585 Dekalb Industrial Way Decatur, GA 30033 (photo submitted by mert)

Literally.

Bill Carpenter, president of Lightroom Architecture, sent us renderings of the house he designed, which is currently being built at 329 South McDonough Street in Decatur.

Being part of the MAK Historic District, the house puts on a traditional face along the “right-of-way”, but a peek into the backyard (after the jump) reveals a completely different house style at the rear.

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Well, we knew we didn’t have a chance of winning since a Decatur resident’s submission missed the deadline, but it’s sorta cool that a fellow Georgia city won the $500,000 from Beneful to renovate a dog park.

How does one spend a whopping $500,000 on a dog park? According to the AJC’s article, the renovated park will feature a rubber mulch trail, a “water spray area” and “a large, bone-shaped ramp with cylindrical tunnels running beneath”.

In related news, a commenter recently noted that Decatur’s Adair Park dog park just got some new metal benches and a water fountain.  I mean really, what more does a dog need?

Oh zoning, you so dated.

This story’s actually been on many people’s radar for quite a while.  Creative Loafing actually wrote a story about it way back in 2008.  Since then , Mr. Miller has had his property rezoned to allow farming for profit, but DeKalb is prosecuting for the past zoning violations.

Channel 2 picked up the story and it’s already made it’s way to the Drudge Report.  (h/t: DeKalb Officers)

MARTA is a $6.4 billion infrastructure system.

So when I picked up my AJC out of the driveway this morning and read “MARTA audit shows wasted money”, I thought, oh damn, what have those crazy MARTA administrators done now.

Walking back up the driveway, I began to read:  $55,000 in missing laptops!  $79,000 in Georgia Cruise Card fines!

The rage was beginning to churn in my stomach, but I kept reading.  I could feel the knock-out punch coming!  Surely if your sub-head is “AJC investigation: Audit shows transit authority has trouble keeping tabs on its stuff”, you gotta be talking about more than $134,000.  Right?

Wrong.

That was it.  Those two items – which according to the article have been fodder for local news outlets of late (because what’s weirder than MARTA employees racking up highway fines?) – were the extent of the headlined “waste money”.

But thank goodness for random, uninformed opinions.

“It’s a little frustrating,” [a GSU MARTA rider] said, especially since her pass charge will go up in October.

“They need to do better,” echoed Ong Wang, an 18-year-old art student who takes MARTA every day from the North Springs station.

Yeah, do better!  This is garbage! Oh man, pissy and better-than-everyone-else here I came!

Unfortunately, the rest of the article did nothing to peak my indignation.  In fact, it included lots of quotes that just confused my ego-trip…

“This tells me the auditor is looking in the right place where the highest risks are and working with management to try to get improvement,” said Ruthe Holden, chairwoman of the American Public Transportation Association’s committee of audit professionals.

Heh?  So you could have just have easily written an article saying that MARTA’s audits found that internal controls were actually quite good, aside from a few minor issues?  Geez man.  What a tease!

I’m not saying that these two cases of wasted money aren’t relevant in the proper context.  But front page, giant, bold, generic “wasted money” headline?  Come on.