{"id":7493,"date":"2014-01-27T08:46:48","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T13:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=7493"},"modified":"2014-01-27T08:50:35","modified_gmt":"2014-01-27T13:50:35","slug":"the-expense-of-agendas-glpc-2014-01-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/the-expense-of-agendas-glpc-2014-01-27.html","title":{"rendered":"the expense of agendas @ GLPC 2014-01-27"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe Greater Lowndes Planning Commission meets tonight at 5:30PM,\r\nbut there’s no agenda posted anywhere online.\r\nAt\r\nthe same meeting at which he asserted\r\n\r\n“we have broadband”<\/a>,\r\nand\r\n\r\n“transparency is not a problem”<\/a>\r\nCounty Chairman Bill Slaughter said the county doesn’t publish\r\nagendas or minutes for the Planning Commission because of\r\n“the expense”.\r\n

\r\n“the expense”\r\n
\r\nv.\r\n
\r\n“When officials act like\r\n
\r\nthey have something to hide,\r\n
\r\nthey often do”\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nI suppose I don’t know much about this Internet stuff,\r\nso maybe somebody can explain it to me:\r\nwhat’s the big expense in publishing the GLPC agendas and minutes\r\nthe same way the county publishes its own\r\n\r\nagendas<\/a> and\r\n\r\nminutes<\/a>?\r\nYet if you search for the Planning Commission on the county’s website,\r\nall you find is its name in a list of\r\n\r\nBoards, Agencies & Commissions<\/a>;\r\ntonight’s meeting is not even listed in\r\n\r\nthe county’s online calendar<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nFor that matter, what would be the big expense in posting\r\nthe entire agenda packets, like for example\r\nNash County, NC<\/a>\r\nor Augusta-Richmond County<\/a>\r\nor\r\n\r\nGlynn County<\/a>, which also publishes videos of its two (2) planning commissions.\r\nOur own two local Valdosta and Lowndes County Boards of Education often\r\n\r\npost board packet items along with their agendas<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nFor that matter, the City of Valdosta puts agendas and minutes online\r\nfor the \r\nValdosta-Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBOA)<\/a>,\r\nwhich, as \r\nGretchen pointed out at last month’s County Commission meeting<\/a>,\r\nis the other board that\r\n\r\nused to be handled<\/a> by the\r\n\r\nSouthern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC)<\/a>.\r\nThe City of Valdosta does have\r\n\r\na web page for GLPC<\/a>\r\nand does list tonight’s meeting in the city’s\r\n\r\nonline calendar<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n\r\nGreater Lowndes Planning Commission\r\n
\r\nPublic Hearing\r\n<\/strong>\r\n
\r\nDate:<\/strong> 1\/27\/2014 5:30 PM\r\n
\r\nLocation:<\/strong> South Health District Administrative Office\r\n
\r\n325 W Savannah Avenue\r\n
\r\nValdosta, Georgia 31601\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nYet for the GLPC minutes, which are handled by Lowndes County,\r\nyou have to file an open records request,\r\nand three days later you get those minutes on paper,\r\neven though they are composed electronically, not on a typewriter.\r\nAnd to get an agenda, apparently now you have to show up at the GLPC meeting,\r\nwhich means you don’t know in advance whether you need to.\r\n

\r\nWhy can the city of Valdosta, the boards of education, and numerous\r\nother counties do what Lowndes County seems to find too expensive?\r\nWhat is this great expense, anyway?\r\n

\r\nWhat about the expense of reputation for the county?\r\nAs\r\n\r\nthe VDT said in an editorial 3 March 2012<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nWhen the media requests records, it is doing so on behalf of the\r\npublic. Taxpayers have the right to know how their money is being\r\nspent by officials elected to represent them. When officials are\r\nreluctant to comply with requests, it raises legitimate concerns.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThere should be no transaction or record that an official should be\r\nconcerned about being made public….\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWhen officials act like they have something to hide, they often do,\r\nand when they begin to consider the government’s business as their\r\npersonal business, it’s time for the public to become concerned.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Greater Lowndes Planning Commission meets tonight at 5:30PM, but there’s no agenda posted anywhere online. At the same meeting at which he asserted “we have broadband”, and “transparency is not a problem” County Chairman Bill Slaughter said the county doesn’t publish agendas or minutes for the Planning Commission because of “the expense”. “the expense” […]","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":[325,2,1105,88,21,3,1106,1341],"tags":[7407,239,258,8701,8764,241,8699,326,10,8702,8815,12,7,8734,8711,4,1107,8700,6,8816,8826,328],"class_list":["post-7493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-glpc","category-government","category-lcboe","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-planning","category-transparency","category-vboe","category-zboa","tag-27-january-2014","tag-augusta","tag-bill-slaughter","tag-georgia","tag-glpc","tag-glynn-county","tag-government","tag-greater-lowndes-planning-commission","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-lake","tag-lcboe","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-planning","tag-regular-session","tag-richmond-county","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta","tag-vboe","tag-zboa","tag-zoning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1WR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7493","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=7493"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7499,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7493\/revisions\/7499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}