{"id":234,"date":"2012-12-28T06:49:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-28T11:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/waste-offer-letter-take-it-or.html"},"modified":"2012-12-28T06:49:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-28T11:49:00","slug":"waste-offer-letter-take-it-or","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/waste-offer-letter-take-it-or.html","title":{"rendered":"Waste offer letter: take it or…."},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"Unsigned<\/a>\nI received the appended unsigned letter from Lowndes County\nrecently,\nwhich says the\n5,000 residents of the unincorporated parts that currently use the\ncounty’s waste disposal sites can sign up with Advanced Disposal\n(of New York City) for curbside pickup or…. There is no or. So\nlook forward to trash dumping long roadsides, in parking lots in\ntown, and on your property. And neither outgoing County Chairman\nAshley Paulk nor County Manager Joe Pritchard even had the courtesy\nto sign the letter.<\/p>\n

After noting that back in June the county changed waste permit\ncards from 12 months to 6 months, the letter says:<\/p>\n

At purchase, information was made available regarding\npossible future options for solid waste management in\nunincorporated Lowndes County.<\/blockquote>\n

So the county is backing off from claiming card buyers got a\nletter spelling out options. I got no such letter with card\npurchase.<\/p>\n

This consideration became necessary due to revenue\ngenerated by the sale of the permit cards, not covering the cost of\noperating the centers.<\/blockquote>\n

\n<\/a>\nAnd that’s all the accounting we get. Where is the summary of\nexpenses for the centers compared to revenue? The VDT reported from\nthe Commissioners’ stealth retreat back in April:<\/p>\n

“In total, the county is currently spending $782,058.34\neach year for solid waste disposal, a reduction from $1,176,207.75\nin 2007.”<\/blockquote>\n

As I pointed out then, “So that’s a rapid reduction in cost to\nless than a third of what it used to be, and less than half of what\nit was only a year ago.” Later Joe Pritchard said those numbers\ndidn’t include everything being spent. So what was actually being\nspent? We the taxpayers and we the card payers don’t know. After\n\na long series of meetings to which the public was either not\ninvited at all or was not invited to provide input<\/a>, at its last\nmeeting of the year (exactly as I predicted),\n\nCommissioners approved changes to the solid waste ordinance\neliminating the collection sites<\/a> and\n\ngranted a monopoly to Advanced Disposal Services<\/a> of\n\nNew York City.<\/a><\/p>\n

Former Chairman Ashley Paulk\n\nrecently complained Moody AFB had become “privatized”.<\/a> Yet at\nhis last Commission meeting he presided over privatizing the\ncounty’s public service of solid waste collection.<\/p>\n

Three new Commissioners were just sworn in yesterday, including\na new chair. The new Commission in the new year is not, so far as I\nknow, bound by the decisions of any previous Commission. It could\nundo the damage the old one just did. Or it could, like the old\none, ignore concerns of\n\npublic health, safety, and the environment<\/a> that\n\nthe state requires them to implement,<\/a> plus concerns of\n\nlocal waste collection businesses,<\/a> of local residents\n\nabout recycling<\/a> and\n\nabout the lack of any other option than curbside;<\/a> will the new\nCommission continue to kick 5,000 county residents towards curbside\ncollection or tossing their trash in the your yard?<\/p>\n

Unsigned trash letter from Lowndes County:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\"Unsigned<\/a><\/p>\n

Unsigned trash letter from\nLowndes County
\nScanned by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange\n(LAKE).<\/small><\/p>\n

-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I received the appended unsigned letter from Lowndes County recently, which says the 5,000 residents of the unincorporated parts that currently use the county’s waste disposal sites can sign up with Advanced Disposal (of New York City) for curbside pickup or…. There is no or. So look forward to trash dumping long roadsides, in parking […]","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":[16,70,2,19,20,88,21,22,32,73,478,53,3,479],"tags":[1032,381,8706,8728,8701,8699,8709,136,8702,8710,12,7,1033,6],"class_list":["post-234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-ethics","category-government","category-history","category-law","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-planning","category-politics","category-pollution","category-safety","category-solid-waste","category-sustainability","category-transparency","category-trash","tag-13-december-2012","tag-budget","tag-environment","tag-ethics","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-history","tag-joe-pritchard","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-revenue","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-3M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234","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=234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}