{"id":341,"date":"2012-11-07T09:57:29","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T14:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/splost-vii-lost.html"},"modified":"2012-11-07T09:57:29","modified_gmt":"2012-11-07T14:57:29","slug":"splost-vii-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/splost-vii-lost.html","title":{"rendered":"SPLOST VII lost"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\n<\/a>\nSpeaking of\n\ntransparency<\/a>,\nLowndes County voters defeated SPLOST VII 18,864 to 17,923 (51.28% to 48.72%).\n\nKay Harris in the VDT today<\/a> quoted Ashley Paulk with this reason:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nThe defeat came as a surprise to Mayor John Gayle but not to Lowndes\nCounty Commission Chairman Ashley Paulk, who said he warned the\nmayors of the five municipalities that if they continued to argue\nover\n\nLOST, the local option sales tax,<\/a> that voters would turn\nagainst SPLOST in retaliation.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI told them at the beginning if they didn’t stop arguing over\na few percent of the LOST and refused to leave the numbers as is by\ntaking the county’s offer, that taxpayers were going to turn against\nthe SPLOST,\u201d said Paulk.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cVoters are disenchanted with the way their local governments\nhave gotten greedy and they’re tired of the arguments over money.\nThey voted SPLOST down because they don’t trust us with their tax\ndollars, and it’s a real shame.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nI would agree\nbickering over<\/a> the \nLOST pie<\/a> was one of the reasons\nSPLOST lost, and add to that the opaque back-room processes by which\nthe SPLOST VII projects were selected.\nWhile the library needs updated and expanded facilities,\n\nthe lack of documented decision process<\/a>\nfor the architect\n\nand lack of adequate explanation for that<\/a>\nprobably didn’t help, either,\nnor did\nthe county’s puzzling lumping of the library in with Parks and Rec.\n\nwhich they later tried to clarify.<\/a>\nPerhaps the voters are\n\ntired of seeing transparency be a constant source of tension.<\/a>\nAnd I’m using the library as just one example. I could equally cite the\nproject for a farmers market under the overpass, which I think is a bad idea\nbecause the farmers market already has a fabulous location at the historic\nLowndes County Courthouse, and so far as I know none of the vendors who sell there\nwere even asked if they wanted a new location, much less the public who buy there.\n<\/p>\n

\nAt the public-not-invited \nSPLOST VII kickoff speeches<\/a>\nthe last speaker said they were not there\n\n\nto debate what projects were in\nSPLOST VII.\nWell, now there’s time to debate and discuss what projects should<\/em>\nbe in SPLOST VII before it goes back to a vote next year.\nMeanwhile, as the VDT pointed out today:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nThe current SPLOST VI collections continue through next year and\nwon’t end until Dec. 31, 2013.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nWill the powers that be in Lowndes County actually go for public\ndiscussion this time?\nMaybe even public hearings?\nOr will they do what the Mayor of Valdosta seems to be suggesting:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nGayle said he was worried about putting SPLOST on the presidential\nelection ballot due to the larger number of voters.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nSure and they could put it on a city council primary ballot next year\nand try to sneak it through like CUEE tried school “unification”.\nThat might work about as well as it did that time (“unification” lost 4 to 1).\n<\/p>\n

\nOr they could follow another path that maybe is what Mayor Gayle really meant:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n\u201cThere are a number of people who don’t seem to understand\nwhat SPLOST is,\u201d said Gayle. \u201cWe didn’t do a very good\njob of selling it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nHow about doing a better job selling it by having citizens involved\nin the process of selecting projects?\n<\/p>\n

\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking of transparency, Lowndes County voters defeated SPLOST VII 18,864 to 17,923 (51.28% to 48.72%). Kay Harris in the VDT today quoted Ashley Paulk with this reason: The defeat came as a surprise to Mayor John Gayle but not to Lowndes County Commission Chairman Ashley Paulk, who said he warned the mayors of the five […]","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":[40,1376,601,14,15,49,2,602,603,544,469,21,22,604,52,3,54,133],"tags":[679,1377,8717,8829,8790,1363,1364,8704,8705,8721,8701,8699,8791,135,8702,8792,405,8775,12,7,8770,8711,8712,1365,8793,8724,1157,8700,6,8726,8742],"class_list":["post-341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-cuee","category-dasher","category-economy","category-education","category-elections","category-government","category-hahira","category-lake-park","category-lost","category-naylor","category-planning","category-politics","category-remerton","category-splost","category-transparency","category-valdosta-city-council","category-vdt","tag-ashley-paulk","tag-auditorium","tag-community","tag-cuee","tag-dasher","tag-debate","tag-discussion","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-elections","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-hahira","tag-kay-harris","tag-lake","tag-lake-park","tag-library","tag-lost","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-naylor","tag-planning","tag-politics","tag-public-hearings","tag-remerton","tag-splost","tag-splost-vii","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-city-council","tag-vdt"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-5v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341","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=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}