Tag Archives: VBOE

Qualifying through today (29 Aug 2013) for November elections

Hahira now has three contenders for Allen Cain’s former District 2 City Council
place;

 he and District 4 Rose Adams are running for Mayor against incumbent Wayne Bullard.
Four contenders now for four Lake Park At Large City Council places,
and two for three in Remerton.
Incumbent Deidra White has still not qualified for Valdosta City Council
District 2, although two other people have.
Tomorrow’s the last day to qualify.
-jsq

Lowndes
County Board of Elections

2808
N. Oak St. P.O. Box 10130
Valdosta, Georgia 31604

Telephone:
(229) 671-2850, Fax: (229) 333-5199

Email:
elections@lowndescounty.com

QUALIFYING

November
5, 2013 – Municipal Election

*
Individuals qualifying on Thursday, August 29th are listed
in blue *

Continue reading →

Qualifying through yesterday (28 Aug 2013) for November elections

All three Valdosta City Council races are contested now!


In Hahira, two contenders and the incumbent for Mayor,
a new candidate for Hahira District 4, and two for District 2,
both vacated by former incumbents now running for Mayor.
Still not enough candidates in Lake Park and nobody in Remerton.
Received yesterday evening.
-jsq



Lowndes County Board of Elections

2808
N. Oak St. P.O. Box 10130
Valdosta, Georgia 31604

Telephone:
(229) 671-2850, Fax: (229) 333-5199

Email:
elections@lowndescounty.com

QUALIFYING

November
5, 2013 – Municipal Election

*
Individuals qualifying on Wednesday, August 28th are
listed in blue *

City
of Valdosta

City
Council District 2

Continue reading →

Qualifying through yesterday for November elections

Received yesterday evening. Contested mayoral election in Hahira and not in Lake Park, so far.
Also one contested Valdosta school board seat, but none for Valdosta City Council so far.
-jsq

Lowndes
County Board of Elections

2808
N. Oak St. P.O. Box 10130
Valdosta, Georgia 31604

Telephone:
(229) 671-2850, Fax: (229) 333-5199

Email:
elections@lowndescounty.com

QUALIFYING

November
5, 2013 – Municipal Election

AUGUST
26, 2013

City
of Valdosta

City
Council District 2

Continue reading →

Community Assessment Group and Internet access @ LCC 2013-07-22

Valdosta Mayor Gayle was standing next to the video ghetto
after the county’s rather rudimentary SPLOST VII presentation
Monday morning, so I asked him why I hadn’t seen anything about Internet
access either Valdosta’s or Lowndes County’s SPLOST lists?
He said that was because it was being handled by the Community Assessment Group (CAG).
What’s that?



Mayor Gayle said CAG is a group of representatives from the county
and all the local cities, the two school districts (Valdosta and Lowndes County),
VSU, Wiregrass Tech, the Industrial Authority, the Chamber, and he may have
said others.
It’s an attempt at better local cooperation, specifically about issues
that cross all the various local governmental and non-governmental groups.
So far they’ve had two meetings, Continue reading →

Are Augusta and Richmond County special in transparency?

So why does

Augusta have the second highest high tech job growth in the country?
I can only speculate, but local government transparency could be a factor.
If you had a high tech company and were looking to open an office,
would you go for a place where you couldn't tell what the local governments
were up to, or one where you could easily find out?
Augusta's combined City Council and County Commission meetings
(it's a consolidated government)

are on video, online.
Their agendas are available in either HTML or PDF,

with attachments.

Here's an example, their



5 December 2012 Commission Meeting.
It includes

a proposed amendment to their land subdivision code.
The actual proposed ordinance

is linked right into the agenda so everybody can see it.

And yes, they link attachments into their agendas before
their meetings;
here's

Augusta's agenda for their meeting tomorrow 18 December 2012,
already with attachments, such as this one

about a zoning exception,
which was apparently submitted on a standard agenda submittal form,
and approved by the Clerk of Commission.

Meanwhile, the outgoing Lowndes County Chairman



complained the Chamber of Commerce hadn't read a proposed
zoning code change
even though

that change is not linked into the agenda (nor is anything else)
and
last year

the same Chairman said no drafts would be published.
Tuesday last week, Lowndes County Commissioners passed changes to the
solid waste ordinance
and to the

alcohol ordinance
that voters and taxpayers and business owners did not get to see
before the Commission voted on them.
Those ordinances seem to be on the county website now that it's
too late to provide input on them: alcohol and waste.
Both ordinances were revised with no public hearings.
And the Chairman even

forgot to hold a scheduled public hearing on special tax lighting districts.
Oh, and they

apparently now have property owners paying on almost $9 million
in bonds for a county palace
that only two years ago they said was already completely paid off
out of sales taxes.

If you had a high tech company and were looking to open an office,

Continue reading →

Two more charter school polls: Amendment 1 still losing support

Two more polls about the charter school amendment show conflicting
results, but even the most optimistic still shows decreased support
since September.
Opponents of the Amendment 1 power grab are winning.


Charter school Amendment 1 polls through 25 October 2012

Wayne Washington wrote for the AJC 12 October 2012,

Poll shows tight race for charter schools amendment,

Continue reading →

Support plummeting for charter school amendment

Support for the charter school amendment,
previously falling, is now dropping like a rock.
Saba Long wrote the Saporta Report 15 October 2012,

Latest polls show the Charter School Amendment vote will be close,
but the actual poll results, when compared to previous polls,
including those before T-SPLOST lost by a landslide,
say Amendment 1 is going down in flames.


Georgia Charter School Polls 2012-10

That poll conducted 4 and 5 October showed 34.2% saying they would definitely
vote no and 18.06% saying probably no.
That’s 52.26% No, which is far higher than

26.2% only a month before.

The pollsters, HEG-GPS, say,

Re: October 4-5 Charter School Amendment Survey,
15.35% responded Probably Yes and only 9.30% said Definitely Yes.
That’s 24.62% Yes,
far down from the 48.3% Yes of a month before.

Yet only 23.12% responded Unsure,
which is hardly changed from 25.5% a month before.
It sure looks to me like this is not just undecideds switching to No.
It looks like a lot of formerly Yes votes are switching to No.

It looks even worse compared to T-SPLOST.
Two weeks before the 31 July Primary election,

Continue reading →

Joint Resolution in Support of Quality Public Education —Lowndes and Valdosta Boards of Education

Yesterday I asked

But what does the joint resolution actually say?
Karen Noll has supplied the answer, in the form of a
PDF
of the signed resolution,
transcribed below.
This thing makes the education paragraph in the

Occupy Valdosta Mission Statement sound mild-mannered.
We’ve already seen

the state’s response.
-jsq



LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION

AND

VALDOSTA CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION

JOINT RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF
QUALITY PUBLIC EDUCATION

Continue reading →

GA State attorney general tries to order private citizens not to oppose charter school amendment

Pushers of the charter school amendment must be desperate!
Blurring the line between public officials and private
citizens, state Attorney General Sam Olens wrote:



Local school boards do not have the legal authority to expend funds
or other resources to advocate or oppose the ratification of a
constitutional amendment by the voters. They may not do this
directly or indirectly through associations to which they may
belong….

As
Jim Galloway wrote yesterday for the AJC in

Sam Olens orders local school boards to stay out of charter school fight,

That means organizations like the Georgia School Boards Association,
and perhaps, the Georgia School Superintendents Association, would
be barred from speaking out against the proposed constitutional
amendment.

And would that include organizations like PAGE,
which produced
the slides
that

a local middle school teacher used last week?
What about that teacher, or

Dr. Troy Davis, speaking a few weeks earlier,
both on their own time?

Olens’ letter would apply to what

the VDT said was in the VBOE and LCBOE joint resolution,
at least the part about “The resolution explicitly states that the boards
are asking voters to not support the Constitutional Amendment relative
to state charter schools.”

But what does Olens mean, duly elected local school boards don’t
have authority to express opinions about educational matters
that would directly affect the people who elected them?

Why has Sam Olens suddenly gotten religion about this now,
after he was silent last year when both VBOE and LCBOE adopted

resolutions against the school “unification” referendum?
Where was he when both boards of education hosted numerous
forums opposing consolidation?

Will he next be telling the Valdosta City Council it can’t

pass a resolution opposing a referendum?
What exactly is the difference between that elected body and
an elected school board as far as expressing such an opinion?
And all of those resolutions were non-binding opinions.

Will Sam Olens next be telling the VDT it can’t
editorialize against the charter school amendment?

How desperate are the pushers of the charter school amendment?

Continue reading →

Local school systems jointly oppose charter school amendment

The Valdosta Board of Education, followed by the
Lowndes County Board of Education, adopted a
“Charter School Amendment Resolution” or a
“Joint Resolution in Support of Quality Public Education”,
depending on which ones minutes you go by.
What does the resolution actually say?

Brittany D. McClure wrote for the VDT 11 September 2012,

School boards to adopt resolution against charter school amendment.

“The Lowndes County and Valdosta City Boards of Education
request that the Governor and State Legislators commit their support
to adequately fund a first-class K-12 public education for students
in Lowndes County and Valdosta City and across the state of
Georgia,” the resolution states.



The resolution explicitly states that the boards are asking voters
to not support the Constitutional Amendment relative to state
charter schools.

Valdosta Board of Education did that at their

10 September 2012 meeting:

Continue reading →