Videos: Regular Session @ VLCIA 2012 01 17
Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
Norman Bennett, Tom Call, Roy Copeland chairman, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett,
Andrea Schruijer Executive Director, J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Allan Ricketts Project Manager,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 17 January 2012.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
According to what Col. Ricketts said at their most recent regular meeting,
apparently what VLCIA is accepting bids for today is Phase 2, not Phase 1,
of Infrastructure for Westside Business Park.
I still give them credit for at least
posting an announcement of today’s meeting on their website.
The red rectangle indicates the area of clearing and grading
for Phase 1 Infrastructure for Westside Business Park.
Col. Ricketts said that had already been completed.
This is all on Belleville Road near Lake Park.
They had already asked for bids for Phase 2, which is
for an internal roadway, storm water and sewer, lighting, paving, etc.
Video: Infrastructure, Westside Business Park @ VLCIA 2012 01 17
Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
Norman Bennett, Tom Call, Roy Copeland chairman, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett,
Andrea Schruijer Executive Director, J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Allan Ricketts Project Manager,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 17 January 2012.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Notice of a Special Called Meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County
Industrial Authority for the purpose of reviewing bids and awarding
a contract for Westside Business Park Phase I Infrastructure Project
on
Friday, January 27, 2012, 12 Noon at the Authority offices, 2110
N. Patterson St. 229-259-9972.
That’s not a link in the middle; they underlined the date and time.
Soon, maybe they will discover italics!
Update 12:20 PM 2012 01 27: And here is
video of Col. Ricketts at that 17th January 2012 Regular Session, saying Phase 1 had already been completed and they
had asked for bids for Phase 2. So Phase 2 is presumably what they’re accepting bids for right now. I still give them credit for posting a notice of today’s special called meeting on their website. -jsq
Westside Business Park Phase 1 Infrastructure (Clear/Grading)
Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
Norman Bennett, Tom Call, Roy Copeland chairman, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett,
Andrea Schruijer Executive Director, J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Allan Ricketts Project Manager,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 17 January 2012.
Picture by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
CCA inadvertently rehabilitated former prisoner Alex Friedmann
and gave him a new career, lobbying against prison privatization.
He says:
In my view, the worst thing
is that they have normalized the notion of incarcerating people for profit.
Basically commodifying people, seeing them
as nothing more than a revenue stream….
If you incarcerate more people and you put more people in
your private prisons you make more money.
Which provides perverse incentives against reforming our justice system.
And increasing the number of people we’re putting in prison,
whether they need to be there or not, just to generate corporate profit.
I think that’s incredibly immoral and unethical,
I think that’s the worst aspect of our private prison industry.
Please find attached the “Transportation in the Region” newsletter for
the Southern Georgia Regional Commission and the Valdosta-Lowndes
Metropolitan Planning Organization. For more information please visit
our website at
www.sgrc.us/transportation.
On October 10, 2011 the Southern Georgia Regional Transportation
Roundtable approved a regional transportation project list that contains
75% of the funds this region would receive if a transportation sales and
use tax is approved by the voters on July 31, 2012. The tax is estimated
to generate $670,985,361 total; $503,239,020 of which is reserved for
the 75% regional projects list.
The remaining 25% of the funds ($167,746,439) are allocated to
local governments by formula (based on population and road centerline
miles). While these funds are to be spent at the discretion of each local
government on transportation related projects, it is recommended that
your local government begin to consider how these funds might be spent
over the next 10 years. By identifying these projects now, your local
voters will be able to know how all of the funds from this proposed
sales and use tax will be spent in their local community.
In order to have a central source for
information about the proposed sales tax,
we are asking local governments to submit
their project lists for the 25% discretionary
funding by March 31, 2012 to the following
address: SGRC; ATTN: Corey Hull; 327 W
Savannah Ave.; Valdosta, GA 31602; or
by email at chull@sgrc.us.
It will be interesting to see what projects local governments submit.
Maybe you’d like to suggest something to them.
In a refreshing changes from “jobs, jobs, jobs” as everything,
Andrea Schruijer,
Executive Director of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
told the Lowndes County Democratic Party meeting, 5 December 2011,
that it wasn’t her job to create jobs, jobs, jobs; it was her job
to create an environment that let jobs be created.
Towards that end, she announced several new jobs at VLCIA,
including a PR and marketing position.
VLCIA Chairman Roy Copeland also spoke and helped answer questions
from the audience, including about
wages,
workers, and
green industries.
Perhaps not shown is her answer to my question about what does
VLCIA do to promote new local industry.
I believe she said VLCIA looks to the Chamber of Commerce for incubation,
and helps once local businesses are established.
My job: create environment for jobs —Andrea Schruijer of VLCIA @ LCDP 5 Dec 2011
Andrea Schruijer Executive Director of VLCIA,
Monthly Meeting, Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 5 December 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman.
Today is the third Tuesday of the month, so the Valdosta-Lowndes County
Industrial Authority Board of Directors
meets tonight.
A list of specific projects, a PR position, and a strategic planning presentation
are on their agenda.
I see they held a special called meeting 16 December 2011,
but at least they listed it on their web page.
Maybe they’ve got control of their
technical glitches.
Appended is the schedule for 2012,
and the agenda for tonight’s meeting.
All Meetings will be held at 5:30pm in the Industrial Authority Conference
Room, 2110 N. Patterson Street, unless otherwise notified.
Special Called Meeting
**December 16, 2011**
Meeting Schedule for 2012
January 17, 2012
February 21, 2012
March 20, 2012
April 17, 2012
May 15, 2012
June 19, 2012
July 17, 2012
August 21, 2012
September 18, 2012
October 16, 2012
November 20, 2012
December 18, 2012
The Georgia Department of Corrections (GDOC) does not provide
a map of prisons in Georgia; at least not that I’ve been able to find.
CCA does not provide a map of its private prisons, either.
This omission seems odd for an industry that brags about how good it is
economically.
But someone has composed
this google map
that gives the big picture.
I don’t know if this map is current or accurate, but the spot checks
I’ve made show markers for real prisons.
Did you know there were so many?
Apparently,
the reddish circles are county prisons;
the red arrows are state prisons for men like Valdosta State Prison;
the blue arrows are Regional Youth Detention Centers (RYDC);
and the green arrows are at least some of CCA’s private prisons,
Prisons are
bad economics, producing no longterm improvement in employment, and risking closure, leaving communities with expensive white elephants.
We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.
Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.
Follow
this link
to petition the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority.
Some interesting points about prisons from a Georgia blogger.
Keith McCants posted Wednesday in Peanut Politics,
Prisons as Economic Development: Boom or Bust for Rural Georgia?
In Georgia today there are more prisoners than farmers. And while
most prisoners in Georgia are from urban communities, most prisons
are now in rural areas with high levels of poverty & a unskilled,
uneducated workforce. During the last two decades, the large-scale
use of incarceration to solve social problems has combined with the
fall-out of globalization to produce an ominous trend: prisons have
become a “growth industry” in rural Georgia, in fact Rural America.
Communities in isolated regions of the state began suffering from
declines in farming, mining, timber-work and manufacturing are now
begging for prisons to be built in their backyards. The economic
restructuring that began in the troubled decade of the 1980s has had
dramatic social and economic consequences for rural communities and
small towns. Together the farm crises, factory closings, corporate
downsizing, shift to service sector employment and the substitution
of major regional and national chains for local, main-street
businesses have triggered profound change in these areas.
So, many rural areas have bought into prisons as a growth industry.
Some consequences are pretty obvious:
Many small rural towns have become dependent
on an industry which itself is dependent on the continuation of
crime-producing conditions.
Unfortunately I missed this meeting as well, and not by choice.
I vaguely remembered that Roy Copeland mentioned after the October
meeting that the December date might be changed to December 6. Thus,
I called Tuesday shortly after 5pm to verify if a meeting was indeed
scheduled. I only got the answering machine (indicating to me that the
office was closed) and the IA website (as so often) was no help.
Thus I, too, was assuming the meeting would be later this month … only
to find out the next day in the VDT that there had been a meeting
after all.
Our community has gone through so much these past couple of months,
highlighting more than ever the need to communicate and cooperate.
I was hoping after all this that we could finally start working together,
despite any differences we might have. That would, however, not only
require a certain amount of transparency but also communication of
such simple matters as meeting agendas and calendars. How difficult can
that be?
Communication is, and always will be, the key to success. Whether this
is about your children’s education, such matters as energy efficiency
and energy conservation, or a Strategic Planning Process which can only
benefit the community … if that very community (not just the same old
status quo) is actually included in the process.
Michael G. Noll, President
Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy (WACE)
They sure did talk about
Miller Business Park
a lot.
