Here’s an interesting presentation by a group of 4-H people
to the Lowndes County Commission in their Regular Sessino of 11 October 2011.
Hm, first they said the pledge, and what’s that I see?
Why look, it’s a camera!
Here during the 4-H presentation, she’s moved up to the second row from the front, right side:
What seems familiar about that location? Continue reading
which I, uh, showed up late for.
Ten minutes late, which, given that nobody else showed up at all, meant
that the county staff went home, so as to avoid wasting taxpayer dollars
presenting to an empty room.
That was the second and last public hearing
So if you want to see that presentation, your last chance is
Monday morning at the County Commission Work Session:
4. Hazard Mitigation Plan Update Presentation (work session only)That is not a public hearing, so you can’t speak. They did hold two public hearings at which you could have spoken.
Other items include a beer and wine license (these are often controversial), an employee health care plan renewal (I think that’s what Section 125 is), and a telephone company site lease agreement. Plus:
7.c. Travel policy
Here’s the agenda.
Continue readingLOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2011, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2011, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Thank you, John for that accurate description of the most bizarre meeting that I have ever attended.Continue reading
As I was not invited I remained at the door. Dean Polling came to the door 10 minutes late because he’d been roaming around Rainwater conference center with a few other folks before he found out the meeting was located here. This meeting was held on the date that the CUEE had given when it would unveil its education plan. So many assumed it would be at the conference center and open to the public.(LOL)
Karen Noll and Dean Poling at the doorThe plan put together by the unnamed education task force a sub committee of cuee pushed Levy into having it at VSU, when VSU has clearly stated they are taking NO side!! So CUEE’s educational plan was presented before the vote has been taken to an invited group at a public institution that is staying out of the whole stinking affair. This is all to strange to not ask why and who is behind this mess?
At the end when I told Myrna Ballard about the location
Emily Ekins wrote for Reason-RUPE 18 October 2011, New Gallup Survey: A Majority of Americans Favor Legalizing Marijuana Use
The latest Gallup poll shows a record high of 50 percent of Americans in favor of legalizing marijuana use. This follows a consistent upward trend, picking up speed in 2006 when 36 percent of Americans favored marijuana legalization.
CCA wrote in its 2010 Annual Report to the SEC: Continue reading
Here is the entire march southbound crossing the tracks.
Here’s Video 1 of 3: Continue reading
There was quite a bit of overlap between Marching to Occupy Valdosta
and the Vote No March.
Gretchen’s sign says Occupy the Voting Booth.
Here’s Part 1 of 2:
Occupy the Voting Booth @ Vote No for Consolidation March 22 October 2011 Part 1 of 2:
No school consolidation,
Vote No for Consolidation March, Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman and John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Amber Smith,
intrepid subjective VSU Spectator reporter,
wrote LHS Alum Against Consolidation.
Here Amber, Bobbi Anne Hancock, LHS student Nathan Wilkins,
and VSU professor Karen Noll all march together.
They all Marched to Occupy Valdosta.
(Erin was in Atlanta, and Austin and others were out of town due to
VSU’s Fall Break.)
Doubtless there were others; nobody tried to take a head count of the crossover.
Here’s Part 2 of 2: Continue reading
and to invite the rich and famous to join her to make
sustainable development that works for all three of
developers, community, and government sexy and profitable.
A stray dog one day led her down a forgotten street to the river.
She got a seed grant, leveraged it 300 times, and turned
that street into a park.
She’s talking about the south Bronx in New York City, and the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, but I think in her problems and solutions you will see some similarities to the south side of Valdosta. If the Chamber was helping with this kind of thing, that would make a far more positive difference to education and real estate values for the whole community, both inside and outside Valdosta, than pushing destructive school “unification”.
It’s a TED Talk.
-jsq
PS: Owed to Scout Smith.
Sam Allen summed it up before the march:
CUEE you have done what you tried to do.
You have brought us together.
United we stand.
Here’s the video:
CUEE you have done what you tried to do —Sam Allen
No school consolidation,
Vote No for Consolidation March, Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman and John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Although maybe this isn’t exactly what CUEE wanted FVCS, SCLC, NAACP,
both school boards, the Valdosta City Council, etc. united about:
What are we gonna do?
Vote!
How we gonna vote?
No!
Here’s the video: Continue reading
Elise Foley wrote for Huff Post yesterday, Immigrant Detainees Report Nearly 200 Instances Of Sexual Abuse
This is also the same CCA that runs a prison in Idaho commonly known as Gladiator School because it has twice the rate of assaults as other prisons in that state.More than 180 sexual abuse complaints have been reported in immigration detention centers since 2007, according to government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a class-action suit filed this week….
All three women in the ACLU lawsuit were held for a time in the T. Don Hutto Residiental Center in Taylor, Texas, a 512-bed detention center privately run on a government contract by private prison giant Corrections Corporation of America.
The suit targets Corrections Corporation of America along with three ICE officials, a former facility manager of the Hutto facility, and a former Hutto guard named Donald Dunn, who was charged last year with assaulting five women and has been accused of abusing more.
We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.
-jsq
‘No’ Vote May Hit You Where You Live
By Mike Hill
Valdosta resident
RealtorI’m not qualified to talk about the quality of school systems in Valdosta or Lowndes County, probably a rare admission these days. I am qualified to talk about the damage done to Valdosta residential real estate by the perception that one system is better than the other. It ain’t pretty and it’s getting worse.
I’ve been a Realtor since 1976, when newcomers couldn’t house hunt until they rolled in with the kids, dogs and all the furniture looking for yard signs and a local newspaper, which led them to agents and property managers, who then sold or rented them a home. Boy, has that changed!
I’ve got friends teaching or retired from both city and county systems who tell me that a good education is available from either system for students who want one. But newcomers concerned about their children’s education have consistently been getting a different message long before they ever see a “sale” or “rent” sign here.Unlike even 10 years ago, Internet magic now allows newcomers to arrive armed with all the statistical knowledge our two school boards provide, plus state and federal statistics. And right or wrong, the perception those statistics create that one system is better or worse than the other travels like gossip between anybody anywhere in the world with an Internet connection who has or can create the slightest link to anybody in Valdosta/Lowndes County with one.
How do I know this? Because families walking into my real estate office to buy or rent “in the county school district” who have never been here before has been consistently increasing for years. Newcomers concerned about their children’s education will sacrifice a garage or fenced yard from the “wish list” for their new home, plus make higher payments, for a county location. It irks me that retired city school superintendent Sam Allen has publicly accused Realtors of adding to a problem that started well before he retired from the city school system. Realtors, he has publicly stated, avoid showing houses for sale in city school districts.
Space isn’t available to address the absurdity of that statement, except to quote the other side of the Golden Rule: “He who has the gold rules.” The Realtor doesn’t drive to showings; she just turns the wheel and hits the gas. The client started driving the car the minute he got into the passenger seat with his checkbook and knew where he wanted to go before he and his family came to town. Accurate or not, perceptions about differences in our split school system exist, with serious consequences in several different directions that aren’t going away. Industries may avoid us, for instance, and we’ll never know how many jobs we lost. In real estate, “perception” makes the value of a house on the city side of a street worth less than an identical house on the county side of the street.
Neither of those things are good and without change, it’s not going to get any better, either.