Tag Archives: Transparency

Citizens can video on duty police —Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has declined to review a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision that struck down an Illinois law prohibiting audio recordings without permission, echoing last year’s First Court decision that you can record police on the job. Let’s remember it’s not just police:

“Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting

‘the free discussion of governmental affairs.’
”

That means all elected or appointed or employed government officials, from County Commissioners and City Councils down through sheriff and police departments to the Animal Shelter. Police are employees, not elected or appointed, so these rulings would appear to apply to other governmental employees.

Radley Balko wrote for Huffpo 27 November 2012, Supreme Court Inaction Boosts Right To Record Police Officers,

The Illinois and Massachusetts laws have been used to arrest people who attempt to record on-duty police officers and other public officials. In one of the more notorious cases, Chicago resident Tiawanda Moore was arrested in 2010 when she attempted to use her cell phone to record officers in a Chicago police station.

Continue reading →

How to stop climate change: divest from fossil fuel companies

In response to a very downbeat diatribe by Bill McKibben in Rolling Stone on the occasion of the U.N.’s Rio+20 conference being some sound and less fury accomplishing not much about stopping climate change, [Bill McKibben, Rolling Stone, 19 July 2012, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math: Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is”] Chloe Maxmin, Divest Harvard Harvard student Chloe Maxmin followed up McKibben’s problem statement with a plan for what to do: divest from fossil fuel companies. [“In Honor of Kalamazoo: An Open Letter to Bill McKibben,” NextGenJournal, 25 July 2012, no longer online, referred to in a post the same day by Chloe Maxmin on First Here, Then Everywhere.] Maxmin didn’t just wish, either, she joined up with McKibben’s 350.org and helped organize Harvard students to do something about it: persuade Harvard to divest its shares of fossil fuel companies. Students at the University of Georgia, or at Valdosta State University, for that matter, could do the same.

Alli Welton wrote for 350.org 18 November 2012, 72% of Harvard Students Vote to Divest from Fossil Fuels,

Last Friday night, the Harvard College Undergraduate Council announced that the student body had voted 72% in favor of Harvard University divesting its $30.7 billion endowment from fossil fuels.

Members of the Harvard chapter of Students for a Just and Stable Future have been campaigning since September to divest Harvard’s endowment from the top 200 publicly-traded fossil fuel corporations that own the majority of the world’s oil, coal, and gas reserves.

Harvard actually already has divested its shares of one fossil fuel company due to public pressure. Continue reading →

Agenda @ GLPC 2012-11-26

GLPC Agenda 2012-11-26

The Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC) meets next Monday, 26 November 2012. Here’s the agenda.

The agenda was emailed by Valdosta City Planner Matt Martin to Gretchen Quarterman who provided it to LAKE. GLPC itself still doesn’t have agendas online, sixteen months after SGRC stopped posting them.

Here’s a summary table of the cases.

-jsq

Lowndes County,
Final action
Tuesday
11 Dec 2012 		2. REZ-2012-18 Roger Budd
1006 Lakes Boulevard, Lake Park, Georgia
Request to rezone 0.87 acres from C-C (Crossroads Commercial)
to C-H (Highway Commercial)
3. REZ-2012-19 Robinson Milltown Properties, LLC
US Highway 84 East, Naylor, Georgia
Request to rezone 2 acres from E-A (Estate Agriculture)
to C-G (General Commercial)
4. TEX-2012-02
Lowndes County Board of Commissioners
A proposed text amendment to the Unified Land Development Code as it pertains to Single Family residential Density and Minimum Lot Area within the MAZ (Moody Activity Zone)
Valdosta,
Final action
Thursday
6 Dec 2012 		5. VA-2012-15 John McCranie
1404 Gornto Road, Valdosta, Georgia
Request to rezone 0.68 acres from Neighborhood Commercial (C-N)
to Community Commercial (C-C)
6. VA-2012-16 Tombrooks, LLC
316 Eager Road, Valdosta, Georgia
Request to rezone 1.80 acres from Single-family Residential (R-15)
to Single-family Residential (R-10)
7. VA-2012-17 El Toreo, Inc.
225 Norman Drive, Valdosta, Georgia
Request to rezone 15.04 acres from Single-family Residential (R-6)
to Highway Commercial (C-H)
8. VA-2012-18
City of Valdosta
Proposed text amendments to the City of Valdosta Land Development Regulations (LDR)

Car wash, parking, alcohol, and night flights: Videos @ GLPC 2012-10-29

The Greater Lowndes Planning Commission made recommendations on cases involving buffering a car wash, sizing parking spaces, alcohol at a corner store, and a development inside the Moody exclusion zone, all at its 29 October 2012 Regular Session.

Here’s the agenda, and here’s a video playlist, followed by a summary of the cases.

Regular Session, Greater Lowndes Planning Commission (GLPC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 29 October 2012.

Valdosta, Final action Thursday 8 Nov 2012

2. CU-2012-07 Stafford Properties

1609 Norman Drive, Valdosta
Request for a Conditional Use Permit (CUP for a Car Wash in a Community Commercial C-C zoning district.

Developer from Columbus spoke for.

Continue reading →

Alcohol at the corner store? @ GLPC 2012-10-29

The old store at the corner of GA 122 and Cat Creek Road was the subject of debate over alcohol at the Planning Commission’s 29 October 2012 Regular Session. Here’s a playlist.

This was the rezoning item:

4. REZ-2012-16 Cook County Land Ventures
SW corner of Georgia Highway 122 East and Cat Creek Road, Hahira
Request to rezone ~2 acres from E-A (Estate Agriculture) to C-C (Crossroads Commercial)

County Planner Jason Davenport said the owner wants commercial zoning for a store, since previous conditional use had expired, and there was concern about prohibiting alcohol, especially if Continue reading →

Video playlist @ LCC 2012-11-13

The County Commission continues to do the peoples’ business in secret. The solid waste exclusive franchise agreement was tabled for a month, due to some mysterious new information, and two citizens pleaded with the Commission to reconsider the whole thing. The developer who got to speak at Monday’s Work Session asked for his development to be tabled for a month, and the Commission did so. After the meeting, three people from Moody AFB trooped into a side room with the Chairman.

Also, if it’s a privilege to serve and an honor to be appointed, why does the Lowndes County Commission not tell us who they are appointing? In the Work Session they muttered some proposed names unintelligbly, and in the Regular Session they didn’t say anything about who some of the new appointees are, and none of the appointees spoke. As near as I could tell, only one bothered to show up: VLCIA reappointee Mary Gooding.

Update 2012-11-20: Jody Hall reminds me he was there as an appointee. He says he was ready to speak, but nobody asked him to.

Here’s a video playlist:

Video playlist
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 November 2012.

Here’s the agenda again, this time with links to the videos plus a few notes.

Continue reading →

Don’t do this to private enterprise —Cary Scarborough @ LCC 2012-11-13

Cary Scarborough of Deep South Sanitation told the Commission he and his wife and son and daughters started a business, but he “didn’t think it would come down to what we’ve seen here lately.” He spoke at Tuesday’s Lowndes County Commission Regular Session.

I understand … that the county has a responsibility for the solid waste…. I understand we have these big corporations, Advanced Disposal, Veolia. I know some of these people at Veolia, good people; they’ve got a good company, and they pick up several thousand cans every day. What we do offer the citizens here… we offer just a personal service. I know a lot of these people first hand….

He told a story about a customer whose husband lost his job. He stopped billing until the man got another job.

Cary Scarborough’s summation:

Don’t do this to private enterprise, to an individual. If it’s done to me, it will get easier later down the road to do it to someone else.

Yes, why is the county taking customers away from a local business and giving them to a company that isn’t even based here?

County Manager Joe Pritchard, once again, was mostly not paying attention.

Here’s the video:

Continue reading →

Keep waste sites open and reprioritize SPLOST —William Geyer @ LCC 2012-11-13

William Geyer expressed two widespread opinions, keep the solid waste disposal sites open, and reprioritize SPLOST, when he spoke at Tuesday’s Lowndes County Commission Regular Session. County Manager Joe Pritchard, the driving force behind the waste disposal decision, still wasn’t listening.

Keep the solid waste disposal sites open

Saying he was William Geyer of 5474 Union Road, Hahira, he asked the Commission to reconsider their solid waste plan, and to keep the waste disposal sites open.
There’s people out there that can’t afford what y’all are offering. And with a budget as large as we got, I know there’s some way to keep them open. Not only that, Florida has them, and they don’t even man them. I talk to a lot of people out there, they don’t come here, but I wish you really would reconsider, because it is a plus for this county, the elderly, a lot of people here who are struggling, who can’t afford it. I’m not saying I can’t; I can afford it, but there’s a lot of people here who can’t afford it.

Reprioritize SPLOST

Geyer noted SPLOST was supposed to be for paving roads, but lots of roads hadn’t gotten paved.
At that first SPLOST meeting, it was around 1984 or 5 they did my road, Union Road. What happened to the rest of the roads that are dirt? We’ve somehow lost our priorities. We want a new library, we want a new this or that. What about these people who live on these dirt roads that were promised they’d be paved. County Manager, how many miles of dirt roads do we have in this county?

County Manager Joe Pritchard obviously wasn’t listening, “Pardon me?” he said, after the Chairman prodded him. He didn’t know, either; he motioned Continue reading →

Video playlist @ LCC 2012-11-12

The Lowndes County Commission invited a developer to speak about his proposed rezoning at a Work Session without inviting any opposition to speak. Plus another rezoning, a proposed solid waste ordinance with exclusive franchise agreement, and proposed appointments to five boards and authorities. And at the end an animal event report.

Here’s a video playlist:

Video playlist
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 12 November 2012.

Here’s the agenda again, this time with links to the videos plus a few notes.

Continue reading →

Appointments to five boards, two rezonings, and a solid waste ordinance @ LCC 2012-11-12

Monday morning the Lowndes County Commission considers and Tuesday evening votes on members of five appointed boards. Who are the candidates? The agenda doesn’t say. The two rezonings are the same ones the Planning Commission recently considered. Presumably the solid waste ordinance has something to do with the recent privatization decision.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2012, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2012, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor Continue reading →