Major Themes From Second Strategic Plan Meeting
Decatur Metro | July 2, 2010The summary from the second strategic planning meeting is now online and can be read in full HERE. (I hit the high points below, though Mr. White’s summary is quite readable in itself.)
Here’s one of the more interesting lines, “The sentiment appeared to be that citizens didn’t necessarily need city government to do more for them, but they would appreciate the government’s help in doing more for themselves. Providing more information, they suggested, was one way.” I would say that this might be one of the largest differences between this Strategic Plan and the last round in 1998.
Anyway, onto your ideas and images for Decatur moving forward!
-
Sustaining and Preserving Decatur
- potential loss of diversity
- keep citizen involvement levels high
- build Decatur’s commercial tax base
-
Tending to the natural environment
- protect and extend Decatur’s tree canopy
- information on being better environmental stewards
- improve storm water infrastructure
- use zoning and building codes to require more green developments
-
Present and future mobility
- support for new forms of transit, including the idea of starting a Decatur trolley system
- make Decatur more walkable
- become more bike-friendly
- making transportation work better through information
-
Life in Decatur – what is most important to you?
- Decatur’s abundance of festivals and community events
- try smaller, neighborhood-focused events in the future
- Support for making Decatur a center for the arts
-
Future of housing
- affordable housing and housing that is appropriate for an aging population
- greater density and more mixed income and rental housing – would be politically challenging
- Allowing single-family houses to add garage apartments and accessory dwellings
-
Healthy living
- promoting exercise and other forms of active living
- help citizens find healthier food
- offer information that connects citizens with healthy living resources
Sustaining
“Baaaaaa-Baaaaaaa!”
“Baramu! Baramu! To your sheep you clan your bleet be true! Baramu!”
Ah! From “Babe” – one of the best movies ever! ( Baa-ram-ewe! Baa-ram-ewe! To your breed, your fleece, your clan be true! Sheep be true! Baa-ram-ewe! )
What a glorious world it’d be if everybody sought to have an unprejudiced heart!
( Left Wing- I kinda agree with you on “sustaining” being the chi-chi buzzword. Would love to know what Maa would’ve had to say about that! )
interesting- so what are the current rules on garage apartments and accessory buildings?
From what the code states, it seems like your property needs to be 12,000 square feet – 6,000 square feet per family – and have a lot width of 70 feet or greater to even contemplate an accessory building. In a city like Decatur, that seems to disqualify a lot of property owners.
Here’s the link to the code: http://bit.ly/9r4uQE
I don’t know where to ask this but can anyone steer me towards some recent demographic info on how the poverty population by age in city of Decatur? We just don’t have the population -just yet – for data sets in the American Community survey, so I am stumped!
nelliebelle1197 – I think you need to piece it together using census.gov/american factfinder and the census tracts for the areas you’re interested in.
Healthy living — like keeping the pools open during August?