Tag Archives: Marketing

Authority should listen to other sources –John S. Quarterman

This op-ed by me appeared in the VDT today, 24 Feb 2011.
On 15 Feb 2011 I spoke directly to the VLCIA board about the main points
and the next day I sent them the longer version,

Why “jobs, jobs, jobs” isn’t good enough for the public good and the general welfare,
which includes links to videos of the relevant speeches and to

VLCIA’s charter. -jsq



Everyone wants jobs for those who need them and jobs for
young people so they don’t have to go somewhere else to find one.
But what good is that if those jobs suck up all the water those people
need to drink?

At the Lake Park Chamber of Commerce annual dinner Brad Lofton gave
a speech which I liked, and I told him so afterwards, because it
was mostly about real industry with real jobs that that the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) has brought
into the area.

But it had a problem:

Continue reading →

How much has VLCIA paid for Sterling Energy travel?



VLCIA says

it paid for hotel rooms in December for
Bob McCann and Gil Waldman of Sterling Energy. Why?
How much more has VLCIA spent on travel for Sterling?
And how can this public-private keep Sterling documents related
to the biomass plant confidential?

According to the VDT,

“Biomass plant said good for Valdosta and Georgia,”
by Johnna Pinholster, 4 Nov 2010,
“Gilbert Waldman is vice president and general manager of Sterling Energy Assets”
and
“Sterling Energy brought in Robert McCann, Jr. from Golder Associates Inc.”
It’s curious that VLCIA paid for a room for the general manager of Sterling
Energy, which I thought VLCIA said was the principle investor in the project.
Seems like more

we, we, we to me.
This is yet more evidence that VLCIA and Sterling Energy do indeed
have a public-private partnership.
In which case, why can Sterling and VLCIA

claim Sterling’s wood fuel
sourcing study is proprietary?

The VDT also said:

On Tuesday, Waldman, an environmental consultant, members of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority board, and Brad Lofton, executive director of the authority, sat down to discuss the plant, how it works and how clean it will be.

Did VLCIA also pay for rooms for Waldman and McCann for that
Tuesday 2 Nov 2010 meeting?
How much money has VLCIA spent bringing them down here?

-jsq

VLCIA Payments for 6 Dec 2010 biomass “Forum”



VLCIA spent

more than
$17,000 on speakers and catering for their 6 Dec 2010 “Forum”, according
to VLCIA’s response to an open records request.
Yet local speakers against the biomass plant
who would have charged nothing were not
invited to be on the panel.
VLCIA insists on referring to it as an “information exchange”,
even though their hand-picked moderator said

“we’re not going to get into debate.”

Here is a summary of the expenses:

Continue reading →

Where is the Wiregrass Solar plant?



Update 21 Feb 2011: Col. Ricketts confirms the groundbreaking is at 11:30 AM today on Water Plant Road; follow the signs from there to the construction site.

The groundbreaking for the Wiregrass Solar plant is

Monday 21 February, rumor has it at 11:30AM, but where?
My understanding is that the site
is at the back of the City of Valdosta’s Mud Creek Wastewater Treatment property,
which is


View Larger Map


on Water Plant Road off of GA 94 (New Statenville Highway)
east of Inner Perimeter Road.

However, VLCIA’s land proposed for the Wiregrass Power LLC biomass plant
is around the corner off of Inner Perimeter Road east of Deloach Road:
It’s conceivable that VLCIA might hold the ceremony on its own property.
See their map below:

Continue reading →

VLCIA board meeting today

The

Valdosta Lowndes County Industrial Authority board meets tonight:

All Meetings will be held at 5:30pm in the Industrial Authority
Conference Room, 2110 N. Patterson Street, unless otherwise notified.

I would post a link to their agenda, if they had it online, but they don’t.

Meanwhile, here they are.

-jsq


Roy Copeland

Roy Copeland
Tom Call

Tom Call
Mary B. Gooding

Mary Gooding
Norman Bennett

Norman Bennett
Jerry Jennett

Jerry Jennett,

Chairman

Why “jobs, jobs, jobs” isn’t good enough for the public good and the general welfare –John S. Quarterman



Sure, everyone wants jobs for the people right now and jobs
so the children don’t have to go somewhere else to find one.
But what good is that if those jobs suck up all the water
those children need to drink?

This is the problem:

“What I believe the three most important things are,
not only for our community, and our state, and our country,
but for our country,
thats jobs number 1, jobs number 2, and jobs.”





Brad Lofton, Executive Director,
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
speaking at the
Lake Park Chamber of Commerce annual dinner,
Lake Park, Lowndes County, Georgia, 28 January 2011.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

I shook Brad Lofton’s hand after that speech and told him I liked it,
because I did: in general it was a positive speech about real accomplishments.
I’ve also pointed out I had a few nits with that speech.
This one is more than a nit.
This one is basic philosophy and policy.

Now one would expect an executive director of an industrial authority
to be all about jobs.
And that would be OK, if

Continue reading →

Contracts between VLCIA and Wiregrass Power LLC



Shortly after GA EPD approved the

final air quality construction permit for the proposed
biomass plant, new contracts were signed between Wiregrass Power LLC
and the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA).

Update 10 Feb 2011:
JPEG images of each page are also available now.

Here they are, as PDFs generated from scans of paper copies.

Both contracts were signed
for Wiregrass Power, LLC by Therrell Murphy, Jr., President,
on 26 July 2010,
and for VLCIA by
Jerry J. Jennett, Chairman and Mary B. Gooding, Secretary, on 17 August 2010.

These documents were obtained by an open records request by a citizen who
then gave copies to LAKE.

-jsq

VLCIA biomass website



VLCIA catches up with LAKE in posting videos of 6 Dec 2010 biomass event.
But where’s the VLCIA FAQ website?

Update 24 Jan 2011 7:13 PM: Bruce J. Bendl found the FAQ.

In this video,

Brad Lofton tells the VLCIA board that staff have put a lot
of time and effort into building a website to answer
frequently asked questions about biomass, including
videos from the 6 Dec 2010 event.
When I congratulated Lofton on this
and asked the board for an answer to one of those qeustions,
I didn’t think to ask for a URL for this new website,
figuring it would be announced on
the main VLCIA website.
If it’s there, I don’t see it.


However, VLCIA has sprouted

a YouTube channel
in which the long-awaited professional videos from the 6 Dec 2010 event
have appeared, six weeks after the event.





Video of VLCIA 18 Jan 2010 board meeting
by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange

More on that below. Meanwhile,


LAKE’s videos of the entire event have been on YouTube

since a few days after the event.

Continue reading →

VLCIA on expansion of existing industry



Local industry for local jobs: feedback loops?
At the 21 Dec 2010 board meeting,

Brad Lofton and the VLCIA board talk about
exanding local industry, namely PCA and AlphaProTech.
Lofton says AlphaProTech will add 50 new jobs.
Hm, 50 is more than 25 slated for the biomass plant.
And nobody even has to trade AlphaProTech land for them to produce these jobs!



According to
their website, AlphaProTech sells:

“protective apparel, infection control and extended care products in
addition to a line of construction weatherization building products for
the housing market.”

Hm, so

if VLCIA promoted refitting local houses
it would also be promoting AlphaProTech.

It’s interesting to hear Gary Minchew say regarding one company:

“we just don’t need to be the front man”





Video by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

Interesting that VLCIA is not willing to be the front man for local industry
(as we’ve also seen in

this response from Col. Ricketts),
when VLCIA clearly is the front man

for Sterling Energy and Wiregrass Power LLC,
neither of which are from around here.

-jsq

Roy Copeland in Top 100 Trial Lawyers



At the 18 Jan 2011 VLCIA board meeting,

Brad Lofton congratulated Roy Copeland.
Lofton seems to be referring to Copeland’s membership in the

THE TOP 100 TRIAL LAWYERS – Georgia,
A Professional, Educational, and Business Organization of Trial Attorneys.
There appear to actually be 90 members.
I congratulate Roy Copeland on his membership.
I can’t quite make out whether he also received an
award from the same organization.
Anyway, here’s the video:





Video by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq