Tag Archives: Valdosta City Council

WWTP surveying, Norwood withdrawn, Colbert on agenda, radar, benefits, and parking @ VCC 2013-10-10



Valdosta wants to survey to prepare for moving and upgrading the

Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The City Council is awarding

retirement benefits,
and the

employee of the month is three people this month.
One rezoning has been
withdrawn
and another
is up for action
Thursday.
Plus somebody didn’t like the Valdosta Historic Preservation Commission
actually requiring preservation and is appealing
to the City Council.
It would be interesting to see what’s in that WWTP surveying and engineering
contract and which parking is being appealed, but Valdosta City Council
doesn’t publish its agenda packets online, unlike for example
Augusta,
which has the second highest high tech job growth in the country.

Here’s

the agenda.
They also have a Work Session Tuesday 8 October 2013 at 5:30 PM,
inconveniently the same time as the
Lowndes County Commission Regular Session.

AGENDA

REGULAR MEETING OF THE VALDOSTA CITY COUNCIL

5:30 P.M., Thursday, October 10, 2013

COUNCIL CHAMBERS, CITY HALL

Continue reading →

Meet the Candidates –Chamber



Go hear what they have to say, to help you decide who you’re going to vote for.
here’s

the list of candidates who qualified.

Here’s

the Chamber’s event description:



Event Name:
Meet the Candidates


Event Type(s):
Chamber Calendar
Community Calendar


Description:
The Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber will host a Meet the Candidates event on Tues. Oct. 1 from 5-7 p.m. at the VSU Continuing Education Building located on 903 N. Patterson Street.
The event is an opportunity for the public to meet and hear from candidates running in the Nov. 5 general election. Attendees can speak one-on-one with candidates and candidates will be given three minutes to discuss his or her main initiatives.


Event Date:
10-01-13


Event Time:
05:00 PM – 07:00 PM Eastern


Location:
VSU Continuing Education Building (Auditorium)
903 N. Patterson St.
Valdosta, GA 31601



click here for Google Maps




click here for Mapquest



Contact Person:


Patty Martin


(phone: 229.247.8100)


Outlook/vCalendar:
click on the date(s) to add to your calendar:



10-01-13

-jsq

Orr, Barrington, Whitewater, New Statenville + VLD * 2 + Dasher + Hahira variance @ GLPC 2013-09-30

A county developer has moved roads, plus
3 out of 5 local cities at the
Greater Lowndes Planning Commission tonight, plus
“Attendance policy for appointed Boards”:
are we going to

expect them to show up now?
A Hahira variance, a Valdosta conditional use permit and a rezoning,
a Dasher zoning text amendment,
and rezonings on four Lowndes County roads, including
New Statenville Highway, Whitewater Road @ Williams Road, Barrington Drive @ Bemiss Road,
and Orr Road.



That Orr Road one uses the same name, Nottinghill,
as one that

on Cat Creek Road that previously got tabled and never came back.
GLPC didn’t list any street numbers of parcel numbers, but
there’s only one property on Orr Road that’s 14.99 acres,

owned by William Henry Wright, backing up to his
property on Stafford Wright Road.
Have the Nottinghill developers made a deal with him for Orr Road
since the neighbors didn’t want them on Cat Creek Road?


Here’s the agenda. Continue reading →

Japan or south Georgia?

How is our local landfill like Fukushima?
No, not radiation: nobody seems to be responsible.

Colin P. A. Jones wrote for The Japan Times 16 September 2013,

Fukushima and the right to responsible government,



Rather, the means of holding a member responsible for bad judgments
are internalized as part of the rules and discipline governing the
hierarchy to which they belong, with mechanisms for outsiders to
assert responsibility — to assert rights — being
minimized and neutralized whenever possible.

Sure, it’s not exactly the same.
Our local governments live in fear they’ll get sued (or so they claim),
and even sheriffs and judges occasionally get convicted around here.
But it’s quite difficult to get local elected officials to take their responsibility to the
people as seriously as “we’ve invested too much in that to stop now”
where “we” means the local government or more frequently a developer.

And privatizing the landfills and

now trash collection is not that
dissimilar to the Japanese government keeping TEPCO afloat so they
have an unaccountable scapegoat for Fukushima.
Locally, nobody seems to even know, much less care, that the landfill
is Continue reading →

Cancelled: Valdosta City Council this week @ VCC 2013-09-19



According to

In the City this Week, Sept. 16-21

The Valdosta City Council meeting =
scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 19 has been canceled. The next City Council
meeting is scheduled for Oct. 10. The Mayor and Council look forward to
seeing you there.

Click here
for information about Mayor and Council meetings.

I guess you’ll have to get your entertainment elsewhere downtown this week.

From that same newsletter: Continue reading →

Flood control measures encourage settling too close and provoke severe flooding events



Flood control to keep water out of houses seems like a good idea,
but it turns out that it causes the flood control measures to keep
needing to be raised higher, and it encourages people to build
too close to flooding areas, plus
“rare and catastrophic events take place”.
Like the 2009 “700 year flood” and the

four or more floods this year
that have overflowed the Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant.
In our case, there are also the issues of widespread clearcutting
and buildings and streets with impervious cover.
The local runoff containment requirements in the various local government zoning codes may be
like levees: “flood control
structures might even increase flood risk as protection from
frequent flooding reduces perceptions of risk”.

This encourages human settlements in floodplain areas, which are then
vulnerable to high-consequence and low-probability events.

Much simpler just not to give out building permits for flood zones.
Or we could

put medical buildings right next to a creek,
assuming

because it’s never flooded it never will….


Socio-hydrology: conceptualising human-flood interactions,
G. Di Baldassarre, A. Viglione, G. Carr, L. Kuil, J. L. Salinas, and G. Bloschl,

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 17, 3295–3303, 2013
doi:10.5194/hess-17-3295-2013,
© Author(s) 2013. CC Attribution 3.0 License.


Abstract. Over history, humankind has tended to settle near streams Continue reading →

Developing across Two Mile Branch and a sidewalk @ VCC 2013-09-05



Magaret Ellen Hill is
Employee of the month, and
they rejected

the sidewalk bids
putting them out for rebid,
after they unanimously approved

the medical development to span One Two Mile Branch
at the Valdosta City Council Regular Session of 5 September 2013.

Here’s

the agenda, with links to the videos, and a few notes.

AGENDA

REGULAR MEETING OF THE VALDOSTA CITY COUNCIL

5:30 PM Thursday, September 5, 2013

COUNCIL CHAMBERS, CITY HALL


  1. Opening Ceremonies

    1. Call to Order
    2. Invocation
    3. Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag



  2. Awards and Presentations

    1. Consideration of the September, 2013 Employee of the Month Award (Margaret Ellen Hill, Main Street Department).

      She helped extend Downtown Valdosta Farm Days by two months.


  3. Minutes Approval

    1. Valdosta City Council – Regular Meeting – Aug 22, 2013 5:30 PM

      Approved unanimously with no changes.

  4. Public Hearings


    UHS Pruitt VA-2013-12 CU-2013-02     Continue reading →

Pruitt Corp. across One Mile Branch and a sidewalk @ VCC 2013-09-05



The medical development to span One Mile Branch

recommended by the Planning Commission
is up for a vote tonight, along with sidewalk bids elsewhere,
by the Valdosta City Council.

Plus September, 2013 Employee of the Month is Margaret Ellen Hill, Main Street Department.

Here’s

the agenda:

AGENDA

REGULAR MEETING OF THE VALDOSTA CITY COUNCIL

5:30 PM Thursday, September 5, 2013

COUNCIL CHAMBERS, CITY HALL

  1. Opening Ceremonies

    1. Call to Order

    2. Invocation

    3. Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag
  2. Awards and Presentations

    1. Consideration of the September, 2013 Employee of the Month Award (Margaret Ellen Hill, Main Street Department).
  3. Minutes Approval

    1. Valdosta City Council – Regular Meeting – Aug 22, 2013 5:30 PM
  4. Public Hearings


    1. Consideration of an Ordinance to rezone 4.96 acres from Single-Family Residential (R-
      6) and (R-10) to Office-Professional (O-P) as requested by UHS Pruitt Corporation
      (File No. VA-2013-12). The property is located at 1501 North Lee Street. The Greater
      Lowndes Planning Commission reviewed this request at their August Regular Meeting
      and recommended approval (7-0 vote).


    2. Consideration of an Ordinance for a Conditional Use Permit to allow a Residential Care
      Facility in Office-Professional (O-P) zoning as requested by UHS-Pruitt Corporation
      (File No. CU-2013-02). The property is located at 1501 North Lee Street. The Greater
      Lowndes Planning Commission reviewed this request at their August Regular Meeting
      and recommended approval with five conditions (7-0 vote).
  5. Bids, Contracts, Agreements and Expenditures

    1. Consideration of bids for the Sidewalk Installation Project on Lamar Street and North
      Oak Street.
  6. City Manager’s Report

  7. Council Comments

  8. Citizens to be Heard

  9. Adjournment

-jsq

Medical development to span One Two Mile Branch in downtown Valdosta? @ GLPC 2013-08-26



That looks like a creek running through 1501 North Lee Street,
as Valdosta City Council Sonny Vickers asked Tuesday and
is on the Valdosta City Council agenda for a vote tonight,
after being considered for a recommendation
at the

Greater Lowndes Planning Commission Regular Session 26 August 2013.



Matthew Woody wrote for the VDT yesterday,

City discusses zoning request,

Councilman Sonny Vickers expressed concern about the facility being
too close to the stream. He asked if the City approved this and
there was a flood, would the City be liable. He asked if any of the
surrounding areas have been flooded in the past, and Martin said
that in the past 43 years, there has never been an issue.

And what about waste flowing downstream or into the aquifer?

Extract from the

Planning Commission agenda
with links to the videos:

CITY OF VALDOSTA CASES:

FINAL ACTION by the City of Valdosta Mayor-Council

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Valdosta City Hall, 216 E. Central Avenue, Valdosta, Georgia

Council Chambers, 2nd Floor

5:30 p.m.


  1. VA-2013-12 UHS Pruitt Corporation

    Property Location: 1501 North Lee Street (Parkwood Development Center)


    VA-2013-12: Adjacent

    Continue reading →

Citizens sue city about sewage

I wonder who else is sick of

sewage?

AP, today,

Sick Of Spewing Sewage, Georgia Neighbors File Lawsuit,



The Georgia Environmental Protection Division responded to a
Rochelle resident’s complaint of waste spewing across portions of a
10-block area in March. The agency concluded there had been a major
spill of more than 10,000 gallons of raw sewage. A March 29 letter
from state regulators says Rochelle city officials were aware of
“frequent spill events” in the past but had made “minimal to no
progress” in fixing the problems.

The complaint and the lawsuit both started with 67-year-old John
Jackson, a retired Rochelle city maintenance worker who reached out
to state regulators and the nonprofit environmental law firm
Earthjustice. The firm filed suit on behalf of him and seven
co-plaintiffs.



Well, of course our local

county seat
and county
here are working on fixing their sewage problems…. Continue reading →