Tag Archives: Transparency

Agenda, Industrial Authority @ VLCIA 2013-04-16

The agenda is different for today’s Industrial Authority meeting! It has even less information than usual: no reports about PR or marketing or existing or new projects; nothing about business parks, and no executive director’s report. It does list an attorney report and an audit update.

Here’s the agenda.

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, April 16, 2013 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street

General Business

  • Call to Order
  • Invocation
  • Welcome Guests

Minutes

  • Regular Meeting, March 8, 2013

Financial

  • Review Compiled Balance Sheet and Income Statements for March 2013
  • Audit Update

Attorney Report

Citzens Wishing To Be Heard

Adjourn General Meeting

Mission of the Valdosta Lowndes County Industrial Authority is to
lead economic development in our community by supporting existing industries
recruiting industries through capitalizing on opportunities for collaboration.

-jsq

Speed dating local officials

Tallahassee does it, and local governments here could also sit down and talk with citizens. It even has built-in time limits, for those elected officials who are concerned about citizen longwindedness.

Gina Pitisci wrote for WCTV Thursday, Ever heard of speed dating? What about speed dating your local officials?

“The more any one of us can get out and talk with the citizens the better off we are,” Gil ziffer, Tallahassee City Commissioner, said. “If we’re insulated in our offices, it’s not like getting out and talking with folks so this is great for us.”

Here’s how it works: every 9 minutes the 12 leaders rotate from table to table giving each group of people an opportunity to ask questions or offer their ideas.

Listening to citizens: now there’s an idea!

-jsq

Lancaster, CA: transparent city

This is how a city that means business acts: in public, on TV and on the web, where its citizens can see it and its citizens can interact.

Not only is Lancaster, California moving ahead with solar energy for jobs and financial benefit, it’s a transparent city:

City of Lancaster, California City Council Meetings are broadcast live on local cable channel 28.

And city council meetings are archived for viewing online; video of yesterday’s meeting is already up. They do require Microsoft Silverlight to view, but nothing’s perfect, and other cities use YouTube, Vimeo, or other more generally usable methods.

And it’s not just the Lancaster City Council: videos of their Planning Commission and numerous other authorities and commissions are also on the web. Plus:

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Believe So. Cal. Edison about San Onofre?

Should we believe the operator of the broken San Onofre 2 nuclear plant that it’s safe to restart at 70% power? The same operator that knew the now-broken steam generators were flawed before it installed them? Recommended by the same NRC staff who couldn’t answer opponents’ questions? The same NRC that doesn’t publish licensee documents and says that’s never been a practice?

SanDiego6.com wrote yesterday, Sen. Boxer Blasts Report on San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station,

On Monday, Southern California Edison announced it had formalized a request to amend its operating license to allow it to operate its Unit 2 reactor at 70 percent beginning June 1.

The reactor was undergoing scheduled maintenance in January 2012 when a small, non-injury leak was discovered in plant’s other reactor. The plant has been shut down since.

According to Edison, vibrations that led to premature wearing of steam pressure tubes in the reactors don’t occur at 70 percent power. The utility wants to operate on limited power for the five warm weather months and then shut down for an inspection of the tubes.

After the inspection, the reactor would resume operating at 70 percent power. The company said it would use the collected tube data to determine an appropriate power setting for the long term.

There’s the catch:

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Who’s inaccurate: VDT, Valdosta, GEFA, Chamber, County?

Both Chamber of Commerce Chair Myrna Ballard and Lowndes County Manager Joe Pritchard say the VDT is inaccurate. The VDT took offense at Ballard’s assertion. Which do you believe? I believe I’d like to see the evidence, not just the VDT’s assertions. And this junior high school cat fight the VDT insists on is not helping fix the real problem with water and wastewater in Valdosta and Lowndes County: the widespread and longterm damage to our watersheds that turned a normal rain in 2009 into a 700 year flood, and caused another flooding of the Withlacoochee Wasterwater Treatment Plant this year. I’m all for investigative reporting, but I have not yet once seen the VDT investigate the real underlying issues of longtime clearcutting and building of roads subdivisions, and parking lots without adequate consideration of water flows.

The VDT front page today has yet another story attacking the City of Valdosta, Loan info from GEFA contradicts City: $11 million awaits disbursement, loan amounts don’t match. I can’t make much sense out of it, because while Jason Shaefer has dug up a lot of interesting information, he doesn’t include dates for much of the financial detail he attributes to GEFA. Let’s see the VDT publish the documents they are referring to. The city does publish its Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports. The VDT has a website, and could publish whatever records it got from GEFA, which after all were produced using our tax dollars, and are therefore public records. Or if the documents are somewhere on GEFA’s website, the VDT could publish links to the specific documents. The VDT did publish a timeline of correspondence with the City about loans, so it could just as easily publish the GEFA documents and its own page-by-page and chart-by-chart comparison so we could all see for ourselves.

The VDT prepended this blurb to its timeline:

It has come to the attention of the Times that the Chamber of Commerce has called a special meeting on Tuesday to address what COC Pres. Myrna Ballard terms as “damage to our community’s reputation” due to the stories that have appeared in the newspaper. The invitation for the 9 a.m. meeting at the Chamber office was extended to only a select group of Chamber members, no media, and states that Mayor John Gayle and City Manager Larry Hanson will explain the city’s financial status. The Times takes very seriously the implication that the newspaper has written anything that is “inaccurate,” as stated by the Chamber. As such, the Times has chosen to show the public the information provided to the newspaper in response to questions posed to the City, with no editing, to allow citizens the opportunity to see for themselves if what the Times has written is an “inaccurate” portrayal of the city’s financial status.

What was that again?

The Times takes very seriously the implication that the newspaper has written anything that is “inaccurate,” as stated by the Chamber.

How about as stated by Lowndes County Manager Joe Pritchard? In a letter from him to me of 29 January 2013 Pritchard stated:

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Videos: Tourism Authority February meeting @ VLCCCTA 2013-02-27

Here are videos of the February meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Convention Center and Tourism Authority. We can guess they met again 27 March 2013, but there’s nothing on their website or their facebook page to indicate that. Their Chair did say 27 March 2013 was the next meeting right at the end of this meeting. And their executive did promise the new website will have meeting times, list of board members, etc. They’re spending money on security cameras and VCRs; hm, maybe they could use some of those cameras to record their own events? Maybe record other board and authorities, and maybe even elected bodies?

I would post the agenda, but I don’t have one; only this picture of the announcement on the door of the Convention Center.

They talked about financials and events vs. event days; they had 25 events in January, down slightly from the same month a year ago, but event-days were similar. Perhaps someone would like to listen to the whole thing and report back on what they did?

Here’s a video playlist:

Videos: Tourism Authority February meeting
Regular Session, Valdosta Lowndes County Conference Center and Tourism Authority (VLCCCTA),
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 February 2013.

-jsq

Valdosta PR about wastewater issues

The city of Valdosta responds. I have decorated this PR with a few images with links, and a few comments after it. -jsq

Mayor and Council Address Recent Wastewater Issues,

The Valdosta Mayor and City Council are committed to providing quality municipal services that meet the expectations of our citizens. In addition to providing fire and police protection and other beneficial quality of life services, the city leadership is equally committed to providing adequate water and wastewater treatment services to its citizens, maintaining a functioning sewer collection system and discharging treated water in an environmentally responsible manner.

Recently, citizens have been inundated with information about the current state of the city’s wastewater treatment plant and sewer collection system, as well as the decisions made during the recent flood event. The following information is provided to explain the recent event and to help citizens better understand these important issues and the dedicated work of their elected officials and municipal staff.

THE SITUATION

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Prison gang violence

This is what eventually happens in a country with 5% of the world’s population yet 25% of the world’s prisoners, in a state that has 1 in 13 adults in the prison system (jail, prison, probation, or parole): prison violence the prisons can’t deal with, possibly including the mysterious violence at Valdosta State Prison. When we stop locking up so many people by ending the war on drugs, we’ll have plenty of money to adequately secure the few remaining real violent offenders.

Rhonda Cook wrote for the AJC Saturday, Gang violence in prison is increasingly deadly,

In a little more than 10 months, 12 inmates and a guard have been stabbed to death in Georgia prisons, a dramatic uptick in violence that law enforcement officials and human rights advocates agree points to increased gang activity.

“We cannot remember a time like this when we were getting this volume and severity of violence,” said Sara Totonchi, executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, which monitors prison violence.

People who go into such prisons, if they aren’t already violent, are likely to be taught to be violent, and some just don’t come back out. Yet those that do get out can be bad for the rest of us:

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Videos: Beer, filters, roads, weather, and executive session @ LCC 2013-03-25

A beer license, and some filters for public works: that's all that's on the agenda for the unquestioning Lowndes County Commission. They did have two very brief reports on the weekend's weather and how they dealt with it. Then they went into executive session for real estate and litigation, which seems to have been the real purpose of this meeting, which otherwise lasted four minutes. They vote on the agenda items Tuesday at 5:30 PM.

Here's the agenda, with links to the videos and some notes.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, MARCH 25, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
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HB 657, the Rural Georgia Economic Recovery and Solar Resource Act of 2014

The solar bill that’s been talked about for weeks has finally appeared in the Georgia legislature: HB 657. It’s better than I expected, because it’s about rural solar generation and distribution. However, there is a catch: a “community solar provider” must be certified by the Public Service Commission, instead of just setting up in business as in most states, and the PSC could certify only one state-wide monopoly; note the summary at the front says “an independent community solar provider” as in only one. But the body of the bill is more circumspect and says “any”. Perhaps if we get enough installations the benefits of solar will become obvious enough that the PSC will certify a lot of community solar providers, and we can get on with solar in Georgia, including house and business rooftop solar. Many thanks to Representatives Kidd of the 145th, Kirby of the 114th, Rogers of the 10th, Brockway of the 102nd, Fullerton of the 153rd, and others. And special credit to Robert E. Green, Shane Owl-Greason, and Ted Terry of Georgia Solar Utilities (GaSU) for shepherding this bill into the legislature.

Shane Owl-Greason, Ted Terry, Robert E. Green
Shane Owl-Greason, Ted Terry, Robert E. Green at the Dublin High School solar groundbreaking.

The bill requires the PSC to study changes in retail rates because of this bill. Too bad it doesn’t go the rest of the way to what North Carolina did, and require timely public posting of who buys and sells which types of energy at which prices, but at least it’s a start.

Maybe HB 657 will help get HB 503 passed for Renewable Portfolio Standards. However, HB 657 is cleaner than either HB 503 or SB 51 because it does not mess around with biomass or for that matter any other energy source: HB 657 is about solar energy and nothing else.

The main part of HB 657 is in Section 1, but first here’s how it shoehorns Continue reading →