Here’s
a video playlist of the 20 November 2012 South Georgia Regional Library Board meeting.
And here’s
George Rhynes’ editorial on what he saw, heard, and was asked at that meeting.
He’d prefer SPLOST being spent first on sidewalks
than on moving the library where people would have
to go farther to get to it.
Also, like many of us, he’s tired of a few people controlling
the purse-strings without input from the rest of us.
He gave an example:
Tag Archives: Planning
SPLOST VII @ SGLB 2012-11-20
At
Tuesday’s South Georgia Library Board meeting.
a board member (his nameplate said Willis Miller)
wanted to know about SPLOST:
How we know it’s going to come up next November or at another time?
Good question.
Here’s video of the discussion as
it resumed later in the meeting:
SPLOST VII discussion at Monthly Meeting, South Georgia Library Board (SGLB),
Video by George Boston Rhynes for K.V.C.I. and bostongbr on YouTube,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 20 November 2012.
Kay Harris said there had to be a minimum of twelve months, so November 2013 would be the next possible time. She said County Commissioner Richard Raines had expressed full support for the new library, and she was talking to the other commissioners. She was asked whether the SPLOST lists would be the same, and said there might be some changes, but she hadn’t heard anyone suggest that the Five Points property might be deleted. That’s curious, because she quoted Valdosta Mayor Gayle in the VDT 7 November 2012 as saying:
Continue readingALEC and the anti-sustainability astroturf talking points (aka “Agenda 21”)
Why do I keep associating the anti-sustainability astroturf talking points with ALEC? Because ALEC's "our state legislators" were promoting them at Georgia's Capitol.
Two out of three of
the Georgia legislators Jim Galloway named in
Georgia's own 52-minute video on the ‘Agenda 21’ conspiracy,
namely
Chip Rogers and Barry Loudermilk,
are associated with ALEC.
Senate Majority Leader (now former) Chip Rogers (R-21) has been ALEC's State Chaimran for Georgia and received ALEC's 2011 State Chair of the year Award. Surely you remember him! Rogers sponsored both misleading amendment 1 ("charter schools") and misleading amendment 2 ("multi-year contracts") on this year's ballot.
Rep. Barry D. Loudermilk (R-14) is on ALEC's
Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force.
How convenient that Loudermilk is the
Secretary of the Georgia
Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications Committee!
So there is at least a convergence of ALEC's "our state legislators" and those pushing this anti-sustainability agenda. This is not surprising, since ALEC is opposed to clean, sustainable energy, as confirmed by ALEC's own attempt to rebut that point. A rebuttal that brought to light ALEC's phrase "our state legislators".
I see Loudermilk is a sponsor of a bill called the Georgia Government Accountability Act,
Continue readingGaSU wins at GA PSC, but will GaSU help all of us win in the legislature?
GA PSC Stan Wise’s 2009 nuclear CWIP lobbying points eerily matched Southern Company’s, but suddenly he’s got separation-of-powers religion about Georgia Solar Utilities (GaSU). The PSC recommended GaSU’s utility bid anyway. When the legislature takes that up in a month or so, will GaSU CEO Robert Green, unlike SO or Georgia Power or Stan Wise, help the rest of us little people fix the 1973 Territoriality law so we can sell our solar electricity on a free market?
Dave Williams wrote for the Atlanta Business Chronicle yesterday, Georgia Public Service Commission moves ahead on solar energy,
The Georgia Public Service Commission approved a plan by Georgia Power Co. Tuesday to acquire an additional 210 megawatts of solar generating capacity, more than tripling its investment in solar energy.
But a sharply divided PSC also gave a potential competitor to Georgia Power its blessing to appeal to the General Assembly to amend a 39-year-old law that gives the Atlanta-based utility the exclusive right to continue serving existing customers.
Under Georgia Power’s Advanced Solar Initiative, the company will buy solar power produced by both large “utility-scale” solar farms and from smaller projects operated by residential and commercial property owners.
Right, that’s actually only 10 Megawatts from “smaller projects”, maintaining Georgia Power’s monopoly while throwing throwing a bone to the rest of us.
While the PSC supported Georgia Power’s plan unanimously, a subsequent motion by McDonald encouraging other solar utilities interested in serving Georgia to pursue their plans with the legislature passed by the narrow margin of 3-2.
Georgia Solar Utilities Inc., a company launched in Macon, Ga., earlier this year, filed an application with the PSC in September for authority to generate solar energy in Georgia on a utility scale.
The two Nay votes were from the two recently-reelected PSC members, apparently now thoroughly in the pocket of the incumbent utilities. Here’s one of them now:
Continue readingAgenda @ GLPC 2012-11-26
The Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC) meets next Monday, 26 November 2012. Here’s the agenda.
The agenda was emailed by Valdosta City Planner Matt Martin to Gretchen Quarterman who provided it to LAKE. GLPC itself still doesn’t have agendas online, sixteen months after SGRC stopped posting them.
Here’s a summary table of the cases.
-jsq
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Lowndes County,
Final action Tuesday 11 Dec 2012 |
2. REZ-2012-18 Roger Budd
1006 Lakes Boulevard, Lake Park, Georgia Request to rezone 0.87 acres from C-C (Crossroads Commercial) to C-H (Highway Commercial) |
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3. REZ-2012-19 Robinson Milltown Properties, LLC
US Highway 84 East, Naylor, Georgia Request to rezone 2 acres from E-A (Estate Agriculture) to C-G (General Commercial) |
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4. TEX-2012-02
Lowndes County Board of Commissioners A proposed text amendment to the Unified Land Development Code as it pertains to Single Family residential Density and Minimum Lot Area within the MAZ (Moody Activity Zone) |
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Valdosta,
Final action Thursday 6 Dec 2012 |
5. VA-2012-15 John McCranie
1404 Gornto Road, Valdosta, Georgia Request to rezone 0.68 acres from Neighborhood Commercial (C-N) to Community Commercial (C-C) |
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6. VA-2012-16 Tombrooks, LLC
316 Eager Road, Valdosta, Georgia Request to rezone 1.80 acres from Single-family Residential (R-15) to Single-family Residential (R-10) |
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7. VA-2012-17 El Toreo, Inc.
225 Norman Drive, Valdosta, Georgia Request to rezone 15.04 acres from Single-family Residential (R-6) to Highway Commercial (C-H) |
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8. VA-2012-18
City of Valdosta Proposed text amendments to the City of Valdosta Land Development Regulations (LDR) |
Car wash, parking, alcohol, and night flights: Videos @ GLPC 2012-10-29
The Greater Lowndes Planning Commission made recommendations on cases
involving buffering a car wash, sizing parking spaces, alcohol at a corner store,
and a development inside the Moody exclusion zone,
all at its 29 October 2012 Regular Session.
Here’s the agenda, and here’s a video playlist, followed by a summary of the cases.
Regular Session, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 29 October 2012.
Valdosta, Final action Thursday 8 Nov 2012
2. CU-2012-07 Stafford Properties
1609 Norman Drive, Valdosta
Request for a Conditional Use Permit (CUP for a Car Wash in a Community Commercial C-C zoning district.
Developer from Columbus spoke for.
Continue readingAlcohol at the corner store? @ GLPC 2012-10-29
The old store at the corner of GA 122 and Cat Creek Road was the subject of debate over alcohol at the Planning Commission’s 29 October 2012 Regular Session. Here’s a playlist.
This was the rezoning item:
4. REZ-2012-16 Cook County Land Ventures
SW corner of Georgia Highway 122 East and Cat Creek Road, Hahira
Request to rezone ~2 acres from E-A (Estate Agriculture) to C-C (Crossroads Commercial)
County Planner Jason Davenport said the owner wants commercial zoning for a store, since previous conditional use had expired, and there was concern about prohibiting alcohol, especially if Continue reading
The real U.N. Agenda 21
What is this Agenda 21 referred to by the anti-sustainability astroturf talking points movie shown at the Georgia statehouse?
The real Agenda 21 is a typical U.N. set of do-good wishful thinking
documents adopted at a U.N. conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
If you think it’s been successful in actually implementing sustainability,
you haven’t paid attention this summer to the
U.N. Rio+20 successor conference from
activists actually interested in a sustainable economy.
Such pro-sustainability activists generally
bemoaned the lack of effective action in the intervening twenty years:
the climate continues to warm as almost every nation continues to burn
more fossil fuels.
The U.N.’s own Rio+20 document pretty much
relegates such concerns to a sideline to an expanding economy.
The U.N.’s intentions are good: this is a small planet with Continue reading
Anti-sustainability astroturf talking points (aka “Agenda 21”)
For many months I have been resisting requests from various people (both pro- and anti-sustainability) to write about Agenda 21. Why resist? Because I considered the anti-Agenda 21 campaign a distraction from real issues. Now that ALEC’s “our state legislators” have made Georgia an international laughingstock over it, I suppose it’s a big enough distraction to write about. But the topic of this series is sustainability: you know, exactly what the astroturf talking points are meant to subvert. Sustainability is important, and we should talk about it.
Jim Galloway’s 12 November 2012 AJC article,
Georgia’s own 52-minute video on the ‘Agenda 21’ conspiracy,
notes that the video some of ALEC’s “our state legislators” chose to play
in the state capitol, like every other attack on sustainability that
uses “Agenda 21” as a key talking point, also includes this:
”The Delphi technique was developed by the Rand Corporation during the Cold War as a mind-control technique. It’s also known as ‘consensive process.’ But basically the goal of the Delphi technique is to lead is to lead a targeted group of people to a pre-determined outcome…..”
The actual RAND Delphi study is
readily available on the web,
and it doesn’t say what Agenda 21 conspiracy buffs say it says.
Come on, conspiracy buffs: show me where the RAND study says its
goal is “to lead a targeted group of people to a pre-determined outcome.”
Nobody can show me that, because it doesn’t say that.
Galloway’s article says ALEC’s “our state legislators” were being taught that T-SPLOST was Continue reading
Wiregrass Alley for local agricultural knowledge-based jobs
What jobs and businesses can we build out of local agriculture and VSU and Wiregrass Tech and GMC and SGMC and Moody? Build like the way Silicon Valley grew out of Stanford and HP and Intel, but different, drawing on our local strengths? Various things, no doubt, but the companies the VDT listed in its agricultural heartland article suggest maybe Wiregrass Alley:
When you factor in businesses such as South Georgia Pecan, PCA, the Langdale Company,
Shiloh Farms, Dupont, Arizona Chemical, ERCO Worldwide, Coggins Farms, Carter and Sons, and the additional farmers represented by Farmer Browns, the impact of agriculture in Lowndes County alone is one of the largest private, non-governmental industries. Across the region, ag and forestry sustain the economies of a number of counties.
Many of those are obviously agricultural, but Dupont, Arizona Chemical, and ERCO? OK, I’ll buy Arizona Chemical which turns pine products into adhesives and smells. But DuPont? Sure, they make chemical fertilizer, but that’s like listing Chevron as a home heating company.
And what’s this ERCO Worldwide, which provides chemicals like caustic soda for PCA? ERCO Worldwide’s other name hereabouts is Sterling Pulp Chemicals. That’s right, the VDT listed Sterling Chemicals as an agricultural company! Well, that’s hard to deny, because, according to FundingUniverse, Sterling Chemicals “was founded in 1986 to acquire and operate Monsanto Co.’s petrochemical plant in Texas City, Texas.” Nobody can say Monsanto isn’t agricultural, when 90+% of corn, soybeans, cotton, and peanuts grown hereabouts are grown from Monsanto seeds. Which is why we have so many chemical fertilizers and poisonous pesticides being used around here. Is that really the direction we want to go?
What if we turn the VDT’s list around,
and start with the “additional farmers”
represented by Farmer Brown and Carters?
You know, the ones who sell at Valdosta Farm Days?
Farmers markets have
increased 6% on average for the past decade.
Why is that?
Partly because of
the conversations and community
at a farmers market.
Anybody who has gone to Valdosta Farm Days or Hahira Farm Days can attest to that.
And it’s not just anecdotal:
there is
research to demonstrate that in farmers markets compared to supermarkets:
On average, the sociologists found, people were having ten times as many conversations per visit.
Another reason farmers markets are spreading so fast is people are paying attention to the increasing number of scientific reports that “conventional” agriculture is poisoning us, such as the recent one that demonstrates that even the inert ingredients in Roundup are poisonous or the one that links the active ingredient, glyphosate, to Parkinson’s disease. Maybe they’ve heard about Monsanto being sued for “devastating birth defects” and chemical poisoning. And most farmers market customers seem to like fresh local foods that taste good and that support local farmers.
So what if we started with those “additional farmers”
that sell at Farmer Brown and Carters and Valdosta Farm Days?
They are the ones already starting in a different direction.
A direction that is actually
more profitable,
in addition to healthier (and less flooding and more wildlife).
Crop rotation takes more thought and more labor (more jobs!)
than just spraying,
but it also takes a lot less expense on patented seeds and chemicals,
for a net financial profit.
Which could help explain why the USDA says:
Consumer demand for organically produced goods has shown double-digit growth for well over a decade, providing market incentives for U.S. farmers across a broad range of products.
The USDA is talking certified organic, which has so many hoops
to jump through that most local producers are not certified, yet many
also aren’t using a lot of chemical inputs and are using
crop rotation and other organic techniques.
Techniques which many old-timers around here will recognize,
because they used to use them a half century ago,
but with new wrinkles such as computerized records and
recent research that may make them even more effective.
That’s right:
modern organic and local agriculture is a knowledge-based industry.
What has all this got to do with the colleges and SGMC and Moody?
Moody could be a big customer for local agricultural produce,
as could the local K-12 schools; VSU already is.
Wiregrass Tech can (and already is) help teach people how to grow
organic or with fewer manufactured inputs.
VSU and GMC can study how that’s working out,
in conjunction with SGMC, which eventually will have fewer
cases of some kinds of diseases to deal with.
How many cases, of what kinds of diseases?
There’s a field of research we could lead,
along with the agricultural industry to cause such improvements in health:
healthy jobs from planting to PhDs!
And if we do want other kinds of knowledge-based businesses and workers (which is where Silicon Valley usually gets mentioned), I think we’ll find they like a place that produces local healthy foods.
-jsq