Tag Archives: Georgia

Solomon’s Culvert

The VDT editorializes about the recent case in which a county resident put in his own culvert and got charged the county’s expenses:
The county should have responded to the resident’s call. It is not always easy dealing with the public, but the public is the county government’s boss. County employees should remember that and return residents’ calls, answer residents’ questions, and treat residents with a level of respect. Many county officials and employees practice such common courtesies. Others do not.

Perhaps this tale didn’t so much need an Aesop as it did a Solomon. Perhaps the judge should have split the difference by fining the resident for half of the fine and charged the other half to the county employee who did not return the resident’s call.

If that started happening, perhaps a few things would change.

Valdosta Cutting Back

On the same day a VDT editorial said “NO!” to any negative talk about the local economy, the VDT published this:
Published March 05, 2009 12:40 am –

Valdosta deals with economic downturn
Hiring freeze, possible furloughs part of the plan
By Matt Flumerfelt
The Valdosta Daily Times

VALDOSTA — The city of Valdosta recently announced it is taking measures to compensate for declining revenues. Among the steps considered at the city’s recent annual planning retreat to adjust to the revenue shortfall is a hiring freeze on new positions and possibly furloughing some city employees.

“The city of Valdosta is experiencing the same effects from the economic downturn that all other governments and businesses are experiencing,” said Valdosta City Manager Larry Hanson. “The unemployment rate in Valdosta and Lowndes County has nearly doubled over the last 18 months. That means revenues such as sales tax have decreased.”

There’s more, all well worth reading.

That the city was retrenching was no secret to anyone who attended the mayor’s state of the city address, but apparently the degree has increased since then.

VDT Goes Ted Stevens

stevens21.jpg Tired of hearing people say newspapers are dying, the Valdosta Daily Times channels former Alaska Senator Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens’ favorite response:
My answer to all of the above is an emphatic “NO!”
The other talk the VDT is saying no to is about foreclosures and job loss. It’s curious about the foreclosures, since it was a little more than a year ago that the VDT published “Lowndes area not immune from home foreclosures” by Billy Bruce, in which he used counts of foreclosure ads from the VDT as data. That was a big change from the previous VDT tune of this area being immune to the financial problems plagueing the rest of the country.

Ah, but Billy Bruce doesn’t work there anymore! And the VDT is back to its old tune. The verse this time is that Lowndes county is not as bad as metro Atlanta counties in foreclosures. Yes, that’s true, and we’re all glad of that. Yet foreclosure rates are up here, too. And above 7% unemployment is not as bad as Atlanta, either, but isn’t normal.

This is a curious excuse: Continue reading →

Paving Quarterman Road

Quarterman Road, 9 March 2009Several months ago a contract for grubbing and clearing Quarterman Road was let. I posted about some of the results of that.

Yesterday, 10AM, March 12 11, 2009, was the bid selection meeting for the contract for paving Quarterman Road. It was a public meeting. Carolyn Selby reports the following bids were read:

Scruggs$1,394,660.47
Reames$1,502,909.80
Hancock$1,495,737.76
The low bid was selected, so Scruggs will be paving Quarterman Road.

The county engineer had estimated $1,336,000.00 for the project.

The county commission will vote on March 24, 2009 at the regular meeting.

Expansion of Lowndes County Commission?

Since a proposal for nine commissioners was voted down in the 1980s and the Justice Department required a minority-majority district, leading to the current three commissioners plus non-voting chair, there have been various attempts to expand the number of Lowndes County Commissioners. Thomas County has eight commissioners, as do several other nearby counties with less population than Lowndes County. For that matter, the city of Valdosta has I think seven city council members, for less than half the population of Lowndes County.

The previous commission was divided among itself on this issue, and the local state representatives would not bring it up in the legislature without consensus among the commission. The new commission has been trying to move forward on this. The last version I heard involved keeping the same commission districts as now, plus adding two overlapping commissioners for new east and west districts.

Interestingly, there was nothing said about all this at Monday’s work session, yet we discover in the newspaper:

Paige Dukes, Lowndes County information officer, said the commission visited with reapportionment in Atlanta twice during the past few weeks. As a result of those meetings, the reapportionment office forwarded several maps to the commission for its review, Dukes said.

Lowndes County Commission Chairman Ashley Paulk said, “The commission continues to work feverishly on the expansion issue. We are at an 80 percent consensus regarding a plan that will meet local needs and satisfy requirements determined by the Department of Justice. I am working one on one with each commissioner in an effort to get a plan to citizens as soon as possible.”

Paulk was a guest of Scott James on his morning radio on program TALK 92.1 Monday, and in the course of that interview, Paulk said that if all the commissioners agreed on the plan, the expansion could actually be voted on by the board at tonight’s meeting.

It’s not clear from that just what they might vote on, but from context maybe it would be to forward a plan to citizens to vote on.

Valdosta Aeterna

vldseal.jpg A new year brings Mayor Fretti’s State of the City address for Valdosta. It was quite interesting as an exercise in transparency: he walked through what seemed like every city department, one by one, in addition to talking about overarching cost-saving measures and emphasizing that Valdosta has no debt, not even bond debt. This was all good.

I noticed that, unlike last year, there were no military personnel pointed out or even present. I guess the mayor noted that saber-rattling is not in fashion this year. He did mention some details of recent economic improvements at Moody AFB; everyone knows the importance of Moody to the local economy.

I did think it was a little over the top when the mayor included in his welcome of new and old county officials that “all roads lead to Valdosta, the county seat.” Valdosta Aeterna! Well, Valdosta, unlike Rome, may not be eternal, but bickering between the city and the county apparently is.

Also, as I mentioned to the mayor afterwards, I had hoped he would say a few words about the proposed bus system. He indicated that he had simply forgotten to do so. That’s understandable, considering all he did talk about. Next year.

If you live in Valdosta, I understand you can view the mayor’s speech on local cable for some time to come. I recommend it. The full text is on the Valdosta city web site (yay!), even though it’s in a hidden link (which I’ve dug out and linked in here) and in Microsoft Word (boo!) instead of as plain HTML.

In the regular agenda, the elephant not in the room became even more obvious by its absence. At the citizens wishing to be heard section, nobody came forward. For that matter, there were almost no citizens present other than elected officials, city employees, contractors, and press. This is a problem. The city of Valdosta is going to some lengths to be transparent and to accept citizen input. Where are the citizens?

Also, this being Valdosta, the one item on the agenda that got the most discussion time was the tennis court improvements at McKey Park. Sports rule in TitleTown!

Perhaps the new county commission chair will think about giving a State of the County talk.

Valdosta Urbanized Area

vldurbanarea.jpg Another interesting thing from the Valdosta Transit Public Information Meeting was I was reminded of the Valdosta Urbanized Area. As you can see by the map, it extends all the way up Bemiss Road through Moody Air Force Base into Berrien County. This came up in the context of bus lines. Valdosta can run a bus to Moody, because Moody is in the Valdosta Urbanized Area.

In a larger context, local public officials often wonder aloud how they can keep landowners from selling out and developers from developing all over the county. Well, they can’t actually prevent that. (Except they already have in the Moody Exclusion Zone immediately around the AFB, but that’s not the point; in general they can’t.) But they can encourage developers not to go for cheap land way out on the edges of the county, and instead buy land near existing services (water, wastewater, busses, etc.). Cheap hookups, expedited permits, encouragement by local municipalities; these things can all help steer development.

Lowndes County and the city of Valdosta could even designate a Preferred Development Corridor and steer development there. It already exists: Valdosta up Bemiss Road towards Moody, plus the area in and around Valdosta, especially along I-75. What’s missing is official and unofficial encouragement for developers to develop there.

In addition, I keep hearing people saying there’s no farming left in Lowndes County. That’s just not true. It’s not like it was 50 years ago, sure, but there are people actively farming, and even seeking new land to rent. South Carolina promotes farming as its growth business. Lowndes County is big enough to promote both industry and farming.

Valdosta Transit Implementation Plan

Transit-Needs-Map.png A couple of weeks ago (Wednesday, Jan 7th, 2009), I went to a public meeting on a Transit Implementation Plan for the Valdosta Urbanized Area. Basically, where should the proposed Valdosta bus system run? This is part of the Valdosta Transportation Master Plan.

It was quite interesting that there was such a meeting, at which the various organizers (SGRDC, MPO, and the consultant) actively solicited input from the attendees, in both ad hoc and organized ways. First they gave a presentation and answered questions. Then they asked participants to fill out a questionnaire about where they lived, worked, and played. The presentation for that meeting is online. They even scheduled several more Public Involvement Meetings. Hm, I’m not seeing that schedule online, but presumably they’ll put it up before the meetings happen.

There was pretty good attendance: several plain citizens, the mayor, a couple of city council members, a couple of county commissioners, at least one planning commission member, a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals, a newspaper reporter, etc.

If you want a bus to run near you, I’d recommend going to one of these meetings, or contacting the organizer, Corey Hull, MPO Coordinator, 229-333-5277.

Lowndes County has a Thoroughfare Plan, which is currently being revised. We’ll see what the public input process for that turns out to be.