{"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":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/98706376@N00\/5638017265\/in\/set-72157626391666787\/\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5225\/5638017265_6976d857e2_m.jpg\"><\/a><br \/>\nI wanted to know what the council and the protesters will do<br \/>\nwhen the biomass plant is canceled.<br \/>\nI still want to know: what will you do?<\/p>\n<p>\nHere&#8217;s<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZQzoVXq3DhY\"><br \/>\nthe video,<\/a><br \/>\nfollowed by my points.<\/p>\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><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<small><br \/>\nWhat will you do?  &mdash;John S. Quarterman @ VCC 7 April 2011<br \/>\n<br \/>\nRegular monthly meeting of the Valdosta City Council (VCC),<br \/>\n<br \/>\nValdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 April 2011,<br \/>\n<br \/>\nVideos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.<br \/>\n<\/small><\/p>\n<p>\nBefore I started, the mayor noted that many people needed to go to an event at 7PM<br \/>\n(he didn&#8217;t name it, but it was the<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/04\/100-black-men-rezoning.html\">100 Black Men Annual Dinner.<\/a>)<br \/>\nHe offered to proceed with scheduled business and re-open Citizens to be Heard at the end of the meeting.<br \/>\nNobody objected.<br \/>\nI had already waited until nobody else seemed to want to speak.<\/p>\n<p>\nMy points:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\nAs I&#8217;ve suggested before consider recording these sessions<br \/>\nand putting them on YouTube.<br \/>\nAt least five video cameras here today indicate some interest<br \/>\nin that from the public.<\/p>\n<li>\nThis meeting is so entertaining Frank Barnas is here in person!<\/p>\n<li>\nTo the people who have come, I applaud<br \/>\nyour spirit of activism,<br \/>\nyour spirit of participation<br \/>\nyour spirit of community.<br \/>\nAnd I hope that perhaps the council might say that.<\/p>\n<li>\nI spelled shovel for the mayor,<br \/>\nwhile reminding him he helped at the Wiregrass Solar<br \/>\ngroundbreaking.<br \/>\nOne way he helped was by keeping the protesters there from<br \/>\nbeing arrested by him and the police chief not sticking<br \/>\nto the letter of the law about permits.<br \/>\nInstead, they not only didn&#8217;t arrest anybody,<br \/>\nthey didn&#8217;t even fine anybody.<br \/>\nThis is an example of how the Valdosta City Council:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nYou are elected representatives of the people,<br \/>\n<br \/>\nyou are not law enforcement officers,<br \/>\n<br \/>\nyou are not contract enforcement officers.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<li>\nThe mayor of Gretna, Florida put out a proclamation,<br \/>\nafter Adage said they were not going to build a biomass plant,<br \/>\nsaying there would be no biomass plant.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThe city of Valdosta,<br \/>\nthe Azalea City,<br \/>\nTitleTown,<br \/>\nthe great city of Valdosta,<br \/>\nwith the elected officials elected to represent the people,<br \/>\ncould make such a proclamation before,<br \/>\ninstead of waiting for somebody else to make the decision for them.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Gretna plant wasn&#8217;t built because nobody wanted to buy the power<br \/>\nfrom it.<br \/>\nElectricity in Georgia is probably even cheaper than in Florida.<br \/>\nAnd just like back in April 2010, today<br \/>\nnobody wants to buy the power from the proposed Wiregrass Power LLC<br \/>\nbiomass plant.<br \/>\nSo that plant will never be built.<br \/>\nSo there is no political risk in saying you are against it.<\/p>\n<li>\nTo those in the audience whom I just complimented:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nWhat I want to know is; don&#8217;t stop what you&#8217;re doing,<br \/>\nbut what will you do when it&#8217;s all over and the plant is cancelled?<br \/>\nI hope you will continue your activism, your participation and your community,<br \/>\nbecause there are so many things that need to be done around here.<br \/>\nFor example do you know the Industrial Authority wants to<br \/>\nbuild a private prison right here in Lowndes County?<br \/>\nThere are positive things, too, like local agriculture,<br \/>\nwhich I happen to know Council member James Wright is interested in.<br \/>\nAnd there are plenty of other things.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Elected officials can do their jobs better if the community helps them.\n<\/ul>\n<p>And LAKE can do its job better if people send in notes, transcriptions, etc.<br \/>\nof their points so we can post them along with their videos.<br \/>\nFor that matter, if you stand up and speak to a government body,<br \/>\ntheir minutes are likely to say &#8220;so-and-so spoke&#8221;.<br \/>\nUnless you also hand them a written version of what you want to say,<br \/>\nwhich will end up in the public record where anybody can see it via<br \/>\nopen records request.<\/p>\n<p>\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"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"],"_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}]}}