{"id":9467,"date":"2014-06-20T07:15:57","date_gmt":"2014-06-20T11:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=9467"},"modified":"2014-06-20T07:17:36","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T11:17:36","slug":"guess-what-you-missed-lowndes-county-budget-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/guess-what-you-missed-lowndes-county-budget-hearing.html","title":{"rendered":"Guess what you missed: Lowndes County Budget Hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAsking the full Commission and staff\r\n\r\nin a public meeting<\/a>\r\nwasn’t enough to get an alert on the budget meeting\r\nthat was held Tuesday:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\nLowndes County Budget Meeting (6\/17\/2014)<\/a>\r\n

\r\nLowndes County Board of Commissioners\r\n
\r\n327 N. Ashley St – Commission Chambers, 2nd Floor Administration Building\r\n
\r\nValdosta, GA\r\n
\r\n5:30 p.m.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nApparently everyone is really supposed to watch the county’s\r\nwebsite every day.\r\nThey did send email to department heads about that meeting.\r\nThey could have also sent that to interested parties.\r\nBut they didn’t.\r\nAnd almost nobody showed up.\r\n

\r\nThere’s another one Tuesday:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\nLowndes County Budget Meeting (6\/24\/2014)<\/a>\r\n

\r\nLowndes County Board of Commissioners\r\n
\r\n327 N. Ashley St – Commission Chambers, 2nd Floor Administration Building\r\n
\r\nValdosta, GA\r\n
\r\n5:00 p.m.\r\n
\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThat’s just before the Regular Session next Tuesday.\r\n

\r\nBe sure to review the draft budget before you go.\r\nOh, right!\r\nYou can’t.\r\nBecause\r\n\r\nit’s not an official county document until it’s\r\nvoted on<\/a> (nevermind what state law says)\r\nor\r\n\r\nif they published it nobody would show up for the Budget Hearings<\/a>,\r\ndepending on when you asked the Chairman.\r\n

\r\nOr maybe your elected county government just doesn’t want your opinion.\r\n

\r\nSpeaking of state law, doesn’t it require a public notice of such a hearing?\r\nThere’s nothing about either of those Budget Hearings\r\nin the\r\n\r\nPublic Notices<\/a> published through the newspaper of record, the VDT.\r\nWell, there’s one for\r\n\r\nthe City of Dasher for a 17 May 2014 budget meeting<\/a>.\r\nBut nothing for Budget Hearings for the County of Lowndes.\r\n

\r\nAnd what is on the county’s website is even less<\/em>\r\ninformation than for last year’s budget tellings.\r\nLast year they included this:\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\nThis year they don’t even offer to let you come look at it.\r\nAnd apparently they don’t want your questions.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asking the full Commission and staff in a public meeting wasn’t enough to get an alert on the budget meeting that was held Tuesday: Lowndes County Budget Meeting (6\/17\/2014) Lowndes County Board of Commissioners 327 N. Ashley St – Commission Chambers, 2nd Floor Administration Building Valdosta, GA 5:30 p.m. Apparently everyone is really supposed to […]","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":[14,20,88,3],"tags":[381,8704,8701,2274,8702,8710,12,7,8734,8700,6],"class_list":["post-9467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-law","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-transparency","tag-budget","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-hearing","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-2sH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9467","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=9467"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9471,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9467\/revisions\/9471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}