Tag Archives: Law

Tybee Island will not scan tourist license plates

Maybe Lowndes County could also welcome tourists instead of using them as a ticketing revenue stream that’s costing us $200,000 to process. And maybe both Lowndes County and Valdosta could put their agenda packets online like tiny (population 3,067) Tybee Island does.

Jim Galloway wrote for the AJC today, Your daily jolt: Tybee Island nixes license plate surveillance,

Tybee Island has decided that the National Security Agency isn’t a model worth following. On Monday, The coastal city’s council retracted its approval of a pair of license plate scanners intended to greet tourists. From the Savannah Morning News:
Citing mostly negative feedback from the public and concerns over how the information from the scanners would translate to a tourism study being conducted by a local professor, the council instead voted to purchase a higher quality model of the current hose-like vehicle counter the city has stretched over U.S. 80.

Meanwhile, the Lowndes County Sheriff’s office last year was Continue reading →

Local company trashed County Commission lawsuit

According to Deep South Sanitation’s facebook page today, DSS won the court case brought against them by the Lowndes County Commission.

So how much money did the alleged County Attorney spend sueing a local company to benefit ADS investors in New York City? The County Commission was very concerned recently about how much the Sheriff and the Coroner spent (which the Sheriff and the Coroner ably rebutted). Why isn’t the Commission as concerned about spending money on a completely unnecessary lawsuit that they started? Why do they let that same attorney set prices for purchase orders?

That exclusive franchise with ADS: not so exclusive anymore, is it?

Will ADS sue the county, as many people rumored was the Commission’s greatest fear?

Will the county now have to pay DSS’s attorney fees? As a taxpayer I don’t like the idea of wasting more of my tax dollars on that lawsuit, so maybe they could take it out of the fees or salaries of whoever recommended and approved that lawsuit.

Maybe somebody down at the county should “check our work”.

-jsq

Maybe county should check its work about other budgets @ LCC 2013-11-14

Who’s responsible for the recent partiality in budget reports? The newspaper, or its source of information, namely the county government at its secretive retreat on the Chairman’s private property that even the VDT reporter had trouble finding?

When the Coroner and the Sheriff (often at odds lately) agree that the VDT’s version of the county government’s remarks about their budgets was at best partial, where is the source of that partiality? Who’s responsible for budgeting for the county, reporter Matthew or editor Kay Harris or Dean Poling? Or is it the local government our taxes pay to do that job, namely the Lowndes County Commission and its staff, which is managed by County Manager Joe Pritchard?

Maybe somebody down at the county palace should, as Gretchen suggested recently, “check our work”.

-jsq

Coroner responds to County Commission about budget @ LCC 2013-11-14

Like the Sheriff, the Coroner reports that something’s rotten in the Lowndes County Commission and staff’s version of his budget.

Dean Poling write for the VDT today, Coroner responds to county budget issues,

Lowndes County Coroner Bill Watson explained Friday that comments calling him one of the county budget’s “worst offenders” did not explain why his office’s expenses change from year to year.

“I have no control over the number of people that dies each year,” Watson told The Times, “and I have to fund the transportation for autopsies. Any time there is an autopsy, it costs my office about $750.”

These costs include Continue reading →

Sheriff responds to County Commission about budget @ LCC 2013-11-14

LTE in the VDT today. -jsq

Sheriff’s Response to “budget woes”

The Sheriff’s Office has received a lot of criticism in the last several months. It appears to be the fashionable thing these days and an easy target. Sheriff Prine did not receive an invitation to the Chairman’s personal property for a review of the county’s budget and criticism of the Sheriff’s budget in particular. There are some facts that have not been reported by the Valdosta Daily Times, which may or may not have been provided.

First it should be noted that the Sheriff’s Office general fund budget was reduced from last year’s budget by $171,306. This was before another $130,492 was taken away in August as a result of shift in traffic citation processing responsibilities to the Clerk’s Office.

A closer look at some of the specific line items targeted for criticism will show Continue reading →

Commissioners listened about the pipeline @ LCC 2013-10-22

Commissioners at least listened about the proposed Sabal Trail Transmission pipeline, at the Lowndes County Commission Regular Session 2013-10-22. Now what will they do?

Video. The Chairman started out reiterating his disclaimer of county responsibility from back in June, but at least this time said they’d take a look at it and they understood what people were going through. Carol Singletary started to respond, and Slaughter said they would talk to her in a few minutes. And they did.

Here’s Part 1 of 2:


Commissioners listened about the pipeline Part 1 of 2:
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 October 2013.

Video of after adjournment. See previous post about how unusual Continue reading →

It was an outright threat –Ronald Kicklighter on Sabal Trail pipeline @ LCC 2013-10-22

A citizen didn’t appreciate a pipeline company’s bullying, especially when a second pipeline would make his land mostly useless and hard to sell, at the Lowndes County Commission Regular Session 2013-10-22.

Video. He said he had an existing pipeline less than fifty feet from his back yard, and this one would be less than sixty feet on the other side, wiping out the use of much of his property, including planting trees. He said he probably couldn’t even sell his property with two pipelines on it. He asked for help from the Commission.

Commissioner Crawford Powell asked for the name of the road Kicklighter lived on.

Here’s the video: Continue reading →

This company is awful –Phillip Singletary on Sabal Trail pipeline @ LCC 2013-10-22

A citizen brought up the sordid health and safety record Spectra Energy, at the Lowndes County Commission Regular Session 2013-10-22.

Video. He thanked Commissioner Marshall for coming to the Spectra pipeline meeting at Wiregrass Tech 16 Oct 2013, and said that meeting wasn’t very informative. He asked Commissioners to put themselves in the landowner’s place.

Also to consider that there’s nothing in Georgia that needs a 36″ gas pipeline, which is actually going to to a power plant in Florida, coming out of Alabama. He wondered why it couldn’t run down highway rights of way instead.

He remarked on catastrophic failures, and noted the pipline company, Spectra, had been fined a record $15 million for PCB cleanup along another pipeline.

“This company is awful,”

he said. He noted a gas explosion of that size pipe could take out two football fields. He wondered if the pipeline would go through the county’s closed landfill.

He recommended they, as Commissioners or as individuals, contact FERC. He asked for them to set up a meeting with Spectra. They did later schedule Spectra to speak at their 9 December 2013 Work Session.

Here’s the video: Continue reading →

All the rest of you are new –Sidney Blanton on SPLOST @ LCC 2013-10-22

A citizen expressed concerns about lack of transparency in SPLOST, at the Lowndes County Commission Regular Session 2013-10-22.

Video. He remarked that Commissioner Joyce Evans was the only one he knew, all the rest were new.

He said he would also talk to the Valdosta City Council that Thursday. (Later I told him they had cancelled that meeting due to lack of agenda items; he did speak at the following Valdosta City Council meeting.) He said he wanted the city to say the Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant was their first priority, and he attested that when he used to crop tobacco on that site it was underwater then when it flooded.

He especially didn’t like that the county didn’t list what projects it was going to fund with SPLOST. I agree with him about that part.

Here’s the video: Continue reading →

Help the citizens of Lowndes County –Carol Singletary on Sabal Trail pipeline @ LCC 2013-10-22

A plea for help was at least partially heard by the Lowndes County Commission at their Regular Session 2013-10-22.

Video. A landowner in the path of the proposed Sabal Trail Transmission pipeline reminded the Commissioners of their own mission statement, mentioned the Spectra pipeline meeting at Wiregrass Tech 16 Oct 2013, said the letter the pipeline company sent her cited Georgia law about eminent domain, and urged Commissioners to contact FERC. She said:

You have a way to help the citizens of Lowndes County. … If you go on record saying you don’t have any impact, where does that leave us?

Commissioner John Page asked her to remain after the meeting so he could “gather some more information from her”. See separate post.

Here’s the video: Continue reading →