When Green, eco-weenies attack!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/17/jeremy-clarkson-horse-manure-protest

College of Coastal Georgia likely to get approval for addition of a BSN program.

http://www.jacksonville.com/news/georgia/2009-09-18/story/brunswick_college_hopes_for_bachelors_in_nursing_program

Discovered: tiny T-Rex ancestor.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/09/17/tiny.t-rex.dinosaur.discovered/index.html

New "temporary" city attorney for St. Marys.

I got wind of the St. Marys City Council hiring a new city attorney in executive session Monday night. When I asked the city clerk for details, here's what I got. Jay, Mr. Alexander Atwood is the City of St Marys’ temporary City Attorney. I do not have any other information at this time. Thank you, Darlene M. Roellig City Clerk Quien sabe?

At last, a TAD-worthy, win-win project?

Click on images to enlarge.

Tuesday afternoon, I ran into my old friend Wyman Westberry coming out of Walmart. For those who don't know, Wyman was the original builder/owner/operator of all of the Mom&Pop stores which he sold to the "Green Cedars" folks. Wyman still has remaining business interests in Camden County. He tells me he now spends about 3 days per week in St. Marys looking after those and 4 days per week at his farm, a little north and west of Jesup, where he is raising "a few hundred head" of cattle. The conversation soon turned to local politics. We were talking about industrial development - or more precisely, the lack thereof. That's when he told me of a couple of documents he received back in April from the Savannah District Office, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. I found his description so interesting and was so amazed I had not heard of the Kingsland project involved, that I asked if I could get a copy. It so happened he had one readily available, so I followed him back to his office (still where it always was). Here's the deal. The ports of Savannah and Jacksonville are both on the cusp of a huge expansion of their container handling capacity. As a result, they both share a similar problem: limited room for container staging and bottlenecks for truckers coming and going. The proposed solutions are identical. The plan is to build off-site locations where the containers can go from ship to train to off-site handling and warehousing locations. The one in Savannah will be in Port Wentworth, on the doorstep of the Garden City Container Berths of the GPA. The proposed solution for the expansion on Blount Island / Dames Point is to haul the containers by train to a new handling, warehousing, and trucking center in Kingsland. Where? Well, refresh your memory by clicking on this link. http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/111507/geo_217793932.shtml

. Okay, so back to the container handling facility. You can see where it will be located in the first illustration above. That shaded area represents a 1,816.42 acre tract within the 15,000 acre development. Containers would come up the existing rail lines from Blount Island / Dames Point, then be diverted into the handling facility. There they would be offloaded. Some would be picked up, unopened, and further shipped by tractor trailer to their end destinations. Others would be unloaded into warehousing for sorting. The contents would then be repacked to fill orders , then shipped out by tractor trailer. This will generate hundreds of reasonably well paying jobs. I would hope that it would also lead to the four laning of Hwy 17 all the way from the 17 / I-95 intersection in Florida to the 17/ I-95 junction in Glynn County at Exit 29. It occurs to me that if that part of the 15,000 acre project could be built first and a TAD would help get it done sooner rather than later, it might well be worth considering.

SMPD officer terminated Tuesday.

City Manager Bill Shanahan has confirmed this morning that an SMPD officer was terminated Tuesday. However, he goes on to say that he can not give me any further details until "10 days after the investigation." What I am hearing, but have not confirmed, is that the terminated officer was most likely Bob Godley, formerly a deputy wiht the CCSO.. Godley, you may recall, was the commodore of BTW's vaunted riverine forces. Assuming that is true, I do not yet have details, however, I have an idea as to what is going on. I attended Monday night's city council meeting. During that meeting, during the public comments section, a black woman came to the podium and very cryptically told the story that her sister and brother-in-law had complained to the SMPD chief several times about their children being constantly harassed by two SMPD officers as they went about their normal activities in their neighborhood. She said they had gotten no action on their complaint. When the mayor asked the city manager, he said that he was aware of it and that there was, in fact, an investigation underway. Later, the council went into executive session. The firing came the next day. Time will tell if there is a connection. There may also be another related SMPD firing forthcoming.

Effingham County asks state to audit Board of Assessors; votes to increase membership of board.

http://www.effinghamherald.net/news/article/8337/ This is the article / action that Winston Barlow, president of the Camden County Watch Dogs, referred to in Monday's St. Marys City Council meeting. By the way, if you don't know, Effingham is the county just north of Chatham County (Savannah). They have seen huge growth in the last 20 years - mostly white flight from an increasingly violent and increasingly black controlled (politically) Savannah.