{"id":2146,"date":"2011-04-21T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-21T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/what-will-you-do-john-s-quarterman-vcc-7-april-2011.html"},"modified":"2011-04-21T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-21T20:00:00","slug":"what-will-you-do-john-s-quarterman-vcc-7-april-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/what-will-you-do-john-s-quarterman-vcc-7-april-2011.html","title":{"rendered":"What will you do?  &mdash;John S. Quarterman @ VCC 7 April 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/98706376@N00\/5638017265\/in\/set-72157626391666787\/\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5225\/5638017265_6976d857e2_m.jpg\"><\/a>\nI wanted to know what the council and the protesters will do\nwhen the biomass plant is canceled.\nI still want to know: what will you do?\n<p>\nHere&#8217;s\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZQzoVXq3DhY\">\nthe video,<\/a>\nfollowed by my points.\n<p align=\"center\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"480\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZQzoVXq3DhY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<br>\n<small>\nWhat will you do?  &mdash;John S. Quarterman @ VCC 7 April 2011\n<br>\nRegular monthly meeting of the Valdosta City Council (VCC),\n<br>\nValdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 April 2011,\n<br>\nVideos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.\n<\/small>\n<p>\nBefore I started, the mayor noted that many people needed to go to an event at 7PM\n(he didn&#8217;t name it, but it was the\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/04\/100-black-men-rezoning.html\">100 Black Men Annual Dinner.<\/a>)\nHe offered to proceed with scheduled business and re-open Citizens to be Heard at the end of the meeting.\nNobody objected.\nI had already waited until nobody else seemed to want to speak.\n<p>\nMy points:\n\n<!--more-->\n<ul>\n<li>\nAs I&#8217;ve suggested before consider recording these sessions\nand putting them on YouTube.\nAt least five video cameras here today indicate some interest\nin that from the public.\n<li>\nThis meeting is so entertaining Frank Barnas is here in person!\n<li>\nTo the people who have come, I applaud\nyour spirit of activism,\nyour spirit of participation\nyour spirit of community.\nAnd I hope that perhaps the council might say that.\n<li>\nI spelled shovel for the mayor,\nwhile reminding him he helped at the Wiregrass Solar\ngroundbreaking.\nOne way he helped was by keeping the protesters there from\nbeing arrested by him and the police chief not sticking\nto the letter of the law about permits.\nInstead, they not only didn&#8217;t arrest anybody,\nthey didn&#8217;t even fine anybody.\nThis is an example of how the Valdosta City Council:\n<blockquote>\nYou are elected representatives of the people,\n<br>\nyou are not law enforcement officers,\n<br>\nyou are not contract enforcement officers.\n<\/blockquote>\n<li>\nThe mayor of Gretna, Florida put out a proclamation,\nafter Adage said they were not going to build a biomass plant,\nsaying there would be no biomass plant.\n<blockquote>\nThe city of Valdosta,\nthe Azalea City,\nTitleTown,\nthe great city of Valdosta,\nwith the elected officials elected to represent the people,\ncould make such a proclamation before,\ninstead of waiting for somebody else to make the decision for them.\n<\/blockquote>\nThe Gretna plant wasn&#8217;t built because nobody wanted to buy the power\nfrom it.\nElectricity in Georgia is probably even cheaper than in Florida.\nAnd just like back in April 2010, today\nnobody wants to buy the power from the proposed Wiregrass Power LLC\nbiomass plant.\nSo that plant will never be built.\nSo there is no political risk in saying you are against it.\n<li>\nTo those in the audience whom I just complimented:\n<blockquote>\nWhat I want to know is; don&#8217;t stop what you&#8217;re doing,\nbut what will you do when it&#8217;s all over and the plant is cancelled?\nI hope you will continue your activism, your participation and your community,\nbecause there are so many things that need to be done around here.\nFor example do you know the Industrial Authority wants to\nbuild a private prison right here in Lowndes County?\nThere are positive things, too, like local agriculture,\nwhich I happen to know Council member James Wright is interested in.\nAnd there are plenty of other things.\n<\/blockquote>\nElected officials can do their jobs better if the community helps them.\n<\/ul>\nAnd LAKE can do its job better if people send in notes, transcriptions, etc.\nof their points so we can post them along with their videos.\nFor that matter, if you stand up and speak to a government body,\ntheir minutes are likely to say &#8220;so-and-so spoke&#8221;.\nUnless you also hand them a written version of what you want to say,\nwhich will end up in the public record where anybody can see it via\nopen records request.\n<p>\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I wanted to know what the council and the protesters will do when the biomass plant is canceled. I still want to know: what will you do? Here&#8217;s the video, followed by my points. What will you do? &mdash;John S. Quarterman @ VCC 7 April 2011 Regular monthly meeting of the Valdosta City Council (VCC), [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[97,596,202,120,48,40,14,15,16,2,72,20,21,22,32,23,24,3,54,4689,133,178],"tags":[4702,8736,8717,8701,10,548,8702,12,7,3413,8712,6,8726,2671],"class_list":["post-2146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-adage","category-agriculture","category-biomass","category-code-enforcement","category-community","category-economy","category-education","category-environment","category-government","category-incarceration","category-law","category-planning","category-politics","category-pollution","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-transparency","category-valdosta-city-council","category-vcc-7-april-2011","category-vdt","category-vlcia","tag-7-april-2011","tag-activism","tag-community","tag-georgia","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-john-s-quarterman","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-participation","tag-politics","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-city-council","tag-vcc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-yC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2146","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=2146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}