Tag Archives: SGRC

Why are federal Interstate projects on the T-SPLOST list?

Why are any I-75 interchange projects on the final T-SPLOST list? Especially now that Congress finally got around to passing a transportation bill? I-75 is a federal highway; shouldn’t it be paid for with federal tax dollars, not $31.5 million of “local” sales taxes?

About the transportation act, and then three T-SPLOST I-75 projects. Richard Simon reported for the Sacramento Bee 29 June 2012, Congress passes transportation bill, halts student loan rate increase. Jamie Dupree’s Washington Insider had some more detail in the AJC 28 June 2012, Congress moves highway, student loan bills. Here’s the actual H.R.4348 — MAP-21 (Enrolled Bill [Final as Passed Both House and Senate] – ENR).

In the final T-SPLOST District 11 report there are still two I-75 interchange projects:

  • $19,872,610 TIA for RC11-000081 I-75 at CR 27/Lake Park-Bellville Road Interchange Improvements – Exit 2
  • $11,631,517 TIA for RC11-000082 I-75 at SR 31 Interchange Replacement – Exit 11
  • $31,504,127 total TIA for two I-75 interchange projects in Lowndes County

Those are just the T-SPLOST dollar amounts; not the total costs of those two projects. A third project, for exits 22 and 29, got moved to TIP money, which is federal money. Why didn’t these two also get moved to TIP and off of the T-SPLOST list?

Previously I reported on Corrected T-SPLOST Southern Region Cost Changes including a list of projects. Of three I-75 projects, two are still on the final project list of October 2011. Here’s a summary:

Number
+ Name		 Original Total
Cost Estimate
+ Updated 		Difference
Diff%		 TIA Funding
(includes Inflation)		 In Final List?
RC11-000081
I-75 at CR 27/Lake Park-Bellville Road Interchange Improvements – Exit 2		 $38,965,901.00
$39,745,219.00		 $779,318.00
2%		 $22,379,786 yes
RC11-000082
I-75 at SR 31 Interchange Replacement – Exit 11		 $22,806,928.00
$23,263,033.00		 $456,105.00
1.99985%		 $13,098,977 yes
RC11-000083
I-75 from North of SR 133 to Cook County Line – Exits 22 & 29		 $44,617,196.00
$44,617,196.00		 $0.00
0%		 $0 no

Finally, here are the details for each of those projects, extracted from the final report for exits 2 and 11, and from the unconstrained list for exits 22 and 29. Why are the remaining two not like the one that got moved to federal funding?

-jsq

Project Sheet

Continue reading →

Transportation plan open house @ SGRC 2012-05-22

Received 1 June 2012 about the

22 May 2012 VLMPO Open House at SGRC.
The “Transportation Improvement Program, or TIP, is the short-range
plan approved by the VLMPO Policy Committee that allows federal funds
to be spent on various transportation projects in the region.”
-jsq

I attended the transportation plan open house on the day that anyone could
come from early morning until 7:00 PM and when I went at 5, I was only the


sixth person who had been there all day. Corey Hull showed me and four
other people the plan, answered our questions, explained the difference
between this long term plan and the TSPLOST and there was a discussion about
how one might go about becoming a bus services provider in the area. The
amount of money allocated to the city of Valdosta for transportation is not
an amount that is near what a bus system would cost, so there still will
have to be other funds available to make that possible. Even though our
group brought the attendance for the day up to 10 citizens, it was a huge
improvement over the last open house, when NO ONE showed. Corey Hull was
very helpful and had a lot of information that probably would have been
fascinating to others if they had attended, but once again there was
virtually no input.

-Jane F. Osborn, MSSW

Valdosta, GA

229-630-0924



According to

projects submitted for T-SPLOST,
a bus system would cost about $7.5 million (startup and a few years run-time),
but that got cut first pass, while $12 million for widening one road
is still in the T-SPLOST list.
I’m told that public transportation is not an issue around here.
If people think it is, maybe they should show up at meetings
like the one SGRC organized about the other transportation plan
and say they want a bus system.

-jsq

JLUS Transparency and Videos @ SGRC 2012-06-08

The South Georgia Regional Commission held a public hearing on Wednesday June 6th to give an overview of the current Implementation Phase draft of the Joint Land Use Study (JLUS) for Moody Air Force Base and surrounding communities.

Todd Miller, the project coordinator, gave a power point presentation. When asked if the presentation could be made available on the SGRC web site, he said yes (and then called to make sure I could find it).

The complete draft implementation phase documents are available at http://www.sgrc.us/JLUS/implementation.htm and the comment period is open until the end of June. Comments should be sent to Todd Miller at tmiller (at) sgrc.us.

Here's a video playlist:

JLUS Transparency and Videos
Public Hearing, Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC), Todd Miller,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, Fri, 8 Jun 2012 10:21:39 -0400.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-gretchen

T-SPLOST discretionary projects —Winter 2012 SGRC Newsletter

Received from Corey Hull 9 January 2012:

Please find attached the “Transportation in the Region” newsletter for
the Southern Georgia Regional Commission and the Valdosta-Lowndes
Metropolitan Planning Organization. For more information please visit
our website at

www.sgrc.us/transportation.

I’ve put a copy on the LAKE website

here.

Here’s the lead story:


Local Discretionary Project Lists for TIA


On October 10, 2011 the Southern Georgia Regional Transportation
Roundtable approved a regional transportation project list that contains
75% of the funds this region would receive if a transportation sales and
use tax is approved by the voters on July 31, 2012. The tax is estimated
to generate $670,985,361 total; $503,239,020 of which is reserved for
the 75% regional projects list.

The remaining 25% of the funds ($167,746,439) are allocated to
local governments by formula (based on population and road centerline
miles). While these funds are to be spent at the discretion of each local
government on transportation related projects, it is recommended that


your local government begin to consider how these funds might be spent
over the next 10 years. By identifying these projects now, your local
voters will be able to know how all of the funds from this proposed
sales and use tax will be spent in their local community.

In order to have a central source for
information about the proposed sales tax,
we are asking local governments to submit
their project lists for the 25% discretionary
funding by March 31, 2012 to the following
address: SGRC; ATTN: Corey Hull; 327 W
Savannah Ave.; Valdosta, GA 31602; or
by email at chull@sgrc.us.



It will be interesting to see what projects local governments submit.
Maybe you’d like to suggest something to them.

Hm, looks like there’s plenty of discretionary funds for a
bus system


such as is recommended by

the Industrial Authority’s Community Assessment.

-jsq

Public hearing doesn’t mean the public gets to know anything


Jane Osborn wrote:

Requesting such a hearing before January 24 would give the opportunity
to have all this information presented and for questions to be asked
and answered.

Except that’s not the way it works around here.
Public hearing locally means the chairman or mayor or whoever says
“Who wants to speak for?”
and maybe somebody speaks.
And then “Who wants to speak against?”
and maybe somebody speaks.
It doesn’t mean that the Commission or the Council or the Authority
presents anything for the public to consider.

Witness the



hearing the Lowndes County Commission
held in December on the documents related to the Comprehensive Plan.
The only reason the public knew anything about what was in those documents
was that Gretchen got them from somewhere else after the Commission
refused to supply them in response to an open records request.
The Commission never distributed any of the relevant documents
to the public.
Only one citizen spoke, perhaps because nobody else knew what
to speak about.

Almost none of the local municipalities or boards or authorities
routinely present to the public the information that is in the
packets they see before the discuss or vote.
There are rare exceptions, such as the VLMPO
and other organizations or projects administered by the

Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC).
SGRC is a state agency, not a local agency.
Why does Lowndes County and all its municipalities and boards
avoid transparency?

Why can’t you, the public, see what’s in a rezoning request before

Continue reading →

T-SPLOST Lunch and Learn today at SGRC

There’s a Lunch and Learn about T-SPLOST at noon today at the

SGRC offices:

327 W. Savannah Ave

Valdosta, GA 31601

Phone: (229)333-5277

FAX: (229)333-5312

Corey Hull says they’re almost full.
However, the presentation is

already on the SGRC web pages.
The City of Valdosta will be videoing the event.
Once Corey knows when it will be televised on the City’s TV channel,
SGRC will advertise that.
There’s also some unknown level of possibility that the videos
may be made available on the web.

-jsq

Corrected T-SPLOST Southern Region Cost Changes

Received this morning. Many thanks to Corey Hull and SGRC for sending this correction. -jsq

John,

I reviewed your question, and that project had an error in it, I am
attaching a new spreadsheet, that is slightly revised. It includes the
TIA funding with inflation so that it matches the other project sheets
that we have handed out at the public meetings

I am sorry about the confusion this has caused.

Sincerely,

Corey

Corey Hull, AICP

MPO Coordinator

Valdosta-Lowndes MPO

This corrects the earlier post.

The corrected spreadsheet he sent is
on the LAKE website
in Excel spreadsheet and HTML versions.

In the HTML version, I have added three columns.


Name is taken from the

Unconstrained Project Listing.
Difference and Diff% were computed from
the Original total Cost Estimate and the Updated Total Cost Estimate.

The project descriptions may be found in the
unconstrained and constrained project lists.
More later.

-jsq

T-SPLOST Southern Region Cost Changes

Update 6:30 PM 26 September 2011: Please see the corrected version received from Corey Hull today. -jsq

Received yesterday from Corey Hull, with this cover sheet message,
responding to my request in the T-SPLOST public meeting Monday.

John,

In the attached spreadsheet you will find the each project associated
with four columns: the original estimate, the updated estimate, the TIA
funding (any difference from the TIA and updated cost estimate is a
secondary funding source i.e. federal, state, or local), and whether
that project is currently included in the constrained list.

GDOT provided the updated costs estimates (based on current GDOT bids)
and in some cases those estimates were further revised by GDOT and the
local governments where appropriate. All project scopes remained the
same with the exception of RC11-000049 and RC11-000042 (highlighted in
yellow), these project termini were changed significantly.

I hope this answers your questions, let me know if you have any more.

Corey

Corey Hull, AICP

MPO Coordinator

Valdosta-Lowndes MPO

327 W. Savannah Ave.

Valdosta, GA 31601

Visit our Facebook Site!

229.333.5277

229.300.0922 (c)

229.333.5312 (f)

chull@sgrc.us


www.sgrc.us/transportation

The spreadsheet he sent is
on the LAKE website
in Excel spreadsheet and HTML versions.
If you want to know what the projects are, you need to look at the
unconstrained and constrained project lists.
More later.

-jsq

T-SPLOST public meeting in Valdosta Monday morning 19 September 2011

The next

T-SPLOST public meeting is tomorrow morning:

Monday, September 19, 2011; 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.; at the Valdosta
City Hall Annex; 300 North Lee Street, Valdosta, Georgia; presentation
will begin at 10:30 a.m.

These meetings are intended to gather public input:

After the public meetings the Roundtable will reconvene to review the
public comments and adopt a final Constrained List that will be presented
on the ballot to voters in 2012.

If you can’t go to the meeting, you can send in the

public comment form
or email Corey Hull at the SGRC.

I don’t know what you might want to comment on,
but a couple of things that come to my mind are:

-jsq

Public comment form on T-SPLOST Roundtable

Received today on

T-SPLOST meeting in Waycross today. -jsq



The SGRC website has been updated to correct the error for the public
comment form. Thank you for letting us know and helping to spread the
word about these public meetings.

-Southern Georgia Regional Commission

The correction has

this new link to the form.
The form says:


Public Comment Form

Southern Georgia Regional Transportation Roundtable

and asks for your name, address, phone, email, and your comments.
I bet you could email that information if you don’t want to print
out the form and write on it.
The
public notice about the regional T-SPLOST meetings said:

Comments are being accepted by email at chull@sgrc.us, by fax at
229-333-5212, or by mailing them to SGRC, ATTN: SG RTR, 327 W Savannah
Ave., Valdosta, GA 31601.

For more information please call Corey Hull at 229-333-5277.

-jsq