Tag Archives: Law

Budget, Surplus, Abandonment, Evidence, Workers Comp, Manhole @ LCC 2015-01-26

Update 25 January 2015: Additional item #5 Anti-Chaining Ordinance Request – Dr. Amanda Hall;
see separate post.

Lowndes County won

an award for its budget as “a policy document, a financial plan, an operations guide and a communications device.”


All good except: as a communications device?
They’d probably have to publish drafts of it before they passed it for
that to be true.
Unless they mean as in a public telling, not a public hearing.
They won last year, too,

along with 45 other winners in Georgia,
including Valdosta.
Award, or passing grade?

No rezonings, but

surplus computing devices,
abandonment of
Deloach Road E (CR 95),
more on the
never-ending juvenile justice Evidence Based Associates topic,
and

sewer gasses corrode manhole covers. I wonder how much gases
corrode pipelines?

The agenda (PDF) still doesn’t give the dates; just Monday and Tuesday, so I’ve inserted them in [brackets].
But congratulations on having the agenda online a week in advance!

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

PROPOSED AGENDA

WORK SESSION, MONDAY, [January 26th] 8:30 a.m.

REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, [January 27th] 5:30 p.m.

327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor

Continue reading →

MLK and pipeline opposition

The fossil fuel opposition is the child and grandchild of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.


With their nonviolence, truth, and action as a model, we shall overcome.

Bill McKibben, The Guardian, 25 August 2011,

Martin Luther King’s legacy and the power of nonviolent civil disobedience:
In opposing the Keystone XL oil pipeline, demonstrators are getting a sense of the civil rights leader’s courage,

Preacher, speaker, writer under fire, but also tactician. He really
understood the power of nonviolence, a power we’ve experienced in
the last few days. When the police cracked down on us, the publicity
it produced cemented two of the main purposes of our protest: First,
it made Keystone XL “ the new, 1,700-mile-long pipeline we’re
trying to block that will vastly increase the flow of “dirty” tar
sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico “ into a
national issue. A few months ago, it was mainly people along the
route of the prospective pipeline who were organising against it.
(And with good reason: Continue reading →

Solar financing bill HB 57

You won’t have to mortgage the farm to install solar power if this bill passes,


because you’ll be able to get

reasonable financing.

Update 2015-02-07: HB 57 was favorably reported out of the
House Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications Committee 28 January 2015,
first time such a bill has ever cleared that hurdle.

The actual solar leasing bill in the Georgia House as of 14 January 2015
is

HB 57 “…to provide for financing of solar technology by retail electric customers for the generation of electric energy to be used on and by property owned or occupied by such customers or to be fed back to the electric service provider”, aka the “Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act of 2015.”
It includes the same old generation limits from the 1973 Territorial
Electric Service Act (10 Megawatts per individual and 100 MW per company),
but it blows a huge hole in the prohibition on power purchase agreements (PPAs).

Georgia Power and the Electric Membership Corporations have reportedly

already agreed on this bill.
If so, it should sail through the legislature.
Still, it won’t hurt to call your Georgia House member and ask them to vote for it,
and maybe become a co-sponsor.

Here’s PDF
of the bill, and
here’s the key provision: Continue reading →

DoJ ending civil asset forfeiture involving federal law

This should also reduce incarceration, through fewer unnecessary
stops, so fewer drug busts.
Next, how about end the failed War on Drugs?

By Robert O’Harrow Jr., Sari Horwitz and Steven Rich, Washington Post, 16 January 2015,

Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police,



Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state
police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property
without warrants or criminal charges.

Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power
to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three
decades ago as part of the war on drugs.

Since 2008, Continue reading →

Georgia Power claims credit for solar leasing bill

That

antique 1973 law may finally change to greatly facilitate
solar financing through power purchase agreements (PPAs),
now that Georgia Power has finally realized the good PR it’s
getting for its own solar power deployments.

Walter C. Jones, Jacksonville.com, 13 January 2015,

Solar access for residences, churches, small businesses could become easier under agreement,



ATLANTA | Homeowners, churches and small businesses would soon have
access to the financing available in two-dozen states for the
installation of solar panels with little upfront costs based on an
agreement announced Tuesday during a legislative hearing.

Coming up with $18,000 or more in cash to install photovoltaic
panels on the average home is difficult for most homeowners. But if
the agreement becomes law, they could lease their roof to companies
that pay them back with free electricity, selling the rest to the
utilities.

Or cities or counties.
Valdosta or Lowndes County, for instance, might save hundreds of
thousands of dollars a year on utility bills if they could finance
solar power through PPAs.

Georgia has the fastest-growing solar Continue reading →

Meet Greenlaw and EarthJustice in Waycross 2015-01-06



People are still sick and dying in Waycross, and
answers are still few, but now there’s increasing help,
and organization at a meeting next Tuesday.
Remember
wastewater from
the Waycross SevenOut SuperFund site was sent to the Pecan Row
Landfill in Valdosta, and

we could have similar sites here, too.
Helping Waycross is helping everyone deal with toxic chemicals. -jsq

Facebook event,

Meeting Announcement – Tuesday Evening, January 6, 2014, Continue reading →

Solar boom charts

When a power source grows 66% a year on average
people start taking notice.
Few had heard of

the Internet in 1993:
now it’s in your pocket.
In less than a decade, by 2023,

solar power will generate more energy than any other U.S. source.
To keep Georgia from being left behind, this is the year to

change a 1973 law.

If charts like this one aren’t familiar yet,
they will be in the next year or two:



Tim McDonnell, Mother Jones, 7 November 2014,

Here Comes the Sun: America’s Solar Boom, in Charts:
It’s been a bit player, but solar power is about to shine.

At 66% more per year, solar power’s current 1% of U.S. electricity
next year will be 1.66%, then 2.76%, then Continue reading →

Zero percent down solar installations for Georgia? Change a 1973 law first

Who would pass up cutting their monthly electric and transportation
costs by 60%?
Well, people in Georgia will get passed by unless
we change an antique 1973 law.

Chris Mooney wrote for Washington Post 24 December 2014,

How solar power and electric cars could make suburban living awesome again,



…the solar-EV combo may just be too good for suburbanites to pass
up — no matter their political ideology. Strikingly, the new
paper estimates that for a household that buys an electric vehicle
and also owns a solar panel system generating enough power for both
the home and the electric car, the monthly cost might be just $89
per month — compared with $255 per month for a household
driving a regular car without any solar panels.

I’m
no fan of sprawl, Continue reading →

Videos: Swearing Commissioners this morning @ LCC 2014-12-19



Here are videos of
swearing in the new Commissioners,
Commissioners, Mark Wisenbaker (District 3) and Scott Orenstein (District 2),
and also the re-elected Commissioner, Demarcus Marshall (District 4),
by
Senior Superior Court Judge, H. Arthur McLane, at 10 AM this morning,
19 December 2014. Continue reading →

Swearing Commissioners this morning

On the county’s website under News Flash aka Spotlight
(but not in the county’s calendar),

New County Commissioners scheduled for ceremony,

On December 19, at 10:00 a.m., Senior Superior Court Judge, H.
Arthur McLane, will swear in newly elected Commissioners, Mark
Wisenbaker (District 3) and Scott Orenstein (District 2). The new
Commissioners will officially take office effective January 1, 2015.
You are invited to attend this event to be held in the Commission
Chambers, Lowndes County Administrative Building, 327 North Ashley
Street, Valdosta, Georgia.

-jsq