Decatur Strategic Plan: Session #3 – Communicate!
Decatur Metro | August 12, 2010 | 3:01 pmThe final of Decatur’s three Strategic Planning sessions took place from June 1st thru 5th, where residents were asked eight questions on the topic of communication. In his Session 3 report, summerizer Otis White boiled down the essence of the eight questions to just these two:
How can the city strengthen connections between the city government and citizens and among the citizens themselves; and what roles should citizens, organizations and institutions play in improving Decatur?
From the nearly 70 pages of answers, White determined that the main concern of citizens was both a “desire for more information, delivered in different ways” and a “desire for more and different groups to be involved and effective”.
I scrolled through those 60+ pages of answers and noticed that some of the suggestions were things the city was already doing. So I thought a quick recap might be useful to old-times and new folks alike:
- You can watch all Decatur City Commission meetings on Comcast Channel 25 live on Monday nights beginning at 7:30p. (The production value of this is really quite good!)
- The City has three official blogs run and written by city staff: The Decatur Minute (run by the Community & Economic Develeopment Department), Be Active Decatur (formerly 231 Sycamore) and the Decatur Tax Blog.
- The city also maintains a Facebook page and a variety of Twitter accounts: such as Downtown Decatur, Decatur HR, Decatur Forums, and DecaturNext (specifically created for the Strategic Plan).
- You can submit service requests – from complaints about barking dogs to requesting maintainable at many city-owned properties – online HERE.
- Decatur doesn’t just have a Code Red telephone alert system for “emergency situations”, but also one for “Weather Warnings”. If you’re not getting either of them currently, you can sign up for them both HERE.
That’s by no means a definitive list of every Decatur communication tool available to you – feel free to chime in with others – but hopefully it gets a few more people in the know!