{"id":2291,"date":"2011-03-21T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-21T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/communities-watching-boards.html"},"modified":"2013-04-02T08:30:52","modified_gmt":"2013-04-02T12:30:52","slug":"communities-watching-boards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/communities-watching-boards.html","title":{"rendered":"Communities watching boards"},"content":{"rendered":"Susan Hall Hardy says that in most places industrial authority executives\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\ndon’t interact with their communities.\r\nWell, paraphrasing what Yakov Smirnoff used to say,\r\nin Lowndes County, community interact with officials!\r\n

\r\nHere is\r\n\r\nher comment from 15 March 2011 on this blog:<\/a>\r\n

\r\nNot to be rude, although honesty is very often perceived that way\r\nthese days, but, the industrial authority executives rarely thank their\r\ncommunities. In the six states I’m most familiar with, these fellows\r\nsee themselves as beholden only to their employers. After all, they work\r\nwith their directors, elected officials, a few bankers and city\/county\r\ndepartment heads. Rarely do they come in direct contact with the average\r\nvoter, employee or homeowner, although all those people often pay a large\r\npart of their salaries and office operating expenses. Despite the public\r\nfunding, these groups are usually tight lipped about how they do business\r\nand rarely provide the public with records or audits. We’ve all put up\r\nwith that manner of doing business for so long we now see it as just\r\nthat — the way you do business. We’d never accept that from a nonprofit\r\norganization, a charity group or most elected officials. Shame on us all.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nSusan, you’re helping by reading, and you’re helping more by posting.\r\nMany local officials have noticed LAKE and this blog because\r\nthey know people read it.\r\n

\r\nAnyone who wants to help still more,\r\nyou, too, can go to a meeting.\r\nThe Industrial Authority is a good one to attend,\r\nbut I hear the Tree Commission isn’t trying as hard to enforce things,\r\nand does anybody know anything the Hospital Authority does?\r\nThe Airport Authority?\r\n\r\n\r\nThe Housing Authority?\r\nThe Board of Health?\r\nParks and Recreation?\r\nThere are\r\n\r\nat least twenty local appointed boards and agencies<\/a>,\r\nplus of course the five local city councils and the County Commission\r\nand other elected officials (sheriff, tax collector)\r\nand bodies (tax assessors and two school boards).\r\nLAKE could use help covering more of them.\r\nThe community could use information on what they’re doing.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSome of them try pretty hard to inform the community,\r\nsuch as the\r\n\r\nValdosta-Lowndes Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO)<\/a>\r\nwhich even has its own\r\n\r\nfacebook page<\/a>\r\non which it posts all its meetings and other information\r\n(railroad repairs, straddling bus, and more).\r\nVLMPO often holds hearings and hardly anybody comes.\r\nY’all come!\r\n

\r\nOther local boards, who knows what they do?\r\nMaybe citizens should find out!\r\n

\r\nJust showing up gets most local agencies to pay attention,\r\nbecause so few people ever do.\r\nIf possible, stay for the whole meeting, because usually people\r\nonly come for one agenda item and then leave, and staying for\r\nthe whole meeting gets the point across that you’re interested\r\nin the agency, not just one item.\r\n

\r\nEven better, take notes, and send them to LAKE to publish.\r\nIf you have a cell phone, you can probably also take video.\r\nOr most any small camera these days can also video.\r\nEverything you need is probably already in your pocket or purse!\r\n

\r\nAnything from 10 seconds to 3 minutes can be plenty of video.\r\nWait until an interesting agenda item and video.\r\nOr go up to an elected or appointed official afterwards,\r\nask a question, and video the answer.\r\nOr do the same with a citizen who spoke.\r\nDon’t worry about it not looking like professional TV:\r\nnobody cares about that.\r\nPeople do care about what’s going on, and you can help show them.\r\n

\r\nIf it’s an open public meeting, Georgia law says you can record it,\r\nO.C.G.A. \u00a7 50-14-1-c.:\r\n

\r\n“Visual, sound, and visual and sound recording during open meetings shall be permitted.”\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nUpload the video to YouTube or Vimeo or flickr or use a flip cam\r\nand send us the link, and LAKE may post it.\r\nWe don’t promise to post everything we get, but the more we get,\r\nthe more we can post.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nLAKE is a small group of active citizens aided by many more from time\r\nto time.\r\nLAKE can use a whole flock of owls.\r\nOr post it yourself on your own blog or facebook or twitter or wherever:\r\n\r\nyou are the media!<\/a>\r\n

\r\nThere are plenty of open records requests still to be filed.\r\nIf you want suggestions, inquire at\r\ninformation at l-a-k-e.org<\/code> (the dashes are part of the address).\r\nFor how, see the previous post on the\r\nOpen Records Act.<\/a>\r\nSend LAKE the results of your request and we may publish them.\r\nIf you want your name mentioned in a LAKE post as the open records requestor,\r\nplease say so.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSometimes an open records request is all it takes\r\nto get a local government to publicly post something, as happened\r\nwith my open records request for Lowndes County’s new\r\n\r\nPolicies and Procedures for Citizens Wishing to be Heard.<\/a>\r\nThey even posted the open records request form itself on the web!\r\nI stood up in front of the Lowndes County Commission and thanked\r\nCounty Clerk Paige Dukes for doing those things.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAll this citizen interest in what local government does is new\r\nto the local goverments.\r\nThey’re not used to people actually looking at things they put on the web.\r\nAnd this is not just about saying “bad!”\r\nIt’s also about publicly complimenting public officials when they do good.\r\nBelieve me, they hear that so seldom they really appreciate it.\r\nTry it for yourself!\r\n\r\nWith time, we may even get real dialog started.<\/a>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThose new Lowndes County policies and procedures themselves may have been partly\r\nprovoked by\r\n\r\none of LAKE’s more famous videos.<\/a>\r\nWe need to keep watching the County Commission about that,\r\nsince\r\n\r\nthere’s plenty of room for improvement<\/a>\r\nin those\r\n\r\npolicies and procedures.<\/a>\r\nSomebody needs to\r\n\r\nconnect the dots.<\/a>\r\n

\r\nThe more people ask local government agencies to video their own meetings\r\nand post them on the web, the more likely they will do it,\r\nand then the more we the citizens can see what’s going on.\r\nThe Lowndes County government has the necessary equipment;\r\nall they need to do is decide to do it.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nValdosta might have to buy some equipment, although as I’ve\r\ndiscussed with the mayor in a public council meeting,\r\na simple hand-held camera such as LAKE uses can pan and zoom,\r\ncosts only a few hundred bucks, and an intern could do it.\r\nDitto for all the other local municipalities, boards, and agencies.\r\n\r\nGeorge Rhynes has been after the Valdosta City Council<\/a> about this\r\nfor ages, and I have spoken to them, the Lowndes County Commission,\r\nVLCIA,\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nand the\r\n\r\nHahira City Council<\/a> about this.\r\nPlease, more people ask local government agencies to video\r\ntheir own meetings and post them on the web.\r\n

\r\nIf attending meetings doesn’t appeal to you, or you can’t because of work,\r\nthere are other things you can do; see following posts.\r\n

\r\nHelp yourself by helping us keep the owl flying.\r\n

\r\n-jsq for\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nLAKE<\/a>, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Susan Hall Hardy says that in most places industrial authority executives don’t interact with their communities. Well, paraphrasing what Yakov Smirnoff used to say, in Lowndes County, community interact with officials! Here is her comment from 15 March 2011 on this blog: Not to be rude, although honesty is very often perceived that way these […]","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":[97,48,40,14,15,2,602,11,1105,88,733,21,604,3,54,1106,178,2305],"tags":[8736,944,8790,8701,8699,8791,8792,7,3413,8793,8700,6],"class_list":["post-2291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-code-enforcement","category-community","category-economy","category-education","category-government","category-hahira","category-lake","category-lcboe","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-media","category-planning","category-remerton","category-transparency","category-valdosta-city-council","category-vboe","category-vlcia","category-vlmpo","tag-activism","tag-citizens","tag-dasher","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-hahira","tag-lake-park","tag-lowndes-county","tag-participation","tag-remerton","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-AX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291","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=2291"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2788,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291\/revisions\/2788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}