{"id":1841,"date":"2011-06-27T13:31:18","date_gmt":"2011-06-27T17:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/lowndes-county-budget-hearing-today-5pm.html"},"modified":"2011-06-27T13:31:18","modified_gmt":"2011-06-27T17:31:18","slug":"lowndes-county-budget-hearing-today-5pm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/lowndes-county-budget-hearing-today-5pm.html","title":{"rendered":"Lowndes County budget hearing today 5PM"},"content":{"rendered":"That&#8217;s 5PM, before the usual 5:30 PM Lowndes County Commission regular session time, at 327 North Ashley Street.\nThe county\n<a href=\"http:\/\/lowndescounty.com\/content\/current\/e1\/misc\/budget%20notice.pdf\">\nhas published a public notice about this second hearing.<\/a>\nIt&#8217;s not clear they did that for the first budget hearing, which was last week.\nAnd the budget doesn&#8217;t include the T-SPLOST boondoggles Lowndes County is requesting.\n<p>\nVDT opined 23 June 2011,\n<a href=\"http:\/\/valdostadailytimes.com\/opinion\/x1277744923\/What-We-Think-Surviving-not-thriving\">\nWhat We Think: Surviving, not thriving<\/a>:\n<blockquote>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/lowndescounty.com\/content.asp?pid=23&#038;id=140\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/lowndescounty.com\/content\/government\/c140\/misc\/s%20black.jpg\"><\/a>\nLowndes County Commissioners held a budget hearing Tuesday to\ndiscuss the 2011-2012 fiscal year with citizens, only to have no citizens\nappear. The budget will be finalized at a public hearing Tuesday, June\n28, prior to the regular commission meeting.\n<p>\nWith all of the attention paid lately to officials and their expenses,\nyou would think that the opportunity to learn how the county spends\ncitizens\u2019 tax dollars would have been an opportunity not to be\nmissed. But missed it was.\n<\/blockquote>\nAfter giving people in Valdosta a hard time for\n<a href=\"http:\/\/valdostadailytimes.com\/opinion\/x1277744923\/What-We-Think-Surviving-not-thriving\">not showing up at their city&#8217;s budget hearing,<\/a>\nI have to say: mea culpa. I wasn&#8217;t there.\n<p>\nHowever, I would ask: how were we supposed to know about it?\n<a href=\"http:\/\/lowndescounty.com\/content.asp?pid=23&#038;id=139\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/lowndescounty.com\/content\/government\/c139\/misc\/p%20%20dukes.jpg\"><\/a>\nSomeone from LAKE has been at every regularly-scheduled Lowndes County Commission\nmeeting in the recent past, videoing the whole meetings,\nand I must have missed the announcement\nof this recent budget hearing, which is also not on the county&#8217;s website calendar.\n<p>\nThe VDT continues:\n<blockquote>\nMaybe it\u2019s because there\u2019s nothing new about the county\u2019s\nbudget. It&#8217;s the same as it has been for several years \u2014 flat.\n<p>\nNo increases in revenue are projected. No new positions, merit raises,\ncost of living increases, or significant purchases, again. Caps on\nassessments, the continuing lull in construction, and slow sales mean no\nnew revenue is coming in. What is projected is enough to make ends meet,\nbut there are no frills, no luxury items, not this year.\n<\/blockquote>\nOh, there are luxury items, they&#8217;re just not in the budget,\nbecause the county is asking we the taxpayers to pay through\nthe proposed new T-SPLOST tax for\n<ul>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/lowndescounty.com\/content.asp?pid=23&#038;id=142\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/lowndescounty.com\/content\/government\/c142\/misc\/m.%20fletcher.jpg\"><\/a>\n<li>\n$10 million to <a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/06\/10-million-t-splost-to-widen-new-bethel-road-for-lanier-county-sprawl.html\">\nwiden New Bethel Road<\/a> to Lanier County\n<li>\n$8 million to <a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/06\/widening-old-us-41-north-its-back-for-8-million-t-splost.html\">\nwiden old US 41 North<\/a>\n<li>\n$3 million to <a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/06\/3-million-t-splost-to-widen-val-del-road.html\">\nwiden Val Del Road<\/a>\n<li>\n$3 million to <a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/06\/3-million-t-splost-for-sprawl-on-cat-creek-road.html\">\nwiden Cat Creek Road<\/a>\n<\/ul>\nThat&#8217;s $24 million in new taxes they&#8217;re requesting for unnecessary road projects\nthat will promote sprawl into far north Lowndes County and into Lanier County.\nSprawl that will end up costing Lowndes County more than it can bring in in taxes from the sprawling developments.\n<p>\nAnd Lowndes County has tacked onto the end a request for\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/06\/75-million-t-splost-for-a-bus-system.html\">$7.5 million for a bus system<\/a>.\nWhich would you rather have?\nA bus system that would promote the entire county&#8217;s economy,\nor five lanes on New Bethel to add to Lanier County sprawl?\n<p>\nFortunately, T-SPLOST <em>does<\/em> publicize its hearings,\nthe next of which will be\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/06\/t-splost-roundtable-meeting-nashville-ga-6-july-2011.html\">\n6 July 2011 in Nashville, Georgia.<\/a>\n<p>\nThe VDT concludes;\n<blockquote>\nBut for Lowndes to thrive, to make such a possibility come alive, it needs\ncitizens willing to participate in the process. We need creative thinking\nand we need leaders willing to listen to the possibilities of new ideas.\n<\/blockquote>\nHear hear!\n<p>\nStay tuned for what happens when a citizen tries to get involved in the\nLowndes County budget process.\n<p>\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That&#8217;s 5PM, before the usual 5:30 PM Lowndes County Commission regular session time, at 327 North Ashley Street. The county has published a public notice about this second hearing. It&#8217;s not clear they did that for the first budget hearing, which was last week. And the budget doesn&#8217;t include the T-SPLOST boondoggles Lowndes County is [&hellip;]","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":[97,40,14,3810,88,21,22,3,449,133,178],"tags":[4240,381,1272,2274,91,4238,8734,4239,8822,8700,8767,2900,8742],"class_list":["post-1841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-economy","category-lcc-28-june-2011","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-planning","category-politics","category-transparency","category-transportation","category-vdt","category-vlcia","tag-boondoggles","tag-budget","tag-citizen","tag-hearing","tag-lcc","tag-leaders","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-luxuries","tag-t-splost","tag-transparency","tag-transportation","tag-valdosta-daily-times","tag-vdt"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-tH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841","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=1841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}