Eat out on Monday, January 31st and help support Decatur Farm to School!  Last year, the event raised over $3,000!

Lucia sends along the announcement…

DECATUR FARM TO SCHOOL DINE OUT COMING SOON!

The second annual Farm to School Dine Out is set for Monday, January 31st, 2011! Participating restaurants are Farm Burger, Iberian Pig, Watershed, Cakes & Ale, Brick Store Pub, Leon’s Full Service, Universal Joint, Steinbeck’s Ale House and Farmstead 303. This is a great night to take your family out together to support our schools and to enjoy Decatur’s restaurants!

The Farm to School Dine Out hopes to create more awareness of ongoing efforts, raise money and encourage parents and students to participate in the school lunch program. Each restaurant will have a unique “Farm to School” menu or menu options and will donate 10% of sales to Decatur Farm to School.

The 2010 Farm to School Dine Out was a huge success and raised over $3,000 to help put healthy foods in the City Schools of Decatur. The funds were used to purchase kitchen equipment for the employees to make some food items from scratch and helped to fund teacher training and school gardens.

Decatur Farm to School is a branch of the Oakhurst Community Garden Project.

Next Stop…Decatur just posted quite the intriguing picture of the NEW DeKalb County Courthouse circa 1965.  You can view it HERE.

Obviously, the thing that will strike the post-1965 Decatur resident first is the pond out in front of the Courthouse, now a massive flowerbed, as Dennis points out in his post.  Personally I had no idea there was once a pond in that location!  I would love to know when and why it was eventually filled in.

However, that’s not the only cool thing about this photo.  The other is the DeKalb government building across the street, which once stood along Trinity in the current Calloway Building lot.  I’ve been sitting on a pic of this building for quite a while, meaning to scan and post it in the name of general historical interest.  But Next Stop’s pic is actually superior to mine, as it gives better locational context.

However, my pic – from the AJC’s now defunct DeKalb Extra – also came with a little blurb about the short history and fate of the government building, which I will now share with ya.

Progress Took Government Building – Standing on the corner of McDonough and Trinity Streets in downtown Decatur, the old DeKalb County government building was built during the county chairmanship of the late Scott Candler in the mid 1940s.  Nearly 30 years later, it was demolished to make room for the construction of the county government’s Callaway Office Building.  The old government building housed, during its lifetime, the departments of Plice, Fire, Sheriff and the DeKalb County Jail, Family and CHildrens Services and Planning, among others.

Mr./Ms. Decatur had a pretty good 2010.  Lots o’ new restaurants, public improvement projects, an amicable school redistricting.  And all in a recovering economy!

As someone living amongst its insides, what do you think should be this smirky character’s New Year’s resolution for 2011?

Brick Store Pub, Decatur GA (pic courtesy of E.J.)

Atlantans love the Beltline, correct?   Well, if you’re talking about City of Atlanta-Atlantans then yes they do.

But what about metro Atlantans?  The ones who live in counties far beyond the Beltline?  A recent Gwinnett poll gives us another look at what seems will be an uphill battle for Atlanta’s highly publicized public project to get on the list of projects funded by the potential transportation sales tax.

According to an annual poll taken by the Gwinnett Village Community Improvement District only 32% of those polled supported the regional sales tax for transportation funding, and only 22% of the 802 Gwinnettians polled supported that funding supporting the Beltline, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.

So OK, it looks like regional leaders have some work to do if they want to convince residents to support this penny sales tax in a recovering economy.  Also, I guess it’s not all that surprising that residents with minimal interaction with the Beltline would be all that jazzed about it, and thus support would be even lower for that.

But here’s the sentence that really has the potential to alarm…

In fact, more than 50 percent of respondents said they would be less likely to favor the sales tax if the Beltline was a part of the project list.

“Haters.” was CL’s Thomas Wheatley reaction to this part of the story.

But hey, let’s stop and think on this for a minute.  If ITPers were presented with a question like “would you be more or less likely to favor the transportation sales tax if a new bridge for Jimmy Carter Boulevard was part of the project list?” how do you think they would respond?