{"id":1338,"date":"2011-10-28T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-28T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/the-missing-lowndes-county-public-hearing-for-comprehensive-plan-updates.html"},"modified":"2011-10-28T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-28T12:00:00","slug":"the-missing-lowndes-county-public-hearing-for-comprehensive-plan-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/the-missing-lowndes-county-public-hearing-for-comprehensive-plan-updates.html","title":{"rendered":"The missing Lowndes County public hearing for Comprehensive Plan Updates"},"content":{"rendered":"Four local governments followed the rules, one appears to have left\ncitizens out of the process.\n

\nAccording to their letters of transmission to the\n\nDepartment of Community Affairs (DCA)<\/a>\n\nValdosta,<\/a>\n\nHahira,<\/a>\nRemerton<\/a>,\nand\n\nLake Park<\/a>\nall held public hearings on the\nShort Term Work Programs and Report of Accomplishment documents.\n

\nHere is\nvideo<\/a>\nof the Valdosta Public Hearing.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nThe\n\nLowndes County resolution<\/a>\ndoes not say that a public hearing was held.\nThat’s because no public hearing was held, as you can see in the video below.\n

\nA public hearing was listed in the\n\nagenda<\/a>\nof the 11 October 2011 Regular Session of the\nLowndes County Commission.\n

\n7. Public Hearing\n
\na. REZ-2011-13, Fred’s Dept. Store, 4401 Bemiss Rd., 145c-90a, 2.0 ac.,\nwater\/sewer, C-H(c) & C- G(c) to C-G\n
\nb. Greater Lowndes 2030 Comprehensive Plan Updates – Lowndes County Report of\nAccomplishments (ROA) and Short Term Work Program (STWP)\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nHowever, citizens were not invited to speak for or against the document.\nIn fact, the document was not provided to the citizens for comment and an\nopen records request for the document has not been satisfied by the county.\nHere is\n\nvideo of items 7a and 7b.<\/a>\n

\nThe\n\nCounty’s Resolution to Transmit<\/a> says in part:\n\n\n

\nWHEREAS<\/strong>,\nthese documents were prepared according to the guidance of the\nGeorgia Department of Community Affairs,…\n

\nBE IT FURTHER RESOLVED<\/strong>\nthat the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners\nhereby authorizes this draft Short-Term Work Program Update to be submitted….\n<\/blockquote>\nThe Georgia Department of Community Affairs document\n\nA Guide to Preparing Annual Capital Improvements Element (CIE) Updates\nfor Local Governments<\/a> seems explicit that the public must have\naccess to the document and have an opportunity to comment upon it:\n

\n\nSubmittal Procedural Requirements\n
\nLocal Public Hearing\n<\/b>\n

\nThe local government must hold at least one public hearing. The\npurpose of the public hearing is to inform the public of the intent\nto update the comprehensive plan and to receive suggestions and\ncomments on the proposed CIE\/STWP update. Copies of the draft\nCIE\/STWP update must be available to the public sufficiently in\nadvance of this hearing to allow time for citizens to review the\nupdate and formulate their comments prior to the hearing. Local\ngovernments should follow the public hearing notification procedures\nthey normally use in announcing and conducting public hearings.\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nLowndes County citizens were not permitted to see the document and were\nnot permitted to make comment.\n

\nIt seems to me that some local governments are following the rules and\nanother is not.\n

\nIt’s enough to make you wonder what’s in the document.\n

\n-gretchen\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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 […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,48,40,552,14,70,8,2,602,603,20,3352,88,21,22,604,3,54],"tags":[3543,1272,8777,8701,3542,8791,2274,8792,91,7,8734,2309,8793,3544,3264,8700,6],"class_list":["post-1338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-code-enforcement","category-community","category-comprehensive-plan","category-economy","category-ethics","category-georgia","category-government","category-hahira","category-lake-park","category-law","category-lcc-11-october-2011","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-planning","category-politics","category-remerton","category-transparency","category-valdosta-city-council","tag-cie","tag-citizen","tag-comprehensive-plan","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-department-of-community-affairs","tag-hahira","tag-hearing","tag-lake-park","tag-lcc","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-notification","tag-remerton","tag-review","tag-stwp","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-lA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}