The Lowndes County Commission Tuesday
voted in
and
Chairman Paulk announced
new
Policies and Procedures for Citizens Wishing to Be Heard
Interestingly, since the Commission rushed through these new rules after the last meeting, there was no time to completely implement them, so the first thing the Chairman did was to set them aside for this meeting.
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Metro Atlanta cities want to air their business in living rooms. Alpharetta agreed to spend $68,000 for a video recording system in its council chambers. Dunwoody will shell out $93,000 for a digital video recording system, enabling residents to view city council and planning commission meetings live from home.Continue readingWhile not every city electronically records its council meetings, the practice has become increasingly popular.
“It’s an overall trend of cities, going where people are to share information, to keep people in touch,” said Amy Henderson, Georgia Municipal Association spokeswoman.
Here
I discuss with the mayor
about the Valdosta City Council videoing their entire meetings and putting
them on the web for everybody to see.
The mayor indicated costs of streaming was an issue;
I recommended putting it on YouTube or Vimeo and letting them handle that part.
I think the AJC article he mentioned is this one:
Meeting access video grows among city councils,
by Patrick Fox, 18 Jan 2011.
This comment by the mayor was amusing:
The worst thing you could do would be to have one camera in the back that has room audio.Touche, Mr. Mayor! :-) What do you think, is a noisy video from the back of the room more useful than no video at all? Can you see him waving his arms around? Continue reading
At Serenity Church in Valdosta, 15 Jan 2011,
Gladys Lee from Brooks County addressed the Quitman 10 about
justice anywhere,
about the
spirit of conviction,
and she said
“We are residents, property owners, taxpaying voters!”.
Speaking
as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Floyd Rose addressed the
Quitman 10 and the congregation:
Now I want to say though we’ve met on what would have been my 87th birthday may be some place of honor. For this honor I want to thank you, and I must say to you: unless the schools you have named for me teach children how to live as much as how to make a living they will become little more than battlegrounds for the frustrated individuals. Unless the bridges that you have named for meContinue reading
VLCIA catches up with LAKE in posting videos of 6 Dec 2010 biomass event.
But where’s the VLCIA FAQ website?
Update 24 Jan 2011 7:13 PM: Bruce J. Bendl found the FAQ.
In this video,
Brad Lofton tells the VLCIA board that staff have put a lot
of time and effort into building a website to answer
frequently asked questions about biomass, including
videos from the 6 Dec 2010 event.
When I congratulated Lofton on this
and asked the board for an answer to one of those qeustions,
I didn’t think to ask for a URL for this new website,
figuring it would be announced on
the main VLCIA website.
If it’s there, I don’t see it.
However, VLCIA has sprouted
a YouTube channel
in which the long-awaited professional videos from the 6 Dec 2010 event
have appeared, six weeks after the event.
More on that below. Meanwhile,
LAKE’s videos of the entire event have been on YouTube
since a few days after the event.
Continue reading
Local industry for local jobs: feedback loops?
At the 21 Dec 2010 board meeting,
Brad Lofton and the VLCIA board talk about
exanding local industry, namely PCA and AlphaProTech.
Lofton says AlphaProTech will add 50 new jobs.
Hm, 50 is more than 25 slated for the biomass plant.
And nobody even has to trade AlphaProTech land for them to produce these jobs!
According to
their website, AlphaProTech sells:
“protective apparel, infection control and extended care products in addition to a line of construction weatherization building products for the housing market.”Hm, so if VLCIA promoted refitting local houses it would also be promoting AlphaProTech.
It’s interesting to hear Gary Minchew say regarding one company:
“we just don’t need to be the front man”
Interesting that VLCIA is not willing to be the front man for local industry (as we’ve also seen in this response from Col. Ricketts), when VLCIA clearly is the front man for Sterling Energy and Wiregrass Power LLC, neither of which are from around here.
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At the 18 Jan 2011 VLCIA board meeting,
Brad Lofton congratulated Roy Copeland.
Lofton seems to be referring to Copeland’s membership in the
THE TOP 100 TRIAL LAWYERS – Georgia,
A Professional, Educational, and Business Organization of Trial Attorneys.
There appear to actually be 90 members.
I congratulate Roy Copeland on his membership.
I can’t quite make out whether he also received an
award from the same organization.
Anyway, here’s the video:
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Grow crops to burn for fuel, or for food?
Valdosta City Council member
James Wright brings up
an article about farmers growing plants for biomass fuel.
These things get passed around by council members, and I’m pretty sure
this one that came to me indirectly is it:
November 12, 2010 – Incentivizing Renewable Biomass Production,
by New Energy Farms, Leamington, Ontario.
What they’re mainly recommending is
Miscanthus,
which is a genus of clump grass.
Now call me old-fashioned, but I prefer local farmers growing food Continue reading
Want to know what your city council really thinks?
Stay through the entire meeting
and you’ll get some clues; or watch these videos by some who did stay.
City Manager, Attorney, and each council member say what’s on their minds.
Much of it addresses some of the questions asked by citizens earlier:
cracks in the MLK monument, biomass,
council members answering questions from the audience, etc.
What they didn’t talk about may indicate what various citizens
didn’t succeed in conveying to the council.
It’s not like what they were saying was a secret. The VDT reporter was there. They were finishing up the agenda with the sections “7. City Manager’s Report” and “8. Council Comments”. You can see them adjourn at the end. Some of them groused about the time citizens take up in “Citizens Wishing to be Heard”.
But remember, almost none of those citizens bothered to stay around to listen to them. Among the stay-latest: two cameras for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange, providing you these two views: Continue reading
First-time speaker Matt Flumerfelt notes the Valdosta City Council
and the Lowndes County Commission both disclaim responsibility for the
Industrial Authority even though both appoint its members,
and he thinks that may make VLCIA’s contract for the biomass plant
challengeable on constitutional grounds.
He also sent LAKE the appended article on 20 Jan 2011.
Video by John S. Quarterman of the regular meeting of the Valdosta City Council, 20 January 2011, for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Continue readingFaith In Technology Is What Got Us Into This Mess
by Matt FlumerfeltMany people in the Valdosta-Lowndes County community have faith that the proposed Biomass incinerator won’t harm anyone or anything, but faith in technology is what got us into our current environmental mess in the first place. Those old enough to remember the nuclear power debate will remember how many people gave assurances that nuclear power was safe, yet we see today how difficult nuclear waste is to dispose of and how much damage it has caused when things go wrong, which, human nature being what it is, they inevitably do. The recent gulf oil spill would not have happened if