Tag Archives: Valdosta

Videos: church parking withdrawn @ ZBOA 2014-04-01




North Valdosta Church of God came to a decision.
Plus

a house variance in
Lowndes County was approved unanimously,
and

a gas station variance got its building variance approved, but its other variance requests denided, all on a split vote.
in
Valdosta.
See

the Meeting Results Summary,
which also lists all of ZBOA members as present.

Here’s

the agenda, with links to the videos and a few notes.
The City of Valdosta puts ZBOA agendas and minutes

online in real PDFs. Continue reading →

A newspaper opposes the pipeline: the Spectator



A major big city daily?
A local newspaper of record along the proposed pipeline path?
Nope: the Valdosta State University student newspaper, The Spectator,
has done what its bigger newspaper colleagues have not dared:
oppose the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline and demand renewable
energy instead.
Where students lead, maybe their elders will follow.

Editorial in The Spectator 1 May 2014 (I added the links and images),

Pipeline a risk to Valdosta, Continue reading →

Video of Gretchen on Scott James radio show 2014-05-01

Lowndes County as the Jewel of the South, and how to get there,
was the topic on drive-time radio Thursday.



Local policy issues include what would happen to us if we got
20 inches of rain like Pensacola just did?
The county needs to be appropriately staffed and prepared for emergencies.
The Army Corps of Engineers study on flooding
will be presented at the next

Valdosta City Council Work Session (5:30 PM May 6th at City Hall)
with a public presentation afterwards (6:30 PM at City Hall Annex).
Gretchen added that

Ashley Tye
will be giving a Lowndes County Emergency Management
Continuity of Business Workshop 5:30-6:30 PM 5 May 2014
at the Lowndes County Administrative Building, 327 North Ashley Street, Valdosta.

Radio host Scott James noted,

In case nobody picked up on it, I just
quizzed Gretchen and she is involved.
She answered both very well.

Gretchen added that having things online for people who can’t
go to the meetings because they’re at work
would be very useful in getting more people engaged.
Scott James advocated livestreaming videos of meetings,
“or at least recorded and played back”.
Gretchen recounted an anecdote about wishing she could have
heard the recent Valdosta City Council meeting livestreamed.

Here’s

the video: Continue reading →

Valdosta Farm Days starts today



9AM to 1PM

Valdosta Farm Days at the old Lowndes County Courthouse,
first and third Saturdays, starting today.

City of Valdosta Pr 24 April 2014,

Downtown Valdosta Welcomes Back Farm Days,

On market Saturdays, vendors offer a variety of goods for sale such
as locally-grown, locally-raised, locally-produced fruits and
vegetables, plants, herbs, meats, farm-fresh eggs and dairy
products, organic produce, baked and prepared foods, snacks and
coffee. Patrons will also find a variety of artisan and natural
products including products made from recycled goods, birdhouses,
handmade soaps and body products, candles, and honey products. Those
who arrive early to shop have the advantage of beating the heat and
getting the best picks of the season.

The market also serves as a venue to educate the community on
healthy local options. Cooking demonstrations and Continue reading →

Ashby, Mass. grilled pipeline company



A tiny town of about 3,000 people grilled pipeline reps for two hours.
Why didn’t the pipeline companies fix the leaky pipelines they had
before building new ones, their Board of Selectment wanted to know
among many other good questions.
Representatives from Kinder Morgan and its subsidiary
Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company (TGP)
said stuff happens and those were bigger issues and basically
don’t worry your pretty little heads.
The locals weren’t buying it. Continue reading →

Opaque Planning Commission agenda from Lowndes County @ GLPC 2014-04-28



Just in case it might work, I sent an Open Records Request to the
Lowndes County Clerk before Monday’s Planning Commission meeting.
The result just arrived, two days later, 47 hours after the meeting started.

It is in electronic form, as I requested, but it’s a
PDF of a scanned
image, so turning it into HTML would require OCRing it or transcribing it,
unlike
the real PDF I got by another means before the meeting
and posted Monday.
If the agendas and minutes for the Planning Commission were posted
on the web like the Lowndes County Commissions own agendas
and minutes already are, this problem wouldn’t arise,
and there would also be less work for county staff.

-jsq

Lowndes County Emergency Management Workshop May 5



Received today via the Valdosta-Lowndes Chamber of Commerce.
I added a few links from
posts in this blog featuring Ashley Tye.
-jsq


Lowndes County Emergency Management
Continuity of Business Workshop,

You Are Invited to attend the

Lowndes County Emergency Management

Continuity of Business Workshop




On Monday, May 5, from 5:30-6:30 p.m., Lowndes County Emergency
Management will host a Continuity of Business Workshop on the second
floor of the Lowndes County Administrative Building, 327 North
Ashley Street, Valdosta, Georgia. The session will be led by

Lowndes County Emergency Management Director, Ashley Tye.

Attendees will receive Continue reading →

2 megaWatts solar in Lanier County

Somebody told me a few weeks ago there’s a big solar farm near Lakeland.
He was not very specific about where, but it’s big: two megawatts,
organized by a company out of Chicago.
Can anybody point me to where it is so I can go take pictures?




Evergreen Solar Services says,

2.0 MW Lakeland, GA

Completed in 2014, 2 — 1.0 MW Georgia Power ASI projects.
Fixed tilt PV with central inverters, medium voltage interconnected.

You can see by this Evergreen Solar Services picture that Continue reading →

Gretchen Quarterman on Chris Beckham radio show 2014-04-29



“People would have a lot more confidence in the government
if they understood it and they could see it happen,”
said Gretchen Quarterman this morning on drive-time radio.
She used last night’s
Brookhaven apartment building rezoning public hearing in
Lake Park to illustrate: local landowners have property rights and
there was a lack of communication between the developers
of a proposed apartment building, the Lake Park city government,
and the neighbors.



She also talked about jobs, including in local agriculture.
For example, she ran the

2014 South Georgia Growing Local Conference.
Money spent on local agriculture supports the local economy,
not companies far away.



She talked about stewardship of resources,
including preserving local property and environment from
the Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline.
She advocated Continue reading →

Local governments can regulate land use –the anti-fracking activists who just won the world’s largest environmental prize

There is something we can do about that proposed fracked methane pipeline.

Lindsay Abrams wrote for Salon today,

The real secret to beating the Koch brothers: How our broken political system can still be won:
A duo of activists has quietly bested the energy lobby, helping ban fracking in 172 towns. Here’s how they did it,



You probably haven’t heard of Helen Slottje, or, for that matter, of her
husband, David. But in the past few years, the former corporate lawyers
have become arguably two of the most powerful opponents of fracking in New
York — not to mention the most successful. As the (sort of) public face
of the duo’s efforts, Helen Slottje on Monday was honored with the
Goldman Prize, the world’s largest environmental prize.

OK, what did they actually do? Continue reading →