{"id":21118,"date":"2019-06-11T11:17:49","date_gmt":"2019-06-11T15:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=21118"},"modified":"2019-06-11T11:17:49","modified_gmt":"2019-06-11T15:17:49","slug":"unannounced-special-session-on-budget-and-litter-lcc-2019-05-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2019\/06\/unannounced-special-session-on-budget-and-litter-lcc-2019-05-29.html","title":{"rendered":"Unannounced special session on budget and litter @ LCC 2019-05-29"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nThe Lowndes County Commission \r\nsaid there will be a public hearing on their proposed $108 million budget at 5PM, Tuesday, June 11, 2019 (today).\r\nThat public hearing is on the county’s online calendar<\/a>.\r\nThey also said the budget included a new trash collection division, and they were\r\nconsidering using that to replace Keep Lowndes-Valdosta Beautiful (KLVB).\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBut the meeting at which that Tuesday Budget Public Hearing was announced, which was some time\r\nWednesday afternoon, May 29, 2019,\r\nis nowhere on\r\nlowndescounty.com<\/a>\r\nthat I can find, not in the calendar, news, or agendas,\r\nand they said nothing about it the previous day in their\r\nWork Session<\/a>\r\nand\r\n\r\nRegular Session<\/a>, both on that Tuesday.\r\nAlso, I received no notification of the Wednesday meeting, even though I’m signed up for\r\nsuch things.\r\nWe only know of it because of\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nCounty proposes budget, litter program<\/a>,\r\nThomas Lynn, Valdosta Daily Times, 30 May 2019.\r\nI’d guess the county did only the minimum state law requires:\r\na notice in front of the building and notification of the newspaper.\r\n

\r\nApparently in that unannounced Wednesday meeting\r\nCommissioners also proposed a mew county litter program, that\r\n“would take calls from residents, document them through work orders then transfer them to employees for completion, according to county documents,” says the VDT story.\r\nThese county documents also do not appear to be on the county’s website.\r\nLAKE will file an open records request for them.\r\n

\r\nThe VDT explained:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nCommissioners at the work session Wednesday said if the new program\r\ndoes well, the county may consider replacing Keep Lowndes-Valdosta Beautiful (KLVB) with it.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nCounty Manager Joe Pritchard said the county has the ability to\r\neliminate KLVB or designate another agency to be the service\r\nprovider for the county’s litter program.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“We’re creating a program that is directly under your supervision\r\nthat is able to respond more efficiently to the request that (the\r\ncommissioners) have made,” Pritchard said.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nIt wasn’t KLVB that produced this litter problem.\r\nThe county did that, back\r\n\r\non December 11, 2012, when it passed a solid waste ordinance<\/a>\r\nclosing the county’s five waste collection centers\r\nand assigning a trash collection monopoly to Advanced Disposal Services (ADS) of New York City,\r\nfollowed by years suing all the way to the state Supreme Court\r\nto try to stop homegrown Deep South Sanitation (DSS) from also\r\nhaving a waste collection franchise.\r\nNow both ADS and DSS will sell you a trash pickup service,\r\nbut that costs far more than the county’s previous collection\r\ncenters did, and many people just throw stuff by the road instead.\r\nThey shouldn’t do that, but the county created the situation in which they do it.\r\n

\r\nAccording to Jason Shaefer, VDT, Concerns continue over garbage agreement: Business owner argues case against County<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n“That was paid for out of other incorporated revenues slated\r\nto go to services,” County Clerk Paige Dukes said.\r\n“Things like other licenses and fees like occupational taxes,\r\nalcohol license fees and other permits.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nProperty taxes do not go to Advanced Disposal now, nor have they\r\never gone to solid waste disposal services. Georgia law prevents\r\nCounty governments from using property tax dollars to pay for waste\r\nservices.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThe opposite is actually true.\r\nGeorgia law actually says, since\r\n\r\nHB 489 of 1999<\/a> modified Georgia code to add in 36-70-24 (emphasis<\/strong> added):\r\n

\r\n

\r\n(3)(A) The strategy shall ensure that the cost of any\r\nservice which a county provides primarily for the\r\nbenefit of the unincorporated area of the county shall\r\nbe borne by the unincorporated area residents,\r\nindividuals, and property owners who receive the\r\nservice. Further, when the county and one or more\r\nmunicipalities jointly fund a county-wide service, the\r\ncounty share of such funding shall be borne by the\r\nunincorporated residents, individuals, and property\r\nowners that receive the service.\r\n

\r\n(B) Such funding shall be derived from special service\r\ndistricts created by the county in which property\r\ntaxes<\/strong>, insurance premium taxes, assessments, or user\r\nfees are levied or imposed or through such other\r\nmechanism agreed upon by the affected parties which\r\nwith the intent of subparagraph (A) of this paragraph; \r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAt the same December 2012 meeting in which the county closed\r\nits trash collection sites, it also approved four Special Tax Lighting Districts.\r\nSo the county obviously knows how to do what state law explicitly\r\nauthorizes for services to residents of unincorporated parts of the county, including for trash collection service: to levy special property taxes.\r\n

\r\nBut now the county proposes a new county division that (according to the recent VDT story):\r\n

\r\n

\r\nwill be responsible for overseeing the removal and pick up all\r\nlitter and items associated with illegal dumping. Employees in this\r\ndivision will respond to and investigate resident complaints and\r\npatrol for illegal dumping, have routes established and patrolled to\r\nperform preventative control, according to county documents.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHow is this new division to be funded?\r\nWhy couldn’t the same funding have been used to pay for the county’s previous collection centers?\r\nAnd where are these county documents?\r\n

\r\nAs I suggested six years ago, the\r\n\r\nVDT should dig deeper into county trash<\/a>.\r\n

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

Investigative reporting costs money, for open records requests, copying, web hosting, gasoline, and cameras, and with sufficient funds we can pay students to do further research. You can\r\ndonate<\/a>\r\n to LAKE today!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lowndes County Commission said there will be a public hearing on their proposed $108 million budget at 5PM, Tuesday, June 11, 2019 (today). That public hearing is on the county’s online calendar. They also said the budget included a new trash collection division, and they were considering using that to replace Keep Lowndes-Valdosta Beautiful […]","protected":false},"author":3,"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2,88,478,3,479],"tags":[10784,381,8701,8699,10785,1724,8723,8702,91,5261,12,7,8734,1111,5039,8772,2516,60,9276,8700,8773,6294,6,90],"class_list":["post-21118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-solid-waste","category-transparency","category-trash","tag-2019-05-29","tag-budget","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-hb-489","tag-keep-lowndes-valdosta-beautiful","tag-klvb","tag-lake","tag-lcc","tag-litter","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-property","tag-services","tag-solid-waste","tag-special-tax-lighting-district","tag-tax","tag-thomas-lynn","tag-transparency","tag-trash","tag-unincorporated","tag-valdosta","tag-work-session"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-5uC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21118","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21118"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21121,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21118\/revisions\/21121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}