{"id":4066,"date":"2013-06-14T04:02:04","date_gmt":"2013-06-14T08:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=4066"},"modified":"2013-06-25T13:40:36","modified_gmt":"2013-06-25T17:40:36","slug":"a-metropolitan-area-needs-better-than-trash-government-john-s-quarterman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/a-metropolitan-area-needs-better-than-trash-government-john-s-quarterman.html","title":{"rendered":"A metropolitan area needs better than trash government –John S. Quarterman"},"content":{"rendered":"

My LTE in the VDT Thursday.\r\nI’ve added links to some of my inspirations. -jsq<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nLocal leaders worked hard to get the\r\n\r\nValdosta Metropolitan Statistical Area<\/a> declared.\r\nWhy now are they acting like a Ludowici\r\nspeed trap for local businesses?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe Lowndes County Commission shouldn’t act like a private business\r\ntrying to exclude anybody it doesn’t like. State law says local\r\ngovernments are supposed to have open bids and public hearings. A\r\npromise (in the VDT) in\r\n\r\nMarch 2013 of a non-exclusive contract<\/a> for\r\ntrash collection turned into\r\n\r\nexclusive in October<\/a>; at least two of\r\nthe five bidders are now the same company; and the county\r\n\r\nis suing<\/a>\r\n\r\n\"Applause\"<\/a>\r\na\r\n\r\nlocal business<\/a> to the profit of\r\n\r\na company owned by investors in New York City<\/a>.\r\nMeanwhile,\r\n\r\nno public accounting has ever been seen<\/a> of the\r\n\r\nformer waste collection sites<\/a> and\r\n\r\nno public hearing was held<\/a> before\r\nthey closed, despite state law.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBusiness exists to make a profit. Government exists to provide\r\npublic services like law enforcement, water, sewers, roads, and yes,\r\ntrash collection. Sure, balanced books are good. But money isn’t the\r\nmain point of government: providing what the people need is, and\r\n\r\nthe people didn’t ask the county<\/a> to exchange the waste collection\r\ncenters for lower prices\r\n\r\nthat won’t last<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nBusinesses (except monopolies<\/a>)\r\nhave to make some effort to please\r\ncustomers, so they continue getting paid. Local citizens\r\n\r\ndon’t even get to see what our local governments are voting on<\/a>\r\nbefore they vote to spend our money on it, and the Lowndes County Commission\r\n\r\nwon’t even listen to citizens for more than fifteen minutes<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"County<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAs the VDT reminded us (19 December 2010),\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\n\"Standing<\/a>\r\n“…citizens are tired of being told what’s best for them, having no\r\nsay so in how their tax dollars are spent,\r\n\r\nand having their concerns ignored<\/a>.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nIf local officials and other local leaders want this to be a\r\nmetropolitan area, we need to get on with\r\n\r\nthings metropolitan areas\r\ncare about<\/a>, like\r\n\r\nmore jobs<\/a>,\r\n\r\nclean air and water<\/a>,\r\n\r\nsolar power<\/a>, and\r\n\r\nfast Internet access<\/a>. Not\r\n\r\nbusiness speed traps<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"Crawford<\/a>\r\n\r\n\"Richard<\/a>\r\n\r\nNot even Lester Maddox tolerated Ludowici. Why should we tolerate\r\ntrash government at the next election?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nJohn S. Quarterman is a Lowndes County resident who remembers Lester\r\nMaddox going to Ludowici\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My LTE in the VDT Thursday. I’ve added links to some of my inspirations. -jsq Local leaders worked hard to get the Valdosta Metropolitan Statistical Area declared. Why now are they acting like a Ludowici speed trap for local businesses? The Lowndes County Commission shouldn’t act like a private business trying to exclude anybody it […]","protected":false},"author":3,"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":[556,14,2,132,20,88,1908,23,24,478,3,479,133,55],"tags":[6397,1339,8779,258,381,774,623,773,6423,8704,6279,3346,6427,8701,8699,10,8741,291,847,8702,8710,91,6428,6430,12,7,8734,6429,647,5586,4,8846,8713,653,8714,8772,6426,8700,8773,6,6431,1731,8742,8727],"class_list":["post-4066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air","category-economy","category-government","category-internet-access-speed","category-law","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-religion","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-solid-waste","category-transparency","category-trash","category-vdt","category-water","tag-11-june-2013","tag-accounting","tag-air","tag-bill-slaughter","tag-budget","tag-cary-scarborough","tag-crawford-powell","tag-deep-south-sanitation","tag-duane-roark","tag-economy","tag-exclusive-franchise","tag-freedom","tag-gary-wright","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-internet-access-speed","tag-jerome-tucker","tag-jobs","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lcc","tag-lester-maddox","tag-long-county","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-ludowici","tag-monopoly","tag-order","tag-regular-session","tag-religion","tag-renewable-energy","tag-richard-raines","tag-solar","tag-solid-waste","tag-steve-parker","tag-transparency","tag-trash","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-metropolitan-statistical-area","tag-valdosta-msa","tag-vdt","tag-water"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-13A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4066","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4066"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4357,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4066\/revisions\/4357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}