All right folks.  Time to put up or shut up.

Every 10 years, Decatur reevaluates itself and 2010 is that year.  Decatur has officially begun its 2010 Strategic Planning process, this time with a dedicated website at www.decaturnext.com.

If you want to be involved in the four city-wide meetings, which will determine the city’s direction over the next 10 years, you must to sign up HERE.

In the meantime, see what some of your neighbors have to say about the “Next 10″ (over a groovy acoustic soundtrack)…

The city wants more than 500 residents involved.  Let’s make that happen!

Allison writes in…

Just a bit of news from the ecotone: I just watched a pair of coyotes trot down the street past my house.

Decatur folks should watch out for their small critters. They are back.

Andisheh snapped this pic – whilst levitating I can only assume – of a car “stuck” on the train tracks running through Decatur.  He reports that the car has since been moved from the scene.

I’ve contacted Decatur PD to see if they can provide any background on HOW a car could possibly end up sitting on the tracks like that.

UPDATE: Lynne sends in another must-read dog poem:  “Another Reason I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House” by Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States (and Decatur Book Festival keynote speaker a couple years back).

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From the “It’s funny cause it’s true” file.

Here’s the beginning of the poem “Cleaning Up After Your Dog”, from today’s Writer’s Almanac…

Pull plastic bag from pocket

and wave it like a flag

or diploma. Make sure many people

congratulate your care

for the community.

Check bag for holes.

Double check.

Read the rest of the poem HERE.  (The part about the cop is something I always find myself doing when a cruiser passes mid-cleanup)

“Build us a streetcar line!” Atlanta screamed north towards the Chesapeake Bay.  “What?  I’m sorry, what was that?” seems to have been the response.

The AJC reports that Atlanta’s bid to get the Federal Government to build us a streetcar line down ol’ Peachtree Street with stimulus funding was totally ignored.

I like it when a reporter’s disappointment bleeds through onto the page…

In fact, in a two-page list of grant recipients including many in the Southeast, Georgia appears not to have a single project.

Atlanta, local business groups and MARTA applied for $298.3 million, the total amount needed to construct the streetcar. The city and the business groups would have shared the cost of operations, helped by ticket fares, advertising revenues, and naming rights. MARTA would have administered the grant. The city also suggested smaller versions of the project that would cost less, but no dice. Streetcars operated in Atlanta until 1949.

The loss for the streetcar is one more drop in the bucket of metro Atlanta’s mass transit misery.

But what did we do to deserve such overlooking?!  What MORE could we have done!?

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