T-SPLOST is a misnomer: it's not a Special Location Option Sales Tax, since it's voted on as a region.
I think maybe we should have a gasoline tax to pay for roads.
Here's the video:
Not a special Local tax: it's a Regional tax –Nolen Cox
T-SPLOST Public Meeting, Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC),
Corey Hull,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 September 2011.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
-jsq
Someone asked:
If Lowndes, Tift, and Ware vote against it, and the other fifteen counties vote for it, that’s a majority.
Corey Hull:
As long as they reach 50% + 1 in voters.
Questioner:
Those three counties, which would probably be the three donor counties in this region… they could kill it for our region if it was a large turnout.
Roy Taylor:
A large county like we could kill it for everybody.
The referendum is still on for July (during the primary, with less turnout) not November (during the general election).
The world’s worst nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan has had economic effects on nuclear-owning power utilities. What will happen to the Southern Company as Georgia Power customers and U.S. taxpayers get tired of paying for cost overruns which are already almost a billion dollars?
Erik Kirschbaum wrote for Reuters 26 May 2012,
Germany sets new solar power record, institute says,
The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022.
And closing those nuclear plants caused German electric utility
E.ON to lay off up
to 11,000 staff, to take its first quarterly loss in a decade, and to
cut its shareholder dividend.
According to Forbes,
E.ON
in 2006 was the biggest electric utility in the world
(and TEPCO, owner of the Fukushima nuclear plants, was number 6).
In March 2012, E.ON was
number 22.
(TEPCO dropped from number 6 to
number 45.)
Southern Company (SO) jumped from number 16 in 2006
to
number 6 this year,
quite possibly because E.ON and TEPCO and others dropped so rapidly.
Hm, I wonder what Southern Company’s nukes, already almost $1 billion over budget, will do to SO’s ranking in Forbes’ list of top utilities? Maybe there’s a reason Moody’s called nuclear “a bet-the-farm risk”. What will SO do when this big nuclear bet goes bad? And how big a bill do Georgia Power customers and we the taxpayers want to let SO run up that we’ll get stuck with?
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T-SPLOST regions are an intermediate level of government in which all the people in the region vote together, not by counties.
Gretchen Quarterman asked:
When the 18 counties vote, is it county by county, say Atkinson votes yes, and Lowndes votes no, and if there were 9 counties that voted yes and 9 counties that voted no, or is it the total of all the voters together, and then we say there were 400,000 voters and it’s a simple majority.
Corey Hull answered:
It’s a simple majority. It’s the latter of how you described it, it’s all the voters together.
Here’s the video:
How do we vote on T-SPLOST?
T-SPLOST Public Meeting, Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC),
Corey Hull,
Nolen Cox, Gretchen Quarterman,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 September 2011.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
-jsq
Lowndes County would be a T-SPLOST donor county: it would put more money into T-SPLOST than it would get back for projects.
Somebody (I think it was Robert Yost) asked whether 
Lowndes County would be a donor county for T-SPLOST. Corey Hull said yes, that was the case. Someone else noted:
Atkinson County that’s been coming over here spending our money all these years, gets a little of it back.
And the smaller counties get penalized a lot more if they vote against T-SPLOST, because they depend much more on LMIG. So T-SPLOST among other downsides is a scheme to pit smaller counties against larger ones in the T-SPLOST region.
Here’s the video:
Lowndes County donor county
T-SPLOST Public Meeting, Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC),
Corey Hull,
Nolen Cox, Gretchen Quarterman,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 September 2011.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
-jsq
Corey Hull explained what the state of Georgia has in store for us if we vote down T-SPLOST:
If the voters do not approve the referendum, then all local governments must match their LMIG funds a rate of 30%. And then we have to wait 24 months to start the process over again. And when I say start the process over again, I mean start the process over to enact this tax.
Nolen Cox, Chairman of the Lowndes County Republican Party (LCRP), remarked:
Is that commonly called a stick?
Gretchen Quarterman, Chairman of the Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP), observed:
It looks like a baseball bat.
Now I doubt either were speaking in an official capacity, but I know from talking to them that both individuals oppose this tax, and I’m pretty sure most people in their local parties do, too.
Here’s a longer explanation of what happens, including what LMIG is, April 2011 LCDP meeting.
Here’s the video:
T-SPLOST: stick or baseball bat?
T-SPLOST Public Meeting, Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC),
Corey Hull,
Nolen Cox, Gretchen Quarterman,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 September 2011.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
-jsq
Lowndes County unincorporated area residents may or may not be forced to buy curbside trash pickup, or something, sometime, but the county isn’t answering questions about that.
In Citizens Wishing to Be Heard at the
24 April 2012 Lowndes County Commission Regular Session, Gretchen Quarterman wanted to know 
what had been decided at the retreat or elsewhere about the trash question. Will we have to get curbside pickup? Did the county look to see what surrounding counties do? Might the county survey citizens for their opinions? Could we have a special garbage tax district for those who wanted to use the current trash deposit areas, similar to the special lighting tax districts the county has repeatedly approved? She got no answers to any of her questions other than Commissioner Joyce Evans shaking her head at that last one.
So we don’t know what the county has decided, if anything, nor when they will decide it, nor how they are collecting citizen input (if at all).
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Imagine an appointed body that likes citizen input, and even puts (some) board packet items on its website before its meetings! Parks and Rec is that body.
With 1.5 mil of our tax dollars every year, it’s good to see the Valdosta-Lowndes County Parks & Recreation Authority (VLPRA) reviewing finances:
At the end of February, the Parks and Rec had $2.69 million in cash, $541,000 in liabilities, and that leaves about $2.1 million….
For the eight months ending February 29, tax receipts $3.22 million. That’s $79,000 dollars more tax receipts than for the eight months of the previous year.
So that’s about $4.3 million per year in tax receipts, plus SPLOST money (see the video). The board didn’t have any questions about finance.
At least we can see some results of their money, such as Continue reading
Don’t believe Latin American presidents (former and current) or a global commission including captains of industry or historic statesmen such as Jimmy Carter or major newspapers or Judge Napolitano or law enforcement professionals like Frank Serpico? Ask an economist who spells it out: the War on Drugs is an economic, public safety, and civil rights disaster, and legalization is needed right now.
Economist Art Carden wrote for Forbes yesterday, Let’s Be Blunt: It’s Time to End the Drug War,
April 20 is the counter-culture “holiday” on which lotsand lots of people come together to advocate marijuana legalization (or just get high). Should drugs—especially marijuana—be legal? The answer is “yes.” Immediately. Without hesitation. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200 seized in a civil asset forfeiture. The war on drugs has been a dismal failure. It’s high time to end prohibition. Even if you aren’t willing to go whole-hog and legalize all drugs, at the very least we should legalize marijuana.
OK, why?
Continue readingThe local cities want more LOST money from the county. Imagine if they and the county spent this much effort bringing in new industry such as solar to increase the pie!
David Rodock wrote for the VDT 17 April 2012,
County’s LOST proposal declined:
Cities want more money; negotiations to begin in May.
Well, that about sums it up.
Looks like this is going to end up in another round of litigation
after a lot of talking past each other.
So there will be LOST again, this time in Hahira, 9AM 2 May 2012 at the Hahira Community Center, 215 Randall Street.
They could spend their time talking together more productively.
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