{"id":167,"date":"2013-01-27T11:51:41","date_gmt":"2013-01-27T16:51:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/01\/get-a-job-lowndes-county-to-waste-site-workers.html"},"modified":"2013-01-27T11:51:41","modified_gmt":"2013-01-27T16:51:41","slug":"get-a-job-lowndes-county-to-waste-site-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/01\/get-a-job-lowndes-county-to-waste-site-workers.html","title":{"rendered":"Get a job —Lowndes County to waste site workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nContinuing to ignore its responsibilities to protect public health, safety,\nand well-being,\nthe Lowndes County government proceeded with its plan\nto trash rural residents’ waste collection sites,\nand told part time workers there to get a job.\n<\/p>\n

\nJason Schaefer wrote for the VDT today,\n\nTrash centers dumped:\nFinal week to make trips to county recycling centers<\/a>,\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nThe Lowndes County Board of Commissioners near the end of 2012 voted\n\n<\/a>\nto approve a contract with Advanced Disposal to serve as the sole\nwaste company to conduct curbside trash pick-up in unincorporated\nLowndes County. Some citizens remain critical of the change in\nservice, which will cost $12.80 per month, and many are trying to\nget their last loads to the collection\/recycling centers before they\nclose….\n<\/p>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nFull-time employees at the recycling stations, which are already\nemployees of Public Works, said County Clerk Paige Dukes, will be\nmoved to different positions within the department. Part-time\nemployees will need to find new jobs.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nWhy might citizens be critical?\n\n\n\n<\/a>\nPerhaps because the county is granting a monopoly (they call it an\n\n“Exclusive Franchise Agreement”<\/a>)\nto\n\nan Alabama company<\/a>\nowned by\n\ninvestors in New York City<\/a>?\nAs\n\nBarbara Stratton put it:<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nYet another example of government contracting not following the fair\nbidding practices or allowing community public input. Even if you\nattend government meetings no bid information is made public & even\nif bids are referred to the amounts are always in those elusive\n“packets before you” that only the members have access to.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nIn case you didn’t get\n\nthe unsigned letter<\/a> from the county:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nThe county recommends residents in unincorporated Lowndes County\ncall Advanced Disposal, (229) 244-2466, to establish service prior\nto the Feb. 1 start date, to prevent problems due to call volume.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThese citizens already complained directly to the Commission,\nat least one in writing,\n\nGretchen Quarterman<\/a>,\nand these\n\n<\/a>\nin public meetings:\n\nCary Scarborough<\/a>,\n\nWilliam Geyer<\/a>,\nJohn Gates<\/a>,\nand\nme<\/a>,\neven though\n\nCounty Manager Joe Pritchard obviously wasn’t listening.<\/a>\nHere’s another citizen:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nCounty resident Frank Rice, who was dumping a pickup-truckload of\nleaves and pine straw in the yard waste area of the recycling center\non Gil Harbin Road Friday, voiced his opinion of the new waste\nordinance.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI think they should keep the recycling centers open,\u201d\nRice said. \u201cI have a lot of leaves in my yard, and they’re\nonly going to pick up clippings every two weeks. I take my leaves\nout here every time I rake. It’s convenient.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nAnd anybody who thinks it’s only yard waste county residents\nwill be burning from now on will be smoking plastics and other\nthings as the wind blows their way.\n<\/p>\n

\nLowndes County Commissioners have ignored\n\n<\/a>\n\ntheir responsibility<\/a>\nto protect\n\nenvironment and the public health, safety, and well-being<\/a>\nof its citizens.\nOther solutions were available,\nsuch as simply raising the price of the access cards for the disposal sites,\nor\n\ncreating a special tax district for waste disposal.<\/a>\nThe Commission never even discussed either of those options.\nEven after a Commissioner admitted that publicly disclosed costs were\n\nonly the tipping fees and not all the ancilary costs of waste disposal (dumpsters, truck maintenance, fencing repairs, etc.<\/a>,\nCommission and staff\nnever gave a detailed public accounting of the alleged cost overruns:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n\n“Unfortunately operating costs run annually slightly over $400,000. The revenue projections are a little bit complicated.”<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nThey\n\nnever held a public hearing with any of the sitting Commissioners<\/a>\nwho voted to close the county’s public-service waste collection centers\nand to grant a monopoly instead.\n<\/p>\n

\nDoes that seem right to you?\n<\/p>\n

\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Continuing to ignore its responsibilities to protect public health, safety, and well-being, the Lowndes County government proceeded with its plan to trash rural residents’ waste collection sites, and told part time workers there to get a job. Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT today, Trash centers dumped: Final week to make trips to county recycling […]","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":[40,14,16,8,2,41,19,20,88,21,22,32,73,478,53,3,479,133],"tags":[8717,8704,8706,8771,8701,8699,8718,8709,136,8702,8710,12,7,8734,656,8711,8712,8715,653,8731,694,8772,8725,8700,8773,6,8742,693],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-economy","category-environment","category-georgia","category-government","category-health-care","category-history","category-law","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-planning","category-politics","category-pollution","category-safety","category-solid-waste","category-sustainability","category-transparency","category-trash","category-vdt","tag-community","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-ga-dnr","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-health-care","tag-history","tag-joe-pritchard","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-paige-dukes","tag-planning","tag-politics","tag-pollution","tag-richard-raines","tag-safety","tag-smoke","tag-solid-waste","tag-sustainability","tag-transparency","tag-trash","tag-valdosta","tag-vdt","tag-well-being"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-2H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","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=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}