On the LAKE Front

Harris resignation letter —Gretchen Quarterman

Some thoughts on the Kay Harris resignation letter.

1. If the library building is going to fall down, move the library to another available building like the soon to be closed federal building downtown.
2. Has she forgotten that the newspaper brags that SPLOST is paid half by people who don't even live in the county?
3. If Valdosta had gone ahead with the MOST then for sure county residents would have been paying for something that they wouldn't get to use. How much "shopping" is outside the Valdosta city limits? Harvey's in Bemiss, Harvey's in Hahira and the stores in Lake Park.

Certainly a SPLOST is better than a MOST.

-gretchen

Kay Harris resigned as Chair and from Library Board

Received today: PDF, with transcription appended below. -jsq

March 15, 2013

Joe Pritchard
County Manager
Lowndes County
327 N. Ashley St.
Valdosta, GA 31601

Dear Mr. Pritchard:

It is with great regret that I find the need to step down from the Lowndes County
and South Georgia Regional Library Board of Trustees. I fear that I am no longer
capable of holding this position in light of the county's recent actions.

As you are aware,

Valdosta Vimeo

I've been nagging Valdosta for years about putting some of their cable TV station content on the web. Turns out they are already doing some of that, which is a step towards acting like a modern metropolitan area. Received Wednesday via Tim Carroll; I added the links and the [clarification].

From: Sementha Mathews
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 11:48 AM
To: Tim Carroll
Subject: RE: "The rest of the story"

Councilman Carroll,

Thank you for the recent phone call. As a result, I will research the Austin, Tx media practices to see if they can be implemented in any way here at Metro 17. We used to include a council wrap segment in each show, and I'll ask Shemeeka [Johnson, Valdosta Channel 17 Media Coordinator] why we took that out. But we can easily add that back in.

City of Austin posts

Time Warner says you don't want high speed Internet

After all, if all the people had fast Internet connections, they might provide their own content, ranging from local sports vidoed by fans to parties to local government meetings, and then they wouldn't be "consumers", would they? The people would be participants in their own community, ranging from local to state, national, and global. And the big cablecos and telcos wouldn't be able to monopolize access to information, which is their cash cow now. It will take more than wishful thinking to get TW to help with affordable local high speed Internet access.

Klint Finley wrote for Wired 28 February 2013, You Don’t Want Super-High-Speed Internet, Says Time Warner Cable,

Time Warner Cable chief technology officer Irene Esteves says you don't really want the gigabit speeds offered by Google Fiber and other high speed providers.

On Wednesday, at a conference in San Francisco, Esteves downplayed the importance of offering a service to compete with Google, as reported by The Verge. “We're in the business of delivering what consumers want, and to stay a little ahead of what we think they will want.... We just don't see the need of delivering that to consumers,” she said, referring to gigabit-speed internet connections.

Esteves thinks only business customers will need that kind of bandwidth, and she noted that Time Warner already offers gigabit connections for businesses in some markets.

Right, "in some markets". How many of you around here can get a gigabit Internet connection? And

Time Warner Cable says Irene Esteves is the Chief Financial Officer, which makes more sense than a Chief Technical Officer spreading this doubtfire.

No, it's TW CTO Michael LaJoie's job to argue against net neutrality. Paul Rodriguez wrote for cabletechtalk at some unknown date, Cable’s internal and external technology picture,

Videos: Commission voted against the people @ LCC 2013-02-26

Apparently one person with a lawyer can persuade the Lowndes County Commission that hundreds of people are just an unruly mass, not the public it's supposed to represent. For whatever reason, not clear to the public, the Commission voted 3 to 1 with 1 absent to close the end of Old State Road to Hotchkiss Crossing, thus barring the only public access to the Alapaha River in Lowndes County. We shall see whether they will follow through with their hint that they might make a park on the Alapaha River at another location. Congratulations to Commissioner Demarcus Marshall for speaking up for due process and for voting for the public!

Public Works Director Robin English spoke about road conditions and Emergency Services Director Ashley Tye spoke about Local weather conditions,

Update noon 27 Feb 2013: Link to weather conditions, and to Citizens Wishing to Be Heard.

The Commission reappointed J. Glenn Gregory to the South Regional Joint Development Authority and appointed Commissioner Joyce Evans to the Southern Georgia Area Agency on Aging Advisory Council. They are applying for a grant for the county's MIDS bus system and reapplying for a CDBG grant for Second Harvest.

Here's the agenda, with links to the videos and some notes, followed by a video playlist. See also the videos of Monday morning's Work Session.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2^nd Floor

Video: two appointments, a public hearing, and two grants @ LCC 2013-02-25

Newsflash! "no new information" and "questions were resolved" about the proposed abandonment of Old State Road at Hotchkiss Landing on the Alapaha River, according to the Commission. They vote tonight at 5:30 PM.

Dr. Bill Grow talked for fifteen minutes about South Health District, and managed not to ask the county for money, although the Health Dept. clearly could use some. Ashley Tye reported on local weather conditions and the county's Code Red emergency warning system, in which lack of Internet access by some county residents came up.

It's J. Glenn Gregory again for the South Regional Joint Development Authority and Commissioner Joyce Evans for the Southern Georgia Area Agency on Aging Advisory Council. They are applying for a grant for the county's MIDS bus system and reapplying for a CDBG grant for Second Harvest.

Here's the agenda, with links to the videos and some notes, followed by a video playlist.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2^nd Floor

Broadband on the table @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Internet speed and access (appearing as Broadband) played a starring role at the 19 February 2013 meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA), with a surprise cameo by Lowndes County Commission Chairman Bill Slaughter (appearing as himself) and a bravura performance by Angela Crance of Wiregrass Tech, with a strong supporting role by VLCIA Chairman Roy Copeland, and Mary Gooding standing in for VSU. Internet access (as "telecommunications infrastructure") came up in Project Manager Allan Ricketts' report as a requirement for a Fortune 500 customer service operation and for a National health care service provider, both considering locating here, also as bandwidth, as a requirement for jobs. That was the main theme of Executive Director Andrea Schruijer's report, especially in rural parts of our county, especially for a home-based call center. Even Rotary Clubs need broadband.

VLCIA is also helping find potential sites for several utility-scale photovoltaic solar installations.

The Industrial Authority Board was down to three members, barely a quorum: Mary Gooding, Chairman Roy Copeland, and Tom Call. Whereabouts of Norman Bennett and Jerry Jennett were undetermined. I can't complain; I was in bed with a sinus infection.

Here's the agenda (such as it is), with links to the videos and some notes, often in separate posts.

Rotary Clubs need broadband @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Before the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013 meeting, Gretchen told Bill about how she's now videoing at Rotary and putting playlists on the web with some delay. Bill and Gretchen (and Commissioner John Page) go to the same Valdosta Rotary Club. This is yet another use of Internet access: attracting participants to local community groups, and getting their speakers to a wider audience.

-jsq

 

I'm super-excited about the whole broadband thing —Gretchen Quarterman @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

And now a word from the only person in the room at the the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013 with actual experience in bringing Internet broadband access to new areas, invisible behind the camera but clearly audible, Gretchen Quarterman:

I'm super-excited about the whole broadband thing, because you know that's near and dear to our heart, and our background.

But please be very careful about the buill that's before the legislature that will prohibit municipal Internets. Right now the legislature is trying to take off the table muncipal Internets. And I think that a municipal Internet would be a really great solution here. So let your legislator know that's a bad idea; they shouldn't take that off the table from us.

That's HB 282, in opposition to which Amy Henderson of Georgia Municipal Association said:

Broadband is economic development.

Gretchen continued:

At the Chamber's annual meeting when a local speaker stood up she talked about the that's doing really well right now is agriculture and I'm pleased to announce that the South Georgia Growing Local Conference will be here in January of 2014 the last weekend, a Friday and Saturday. It's an equivalent of the Georgia Organics big conference that they have in Atlanta. Except that it's for south Georgia local growers, farmers, homesteaders. We just were in Reidsville this last January and Lowndes County is going to have it next year.

And the whole series of South Georgia Growing Local Conferences (this will be the fourth) has been organized largely online, in yet another use of Internet access for economic development, in this case sustainable local development.

OK, one more: Rotary Clubs need broadband.

-jsq

I don't want to say we don't have broadband —Andrea Schruijer @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

Unfortunately, Andrea Schruijer made clear that much of what had just been said at the the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013 hadn't been heard.

It's not that we're saying we don't have broadband. We have connectivity; that's not the issue. We have great partners that help us with that.

Well, local "leaders" need to learn to say it: "we don't have broadband!" Many of the people of Lowndes County and even more in the surrounding counties can't afford Internet access at all, as Idelle Dear told the Lowndes County Commission. And the "great partners" Ms. Schruijer bragged about will never provide it for us without a lot of prodding, because AT&T and Verizon and Sprint and Comcast and Mediacom don't think anything outside the Atlanta beltway has enough population density to bother with, and even in Atlanta all people get is U.S.-style low-speed low-reliability Internet connectivity that would never even be on sale in Japan or France or Korea or Finland or even Estonia.

Tom Call illustrated my point when he talked about a residential project where a provider installed cable and claimed they were providing voice, TV, and Internet access, but then didn't actually have the capacity for Internet when people started using it.