Tag Archives: Lowndes County

Parks and Rec citizen meeting tonight in Hahira

Following up on something I heard last night, I called Valdosta-Lowndes County Parks & Recreation Authority and determined they’re having a citizens meeting tonight in Hahira:

Who: Lose & Associates presentation
What: will ask questions and take community input
Where: Courthouse, 305 W. Main Street, Hahira, GA
When: 6-7PM 18 April 2012

Image by Old Shoe Woman

There was one of these yesterday at Mildred Hunter in south Valdosta. For unknown reasons these events were not posted on VLPRA’s website, which is odd considering this earlier report:

In March there will be about six public meetings concerning the master plan. According to Mr. Page the meetings will be advertised on the VLPRA website, in the Valdosta Daily Times, and by word of mouth.

I heard by word of mouth there was a notice in the VDT yesterday, so that’s two out of three.

-jsq

Videos @ VLCIA 2012 03 20

Likely new industry, private prison really cancelled, strategic planning, and trees in the median!

Here are videos of the entire March regular meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA). Here’s the agenda.

It’s good that they approve minutes after emailing them to each other. Maybe someday we the taxpayers will get to see those minutes.

Did you know they had two executive sessions on 23 February 2012, at 10AM and 2:25 PM in addition to their retreat and regular meeting of that same day? If they’re having all these executive sessions, presumably all the material about personnel and real estate that needs to be kept confidential is in there, and the minutes of the regular meetings shouldn’t contain anything the public should not see.

For example, Continue reading →

Videos @ Joint Governments 2012 03 29

Here are videos of the entire “first annual Valdosta-Lowndes Governmental Leadership Meeting” that was held 6:30 PM 29 March 2012 in the Lowndes High School Lecture Hall. Here’s the announcement.

The meeting was introduced by Dr. Steve Smith, Superintendent, Lowndes County Schools. Lowndes County Schools had a written position statement, with everything from a broad variety of test scores and other metrics to specific examples of existing collaborations such as loaning busses to the Valdosta School System for away sporting events.

Dr. Smith clarified that:

This is not a community forum, it is not an open dialogue.
He told me before the meeting started that he was concerned that if they opened it up to questions from the audience it would take all night and it had been hard enough to get the various elected officials to show up at all without expecting them to stay for that. I didn’t see but maybe a dozen non-elected audience members, so I wonder whether that really would have happened, but I applaud the various governments for collaborating at all. He did say if you had a question you could write it down and hand it to a member of your elected government or school board. He also indicated that committees might form, not that evening, but perhaps growing out of that evening’s meeting. He reiterated this meeting was for brainstorming among the elected officials.

The elected officials included Valdosta Schools Superintendent and many VBOE members, Lowndes School Superintendent and Superintendent-elect and many LCBOE members, Valdosta Mayor, City Manager, and many city council members, and Lowndes County Manager, Clerk, and voting commissioners, but not the Chairman.

Wes Taylor, Lowndes High School Principal & Lowndes County Schools Superintendent Elect talked about finances.

Valdosta Mayor John Gayle said we’re regional now (regional hospital, regional university, etc.). He talked about how Troup County went about landing the Kia plant, which had to do with each governmental entity taking a role and collaborating. (It had nothing to do with school consolidation.)

VBOE member Vanassa Flucas said they try to put everything related to their schools on their website, in an effort of transparency for parents and students. Plus:

We noticed that since we put our strategic plan on our website approximately three years ago, it was very well received. It was very heartening; people could find the information that they wanted.
Imagine that! Continue reading →

They come to school hungry; they come to school homeless — Bill Cason @ Joint Governments 2012 03 29

Breaking from the agenda of the first annual Valdosta-Lowndes Governmental Leadership Meeting, Valdosta School Superintendent Bill Cason rose above tactics and talked about vision and the root of the matter: poverty.

Supt. Cason started talking about teenage pregnancy and drug use, and then got to the heart of the matter:

They come to school hungry; they come to school homeless. Last year we identified more than 200 homeless kids in our school district. We can talk about all of these other things, but until we can address those as a group, every public entity in this room, is willing to get together as a team and address those issues, we forgot the most important thing we deal with, that is our students.

[applause]

They will be the future leaders of this community. And if you want to see Valdosta take a backwards slide, then let this problem run as it is and you will see. I’ve seen it before in other communities, and I’m seeing it here now. This is not something we can wait on; it has to be done now. So if we want to really be serious about what we’re talking about tonight, educating our children, having a viable community, having a good community, having recreational facilities everybody can use, then you need to begin to address these problems not only with our mouths, but with our money and with our resources. And until you do this, then we’re going backwards.

Poverty is the root of the matter. It’s great that the local goverments and school boards are talking, and they can tinker around the edges all they want, but until they get serious about poverty in our community, educational improvements and the future of the community will be severely limited.

-jsq

 

 

Videos of Rally for HOPE @ LCDP 2012 03 24

Rain kept the numbers down, but the enthusiasm was strong in Lakeland at the Rally for HOPE, 24 March 2012.

The announcement said:

This will be a Rally for the Hope Scholarship and a Voter Registration. Everyone concerned about HOPE is invited. We will have guest speakers and will hear from those students and families affected by the current status of HOPE.

The featured speaker was Janice Barrocas of HOPE for Georgia, which is running a three year nonpartisan campaign to save HOPE scholarships.

Bikram Mohanty explained that there will be a shortfall of $270 million for the HOPE scholarships in 2012. Janice Barrocas pointed out there were really two HOPEs now: the other one being the Zell Miller scholarships. Bikram showed a map that illustrates that very few Zell Miller Scholarships go to south Georgia.

Janice Barrocas and Bikram Mohanty discussed that HOPE is funded by a lottery, and lottery funds are down in the recession. The blue line on the chart is deposits from the lottery into the HOPE program, the red line is expenditures, and the green line, dropping rapidly, is reserves at the end of the year.

Janice Barrocas noted that

The end users of this program were not at the table

when the recent HOPE changes were passed. Especially students mostly found out when they got stuck with bigger bills they had to pay. Students and their families may still be too polite to mention they have financial troubles, but it’s time to break the culture of silence when it’s a choice between the family eating or the student going to school. Betty Marini pointed out students loans add up to $1 trillion dollars, which is a huge drag on the economy.

Matt Flumerfelt observed that there is a push for divestiture and privatization these days, and he wondered if the silence around the quick passage of the recent HOPE changes wasn’t because it was a money grab for the lottery funds.

Tech school HOPE is grants, and most tech school students get them. If HOPE went away, the lottery would Continue reading →

April 2012 LAKE meeting: China 1, Hahira

See the owl use chopsticks! Come to Hahira Tuesday.

What: Monthly LAKE Meeting
When: 7 PM, Tuesday 17 April 2012
Where: China 1
205 South Church Street
(one block south of Main or GA 122)
(don’t believe google maps)
Hahira, GA 31632

If you follow the LAKE blog, On the LAKE Front, you know what we cover, from elections to gardening, connecting the dots. What else do you want to investigate?

If you’re on Facebook, please Like the LAKE facebook page. You can sign up for the meeting event there, Or just come as you are.

-jsq

 

 

Industrial Authority board meets Tuesday @ VLCIA 2012 04 17

Industrial Authority board meets about something or other Tuesday; hard to tell what. Maybe this will reveal some sort of strategy:

  • Target Market Study Update

VLCIA’s website is restored enough to say:

The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority will hold a Regular Board Meeting on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 5:30pm in the Industrial Authority Conference room.
They’ve also posted a notice on their facebook page.

The agenda doesn’t say much. I guess that one time they put a lot of information in it was a one-shot. And if you want to see any old agendas, you’ll need to wait until they finish fixing their website. Or look in the LAKE blog….

Now, let’s see, where are those minutes?

Here’s the agenda.

-jsq

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, April 17, 2012 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
Continue reading →

Underfunded ethics commission makes mistakes

Underfunding of Georgia’s ethics commission has led to numerous inappropriate fines, some of which are still being straightened out after many months. Maybe the legislature should fund the ethics commission to a working level and make it independent of the legislature.

David Rodock wrote for the VDT 29 September 2011, Transparency Confusion: New campaign contributions system leads to officials owing fines,

The Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Commission posted a seven-page list online earlier this week ethics.ga.gov of local government officials who have supposedly failed to submit their campaign contribution information this year.

According to the state organization’s website, each late filer owes fines of different amounts.

Various elected officials were quoted in that article saying the fines were inappropriate. Many of those fines had already been removed from the list by the time that article was written.

There have been calls to properly fund that agency and to make it independent of the legislature. The Columbus Ledger-Inquirer wrote 25 January 2012, Ethics panel needs funding and independence,

Continue reading →

Even George Will is calling for drug legalization

We can’t afford this anymore:
A $200 transaction can cost society $100,000 for a three-year sentence.
It’s time to legalize, regulate, and tax drugs, taking tax money away from private prisons and police militarization, and freeing it up for education, health care, and rehabilitation.

George F. Will wrote 11 April 2012, Should the U.S. legalize hard drugs?

Amelioration of today’s drug problem requires Americans to understand the significance of the 80-20 ratio. Twenty percent of American drinkers consume 80 percent of the alcohol sold here. The same 80-20 split obtains among users of illicit drugs.

About 3 million people — less than 1 percent of America’s population — consume 80 percent of illegal hard drugs. Drug-trafficking organizations can be most efficiently injured by changing the behavior of the 20 percent of heavy users, and we are learning how to do so. Reducing consumption by the 80 percent of casual users will not substantially reduce the northward flow of drugs or the southward flow of money.

Will-like, he ignores the real reasons we’re locking up so many people (corporate greed), but he does get at the consequences: Continue reading →

Agendas with board packet items: Lowndes County Board of Education

The Lowndes County Board of Education (LCBOE) often includes along with its agendas detailed information from its board packets. The Lowndes County Commission could do the same.

Here’s their November FY2012 Finance Report in their 12 December 2012 agenda. Sometimes they even include details of items for their executive sessions, as in Personnel recommendations attached to that same agenda.

The Valdosta Board of Education (VBOE) does the same thing. Here’s a football ticket proposal and a Coke contract from VBOE’s 27 February 2012 agenda; also health insurance cost information. That particular agenda has several more financial documents attached.

Both LCBOE and VBOE use eboardsolutions.com. Other companies sell other products that facilitate posting board agendas and minutes.

Travis County, Texas, which includes packet items with its agendas, appears to have constructed its own website. Travis County adds videos after the meetings. I bet they’d tell other local governments how they do it.

So there’s part of a spectrum of solutions to posting board packet items online with agendas: use a turnkey cloud solution, or roll your own.

The Lowndes County Commission could pick a solution, and inform the public about what they are doing by putting agenda packets online with their agendas.

-jsq