Thanks to better than expected revenues and “strong expenditure controls by City employees”, the City of Decatur found itself roughly $1,000,000 in the black for the completed 2009-2010 fiscal year.

As such, City Manager Peggy Merriss is recommending that the Decatur City Commission pass a resolution at tomorrow night’s commission meeting that will provide a $70, one-time tax credit to City of Decatur property owners, which, if approved, will appear on late October’s tax bill.

According to Ms. Merriss’ note to the commission (page 22 – 23 of the meeting materials – pdf), the city’s audit revealed that revenues were $510,000 better than conservative projections, while expenditures were roughly $875,000 less than budgeted.  (To get the +$1,000,000, add the +$1,385,000 summarized in the previous sentence to the -$393,000 originally set aside in the 09-10 budget from the reserve fund.)

The one-time, $70 tax credit would “cost” the city approximately $360,000.  That in addition to a one-time “pay period compensation adjustment” for city employees at $200,000 and dumping the remaining funds back into the reserve fund (putting it back at its “prudent” max of 34% of annual operating costs – $6.4 million) accounts for all $1,000,000 in additional revenue.

According to the City Manager, this particular allocation “would recognize that the fund balance increase resulted from both additional revenues, including taxes, and from expenditure reductions managed by City staff.”

Everyone knows that Sherman burned Atlanta.  Fewer know that the Confederacy burned some of Atlanta first as they retreated out of the city on September 2, 1864 (which I recently learned at a Decatur Book Festival talk).

But perhaps even fewer know where to locate the oldest building in downtown Atlanta today.

Well, if you’ve never been out of your car downtown, you’ve probably never seen it.  But if you’ve ever rambled around Underground Atlanta, you might be accidently come across it.

The Georgia Railroad Freight Depot – built in 1869 – sits just outside Underground, below an oddly placed mural of whales on the side of a Central Avenue parking deck, and serves today as banquet hall for the Georgia Legislature.  Many Atlanta history buffs have pointed to the strange juxtaposition of the Depot and whales of downtown Atlanta as a great visual example of Atlanta’s strange and forgetful relationship with its own history.

Well now, according to the AJC, the 17 year-old whaling wall must be removed in order to repair the deteriorating parking deck.  Soon the wall will promote Georgia State instead of celebrate Atlanta’s great whaling history.

So I guess a dramatic mural of a steam engine rolling into the station is out of the question, but perhaps GSU could reserve a small spot on the wall to indicate the key piece of Atlanta history located just below the surface of our modern infrastructure.

Photo courtesy of City Data