Mary Gooding |
Norman Bennett |
Jerry Jennett, Chairman |
On the front page of the paper VDT today County Manager Joe Pritchard
proposes further restrictions on citizens in public County Commission
meetings:
“We cannot stop anybody from taking video of a session; but we can limit them to one area; it’s distracting to us and to citizens to have somebody running around the session trying to get different angles,” said Joe Pritchard, county manager.The only person I’ve seen running around the session trying to get different angles is Paige Dukes, County Clerk. Will she now be prohibited from coming out from behind the bar to take pictures of awards and such?
Why they can’t stop anybody from taking video, according to Georgia law, O.C.G.A. § 50-14-1-c.:
“Visual, sound, and visual and sound recording during open meetings shall be permitted.”Some courts do put some restrictions on visual recordings, such as prohibiting pictures of jurors. But the Lowndes County Commission is not a court. It is the only elected body for the entire county, and thus the only public forum at which citizens can peacefully assemble to petition their local government for redress of county-wide grievances.
Does the Commission really want to put more restrictions on citizens in its meetings,
even though a constitutional scholar is questioning
the constitutionality of
the rules they recently passed?
Rules which limit the number of speakers in Citizens Wishing to be Heard to 10
and
Continue reading
Sure, everyone wants jobs for the people right now and jobs
so the children don’t have to go somewhere else to find one.
But what good is that if those jobs suck up all the water
those children need to drink?
This is the problem:
“What I believe the three most important things are, not only for our community, and our state, and our country, but for our country, thats jobs number 1, jobs number 2, and jobs.”
I shook Brad Lofton’s hand after that speech and told him I liked it, because I did: in general it was a positive speech about real accomplishments. I’ve also pointed out I had a few nits with that speech. This one is more than a nit. This one is basic philosophy and policy.
Now one would expect an executive director of an industrial authority to be all about jobs. And that would be OK, if Continue reading
The
Longleaf Alliance
came up with some doozies of old fire-suppression propaganda
at the
Longleaf Workshops at Wiregrass Tech today.
Just in case you couldn’t visualize this enemy well enough, how about as a pale skeleton on a white horse with a B-movie torch?WOODS FIRES
EVERYMAN’S ENEMY
Ooh, those shadowy letters!DEATH RIDES
THE FOREST
If all else fails, go for fake religious injunctions, such as Continue reading
This sums it up:
“Taking fire out of the longleaf forest is like taking rain out of the rain forest.”But there’s a lot more to learn about the formerly largest-ranging forest in North America. The Longleaf Alliance is doing a series of Longleaf Workshops around Georgia, in conjunction with the Georgia Forestry Commission
I went to the one at
Wiregrass Technical College at Valdosta.
Here is EJ Williams giving an overview:
Good crowd: more than 50 people.
More later.
We’re on break now.
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.jpg)
Shortly after GA EPD approved the
final air quality construction permit for the proposed
biomass plant, new contracts were signed between Wiregrass Power LLC
and the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA).
Update 10 Feb 2011: JPEG images of each page are also available now.
Here they are, as PDFs generated from scans of paper copies.
These documents were obtained by an open records request by a citizen who then gave copies to LAKE.
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Remember,
the new rules take effect at the upcoming County Commission meeting:
The Lowndes County front page has links to the resolution the Commission passed last time, to the new rules, and to the new sign-in sheet, along with this notice: Continue reading
Buddy Boswell of Daily Dinners Personal Chef Service
talks about eating better by cooking fresh food.
He reminisces about what his grandmother taught him.
And he says a gourmet is just somebody who likes good food
with good fresh ingredients.
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Following up on his previous correspondence. -jsq
Continue readingFrom: Russ Anderson
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:20:24 -0500
Subject: Re: Attn: Clarifications on my comments
To: blofton@industrialauthority.com, info@sterlingplanet.com, bmaddox@sterlingplanet.comBrad,
I’m not saying the project is good, responsible, that it will actually happen, and def. not that you are in any way right in your opinions of “green” and “renewable”.
Furthermore, I really wish you could get beyond the talking point of “the agencies and groups endorsing similar projects”, because again that is a highly contestable and skewed figure as many local, regional, and national agencies, groups, and networks still voice heavy opposition to this issue and biomass incineration.
Using words like green, renewable, etc. does not magically make it so. I know all about framing language and tactics of those wishing to line their pockets and exploit subsidy and tax loopholes. The simple fact that you are so set in your opinion and mentality is quite alarming..
For example, I am more than willing to embrace control technologies and
Continue readingDate: Wed, 26 Jan 2011 21:59:50 -0500
From: noll_family
To: apaulk@lowndescounty.com, jevans@lowndescounty.com, rraines@lowndescounty.com, cpowell@lowndescounty.com
CC: kay.harris, “John S. Quarterman”
Subject: Last Night’s MeetingDear Chairman Paulk and Commissioners.
Thanks for providing my wife and I and others opposed to the biomass plant the opportunity to address you last night. As a follow-up to last night’s meeting, let me share some thoughts with you, including reflections on a comment made about other “biomass incinerators” in our county and the continuing myth that biomass constitutes a “health benefit”: