{"id":9618,"date":"2014-07-14T07:06:05","date_gmt":"2014-07-14T11:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=9618"},"modified":"2014-07-14T07:07:16","modified_gmt":"2014-07-14T11:07:16","slug":"millage-hearings-for-lowndes-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/millage-hearings-for-lowndes-county.html","title":{"rendered":"Millage Hearings for Lowndes County"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nEven though the County Commission\r\n\r\nalready voted on the budget for spending your tax money<\/a>\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n(and still hasn’t published that budget),\r\nit will have public hearings on the millage before final\r\nadoption of that number that decides how much tax you pay.\r\nWhile the proposed millage rate \r\nis still low compared to other counties<\/a>\r\nit’s curious that while\r\n\r\nthe Lowndes County Board of Education has published at least a summary\r\nof its new budget<\/a>\r\nthe Lowndes County Commission has not.\r\n

\r\nAccording to the county’s online\r\n\r\ncalendar<\/a> and Current Events (but not its Public Notices<\/a> nor the VDT’s online public notices),\r\nthese meetings are scheduled:\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
8:30-9:00 AM<\/td>Wednesday<\/td>16 July 2014<\/td>Millage Hearing<\/td><\/tr>\r\n
6:00-6:30 PM<\/td>Wednesday<\/td>16 July 2014<\/td>Millage Hearing<\/td><\/tr>\r\n
8:30 AM<\/td>Monday<\/td>21 July 2014<\/td>Work Session<\/td><\/tr>\r\n
5:30 PM<\/td>Tuesday<\/td>22 July 2014<\/td>Work Session<\/td><\/tr>\r\n
8:30-9:00 AM<\/td>Wednesday<\/td>23 July 2014<\/td>Millage Hearing<\/td><\/tr>\r\n
9:00-9:30 AM<\/td>Wednesday<\/td>23 July 2014<\/td>Millage Adoption Hearing<\/td><\/tr>\r\n<\/table>\r\n

\r\nAll are in the same place:\r\n

\r\n327 N. Ashley St – Commission Chambers, 2nd Floor Administration Building\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nIt’s interesting that the county’s\r\nPublic Notice page<\/a>\r\ndoesn’t list these opportunities for citizens to speak about the millage,\r\nbut it does have\r\na prominent notice of the Commission’s citizen speech suppression measures:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\nPLEASE NOTE<\/strong>—On Tuesday, January 25, 2011, at the regular\r\nmeeting of the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners, the Commission\r\nunanimously adopted a resolution and policy establishing guidelines\r\nfor the\r\n\r\nCitizens Wishing To Be Heard<\/strong> portion of the regular meeting\r\nagenda. For your review, links to the adopted documents have been\r\nposted below. Citizens wishing to address the Commission at the next\r\nregular meeting, may fill out the Citizens Wishing to Be Heard Form\r\nand bring it with them or forms will be provided in Commission\r\nChambers twenty minutes prior to the start of the meeting. Citizens\r\nthat would like to meet with officials outside of a regular meeting\r\nare encouraged to contact their Commissioner directly or contact\r\nLowndes County at 229-671-2400, to make an appointment. Thank you.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\nCitizens Wishing to Be Heard Resolution<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\nPolicies and Procedures<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\nCitizens Wishing to Be Heard Form<\/a>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nCitizens may wish to speak, but it’s not clear the Commission wants to listen.\r\n

\r\nMeanwhile, don’t forget the\r\n\r\nLowndes County Board of Education millage hearings<\/a>\r\nAll these millage hearings are in the\r\nLAKE calendar<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even though the County Commission already voted on the budget for spending your tax money (and still hasn’t published that budget), it will have public hearings on the millage before final adoption of that number that decides how much tax you pay. While the proposed millage rate is still low compared to other counties it’s […]","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":[14,2,88,3],"tags":[381,8704,8701,8699,8702,12,7,8734,1247,722,60,8700,6],"class_list":["post-9618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-government","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-transparency","tag-budget","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-millage","tag-public-hearing","tag-tax","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-2v8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9618","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=9618"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9620,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9618\/revisions\/9620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}