Kara Ramos reported in the VDT on 18 Aug 2010 that Private prison company picks Valdosta as potential site:
The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) announced an economic development partnership for future construction of a private prison.
Who is CCA? NPR’s Laura Sullivan reported on 28 Oct 2010 about Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law:
Continue reading
What is the Industrial Authority’s plan to bring in real clean jobs?
MAGE SOLAR is hiring for the first of 350 jobs in its photovoltaic (PV) solar manufacturing plant in Dublin, Georgia, with half the population of Valdosta, in Laurens County, with half the population of Lowndes County. They’ve parlayed their position between the Atlanta airport and the Savannah seaport for many new clean jobs.
Suniva of Norcross’s second PV plant with its 500 jobs went to Michigan. Saginaw Valley calls itself Solar Valley and collaborates with governments, academia, and industry, winning thousands of clean jobs in wind and solar manufacturing and generating plants.
Here are videos that illustrate the VDT’s point today in
What We Think:
While officials continue to downplay local citizen anger about current projects, citizens are organizing in a variety of ways to affect change the next election cycle. When Sterling Chemical came to Lowndes County in the 1990s, citizens were told the project was a “done deal,” and so it was. Sterling is still here, but those in office at the time aren’t, and the director of the Industrial Authority at the time is no longer here either.Maybe the VDT is referring to this kind of response from the VLCIA panel on 6 Dec 2010:As has been shown worldwide, citizens are tired of being told what’s best for them, having no say so in how their tax dollars are spent, and having their concerns ignored.
Until officials understand that it is coming from all directions and not just led by a few malcontents, the swell will continue to grow. And those who continue to ignore the anger and frustration do so at their own peril.
“these things do prop up the local economy, period, end of discussion.”A previous questioner who had a job in Vietnam notes he was lied to about Agent Orange and asks “can you assure me that I won’t be affected by this?” Continue reading
Here in the U.S., we’re still thinking about maybe doing some high
speed rail lines.
None in Georgia.
And even the slow-speed passenger proposed rail network bypasses Valdosta
and Lowndes County.
Meanwhile, in China:
(Click on the detail map for the full map from johomaps 2010.)
Suniva’s
second solar PV manufacturing plant that Georgia couldn’t keep
went to Saginaw, Michigan,
where the editorial board of The Saginaw News lists it as
just one bullet item:
• Georgia-based solar panel maker Suniva is well along in its federal loan guarantee application so it can build a plant in Saginaw County.So what is the big news that they’re editorializing about?
The Solar Valley is starting to snowball.Continue readingAmid the campaigning and squabbling on the Friday before last week’s statewide election were two electric announcements promising a big buzz for our region’s future.
The people … that are opposing the plant … have yet to agree to sit down and talk with the authority directly about the plant.He said somehing similar at the 29 Sep 2010 meeting of the Valdosta Board of Education (VBOE). Except then he at least admitted that I had gotten the VLCIA presentation. Yet even then he forgot about the other people in this picture of that 10 June 2010 meeting at the VLCIA offices:
Pictured: Natasha Fast, Angela Manning, Allan Ricketts (Project Manager), Geraldine Fairell, Ken Klanicki, Brad Lofton (Executive Director)
Even earlier, Dr. Brad Bergstrom and Seth Gunning got a presentation from the VLCIA.
I pointed all this out a month ago, after the VBOE incident.
Why does Brad Lofton, a public employee, keep standing up before elected bodies and saying something that is not true?
-jsq
Given this era of YouTube, Internet blogs, and citizen journalists, we have to ask why only credentialed members of the media were asked to leave?For example when I stood up in the row behind the VDT reporter and identified myself as taking videos for LAKE for posting on the web? The editorial continues:Some of the people in attendance during Sunday’s meeting have openly identified themselves in the past as active Internet bloggers.
I also said that due to the sensitive nature of the subject, instead of LAKE’s usual policy of videoing and posting everything that seemed interesting at a public meeting, at this meeting I was only videoing people who asked to be videoed. It wasn’t the DoJ’s responses that were sensitive (they said hardly anything after their introduction): it was what the people in the audience had to say.Any one of the people in attendance could have recorded the DOJ’s responses and posted them, but the DOJ didn’t ask to collect people’s cell phones.
I asked “the female DOJ attorney”, as the VDT calls her, Continue reading
During yesterday’s 3PM work session, Commissioner Lee asked the County Planner Continue reading
“Proposed plant said to be ‘medical atrocity'”,
about Dr. William Sammons’ Monday
talk about health problems of biomass and how solar is better.
The VDT then featured biomass in its reporting on the AAUW Candidate Forum: Continue reading
The
Lowndes County Commission meets tonight:
Lowndes County Administrative ComplexThey represent the entire county (including the cities).
Commission Chambers – 2nd Floor
327 N. Ashley Street
Valdosta, GA 31601
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Their mission statement:
To provide an efficient, effective and responsive local government to all citizens of Lowndes County while maintaining the financial strength to meet any contingencyAnyone can stand up in the Citizens Wishing to Be Heard section of the agenda and say what’s on their mind. Say who you are, where you live, and be brief and polite.
-jsq