What Capital Improvements is Decatur Planning in Next 10 Years?
Decatur Metro | June 15, 2015 | 8:33 amAt tonight’s Decatur City Commission meeting, City Manager Peggy Merriss will present a 10-Year Capital Improvement Plan to the Commission for approval. In a note to the Commission, Ms. Merriss states…
The ten-year capital plan represents the first time the City has combined all of its capital improvement plans into one document. It provides a comprehensive depiction of Decatur’s current and anticipated capital improvement needs, including expenditures and revenue sources, for a ten year period. The plan is another step in an ongoing conversation with the community regarding infrastructure investment, service level standards and funding priorities.
Ms. Merriss also mentions that the city will be updating the plan annually going forward.
Sure there are many mundane items like painting City Hall and car payments, also details many of Decatur’s planned infrastructure improvements and ongoing upkeep over the next decade. – CLICK HERE to view it yourself.
For example, here are a few items worth noting offhand.
- Fiber Network Installation – There’s $100,000 earmarked for the next 5 years, assumedly related to Google Fiber’s plans to install service in Decatur in the coming years.
- CCC Pedestrian and Bike Safety Improvements – Over $1 million in both 16-17 and 17-18
- North McDonough Streetscapes and McDonough/Candler railroad crossings – $708,000 ($342,000 from HOST funding) and $200,000 ($570,000 from HOST fuding) budgeted respectively for these two projects in 2015-16 and 2016-17.
- Public Art – $10,000 a year budgeted
- Hidden Cove Park will see $50,000 in 2018-19 and $100,000 investments/year from 2019-2021.
Tell us what other notable items you see in the comments!
Photo courtesy of The Decatur Minute
Disappointing. I don’t see a new kitchen for my house anywhere on this list. Guess I’ll have to try Kickstarter.
I’m interested to learn more about the Hidden Cove Park upgrades. Since Westchester reopened, foot traffic on the trail through Hidden Cove has increased, and neighbors seem to be utilizing the entirety of the space more frequently.
I’ll check into it.
I see that McKoy and Oakhurst Parks are slated for some upgrades. I hope they stay on schedule because they’re LONG overdue. The restrooms and concession stands as well as general landscaping are an embarrassment for a city that has such a great reputation nationwide for being a “great place to live”…
It’s a big downer to bring your kids to the playground, or play tennis at Oakhurst and then go into those disgusting restrooms (when they’re even open). The Active Living sports and camp programs (baseball, softball) that use those fields (as well as the high school teams) deserve clean restrooms, concessions and playgrounds. I hope this is the real thing.
Agree
Glenlake Park’s playground is in drastic need of improvements as well. The exercise machines installed not too long ago have been vandalized to the point of destruction. They are now an obvious hazard, capable of causing severe, bloody injury. The playground itself has been thrashed and neglected, and is also in need of some urgent attention. In addition, the park has boomed in popularity and on some weekends, there are hundreds of children crammed onto that small play area.
I also wonder if the city should re-evaluate the money spent on road paving and repair. The condition of our streets is pretty embarrassing for a city that’s so highly lauded as a “great place to live”. Just look at the street in front of the Marlay through The Pinewood. Its awful. Same can be said for Church street, pretty much all the way to the new WalMart. Riddled with potholes and half-arsed patches.
I hate to say it, but any public-access equipment, etc will be vandalized; even in our little “utopia”. There are simply people out there who don’t give a care in the world about the community’s assets, much less others’ personal property (recently someone stole my American flag off of my house; destroyed a “neighborhood” soccer goal which was on a dead end street; stole stones and plants from a house for sale; not to mention various “tagging” of street signs).
Oh, I totally get that vandals will always be around – but leaving jagged rusty metal where parts were torn off the equipment, as well as bare-steel rods that would excel at impalement is a blatant safety red-flag. IN A PARK FILLED WITH CHILDREN. These things must be repaired. As it is, they’ve been that way for weeks.
If the city can’t afford to monitor and repair these items as needed, then the gear needs to be removed.
Agreed
Any improvements planned to Mead/Adair/College railroad crossing? If this is a 10 year plan….
That’s the Atlanta Ave crossing and there hasn’t been talk of funding improvements of that intersection in a long while. More than 5 years back, McDonough and Candler were prioritized and Atlanta has since been sidelined. It’s included in the old Transportation Plan but believe it has been put off due to general lack of funding.
Traffic volume/congestion is debated here frequently. It tends to breakdown to arguments between “we need better streets/light timing/re-worked intersections to move cars more efficiently” and “people need to bike/walk and not drive as much”. What about an in between solution? Work with MARTA to develop a network of small buses (thinking like Emory Cliff Shuttle size) that work to deliver people from the neighborhoods to the central business district and the Oakhurst Business District. Maybe CSD could pay this system to transport those students who they have to transport and get out of the transportation business.
This is in the Strategic Plan and, if I recall correctly, rolled out in a limited-term pilot project maybe two years ago. Also seem to recall it was funded by a grant. DM, any recollection? I think it ran one day a week or something like that.
Funny, I can’t find the DM post at the moment, but here’s a link to the senior shuttle program that was posted on Patti Garrett’s blog from 2013… http://pattigarrett.net/2013/02/20/senior-shuttle-pilot-program-oakhurst-to-downtown/
It’s still running.
I think where conversations like this break down is that people are quick to forget that people have to be able to get home in a reasonable time in order for any of this to make a difference. If getting to your front door is totally stressing you out, you’re going to sour on the community. I have children in the schools here. Were it not for that, I’d be loooooong gone – and its mainly due to the asinine redesign of traffic patterns.
As it is now, the commute from W. Howard to the Glenlake Park area can take upwards of 30 minutes – sometimes more. That’s a distance of a mile. I can get from my office in Downtown Atlanta to Commerce Drive in nearly the same amount of time that it takes me to get from W. Howard to my home. This was not an issue until they implemented the ‘traffic calming’ measures @ Commerce and Claremont.
As a result, cars are cutting through neighborhoods on streets like Adair and Drexel, to get to Ponce, then diving back into Ponce DL Place and Fairview – just to get around. This is putting those communities at risk due to exponential increases in traffic. I live in one of those areas – I can speak firsthand to the increase in traffic volume. I sit there and watch the cars drive past on days I go in late or pick up the kids early. Which I do, by the way, to keep me out of the awful traffic in Decatur around rush hours.
Any member of City leadership that thinks this is “good for the community” needs to be removed from office. Its lunacy.
30 minutes to get from West Howard to Glenlake Park?!?!
I make that trip nearly every day round trip and it never takes more than 5 minutes. Can I ask what time of the day you are talking about?
Between 5:30 – 6:30pm. In other words, peak rush hour. If you make this trip in 5 minutes, you must have a helicopter.
So there is traffic at rush hour? That’s not surprising.
However, I don’t think we should build our roads for the capacity that may be there for an hour or two of the day. What about the other 22 hours of the day? Let’s design our roads for people too walkers, runners, bikers.
Also, don’t forget, there’s been no actual traffic calming installed yet at Clairemont and Commerce. All we have right now is just an admittedly clunky construction workaround. Once complete, the back-up stacking for a left on Clairemont will no longer be in the same lane as through-traffic. From what I’ve seen, Commerce, originally 2 through lanes plus the center turn lane, will become 1 through lane and one bike lane, plus the center turn lane. So the current clusterfark at the intersection should get largely back to normal.
“Traffic at rush hour? That’s not surprising”. Cute. Holier-than-thou snark always goes over well in a forum.
Using your logic, anesthesia shouldn’t be required during a colonoscopy. I mean, there are 24 hours in a day, right? And you’re only in surgery for like an hour of those 24. Suck it up!
Sorry pal – I get in my car twice a day. Once to drive to work, and once to drive home. Those two trips encompass 99% of my driving in the city, and I suspect I am a member of the mighty majority. The rest of the time, I walk. If 99% of the driving experience in Decatur is blood-boilingly godawful traffic on poorly maintained roads, then that is definitely something that should be looked at. Especially if this route is one of the only ones to get AROUND the downtown area – we’re not even trying to get THROUGH it. This is a bypass-route!
Scott – we will just have to see what effect their ‘calming measures’ will have. I suspect once they are fully implemented, the problem will remain.
This! So much this. And have rider fees, too. (Cliff shuttle is free for users.) I would happily pay and use the heck out of such a service. (I mean, provided a one-way trip was a reasonable fee.) One thing about walking or biking is that it is cumbersome to, say, do some shopping and haul stuff back home, or bring your young kids along. It would also make it easier for us, as a family, to use MARTA to go into Atlanta. Would definitely eliminate a lot of car trips in our household, if not the use of one car altogether.
I am concerned that they are still considering a round about at the Glenlake Park entrance on Church. This would make it absolutely impossible for me or any of my neighbors to get out of our condo community during rush hour and incredibly difficult any other time. I truly hope the City leaders listen to residents and make the right choices for all of us not just the people coming into our lovely city.
Is that on this list? Whereabouts?
Putting a roundabout on the secondary artery into the downtown area would choke the life out of it as well as decimate property values around there. They’re having a hard enough time making Church St @ Commerce into something nice. If they implement a roundabout in front of the pool – they can kiss that side of town goodbye.