![\"vldseal.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.quarterman.com\/images\/vldseal.jpg\")
<\/a>\nA new year brings\n<\/a>\nA new year brings\n\nMayor Fretti’s State of the City<\/a> address for Valdosta.\nIt was quite interesting as an exercise in transparency:\nhe walked through what\nseemed like every city department, one by one, in addition to\ntalking about overarching cost-saving measures and emphasizing\nthat Valdosta has no debt, not even bond debt.\nThis was all good.\n\nI noticed that, unlike last year, there were no military personnel\npointed out or even present.\nI guess the mayor noted that saber-rattling is not in fashion this year.\nHe did mention some details of recent economic improvements at Moody AFB; everyone knows the importance of Moody to the local economy.\n
\nI did think it was a little over the top when the mayor included in his welcome\nof new and old county officials that “all roads lead to Valdosta, the\ncounty seat.”\nValdosta Aeterna!\nWell, Valdosta, unlike Rome, may not be eternal, but bickering\nbetween the city and the county apparently is.\n
\nAlso, as I mentioned to the mayor afterwards, I had hoped he would\nsay a few words about the proposed bus system<\/a>. He indicated that\nhe had simply forgotten to do so. That’s understandable, considering\nall he did talk about.\nNext year.\n \nIf you live in Valdosta, I understand you can view the mayor’s speech\non local cable for some time to come. I recommend it. The full text is on the\nValdosta city web site<\/a> (yay!),\neven though it’s in a hidden link (which I’ve dug out and linked in here<\/a>) and in Microsoft Word (boo!)\ninstead of as plain HTML.\n \nIn the regular agenda, the elephant not in the room became even more obvious by its absence.\nAt the citizens wishing to be heard section, nobody came forward.\nFor that matter, there were almost no citizens present other than\nelected officials, city employees, contractors, and press.\nThis is a problem.\nThe city of Valdosta is going to some lengths to be transparent\nand to accept citizen input. Where are the citizens?\n \nAlso, this being Valdosta, the one item on the agenda that got the most\ndiscussion time was the tennis court improvements at McKey Park.\nSports rule in TitleTown!\n \nPerhaps the new county commission chair will think about giving a State of the County talk.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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 […]","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":[1736,12],"tags":[2121,3,2,2120,2123,565,2126,1808,2125,2122,2124,45,2127],"class_list":["post-637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lowndes-county-commission-georgia","category-politics","tag-fretti","tag-georgia","tag-lowndes-county","tag-mayor","tag-mckey-park","tag-moody-afb","tag-roma-aeterna","tag-rome","tag-sports","tag-state-of-the-city","tag-tennis","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-aeterna"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-ah","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}