Tag Archives: Valdosta

No contracts for tenants of Leila Ellis Building @ LCC 2013-10-07

Two, four, six, many: that’s how Lowndes County counts tenants. It’s great the county is providing space for organizations that help the needy, but it’s kind of curious that the county didn’t seem to know who or how many organizations were using the Leila Ellis building, and had no lease agreement with them. Not to mention it took twenty questions from Commissioners to get staff to admit that lack of contracts, at Monday morning’s Lowndes County Commission Work Session.

6.b. Leila Ellis Building-Available Space

Kind of like they have no contract with the alleged county attorney.

Chad McCleod at one point said two organizations are currently in the building, LAMP and Cash Prosperity. He said the County let LAMP use it, and LAMP let Cash Prosperity use it.

In response to a question from Commissioner DeMarcus Marshall, County Manager Joe Pritchard said under normal circumstances any organization would need to come to the Commission to ask for space. They currently have more applicants than space.

Commissioner Crawford Powell wanted to know if the county was going to set up guidelines for who could lease. Pritchard said they could, and they couldn’t lease to a private business.

Commissioner Richard Raines wanted to know if annual leases were the practice of this board. Pritchard, not actually answering the question asked, said “That would be my suggestion.”

JoTaryla Thomas came up to speak for Continue reading →

Rotating vice chairmanship @ LCC 2013-10-07

Six minutes on who will be Vice Chairman and when, a ceremonial position, as far as I know. 13 minutes on a parade of organizations that want to rent space in the Leila Ellis. They vote tonight at 5:30 PM.

The storm that wasn’t was the subject of Ashley Tye’s report. They tabled Nottinghill like the Planning Commission did. They vote tonight on letting Barrington subdivision sprawl into the county. Did Commissioners ever get that list of roads for striping? Do we have enough evidence yet for juvenile justice? Or will we continue to concentrate on fining people coming off of I-75? All that and a group photo. At least the Work Session yesterday morning had some actual discussion in it for a change.

Here’s the agenda with links to the videos and a few notes.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

Divestment is about undermining the political power of the fossil fuel industry –Tim DeChristopher

Answering Harvard President Drew Faust’s excuses,

Tim DeChristopher, who went to jail for directly opposing gas and oil drilling and is now a student at Harvard Divinity School,

To seriously suggest that any research will solve the climate crisis while we continue to allow the fossil fuel industry to maintain a stranglehold on our democracy is profoundly naive.

Wen Stephenson wrote for the Nation 4 October 2013, Tim DeChristopher: There Is No ‘Neutral’ in the Climate Fight, including DeChristopher’s statement:

Drew Faust seeks a position of neutrality in a struggle where the powerful only ask that people like her remain neutral. She says that Harvard’s endowment shouldn’t take a political position, and yet it invests in an industry that spends countless millions on corrupting our political system. In a world of corporate personhood, if she doesn’t want that money to be political, she should put it under her mattress. She has clearly forgotten the words of Paolo Freire: “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and powerless means to side with the powerful, not to remain neutral.” Or as Howard Zinn put succinctly, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”

She touts Continue reading →

Harvard excuses for not divesting from fossil fuels

Drew Faust wants us to believe Harvard can’t figure out how to power its own campus and vehicles on renewable solar, wind, wave, and tidal energy? Come on, pull the other one!

President Faust wrote that divestment would make Harvard appear “as a political actor rather than an academic institution”, that Harvard might not make enough money, that “Universities own a very small fraction of the market capitalization of fossil fuel companies”, and that “I also find a troubling inconsistency in the notion that, as an investor, we should boycott a whole class of companies at the same time that, as individuals and as a community, we are extensively relying on those companies’ products and services for so much of what we do every day.” The first three excuses would have applied just as much back in the 1980s when Harvard finally divested from companies dealing in apartheid in South Africa, a symbolic, and yes, political action that contributed markedly to the release of Nelson Mandela, the downfall of the apartheid regime, and later the election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa.

Harvard President Derek Bok, 18 May 1990, in a letter to students explaining the Unversity’s September 1989 decision to divest from tobacco companies, since completed:

In reaching its decision, the corporation was motivated by a desire not to be associated as a shareholder with companies engaged in significant sales of products that create a substantial and unjustified risk of harm to other human beings.

Harvard divestment was good enough for apartheid and tobacco.

In veritas, Harvard can have just as much or more influence by divesting from fossil fuels, and that cause is even more important for the whole world. In south Georgia truth, so can Valdosta State University in its own region.

Office of the President, Harvard, 3 October 2013, Fossil Fuel Divestment Statement; I added the links and images, all directly related to Harvard.

Dear Members of the Harvard Community,

Continue reading →

Test program meeting at Plant Vogtle –NRC and Southern Company 9 October 2013

Safety at Plant Vogtle, this Wednesday, with call-in number, by NRC and Georgia Power’s parent the Southern Company. One hour from 1 to 2PM is the public part, then 3 more hours closed “because the staff has determined that the information is proprietary in nature.” Why is nuclear testing affecting public safety proprietary?

It’s at Vogtle Training Center, 9034 River Road, Waynesboro, GA 30830, which is on the corner of the Plant Vogtle site. Do you get a tour of the construction if you appear in person? Here’s what it looks like in Georgia Power’s Vogtle 3 and 4 Construction Photos September 2013, and on google maps:


View Larger Map

Here’s the NRC meeting announcement: Continue reading →

From Seven Out in Waycross to CSX to Pecan Row Landfill in Lowndes County

CSX was involved directly in the Seven Out contamination, storing hazardous water that leaked: and then that water was apparently shipped to the Pecan Row Landfill in Lowndes County. This is in addition to the the CSX trichloroethylene groundwater contamination dating back to 2000 and earlier.

According to a letter from Georgia Department of Natural Resources to BCX, Inc. of 20 July 2004, EPA Identification Number: GAR000030007,

  1. Twenty-seven tanks of wastewater were stored at the facility. Four portable tanks were storing the excess capacity of wastewater next door on property owned by CSX Transportation. These portable 10,000-gallon tanks were not labeled to indicate their contents;
  2. According to a BCX representative, one of the portable 10,000-gallon tanks had a gasket failure on the forward manhole which caused the release of an unknown substance onto the ground at the site owned by CSX Transportation;
  3. Dead vegetation was observed in a 15 feet by 30 feet area downgradient of the tank that caused the release;
  4. A yellowish-green substance was observed on the ground between the portable tank that had the release and another portable tank adjacent to it. There was also dead vegetation observed between these two tanks; and

And GA EPD tested the soil and found something the document doesn’t specify, but whatever it was was enough that: Continue reading →

October LAKE meeting Monday 7 October 2013

Different day (Monday) and time (4PM), and some new developments, also adding that natural gas pipeline to the usual agenda of local governance: Water (sinkholes, aquifer recharge, runoff, drinking water, and wastewater), trash (how about that Exclusive Franchise!), and money (no-bid contracts and plus SPLOST VII). If you want to help, we have a little list of tasks you can do.

If you're on Facebook, please Like the LAKE facebook page. You can sign up for the meeting event there, Or just come as you are.

Pipeline points with streets
What: Monthly LAKE Meeting
When: 4PM Monday
7 October 2013
Where: Michael’s Deli
1307 N Ashley St.
Valdosta, GA 31601

-jsq

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 →

No Nottinghill + 3 other rezonings, 3 contracts, a bid, and vice chairmanship @ LCC 2013-10-07

Will the County Commission take up Nottinghill even though the Planning Commission tabled it? Is Barrington subdivision now ready to sprawl into the county? Did Commissioners ever get that list of roads for striping? Do we have enough evidence yet for juvenile justice? Or will we continue to concentrate on fining people coming off of I-75? Who was Leila Ellis, anyway? And who will be Vice Chairman (hint: Joyce Evans is now)? All that and a group photo, continuing the tradition of County Commission meetings as content-free photo-ops.

Here’s the agenda.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

Georgia Power wants to charge you for your solar power

Georgia Sierra Club’s Seth Gunning batted away Georgia Power’s proposed solar tax, which would charge about $22 a month for many new home solar installations. GA PSC needs to call Georgia Power’s proposal out, because it was a bad idea when Dominion Power did it in Virginia, and it would be a worse idea here in sunny Georgia. Besides, Austin Energy already established that the purported basis for such a solar tax is nonsense: actually, utilities should be paying more for home solar power because of the benefits they receive.

Jonathan Shapiro wrote for WABE yesterday, Georgia Power’s Proposed Solar Tariff Scrutinized,

The company is proposing an average tariff of about $22 per month for new home solar systems that aren’t a part of Georgia Power-sponsored solar initiatives.

Company officials argue the tariff is necessary because most solar users still require the power grid as a back-up when the sun isn’t shining. As solar use spreads, the company stands to collect less revenue from those customers. What doesn’t change is the cost to maintain the grid. Georgia Power says non-solar customers shouldn’t have to bear all the costs.

“We don’t want to contribute to the problem of shifting costs so before we do that we very much prefer to get these tariffs right so all customers benefit,” said Roberts.

PSC Chairman Chuck Eaton wondered if the tariff is about making up for lost revenue, why not consider new fees for any number of energy efficiency measures.

“What makes solar unique?” asked Eaton. Continue reading →