Chad sends along this note…

Bid Night Out benefiting Decatur Presbyterian Children’s Community – Friday March 6th, 7:00 pm at the Courthouse on Decatur Square

Enjoy delicious fare from Bada Bing while you bid on vacations, one of a kind gifts and amazing sports memorabilia.  Live auction begins at 9:00 pm and features two tickets to a taping of the Late Show with David Letterman!

Tickets are $30 in advance, $35 at the door. Tickets include all food, beer, wine and soft drinks.

Contact Jenny Haldopoulos (404-373-3647) to donate or attend.

Also on the docket tonight, the Decatur city commission is set to vote on an interim transitional buffer between residential and commercial properties that would increase the setback from 10 to 30 feet and decrease the height-limiting plane angle from 60 to 45 degrees.  It also transfers the authority of giving parking variances from the ZBA to the city commission.

This ordinance (along with one for new mixed use zoning) went before the planning commission a few days back and the minutes from the meeting are particularly interesting – hello concerned resident Kathy Gannon!  While the buffer ordinance was approved by the planning commission, the mixed use zoning was tabled to investigate adding a grandfather clause, increasing building heights by 4′ feet to a 54′ max in the village sub-area, and increasing the allowable retail floor area to 8,000 ft to accommodate a grocery store.

At tonight’s city commission meeting, the city is scheduled to award the historic resources survey to Keystone Preservation Associates and Morrison Design.

The $35,000 project will document all properties in Decatur outside of the historic districts with a digital photograph and a “property inventory sheet”. Once the survey is complete, Keystone and Morrison will produce a final report and public presentation of their findings and make recommendations for what is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

The project was conceived back in 2007, when controversy surrounding the proposed Oakhurst Historic District was even more confused by the fact that the city had no complete database of its built environment.

This morning’s Daily Candy features Leon’s and gives a little inside scoop (with weird punctuation)…

In addition to a master beer selection (duh), there’s a whistle-wetting, seasonal cocktail menu. Yeah, we’ve heard about the appley Whiskey Pie and Belgian Champale. But what’s not on the menu is Carl’s Screwball – inspired by the owners’ fave back-in-the-day Carl’s candy and made with biscotti liqueur – and K. Chocolat’s by-request-only chocolate flights.

Thanks to my wife, Carl and Brooke for forwarding!

Over on CL, Cliff Bostock gives a preview of his upcoming full review of the gastropub.  (Haven’t heard much from DM readers yet…what’s been your impression of Leon’s thus far?)

And probably most importantly for those who have yet to make it over to the corner of Church and Ponce…both the food and drink menus are now online!

As the Federal stimulus package passed both houses of Congress last week, transit junkies seemed a little bipolar as they both whimpered and cheered.

They whimpered because mass transit funding ended up receiving only 1/3 of its original appropriation ($8.4 billion from $24 billion).  But then they waved those wet hankies high when they realized that in the final moments of wheeling and dealing, high-speed rail’s money quadrupled to $8 billion.

What will be done with the high-speed rail cash is still definitely yet-to-be-determined. All that we really know is that $8 billion doesn’t get you far when building new track for 100+ mph trains (the recently voter approved L.A. to SF high-speed route will cost upwards of $40 billion).  However, retrofitting existing freight tracks between Charlotte and Macon (with a stop in ATL) seems to be substantially cheaper – only $2.5 billion! And seriously, what’s a couple billion between friends?

But what I’m curious about this morning is what will our favorite Georgia politicians do with the $168 million in mass transit grants it will receive from the Fed?  The city of Atlanta has asked for $121 million to build two street car lines and $18 million for light rail along the Beltline Trail, while Athens, Macon and Hinesburg all want a smaller piece so they can pimp their bus services.

How will this money be distributed?  Let’s ask the GDOT!

Oh wait…didn’t I read something recently about Sonny & friends looking to take authority away from our lovably dysfunctional GDOT?  I wonder if that has anything to do the more than $1 billion the state will soon receive in infrastructure money.  Maybe if we can distract the rest of the state with visions of gold-plated bridges, Atlanta can claim most of that delicious transit money!

That is unless some smaller, and less annoyingly liberal town or city asks for it.  Then suddenly its all “Light-Rail Comes to LaGrange!”