I hope Pete the Cat will like his black, ink-stained shoes, after he’s finished climbing the New York Times Bestseller list!

Dave over on the Little Shop blog notes that Eric Litwin and James Dean’s Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes is already #8 on the New York Times Picture Book Best Seller List after only a couple weeks of having gone national with Harper Collins.

In celebration, sing along with these girls!

How do you deal with a budget decifit without raising the millage rate on property owners?  Cut.  And then cut some more.

From this morning’s AJC…

The [DeKalb School Board budget] committee’s budget includes laying off 200 paraprofessionals, 150 central office employees, 59 media clerks and 18 technology specialists.

In addition to layoffs, the budget committee voted to cut another 61 paraprofessionals, 10 assistant principals and 10 counselors through attrition.

…The committee also voted to furlough teachers seven days, which is about a 3.9 percent pay cut. Administrators, secretaries and other employees will face 10 to 15 furlough days.

The committee also voted to raise class sizes by two students and cut the board’s contribution to employees’ tax-sheltered annuity.

Even with all these cuts, some think that it still won’t be enough to close the budget gap.  In that case, a small tax increase might be on the horizon.

Atlanta Urban Area Partnership for Google from City of Decatur on Vimeo.

Here’s the video produced by Decatur’s Andrea Berry on behalf of Decatur, Chamblee, Avondale, Dunwoody, Doraville, Emory and Georgia Power, making the case for Google Fiber. [h/t The Decatur Minute]

It looks like Decatur, etc will have their work cut out for them.  Google broke its silence on the initiative yesterday with an update, which stated that with the RFI deadline now past, over 1,100 communities across the U.S. had expressed interest in becoming the test ground for the company’s high-speed fiber optic network.  Next steps for Google include “site visits, meeting with local officials and consulting with third-party organizations.”

After the jump, you can view a map that Google created showing the locations of government responses (small dots) and resident nominations of 1,000 or more (big dots).

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