Tag Archives: Valdosta

$75/day Lowndes County Travel Policy @ LCC 24-25 October 2011

Commissioner Crawford Powell wanted exemptions or exceptions to Lowndes County’s travel policy for “department heads, elected officials, County Manager”. Commissioner Richard Raines just wanted the limits raised. Commissioner Joyce Evans preferred they
…make a statement that we should not exceed a certain amount per day.
Chairman Ashley Paulk said exceptions were a problem and indicated they would be a bad idea. Powell and Raines are the same Commissioners who thought accepting a federal grant for NOAA Weather Radios would be “wasteful spending” of tax dollars and who refused a federal grant for an emergency vehicle. Spending local taxes seems fine with then when it comes to their travel expenses. They finally adopted a total of $75/day for meals. I hate to agree with Frank Barnas, but GSA standard for trips to Atlanta is $56/day.

At the Monday 24 October 2011 County Commission Work Session, County Manager Pritchard said the county’s travel policy had been discussed during their retreat and during budget preparations, with changes for mileage reimbursement, meal limitations, and use of tax forms. .

This is the policy we have been acting under since the adoption of the budget. I just wanted to bring it back before you to make this adoption public.
Joyce Evans expressed a concern about it saying the County Manager or his designee could approve expenses. She seemed to want the designee part removed.

Crawford Powell said:

Continue reading →

Videos of VBOE Education Open Forum 25 October 2011

Here are videos of the entire Open Forum on education held by the Valdosta Board of Education at JL Lomax Elementary School 25 October 2011. This forum was advertised starting 29 August 2011, almost two months in advance, and was the third of three forums held by VBOE. As I asked back back on 1 September, Where was CUEE at the school board meetings? One or two showed up at each of the VBOE forums. Where were the rest of them?

Oh, that’s right! CUEE’s idea of a forum is to phone up selected people in the middle of the night to come to a meeting when both school superintendents are out of town, oh, and not invite the newspaper of record.

If you still haven’t been to a real open forum, the Lowndes Continue reading →

Any parent is free to send their children to Valdosta Schools —Susan Wehling @ VBOE 25 October 2011

Susan Wehling made several good points Tuesday, including an invitation for CUEE to put their children where their mouth is, like she already has.

Hi, I’m a parent, and I have three kids in school right now; one just graduated.

First of all, CUEE sent me flyers… to insult my schools…. That was very hurtful for my children to read those flyers telling them how bad my schools are. My schools are not bad, and I’m very upset about that.

[applause]

She also said: Continue reading →

I would certainly encourage you to speak your mind —VSU Pres. Levy

Henry Calhoun asked VSU Interim President Louis Levy where are the free areas on campus? Dr. Levy answered:
Right outside of Palms Quad there’s a free speech thing, but, as you can see, uh…. [gestures around]
[laughter]
You know, like I said. If someone’s violating the law here, and creating a dangerous situation by, uh, physically disrupting the students or faculty, that’s one thing, we deal with that….

But if it’s, even this gnat, we will allow this gnat to….

Continue reading →

An Open Forum on Financial Issues Concerning Consolidation —LCBOE 1 November 2011

Last chance for an open forum about school consolidation issues.

Lowndes County Board of Education will hold a An Open Forum on Financial Issues Concerning Consolidation:

6PM, 1 November 2011
Lowndes High Cafeteria
1606 Norman Drive
Valdosta, GA
All about the previous LCBOE Forum of 4 October 2011.

-jsq

Community Calendar —Jane F. Osborn 26 October 2011

The latest update, 26 October 2011, is online for the community calendar produced by Jane F. Osborn who organizes the Valdosta Civic Roundtable. She wrote:
…the calendar is not produced for civic roundtable, it is just a project of mine for the many counties that lost a source of information when 2-1-1 was discontinued.
LAKE will attempt to remember to update new ones in this web page as Miss Jane sends them. We hope you, dear readers, will remind us if we don’t.

-jsq

Same old “unification” disinformation from the Chamber and CUEE

This is what CUEE Referendum Supporters apparently support, and why I call on them to stand up and say whether they are for or against it: the same old disproved disinformation sent again yesterday by a CUEE board member from the Chamber’s own email address to Chamber members. If you support CUEE, you support this disinformation campaign instead of real research that shows consolidation would do nothing to improve education, it would raise everyone’s taxes, and it would not help attract industry. Instead, it would seriously damage public education.

This is not a time to be silent. Which side are you on? CUEE and the Chamber’s propaganda campaign? Or public education, and you will vote no?

CUEE Board Member “Jud Rackley, CPA” emailed yesterday from chamber@valdostachamber.com, subject “The Truth About School Taxes and Unification”, including:

I’ve heard several people say school unification will cause a significant tax increase. Yet, no one seems to know why this would happen. It appears this rumor is based on a document circulated by the Lowndes County Board of Education.
Dr. Troy Davis spelled out why taxes would increase, based on actual tax statements, plus information from the Lowndes County Tax Assessors’ office and the actual budgets of the Valdosta and Lowndes County School Systems. See also former Valdosta School Superintendent Sam Allen’s partial list of massive layoffs, service cuts, and school closings caused by reduced income because of less federal and state funding, and increased costs due to bussing. And the formal statements against consolidation approved overwhelmingly by both school boards. In addition to these statements by people with actual experience in school administration, see also the extensive statement against consolidation by the Valdosta City Council, and even the VDT turned against this consolidation effort. If that’s not enough, David Mullis has compiled all the research into a convenient Grassroots Handbook Against School Consolidation.

Opposed to all this evidence, we have this undocumented letter Continue reading →

Planning meetings, Occupy Valdosta @ VSU 27 October 2011

Yesterday’s Occupy Valdosta organizational session went faster than expected, and resulted in adding some events to the upcoming list:

Here’s Erin Hurley talking about two of those events: Continue reading →

The missing Lowndes County public hearing for Comprehensive Plan Updates

Four local governments followed the rules, one appears to have left citizens out of the process.

According to their letters of transmission to the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) Valdosta, Hahira, Remerton, and Lake Park all held public hearings on the Short Term Work Programs and Report of Accomplishment documents.

Here is video of the Valdosta Public Hearing.

The Lowndes County resolution does not say that a public hearing was held. That’s because no public hearing was held, as you can see in the video below.

A public hearing was listed in the agenda of the 11 October 2011 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

7. Public Hearing
a. REZ-2011-13, Fred’s Dept. Store, 4401 Bemiss Rd., 145c-90a, 2.0 ac., water/sewer, C-H(c) & C- G(c) to C-G
b. Greater Lowndes 2030 Comprehensive Plan Updates – Lowndes County Report of Accomplishments (ROA) and Short Term Work Program (STWP)

However, citizens were not invited to speak for or against the document. In fact, the document was not provided to the citizens for comment and an open records request for the document has not been satisfied by the county. Here is video of items 7a and 7b.

The County’s Resolution to Transmit says in part: Continue reading →

The Comprehensive Plan updates Lowndes County refused to provide

LAKE has obtained the planning revision documents Lowndes County refused, in violation of the law, to return in response to an open records request. Here they are for all to see.

The Standards and Procedures for Local Comprehensive Planning, established by the Georgia Planning Act of 1989, require updates to the Short Term Work Projects (STWP) list and the Report of Accomplishments (ROA) every 5 years. Lowndes County and the cities in Lowndes County have submitted the documents to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA)

An open records request to Lowndes County for the documents was not satisfied. However other government agencies were willing to abide by the Georgia Open Records Law ocga 50-18-70.

The documents are available for review on the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange website for Valdosta, Lake Park, Remerton, Hahira and Lowndes County.

I encourage you to read carefully what our elected officials see as the future of our community.

-gretchen