On the LAKE Front

Strickland Mill in Remerton —Emily Foster

Received yesterday. -jsq

FYI: The Strickland Mill in Remerton is being threatened with demolition. Remerton City Council will meet to discuss this situation on Monday, June 4th at 5:30pm during their work session, and on Monday, June 11th at 5:30pm to vote on the matter. The public is invited to both of these meetings to express opinions on the possible demolition of the Mill. As you all are aware, this mill complex dates to 1899 and is one of the few surviving textile mills in our region. This is an important community landmark and was very influential to the development of Valdosta, not to mention integral to Remerton's existence.

Emily Conklin Foster

Videos of Mayors and County in Hahira @ LOST 2012 05 02

The five local cities (Valdosta, Hahira, Remerton, Dasher, and Lake Park) presented their case in terms of changed demographics from the 2000 to the 2010 census. Much of the presentation was explained by Hahira City Manager Jonathan Sumner.

Lowndes County wasn't interested in discussing, and is waiting for arbitration, which will happen in 60 days (presumably from when they started negotiating). The VDT writeup protrays that as a surprise, but it's what County Chairman Ashley Paulk has been saying since before these negotiations began.

I would have preferred to hear what services the cities do now or could with more tax revenue provide that would benefit the entire county.

Even more, I think the local governments could spend their time together better talking about how to increase the pie, for example through solar energy for municipal revenue or through county-wide fast Internet broadband access, either of which would help attract knowledge-based jobs, which would provide employment and increased tax revenue.

However, I salute the cities and the county for being transparent about their positions, as you can see in these videos.

Here's a playlist:

Videos of Mayors and County in Hahira
LOST Negotiation,
Mayors and County in Hahira, Lowndes County Commission (LOST),
Hahira, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2 May 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-jsq

LOST again in Hahira 9AM 2 May 2012

The local cities want more LOST money from the county. Imagine if they and the county spent this much effort bringing in new industry such as solar to increase the pie!

David Rodock wrote for the VDT 17 April 2012, County’s LOST proposal declined: Cities want more money; negotiations to begin in May. Well, that about sums it up. Looks like this is going to end up in another round of litigation after a lot of talking past each other.

So there will be LOST again, this time in Hahira, 9AM 2 May 2012 at the Hahira Community Center, 215 Randall Street.

They could spend their time talking together more productively.

-jsq

Videos of Lowndes County and the mayors @ LOST 2012 04 09

Here are videos of the Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) talks yesterday morning between Lowndes County and the local cities (Valdosta, Hahira, Remerton, Dasher, and Lake Park. Not really negotiations, these were more an exchange of views. The county's position is the same as Chairman Ashley Paulk told me after the county's four minute work session earlier that morning: the county could claim 72% of LOST based on cost of services delivered to the whole county, but the county's offer is to stick with the 58% share from 2002. The cities all would like a bigger share.

The venue was the county's meeting room next to Commission Chambers. There was no sound feed available in there, so sound is variable.

First County Manager Joe Pritchard explained the state-mandated procedures and Lowndes County's position, both of which were spelled out in a three page paper. Basically, the county wants to stick to the percentages negotiated in 2002, although by the county's reckoning it could ask for a much higher percentage.

None of the cities had a written position paper. Valdosta Mayor John Gayle noted Valdosta had grown more than the county as a whole. County Chairman Ashley Paulk responded that the city couldn't grow without the county growing. The Mayor said nontheless most growth was in Valdosta. The Chairman asked whether that was growth in households? The Mayor said he didn't know the answer to that right now. The Chairman remarked that according to his reading of the census, it was mostly not in households.

Hahira Mayor Wayne Bullard

Lowndes County position on LOST negotiations @ LCC 2012 04 09

Lowndes County Clerk Paige Dukes handed out this document, Lowndes County's Report for Initial LOST Negotiations: April 9, 2012, at that first LOST meeting yesterday. When I spoke to her later, I mentioned that I thought it was the very model of how to write such a document: clear, complete, pithy, and easily understandable. She did not have a readily-accessible electronic copy, so I've posted these scanned images on the LAKE website.

The document includes a summary of the negotiation procedure (60 days to negotiate, after which it goes to mediation, then Superior Court "baseball arbitration"), plus how and how much LOST can reduce property taxes.

The rest of the document is the county's position, which includes that the county provides services such as sheriff, courts, public health, and animal control that benefit the entire county, and the county could claim 72% of LOST. However, the county is only asking for the same 58% as negotiated in 2002.

A few things I did not know include that the dedicated millage for Parks and Rec (VLPRA 1.5mil) and the Industrial Authority (VLCIA 1 mil) come out of county property taxes, not out of any city property taxes. Also VLCIA's millage started since 2002, before which VLCIA was funded out of hotel-motel taxes, including Valdosta hotel-motel taxes.

I also remarked to Paige Dukes that I wished the cities had prepared similar position statements. She said they may be depending on LOST negotiating documents by the Georgia Municipal Association (GMA), and that there were similar documents by the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia (ACCG), both which you can find linked in on the LAKE website.

The ACCG guidelines include this interesting passage:

Shadowy LOST talks tomorrow morning among all the local elected governments @ LOST 2012 04 09

It's great that the local cities and the county government think they can negotiate how to share Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) money this time without spending a lot of money suing each other like they did back in 2002. It's not so great that they're doing it at an unannounced time and place.

Kay Harris wrote Saturday in the VDT, LOST talks set to begin: County, cities to meet Monday,

As required by state law, Lowndes County issued a letter to the mayors of all the municipalities in the county, requesting they attend a renegotiation meeting Monday, April 9 to discuss LOST (local option sales tax) distributions.

“This has to be done and approved by the end of the year in order to stay in place, so we have to start the process now,” said Commission Chairman Ashley Paulk.

Well, that's interesting. When is this meeting? Ah, the time of day wasn't included in the article.

There's a clue in David Rodock's 31 March 2012 writeup about the Commission retreat,

Lowndes County and Valdosta history: origins of the old boys

If we want good clean industry for jobs for local people, we need good clean local government, too. Why do our local government bodies hide when they discuss public goods like waste disposal, try to avoid stating public positions on issues, and fail to publish minutes of elected bodies?

A little reading in local histories of the area or talking to people who were involved even a generation or two back indicates that Lowndes County has always been a cliquish sort of place, mostly run by old boys, for reasons that made some sense in the early days (lack of resources, mainly), but doesn't so much anymore in these days of I-75 and I-10, airport, railroads that still go everywhere, Moody AFB, VSU as a regional university, technical and community colleges, two hospitals and medical industry, TitleTown, Grand Bay WMA, Wild Adventures, and south Georgia sunshine we can export to Atlanta and points north.

Here are a few books about the old days, all available in local libraries and possibly in local bookstores:

How to read Comprehensive Plan documents

I'm always getting a civics lesson, learning more and more about how our local and state governments work. Most recently, I had the opportunity to have explained two documents related to the Lowndes County Comprehensive Plan: the Short Term Work Projects (STWP) and the Report of Accomplishments (ROA). In the spirit of information exchange, I share what I learned with you.

The state of Georgia requires a Comprehensive Plan and collects and approves them through the Department of Community Affairs (DCA). The current plans for all of Georgia are available at the DCA Planning Site.

The current STWP documents that are being reviewed locally are the projects that the local governments and agencies expect to actively work on in the next five years. The ROA documents report on what was done in the past five years: what was completed, or will no longer be pursued. Many municipalities and counties file separate reports. Locally, because there is significant cooperation among the cities and Lowndes County there is one document with all the projects included and a place that indicates which agency is participating in the project. However, their input documents are filed separately, and LAKE has collected them on the LAKE web pages. Also, each local municipality holds its own public hearings.

Reading the STWP and ROA can be a bit tricky but once I understood the format, the process became much easier. The overall topics are prescribed by the state and are in general categories like "Population", "Economic Development", "Housing" and "Land Use". There are sub-categories in each of the ten major categories, like "Secure High-Wage Jobs" and "Address Workforce Adequacy" in the "Economic Development" major category. Then, under each of these items are one or more specific projects that will be done in the next five years to help achieve each goal.

One reason the draft STWP is complex is that it redlines projects that were performed in the previous five years and are now being removed or modified for a variety of reasons. Many projects were completed, some moved from one stage (investigate) to another (implement or market), and still others simply lacked the staff or funding resources to continue being pursued.

The ROA document is in a similar format but the focus of it is to report the status of the STWP for the previous five years. An Explanation Column gives details on the status of each previous project. For example, it says that the "Feed the Elderly Senior Citizen Nutrition Program" has been discontinued because "Budgetary constraints have limited Lowndes County's role in this supporting action.".

The STWP and ROA documents are meant to be read as a pair, giving the reader an understanding of where we have been, where we are going and how we are going to get there as a community.

-gretchen

The missing Lowndes County public hearing for Comprehensive Plan Updates

Four local governments followed the rules, one appears to have left citizens out of the process.

According to their letters of transmission to the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) Valdosta, Hahira, Remerton, and Lake Park all held public hearings on the Short Term Work Programs and Report of Accomplishment documents.

Here is video of the Valdosta Public Hearing.

The Lowndes County resolution does not say that a public hearing was held. That's because no public hearing was held, as you can see in the video below.

A public hearing was listed in the agenda of the 11 October 2011 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

7. Public Hearing
a. REZ-2011-13, Fred's Dept. Store, 4401 Bemiss Rd., 145c-90a, 2.0 ac., water/sewer, C-H(c) & C- G(c) to C-G
b. Greater Lowndes 2030 Comprehensive Plan Updates - Lowndes County Report of Accomplishments (ROA) and Short Term Work Program (STWP)

However, citizens were not invited to speak for or against the document. In fact, the document was not provided to the citizens for comment and an open records request for the document has not been satisfied by the county. Here is video of items 7a and 7b.

The County's Resolution to Transmit says in part:

The Comprehensive Plan updates Lowndes County refused to provide

LAKE has obtained the planning revision documents Lowndes County refused, in violation of the law, to return in response to an open records request. Here they are for all to see.

The Standards and Procedures for Local Comprehensive Planning, established by the Georgia Planning Act of 1989, require updates to the Short Term Work Projects (STWP) list and the Report of Accomplishments (ROA) every 5 years. Lowndes County and the cities in Lowndes County have submitted the documents to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA)

An open records request to Lowndes County for the documents was not satisfied. However other government agencies were willing to abide by the Georgia Open Records Law ocga 50-18-70.

The documents are available for review on the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange website for Valdosta, Lake Park, Remerton, Hahira and Lowndes County.

I encourage you to read carefully what our elected officials see as the future of our community.

-gretchen