{"id":320,"date":"2012-11-19T15:13:56","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T20:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/airport-authority-says-county-commission-shorted-payment-vdt.html"},"modified":"2012-11-19T15:13:56","modified_gmt":"2012-11-19T20:13:56","slug":"airport-authority-says-county-commission-shorted-payment-vdt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/airport-authority-says-county-commission-shorted-payment-vdt.html","title":{"rendered":"Airport Authority says County Commission shorted payment —VDT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nThe Lowndes County Commission apparently
\nfailed to pay the Airport Authority $150,000,
\nyet the City of Valdosta paid their part in full.
\nOnce again the VDT did a little investigation and came up with a story.\n<\/p>\n

\nBrittany D. McClure wrote for the VDT 15 November 2012,
\n
\nAirport Authority chair states County Commission came up short<\/a>,\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n\"Pictures<\/a>
\nWhen the Valdosta Regional Airport had hangars built on the
\nproperty, both the city of Valdosta and Lowndes County pledged
\n$900,000.\n<\/p>\n

\nAccording to [Steve] Everett, the city paid their part in full but the
\ncounty failed to pay $150,000 of the dedicated funds.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nWhy?\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

\nEverett stated that according to the commission, they were unable to
\npay the $150,000 because they came up short with SPLOST funds.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nSo what did the county spend its SPLOST funds on?\n<\/p>\n

\nAlso, why did this happen?\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nSubsequently, the authority had to borrow the $150,000 from the city
\nwhich they are now paying back with interest.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nWe know the county has a rolling line of credit it can draw on.
\nAnd the county is
\n
\nrefinancing outstanding bonds<\/a>
\nto the tune of about $1,675,000 savings.
\nWhy is the Airport Authority having to run up new debt for the county’s mistakes?\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nAccording to Lowndes County Manager Joe Pritchard, when the proceeds
\nfrom SPLOST began to come in, it was apparent that the county’s
\ncontribution would have to be reduced by $150,000.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nApparent to whom?
\nWe know the Industrial Authority has been asking the county for
\nmany months when the amount they’d been shorted would be caught up.
\nBut did the county tell the various authorities it was shorting
\nthat it was doing so?
\nOr did only the ones that were suspicious enough to ask find out?\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nThe county was anticipating $182 million in SPLOST revenue, but now
\nit looks like about $150 million will be collected.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe’re not at a point right now where we could give these
\nfunds,\u201d said Pritchard.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nMaybe somebody shouldn’t have committed to give so much funds in
\nthe first place.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut here’s a bright spot:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nWhile SPLOST was the cause of lost money and a detriment to the
\nairport in this instance, executive director and manager of the
\nairport Jim Galloway stated that SPLOST VII not passing actually
\nimpacted the airport positively.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe SPLOST that was voted on in November didn’t include any airport
\nprojects. According to Galloway, when SPLOST comes back around, they
\nmay be able to get some airport projects on the list.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nAnother organization that would like a better process for getting
\nprojects on the SPLOST list!\n<\/p>\n

\nMeanwhile, who was in charge of promising all those SPLOST
\nfunds to all those authorities?
\nNot in charge of producing the spreadsheets: in charge of allocating
\nthe funds.
\nCould it have been Joe Pritchard?\n<\/p>\n

\nI wonder if 16.66% of anybody’s paycheck has been withheld until the
\nauthorities get their promised SPLOST funds?\n<\/p>\n

\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Lowndes County Commission apparently failed to pay the Airport Authority $150,000, yet the City of Valdosta paid their part in full. Once again the VDT did a little investigation and came up with a story. Brittany D. McClure wrote for the VDT 15 November 2012, Airport Authority chair states County Commission came up short, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,88,52,807,178],"tags":[1339,8728,8701,136,8702,12,7,8734,8724,1338,6,8804,8749],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-splost","category-vlcaa","category-vlcia","tag-accounting","tag-ethics","tag-georgia","tag-joe-pritchard","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-splost","tag-steve-everett","tag-valdosta","tag-vlcaa","tag-vlcia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","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=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}