Tag Archives: Richmond County

the expense of agendas @ GLPC 2014-01-27



The Greater Lowndes Planning Commission meets tonight at 5:30PM,
but there’s no agenda posted anywhere online.
At
the same meeting at which he asserted

“we have broadband”,
and

“transparency is not a problem”
County Chairman Bill Slaughter said the county doesn’t publish
agendas or minutes for the Planning Commission because of
“the expense”.

“the expense”

v.

“When officials act like

they have something to hide,

they often do”

I suppose I don’t know much about this Internet stuff,
so maybe somebody can explain it to me:
what’s the big expense in publishing the GLPC agendas and minutes
the same way the county publishes its own

agendas and

minutes?
Yet if you search for the Planning Commission on the county’s website,
all you find is its name in a list of

Boards, Agencies & Commissions;
tonight’s meeting is not even listed in

the county’s online calendar.

For that matter, what would be the big expense in posting
the entire agenda packets, like for example Continue reading →

Are Augusta and Richmond County special in transparency?

So why does

Augusta have the second highest high tech job growth in the country?
I can only speculate, but local government transparency could be a factor.
If you had a high tech company and were looking to open an office,
would you go for a place where you couldn't tell what the local governments
were up to, or one where you could easily find out?
Augusta's combined City Council and County Commission meetings
(it's a consolidated government)

are on video, online.
Their agendas are available in either HTML or PDF,

with attachments.

Here's an example, their



5 December 2012 Commission Meeting.
It includes

a proposed amendment to their land subdivision code.
The actual proposed ordinance

is linked right into the agenda so everybody can see it.

And yes, they link attachments into their agendas before
their meetings;
here's

Augusta's agenda for their meeting tomorrow 18 December 2012,
already with attachments, such as this one

about a zoning exception,
which was apparently submitted on a standard agenda submittal form,
and approved by the Clerk of Commission.

Meanwhile, the outgoing Lowndes County Chairman



complained the Chamber of Commerce hadn't read a proposed
zoning code change
even though

that change is not linked into the agenda (nor is anything else)
and
last year

the same Chairman said no drafts would be published.
Tuesday last week, Lowndes County Commissioners passed changes to the
solid waste ordinance
and to the

alcohol ordinance
that voters and taxpayers and business owners did not get to see
before the Commission voted on them.
Those ordinances seem to be on the county website now that it's
too late to provide input on them: alcohol and waste.
Both ordinances were revised with no public hearings.
And the Chairman even

forgot to hold a scheduled public hearing on special tax lighting districts.
Oh, and they

apparently now have property owners paying on almost $9 million
in bonds for a county palace
that only two years ago they said was already completely paid off
out of sales taxes.

If you had a high tech company and were looking to open an office,

Continue reading →