After a 3 month pilot of “Open City Hall“, the city has decided to extend its contract with “Peak Democracy” for at least another year.  Here’s the city’s press release from Linda Harris.

The City of Decatur announces its commitment to being one of the first cities in the world to add an on-line option to its public comment process.

‘We know a lot of residents are interested in alternatives for participating in the public process,” says Decatur Mayor Bill Floyd, ‘and we wanted to provide another option for civic engagement.’ After a 3 month pilot, they’ve decided to continue their ‘Open City Hall’ project for at least another year.

Release is continued after the jump…

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The great Decatur photog, HamwithCam, captured one of the many lightning strikes that hit around Decatur last night.

It was one of those nights when the lightning was so frequent, you’d swear there was a mob of paparazzi outside your door.

The Decatur Book Festival is using the web in hopes of attracting literary rock star Neil Gaiman to the festival this summer.

Jump over to the Decatur Book Festival website and click the DEMAND button under the pic of  Gaiman to support the effort.  You’ll have to put in an email address to complete the process, but its all quite quick and easy.

Currently there are 35 demands for Gaiman.  I’m sure we can do better than that!

MARTA announced yesterday that it will receive between $60M-$70M of the $180M allocated for GA mass transit in the federal stimulus package.  But as we suspected, that money cannot be used to cover operating expenses, so MARTA plans to use the funds for repairs and “system preservation projects”.

Not the sort of news that gets transit-huggers all hot and bothered, though I guess it could be considered “investing in the future”.  I’m still eager to hear how the other $120M will be spent.

Meanwhile, it sounds like we won’t know for a couple months how the now much-malined (thanks a lot Harry Reid) high-speed rail money will be distributed.  The U.S. Transportation Sec. will distribute that money directly.

Johnny Issakson better get crackin’!  Here’s where you can contact him, in case you’d like to drop him a line.