{"id":4364,"date":"2013-06-25T14:13:47","date_gmt":"2013-06-25T18:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=4364"},"modified":"2013-06-25T14:14:24","modified_gmt":"2013-06-25T18:14:24","slug":"budget-telling-tonight-lcc-2013-06-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/budget-telling-tonight-lcc-2013-06-25.html","title":{"rendered":"Budget Telling Tonight @ LCC 2013-06-25"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nTonight you can go be told what the county’s budget will be,\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n5PM at the county palace.\r\nIf you want to see the proposed budget,\r\nyou’ll have to go their beforehand and view the one paper\r\ncopy they are\r\n\r\nrequired by law to show you<\/a>.\r\nThey say they’re short of money,\r\nso why are they\r\n\r\nwasting taxpayer funds suing a legitimate business<\/a>?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nOn the county’s online calendar:\r\n\r\nBudget Public Hearing (6\/18\/2013)<\/a>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nPUBLIC NOTICE\r\n
\r\nThe Lowndes County Board of Commissioners will hold a public hearing for the purpose of considering\r\n
\r\nthe Fiscal Year 2014 proposed budget on the following dates:\r\n

\r\nJune 18, 2013 at 5:30 p.m.\r\n

\r\nJune 25, 2013 at 5:00 p.m.\r\n

\r\nLocation:\r\n
\r\nLowndes County Commission Chambers\r\n
\r\n327 N. Ashley St.\r\n
\r\nValdosta, GA\r\n
\r\n
\r\nA copy of the proposed budget is available for public review in the office of the County Clerk.\r\n
\r\nFor questions please call 671-2400.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nKay Harris wrote for the VDT 19 June 2013,\r\n\r\nLowndes County facing budget woes<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIn a brief meeting Tuesday evening, Lowndes County Commissioners and\r\na small audience reviewed a power point presentation compiled by\r\nFinance director Stephanie Black, which shows a rather bleak picture\r\nfor this fiscal year….\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nFacing a reduction in revenues from sales and property tax\r\ncollections, the overall budget for the county for FY2014 is down\r\n7.28 percent from the previous year, to $87,392,529.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nFunny how that happens when you base your taxes on sales tax\r\nand there’s a recession.\r\nThere’s more in the VDT story about SPLOST IV being tapped out,\r\nthe remainder of SPLOST V being earmarked for specific projects,\r\nand SPLOST VI collections ending in one more year.\r\nIf they hadn’t jumped up the electon for SPLOST VII\r\nto last year and larded it with two big questionable\r\nbuilding projects (a new library building when they never\r\neven considered using the old federal building, and a new auditorium),\r\nmaybe they’d have SPLOST VII already.\r\nMaybe this time they’ll put things on the list for SPLOST VII\r\nthat the people actually want and hold public hearings before\r\nthey finalize the list so they can find out.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nDespite savings in several areas, including the solid waste disposal\r\nexpenses, the decrease in tax revenues and increased costs, despite\r\nmaintaining or decreasing current funding levels for departments and\r\nagencies, paints a dismal picture for county government.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nSo far as we can tell by\r\n\r\nthe inadequate county accounting<\/a>,\r\nfor the\r\nsolid waste collection centers<\/a>,\r\nthe county could have just raised the $100 dollar fee for the cards\r\nto $150 and closed the budget shortfall, also avoiding any need to\r\nsue anybody.\r\nPeople who didn’t want to pay the $150 could have signed up with\r\nVeolia or Deep South Sanitation.\r\nNow people may get stuck with ADS, whose fees\r\n\r\nwill very likely go up<\/a>, quite possibly to more than $150\/year.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nOh, and during this period of recession and county budget shortfall,\r\nthe Industrial Authority kept trying to push on us\r\n\r\na private prison<\/a> (like the one that may still\r\nbankrupt Irwin County<\/a>)\r\nand\r\n\r\na biomass incinerator<\/a>\r\n(like the one that\r\nis helping bankrupt Harrisburg, PA<\/a>)\r\nboth of which turned out to have public opposition\r\nand no customers.\r\nWhy did VLCIA continue to get full funding during that entire period?\r\nIts charter doesn’t say it shall get 1 mil of tax money.\r\n\r\nIt says<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThe County of Lowndes is hereby authorized to levy and collect an\r\nannual ad valorem tax not to exceed two (2) mills for developing and\r\npromoting industry and agriculture, and is hereby directed to pay to\r\nthe authority all funds derived from such levy to be used for the\r\npurposes provided herein.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThat’s a maximum of 2 mills, not a minimum of 1 mil.\r\nThe minimum is what it used to be: zero mills.\r\nWhat the County Commission gaveth, the County Commission could\r\ntake away, or at least adjust.\r\nInstead of\r\n\r\nguaranteeing bonds for VLCIA to buy land<\/a> for\r\nindustrial parks that mostly sit empty.\r\nVLCIA does\r\n\r\nseem to be trying for better projects lately<\/a>.\r\nBut why was reducing their budget never discussed,\r\nand how about asking them to sell some of that unused land\r\nif they don’t find some use for it soon?\r\nProceeds could go to pay down those bonds.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tonight you can go be told what the county’s budget will be, 5PM at the county palace. If you want to see the proposed budget, you’ll have to go their beforehand and view the one paper copy they are required by law to show you. They say they’re short of money, so why are they […]","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":[120,14,8,2,72,20,88,478,52,3,479,178],"tags":[6503,619,8738,381,2220,8817,773,8704,8701,8699,10,2274,8730,8702,8710,91,12,7,8734,8772,8724,8840,8700,8773,6,618,8749],"class_list":["post-4364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biomass","category-economy","category-georgia","category-government","category-incarceration","category-law","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-solid-waste","category-splost","category-transparency","category-trash","category-vlcia","tag-25-june-2013","tag-ads","tag-biomass","tag-budget","tag-budget-hearing","tag-cca","tag-deep-south-sanitation","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-hearing","tag-incarceration","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lcc","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-solid-waste","tag-splost","tag-sterling-planet","tag-transparency","tag-trash","tag-valdosta","tag-veolia","tag-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-18o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4364","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=4364"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4367,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4364\/revisions\/4367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}