Tag Archives: Planning

Most corrupt state sells public education to Waltons


Amendment 1 results
And it wasn’t even close:

2,152,091 to 1,526,959 (58.50% to 41.50%).
Lowndes County went for the Atlanta-power-grab “charter school” amendment
18,606 to 17,619 (51.36% to 48.64%).
The voters of Georgia just sold their children’s educational
birthright for a mess of slick brochures.


Amendment 2 results
The

other ALEC amendment, on multi-year contracts,
passed by

an even wider margin:
2,241,621 to 1,275,809 (63.73% to 36.27%).
Lowndes went for it 20,205 to 14,414 (58.36% to 41.64%).

Apparently Georgia voters will vote for any old thing that’s
submitted to them as a constitutional amendment.


Esau sells his birthright for a mess of pottage
Congratulations, ALEC and Wal-Mart!
You’ve demonstrated money talks and

slick brochures sell.
This was even better for you than

ALEC’s so-called anti-immigration law which the legislature passed
and

that actually devastates Georgia agriculture for
the profit of private prison company CCA.
This time you got the people of Georgia to vote directly against
their own best interests to the benefit of school privatizing
corporations in Virginia and Michigan!

Boo Georgia voters.
You’ve just given

the most corrupt legislature in the country
the ability

to commit you the taxpayers to contracts for decades.
And you’ve just traded your children’s educational birthright
for a mess of slick paper.

-jsq

SPLOST VII lost



Speaking of

transparency,
Lowndes County voters defeated SPLOST VII 18,864 to 17,923 (51.28% to 48.72%).

Kay Harris in the VDT today quoted Ashley Paulk with this reason:

The defeat came as a surprise to Mayor John Gayle but not to Lowndes
County Commission Chairman Ashley Paulk, who said he warned the
mayors of the five municipalities that if they continued to argue
over

LOST, the local option sales tax, that voters would turn
against SPLOST in retaliation.

“I told them at the beginning if they didn’t stop arguing over
a few percent of the LOST and refused to leave the numbers as is by
taking the county’s offer, that taxpayers were going to turn against
the SPLOST,” said Paulk.

“Voters are disenchanted with the way their local governments
have gotten greedy and they’re tired of the arguments over money.
They voted SPLOST down because they don’t trust us with their tax
dollars, and it’s a real shame.”

I would agree
bickering over the
LOST pie was one of the reasons
SPLOST lost, and add to that the opaque back-room processes by which
the SPLOST VII projects were selected.
While the library needs updated and expanded facilities,

the lack of documented decision process
for the architect

and lack of adequate explanation for that
probably didn’t help, either,
nor did
the county’s puzzling lumping of the library in with Parks and Rec.

which they later tried to clarify.
Perhaps the voters are

tired of seeing transparency be a constant source of tension.
And I’m using the library as just one example. I could equally cite the
project for a farmers market under the overpass, which I think is a bad idea
because the farmers market already has a fabulous location at the historic
Lowndes County Courthouse, and so far as I know none of the vendors who sell there
were even asked if they wanted a new location, much less the public who buy there.

At the public-not-invited
SPLOST VII kickoff speeches
the last speaker said they were not there

Continue reading →

County Commission Chair Results

Gretchen's summary:



Thank you to everyone who voted for me, to everyone who helped me in
so very many ways. I was not successful in winning

my campaign, but
I was successful in raising issues and have a lot of fun.

Final Score: GQ:16,752 BS:19,531

When the VDT called, she added:

If the chairman-elect is for good communications,
I challenge him to be transparent.

-jsq

Precincts on Election Day 2012 in Lowndes County, Georgia


Naylor
There’s an election going on!
Here are some pictures of precincts around Lowndes County today.
I’ve seen no lines, and everything seems to be flowing smoothly.
Except there are multiple reports that when people call the Board of Elections
to ask where they vote they’re getting a “this number disconnected” message.
Apparently there are ten phone lines down there but only three people
answering them, and the phone is not rolling over properly.
Given all the recent changes in precincts, this is a problem.


Ready for you to vote at Pine Grove

Sara Crow voted at Pine Grove (Clerk of Court, Lowndes County)
Around 1PM Sara Crow said she heard at Pine Grove that about 900 people had
already voted there today.


Rainwater
I’m not blogging much today because I’m out helping

Gretchen for Lowndes County Commission Chair.
If you’ve got something interesting,

send it in;
I’m checking in frequently.

Here’s
a slideshow:


Everyone Matters, so go vote!

Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

Lowndes County, Georgia, 6 November 2012.


Everyone Matters, so go vote!
Everyone matters, so go vote!

-jsq

Georgia Power raising rates



Georgia Power is raising rates
in January, despite its recent announcement that it would lower
rates because of lower fuel bills.
Why raising?
Mostly the new nukes and for a new natural gas plant.
And 16% of the rise is for energy efficiency.
Does that seem like the right proportion to you?

Kristi Swartz wrote for the AJC 1 Nov 2012,

Georgia Power bills to increase,

The average Georgia Power bill will increase about 44 cents a month
starting in January, not decrease as many might have expected when
the company announced last month its fuel costs had dropped.

The utility, which serves 2.4 million customers, notified state
regulators in October that it would be applying for a residential
rate reduction because the amount it pays for fuel has fallen 7
percent, saving $122 million. The utility cannot profit from lower
fuel costs and must pass those savings on to customers.

So why are customer rates going up?

About $1.05 of the typical residential bill will go toward paying
for a new natural gas unit at Plant McDonough-Atkinson in Smyrna.
That increase already was approved as part of a three-tiered rate
hike set in 2010.

Yep, that’s that

set-in-2010 and keep-rising-’till-2013 natural gas
rate hike
that Georgia Power got away with while complaining about
any potential solar subsidies.
The one
AJC complained would be “on autopilot”:

Continue reading →

Nuclear reactors near here

If you think of nuclear reactors as something far away,
or as much safer than Fukushima,
you’re in for a surprise.
The most notorious reactors are the ones not yet built,
units 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle near Augusta and their

famous financial boondoggle.
But others are closer, older, and more numerous than you may know.

Here’s a map by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).


That map’s not clickable, so here’s a table,
selected from an

NRC table
by distance from Valdosta:

Name Owner Where Distance
from
Valdosta
Hatch 1 & 2* SNOC 11 miles N of Baxley, GA 100 miles
Farley 1 & 2 SNOC 18 miles SE of Dothan, AL 125 miles
Crystal River 3 PGN 80 miles N of Tampa, FL 160 miles
Vogtle 1 & 2 SNOC 26 miles SE of Augusta, GA 200 miles
Summer SCEG 26 miles NW of Columbia, SC 300 miles
Saint Lucie 1 & 2 FPL 10 miles SE of Ft. Pierce, FL 325 miles
Oconee 1,2,3 Duke 30 miles W of Greenville, SC 330 miles
Robinson 2 PGN 26 miles NW of Florence, SC 350 miles
Sequoya 1 & 2 TVA 16 miles NE of Chattanooga, TN 360 miles
Catawba 1 & 2 Duke 18 miles S of Charlotte, NC 390 miles
McGuire 1 & 2 Duke 17 miles N of Charlotte, NC 410 miles
Browns Ferry 1,2,3* TVA 32 miles W of Huntsville, AL 410 miles
Turkey Point 3 & 4 FPL 20 miles S of Miami, FL 440 miles
Brunswick 1 & 2* PGN 40 miles S of Wilmington, NC 480 miles
Waterford 3 Entergy 25 miles W of New Orleans, LA 495 miles
Shearon Harris 1 PGN 20 miles SW of Raleigh, NC 498 miles
* GE Mark I;
Duke: Duke Energy Power Company, LLC;
Entergy: Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc.;
FPL: Florida Power & Light Co.;
PGN: Progress Energy;
SCEG: South Carolina Electric & Gas Co.;
SNOC: Southern Nuclear Operating Company;
TVA: Tennessee Valley Authority

Five operating nuclear power reactors are closer to us

Continue reading →

Most Early Voting Ever in Lowndes County, Georgia


Backed up onto the street
More people have voted early in Lowndes County than ever before,
with cars often backed up onto the street waiting to get into
the Board of Elections.

Eames Yates wrote for WCTV Friday,

Record Breaking Number of Early Voters in Lowndes County,

More people have now voted early in Lowndes County than any time in
history. Sherrie Luther was voter 22,00[0]…

People waiting to vote
making her ballot the one
that broke the previous record set four years ago.

In the 2008 presidential election, there were 45 days of early
voting in Lowndes County. In this year’s election there were just 16
days. Nevertheless the record was broken.

Sherrie was rewarded

Continue reading →

Fair bidding practices and community public input —Barbara Stratton

Received today on

County trash plan already failing. -jsq

Yet another example of government contracting not following the fair
bidding practices or allowing community public input. Even if you
attend government meetings no bid information is made public & even
if bids are referred to the amounts are always in those elusive
"packets before you" that only the members have access to.

In a recent Hahira City Council meeting the city attorney ruled that
the city council did not have to put out the garbage service for
bids & that it did not even have to have a contract. As of December
31, 2012 the city collection services will not be under contract at
all so who knows what the rates may be or if a lower bid would have
saved citizens money?


Barbara Stratton
I've been involved in government contracting for years & I can tell
you that the recent path government bodies have endorsed is leading
further & further away from the bidding procedures that were enacted
to prevent good old boy politics & kick backs & is opening the door
wide for public/private partnerships that never answer to the
citizens.

The state attorney general's office which should regulate bidding
practices will not interfere with county or municipal issues unless
a citizen is willing to pay $500 to a lawyer to present the case to
them. They justify this as catering to "home rule" but in actuality
they are turning a blind eye because it is within their jurisdiction
to rule on non-adherence to proper bidding practices.

If the state believes in "home rule" why is Governor Deal pushing a
state charter school board amendment that will take away local rule?
The state seems to pick & choose its standards.

-Barbara Stratton

-jsq

County trash plan already failing

The recently

adopted-by-stealth Lowndes County waste disposal plan
is already failing.

Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT yesterday,

Garbage carts vanish,


VDT picture of bag of solid waste
Some residents in unincorporated Lowndes County have complained that
their garbage cans have been taken up, leaving them without a way to
dispose of their trash until Jan. 1.

Allgreen Services, one of the waste management companies ousted out
of unincorporated Lowndes County with the Oct. 9 Commissioners
decision to award a waste contract bid to Veolia Environmental
Service, has begun picking up the waste carts in anticipation of the
holiday season.

“We hate to have to remove them, but we have to,”
Allgreen General Manager Sam Sullivan said. “We thought about
waiting a month, but the problem is if we wait until the end of the
year, we would be removing the carts around Christmastime. We didn’t
want to be out there then.”


I don't think it could get any easier, said Richard Raines
Funny how there was no mention of this possibility in

the County Commission meeting that adopted this new solid waste plan.
“I don’t think it could get any easier,” said Commissioner Richard Raines.
It looks like it’s not getting easier for county residents who want
to dispose of their trash.

This is currently on

the county’s own front page:

Continue reading →

Calvert Cliffs nuke terminated

Yesterday on Nuclear Information and Resource Service’s

website:



Update, November 1, 2012: UniStar is seeking review of decision by
NRC Commissioners, Nuclear Energy Institute filed motion in
support. NIRS and NRC staff support the ASLB decision. We
will post the Commissioners’ decision when filed. However,
today the ASLB officially issued an order terminating the
Calvert Cliffs-3 licensing proceeding.

That continues

what happened after EDF pulled out
and

neither Southern Company (SO) nor Duke would step in.
Another one down, SO:
watch out for your

three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool
at Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River!

-jsq

PS: Owed to Star Priscilla.