{"id":1616,"date":"2011-08-21T12:15:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-21T16:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/cuee-filed-enough-petitions-for-a-referendum.html"},"modified":"2011-08-21T12:15:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-21T16:15:00","slug":"cuee-filed-enough-petitions-for-a-referendum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/cuee-filed-enough-petitions-for-a-referendum.html","title":{"rendered":"CUEE filed enough petitions for a referendum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;\"  src=\"https:\/\/chart.googleapis.com\/chart?cht=p&#038;chd=s:Uf9a&#038;chs=400x300&#038;chma=100,69&#038;chd=t:21111,7068,95&#038;chds=0,21111&#038;chtt=0.33%25%20of%20registered%20voters|got%20CUEE's%20referendum%20on%20the%20ballot%20in%20Valdosta|Pie%20chart%20by%20LAKE,%20the%20Lowndes%20Area%20Knowledge%20Exchange&#038;chl=Registered%20voters|Needed|Got%2095%20more\"><br \/>\nLess than one percent of the registered voters in Valdosta have made<br \/>\nthe difference between CUEE&#8217;s school consolidation petition getting on<br \/>\nthe ballot and not.<\/p>\n<p>\nAccording to the City of Valdosta&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.valdostacity.com\/Index.aspx?page=270&#038;recordid=1592&#038;returnURL=%2findex.aspx\">website 19 August 2011:<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cueeinc.com\/index.html\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/www.cueeinc.com\/images\/cueelogovote.jpg\"><\/a><br \/>\nOn May 12, 2011, the Community Unification for Educational Excellence<br \/>\n(CUEE) group filed the appropriate paperwork to begin a petition drive<br \/>\nwith a goal of collecting enough signatures to have a referendum question<br \/>\nplaced on the November Municipal Election ballot. On July 11, 2011, the<br \/>\ngroup provided the signed petitions to the City of Valdosta as required<br \/>\nby law.<\/p>\n<p>The city had 50 days from the date the petitions were delivered to<br \/>\nverify the information. This has necessitated manually reviewing each<br \/>\nand every one of the 10,090 signatures to confirm or deny them as valid,<br \/>\nregistered voters in the City of Valdosta as prescribed under the statute<br \/>\nand Georgia law.<\/p>\n<p>\nAs of July 1, 2011, according to the Georgia Secretary of State\u2019s<br \/>\nOffice, as provided by the Lowndes County Board of Elections,<br \/>\nthe total number of registered voters in the City of Valdosta was<br \/>\n28,274. O.C.G.A. 20-2-370 requires that the petition be signed by<br \/>\none-fourth of the qualified voters of the municipality. At the time the<br \/>\npetition was presented and filed with the city, there were 28,274 voters<br \/>\nqualified to vote in the city. This would require valid petitions signed<br \/>\nby 7,068 qualified voters. According to the results of the verification<br \/>\nprocess, 7,163 petitions were determined to be valid. Thus, the petition<br \/>\nis certified to be valid, and the city will notify the Lowndes County<br \/>\nBoard of Elections to place the question before voters of the city in<br \/>\nthe November Municipal election.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Friends-of-Valdosta-City-Schools\/179833012062350\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/profile.ak.fbcdn.net\/hprofile-ak-ash2\/187907_179833012062350_5856532_n.jpg\"><\/a><br \/>\nA difference of 95 signatures, or 0.33% of the registered voters.<\/p>\n<p>\nSo far,<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cueeinc.com\/index.html\"><br \/>\nCUEE<\/a><br \/>\nhas successfully outmaneuvered<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Friends-of-Valdosta-City-Schools\/179833012062350\"><br \/>\nFVCS.<\/a><br \/>\nWill FVCS finally stop up and either<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/07\/the-qualified-voters-voting-thereon-in-each-separate-school-system-proposed-to-be-consolidated-ga-constitution.html\">mount a legal challenge<\/a><br \/>\nor simply get enough voters out to vote no?<\/p>\n<p>\n-jsq<\/p>\n<p>\nPS:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n&ldquo;Shall the City of Valdosta public school system and the Lowndes County<br \/>\npublic school system be consolidated by amending the City of Valdosta<br \/>\ncharter to abolish the City of Valdosta&#8217;s public school system and<br \/>\nmaking the City of Valdosta public school system a part of the Lowndes<br \/>\nCounty public school system?&rdquo;<br \/>\n<br \/>\n&mdash;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cueeinc.com\/referendum.html\"><br \/>\ntext of the referendum<\/a> for the November ballot\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Less than one percent of the registered voters in Valdosta have made the difference between CUEE&#8217;s school consolidation petition getting on the ballot and not. According to the City of Valdosta&#8217;s website 19 August 2011:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,1376,15,49,3305,20,1105,1106],"tags":[1487,1636,3404,8829,3472,8869,8701,1241,3916,7,1486,3410,1635,6],"class_list":["post-1616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-cuee","category-education","category-elections","category-fvcs","category-law","category-lcboe","category-vboe","tag-ballot","tag-consolidation","tag-constitution","tag-cuee","tag-desegregation","tag-fvcs","tag-georgia","tag-legal","tag-legality","tag-lowndes-county","tag-referendum","tag-schools","tag-unification","tag-valdosta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616","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=1616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}