Tag Archives: Lu Williams

Arsenic, Outings, and Flooding: WWALS Watershed Coalition @ VLCIA 2013-04-16



Water issues strongly affect economic development, so I talked about
the new WWALS Watershed Coalition at the

16 April 2013 Board Meeting
of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority.

The VDT declined to speak, so I did.
After apologizing for no okra today,
I commended the Authority for talking about the missing agenda items
and for mentioning due diligence and flood control.

Mostly I talked about the new WWALS Watershed Coalition,
www.wwals.net,
incorporated in June 2012, which is about watershed issues
such as flooding, water quality, and invasive species related to the Withlacoochee, Willacoochee,
Alapaha, and Little River System.
I mentioned

arsenic in some local well water,
which
the Department of Health has finally said should be tested,
three years after

Janet McMahan discovered it was a problem.

I invited VLCIA board and staff to two upcoming WWALS events: Continue reading →

A New Home! Year Six @ VLCIA 2013-04-16



The Industrial Authority was very forthcoming
about everything about their new office purchase
except who they were buying it from;
this was at the

16 April 2013 Board Meeting
of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority.
The seller turns out to be a household name hereabouts.

New Office –Roy Copeland

Chairman Roy Copeland talked about the at least five year process
for finding “a new home” for VLCIA.

103 Roosevelt Drive
He noted that before he joined the board they were considering
buying a property he and his wife own.
He and former Lowndes County Chairman Ashley Paulk looked
at another property near the Courthouse.
VLCIA even toured the historic Lowndes County Courthouse
but concluded it couldn’t be renovated for their purposes.
Jerry Jennett noted the search had gone on even longer than five years.
Copeland said the parameters they had set were, as far as he recalled, Continue reading →

Two more megawatts of local solar power! @ VLCIA 2013-04-16

One megawatt at DuPont
and one megawatt at Valdosta’s Mud Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant:
that’s two more megawatts of solar power coming to Valdosta and Lowndes County!
This was revealed at the

16 April 2013 Board Meeting
of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority.



Project Director Allan Ricketts was on a speaker phone,
so Executive Director Andrea Schruijer gave the

Existing Industry and Project Report.
She thinks maybe three existing industry expansions in second and third quarter 2013.
They’ve continued working with a pharmaceutical company about locating here;
more on that later.
Continued work with three renewable and sustainable energy companies,
and Georgia Power is cooperating.

We did receive notification that two of those advanced solar initiatives
have been approved by Georgia Power Company.

One of them is a megawatt solar expansion at DuPont.
The other is a megawatt solar expansion at the City of Valdosta’s Mud Creek
Wastewater Plant.

She didn’t mention that in most states such projects

wouldn’t have to be approved for doled-out quotas by a power company.

Schruijer also talked about Continue reading →

Logistics and YouTube Videos! Marketing @ VLCIA 2013-04-16



So many things the Industrial Authority is doing that they could be promoting!
Some of them came out at their

16 April 2013 Board Meeting.
Maybe they even took notes about the Georgia Logistics Summit putting all its presentations on its YouTube channel.

In her

Marketing Report, Meghan Duke said
branded materials were now available and in use.

Valdostalowndesprospector.com has new feature for comparison of features
by county, city, etc. for any community in the world.
Several recent guests, including



Georgia Power South Region,
whom VLCIA took on a tour of their industrial parks and Steeda Autosports.
VLCIA hosted Board of GA Dept. of Economic Development at Moody AFB.
She didn’t say, but GDEcD Board of Directors says:

Georgia Department of Economic Development’s Board of Director’s
meeting will be held in February 21st, 2013 at Moody AFB, 1800 Moody
Road, Valdosta, GA 31601. Due to security on base you will need to
have a government (state, federal, etc.) issued ID, such as a
driver’s license, with you before you can enter the base. A
background check with need to be ran prior to the meeting day so
please contact Carrie Bisig & she will let you know what information
the base will need.

VLCIA had a community presentation in Atlanta with Continue reading →

Agenda, Industrial Authority @ VLCIA 2013-04-16



The agenda is different for today’s Industrial Authority meeting!
It has even less information than usual:
no reports about PR or marketing or existing or new projects;
nothing about business parks, and no executive director’s report.
It does list an attorney report and an audit update.

Here’s
the agenda.


Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority

Agenda

Tuesday, April 16, 2013 5:30 p.m.

Industrial Authority Conference Room

2110 N. Patterson Street

General Business

  • Call to Order
  • Invocation
  • Welcome Guests

Minutes

  • Regular Meeting, March 8, 2013

Financial

  • Review Compiled Balance Sheet and Income Statements for March 2013
  • Audit Update

Attorney Report


Citzens Wishing To Be Heard


Adjourn General Meeting

Mission of the Valdosta Lowndes County Industrial Authority is to

lead economic development in our community by supporting existing industries

recruiting industries through capitalizing on opportunities for collaboration.

-jsq

Industrial Authority already met; what about open meetings law? @ VLCIA 2013-03-08


Wanting to go to the Industrial Authority meeting tonight?
Oops, you missed it: they held it 11 days ago.
Did you want to speak there?
Nope, no Citizens to be Heard on that agenda, and not much else, either.

To find that agenda on VLCIA’s website:
Home → About Us → Industrial Authority →
Meeting Schedule,

There will be a Special Called Meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes
County Industrial Authority on

Friday, March 8, 2013, 11:00 am at
the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority Offices. This
Special Called Meeting will also serve as the Regular March 2013
Meeting.


Agenda (PDF) There will be no meeting on Tuesday, March 19, 2013.

I don’t know when they put that on their website, but they announced
the same thing on

their facebook page on March 4th.
Much of the usual agenda boilerplate
is replaced by an executive session, and the agenda doesn’t
even say for what.
I seem to recall the Industrial Authority’s attorney on several occasions
reminding the Chair that before going into executive session it was
necessary to say for what purpose.
As the

Association of County Commissioners of Georgia (ACCG)
puts it:

What is the procedure for going into and holding an “executive session” or “closing a meeting”?

Continue reading →

Broadband on the table @ VLCIA 2013-02-19



Internet speed and access (appearing as Broadband)
played a starring role at the 19 February 2013 meeting of the

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
with a surprise cameo by Lowndes County Commission Chairman
Bill Slaughter (appearing as himself)
and a bravura performance by Angela Crance of Wiregrass Tech,
with a strong supporting role by VLCIA Chairman Roy Copeland,
and Mary Gooding standing in for VSU.
Internet access (as "telecommunications infrastructure")
came up in Project Manager Allan Ricketts' report as a requirement for

a Fortune 500 customer service operation
and
for a

National health care service provider,
both considering locating here,
also as
bandwidth,
as a requirement for
jobs.
That was the main theme of

Executive Director Andrea Schruijer's report,
especially in rural parts of our county,

especially for a home-based call center.
Even Rotary Clubs
need broadband.

VLCIA is also helping find potential sites for several

utility-scale photovoltaic solar installations.

The Industrial Authority Board was down to three members, barely a quorum:
Mary Gooding, Chairman Roy Copeland, and Tom Call.
Whereabouts of Norman Bennett and Jerry Jennett were undetermined.
I can't complain; I was in bed with a sinus infection.

Here's the

agenda (such as it is), with links to the videos and some notes,
often in separate posts.

Continue reading →

Rotary Clubs need broadband @ VLCIA 2013-02-19


Bill Slaughter, Dennis Marks, John Page, Gretchen Quarterman @ Valdosta Rotary Club 2012-09-12

Before

the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013 meeting,

Gretchen told Bill about how she’s now videoing at Rotary
and

putting playlists on the web with some delay.
Bill and Gretchen (and Commissioner John Page) go to the same

Valdosta Rotary Club.
This is yet another use of Internet access:
attracting participants to local community groups,
and getting their speakers to a wider audience.

-jsq

 

I’m super-excited about the whole broadband thing —Gretchen Quarterman @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

And now a word from the only person in the room at the

the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013
with actual experience in bringing Internet broadband access to new areas,
invisible behind the camera but clearly audible,
Gretchen Quarterman:

I’m super-excited about the whole broadband thing,
because you know that’s near and dear to our heart, and our background.

But please be very careful about the buill that’s before the legislature
that will prohibit municipal Internets.
Right now the legislature is trying to take off the table muncipal Internets.
And I think that a municipal Internet would be a really great solution here.
So let your legislator know that’s a bad idea; they shouldn’t take that
off the table from us.

That’s

HB 282, in opposition to which Amy Henderson of Georgia Municipal Association
said:

Broadband is economic development.

Gretchen continued:

At the Chamber’s annual meeting when a local speaker stood up she talked
about the
that’s doing really well right now is
agriculture


and I’m pleased to announce
that

the South Georgia Growing Local Conference will be here in January of 2014
the last weekend, a Friday and Saturday.
It’s an equivalent of the Georgia Organics big conference that they have
in Atlanta.
Except that it’s for south Georgia local growers, farmers, homesteaders.
We just were in Reidsville this last January
and Lowndes County is going to have it next year.

And the whole series of South Georgia Growing Local Conferences (this will
be the fourth) has been organized largely online,
in yet another use of Internet access for economic development,
in this case sustainable local development.

OK, one more:

Rotary Clubs need broadband.

-jsq

I don’t want to say we don’t have broadband —Andrea Schruijer @ VLCIA 2013-02-19



Unfortunately, Andrea Schruijer made clear that much of what
had just been said at the

the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013
hadn’t been heard.

It’s not that we’re saying we don’t have broadband.
We have connectivity; that’s not the issue.
We have great partners that help us with that.

Well, local “leaders” need to learn to say it:
“we don’t have broadband!”
Many of the people of Lowndes County and even more in the surrounding
counties

can’t afford Internet access at all, as Idelle Dear told the Lowndes County
Commission.
And the “great partners” Ms. Schruijer bragged about will never provide
it for us without a lot of prodding, because AT&T and Verizon
and Sprint and Comcast and Mediacom don’t think anything outside the
Atlanta beltway has enough population density to bother with,
and even in Atlanta all people get is U.S.-style low-speed low-reliability
Internet connectivity that would never even be on sale in Japan or France
or Korea or Finland or even Estonia.



Tom Call illustrated my point when he

talked about a residential project
where a provider installed cable and claimed they were providing voice, TV, and Internet access, but then didn’t actually have the capacity for Internet
when people started using it.

Continue reading →